Page 47 of Zorro

In the center of it all stood a lovely woman, blonde with an edge of steel tension tucked beneath a sun-kissed smile. She wasn’t a tourist. One of the tactical types attending the conference. Everly recognized the posture, shoulders relaxed, but eyes alert. A woman who’d spent time in rooms that didn’t forgive weakness.

She was grinning at a rack of shirts like she was planning a very specific act of mischief.

“Think this is too sedate for a Cajun madman?” the woman asked, holding up a navy-blue Hawaiian button-up dotted with restrained pineapples and vaguely suspicious parrots.

Everly blinked. The question caught her completely off guard. A laugh escaped before she could stop it. Soft. Startled. Real. It broke loose like a bird from her throat. “Absolutely,” she said, her voice hoarse with too much silence. “That shirt’s not screaming enough.”

Without thinking, she reached for a hideous pink flamingo monstrosity, fluorescent birds in sunglasses, palm trees dusted with glitter, the kind of color that might qualify as a minor war crime under the Geneva Convention.

It was the kind of shirt Rob would never wear. The kind of shirt Zorro would. Especially if she asked him to. Especially if he thought it would make her laugh. She held it out between two fingers. “Now this,” Everly said, “is perfect for a madman.”

The woman laughed, really laughed, and took the shirt with a nod of fierce approval.

“He’d wear this. Open. No undershirt. Swagger into a debrief like it’s Mardi Gras in hell.”

Everly’s heart squeezed, tight enough to hurt. What a wonderful-sounding man. She had one. Maybe. If she were brave enough to reach for him. The keycard burned against her hip. Sharp enough to bite.

She gave a faint smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Her shoulders stayed tense beneath her linen cover-up, her breathing too shallow.

The woman went still. It was subtle, the way her head tilted, studying Everly without intrusion. But she saw it.

Everly hated how fast she recognized the kind of gaze that dissected without cutting. How much of herself she couldn’t seem to hide.

“You okay?” the woman asked, voice soft but certain.

Everly didn’t answer. Her throat closed on the truth. Then, too quietly to be meant for anyone, she whispered, “It must be nice…having that kind of madman.” A man who made you laugh. A man who didn’t ask you to shrink. A man who didn’t resent the light you carried.

Before the woman could answer, the air shifted behind them with the kind of precision that only came from years of operating on instinct.

“Did someone say madman?” The voice was warm, familiar. Gator? “Damn right it’s nice, Dr. S. Come here, babe.”

He wrapped an arm around the woman and kissed her temple like it was second nature, like affection didn’t require permission. The woman leaned into him like he was the pillar that stabilized her.

Everly’s eyes flicked away, fast. The ache hit like a flash fire, hot and sharp and uninvited. That intimacy. That ease. It wasn’t just marriage. It was play. It was knowing. It was safe. She swallowed hard. A lump like guilt lodged in her throat.

“This is my wife, Isabelle,” Gator said, casual but proud. “I guess you two didn’t meet in Niamey. She was the acting ambassador before we were kicked out of the country.” His face was so…soft and tender when he looked at her. She was the only woman he saw. “Izzy, this is Dr. Everly Quinn.”

Izzy offered a hand, still holding the flamingo shirt with her other hand. “I’ve heard so much about you. Thank you for taking care of Zeph and his whole team.”

Everly groaned inwardly. What was this? A coordinated emotional ambush? Could she walk two steps in this damn hotel without colliding with one of Zorro’s teammates and their wives whose marriages didn’t look like a slow heartbreak?

First Pippa and Joker thriving under ambition without losing their passion. Then Gator and Izzy, all fire and mischief, effortless and known. Together, they looked like hope. Like something that endured without demanding either person compromise.

Zorro, God, Zorro had looked at her like she was light. Even when she was unraveling.

She mumbled something about needing to go and turned before they could say anything else, especially anything kind. She couldn’t take kindness right now. She was too brittle. Kindness would break her faster than cruelty.

She moved on autopilot, her fingers fisting around the curve of the keycard in her pocket.

But she still didn’t turn toward Zorro’s room. She couldn’t, not while everything was so precarious, and his kindness meant she might be forgiven, and his forgiveness meant she might be worthy. That was the part she still didn’t know how to believe.

The shop door jingled behind her. She stepped into the corridor like she was surfacing from deep water.

The shift in temperature hit her first, humid warmth replacing the air-conditioned chill. Then the noise. Laughter. Clinking glasses. Voices clustered in the mezzanine lounge just beyond the corridor.

She started to turn back toward the elevators, the keycard still tucked in her pocket like a pulse, when a group of conference attendees stepped out from the alcove nearby.

She didn’t mean to linger. She didn’t mean to listen.

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