Page 24 of The Boss
They ate in silence at first, each bite grounding her, steadying her after the intensity of the office. But silence couldn’t last. The questions rose like steam, curling betweenthem.
“Who taught you?” she asked softly, cutting into themeat.
He didn’t look up at first. “My grandmother. Cooking was the only time she let me near without reminding me who I belonged to.”
“Bjorn?”
“Bjorn.”
Mariah paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. He said his father’s name so flatly, but she heard what was beneath it: aboy who’d been claimed by a name before he could claim himself. She swallowed. “My mother taught me. She said food was love, even when there wasn’t much else to give.”
He looked at her then, and for a moment the burden of the Severins and the Dantes and the bomb and the Brand fell away. It was just two people at a table, sharing something real. It hit her harder than the brush of his thumb, harder than the almost-kiss in the office. Because it was intimacy he hadn’t planned.
He studied her for a long moment over the rim of his glass, then asked quietly, almost as if testing her: “What do you fear?”
She set her fork down, fingers trembling. She didn’t hesitate, but answered directly. “Being invisible. Being nothing more than a shadow in someone else’s war. I’ve spent my life being overlooked until I was convenient. Idon’t want to disappear again.”
His eyes sharpened, the kind of focus that could gut a man. “You won’t disappear. Not with me.”
The words made her chest ache. “And you?”
He leaned back, swirling his wine, but his voice was stripped of pretense. “Losing control. Control is the only thing between me and my father’s brutality. It’s the only thing that keeps me from becoming him.”
The admission cracked something open. She wanted to reach across the table, to cover his hand with hers, to tell him he wasn’t his father. But she didn’t know his father, so didn’t move. Couldn’t. The tension curling between them was too sharp, too fragile.
They ate slower after that, conversation weaving between bites. Every word drew them tighter. Every glance carried the promise of more. When he reached across the table and brushed his thumb along her knuckles, she didn’t pull away. The Brand pulsed in her palm, answering his. She let the silence stretch, let him watch her shiver.
“Together,” he said again, voice final.
This time Mariah knew he didn’t mean just the investigation. He meant the two of them, the meal, the confessions, the night waiting ahead.
Her breath caught, but she didn’t argue. She couldn’t. For the first time, she didn’t want to.His gaze lingered long after the words left his mouth. He didn’t move to clear the table, didn’t break the silence with some casual remark. He just looked at her, as though memorizing the exact shape of her surrender. Her skin prickled. She picked at the stem of her wineglass, desperate for something to do with her hands.
Finally, she pushed her chair back. The scrape of it on the polished floor sounded too loud in the hush. “I’ll help with the dishes.”
He stood at the same time, the chair silent under his control. “No. Sit.”
She lifted her chin. “I said I cook, too. That includes cleaning.”
One dark brow arched, but instead of arguing he gathered the plates in one hand and carried them to the sink. She rose anyway, following him, the air electric with the unfinished conversation between their bodies. Shoulder to shoulder at the sink, they rinsed, scrubbed, stacked. Soap foamed, warm water steamed, and each brush of his arm against hers stole her breath. The intimacy gutted her—more dangerous than sex at the Alabaster.
When he passed her a glass, his wet fingers slid over hers, lingered. She looked up sharply. His face was close, too close, the blue of his eyes nearly black. Her lips parted on a breath that sounded like a plea. He leaned in, stopping a fraction of an inch short, and the restraint in him vibrated through theair.
“Leif…”
He set the glass on the counter instead of kissing her, awarning in his words. “If I start, Iwon’t stop.”
Her pulse battered against bone. “Maybe I don’t want you to.”
The words hung between them, dangerous, impossible to take back. His hand fisted at his side. For a long beat, neither of them moved.
Then he stepped back, breaking the thread with visible effort. He dried his hands, the motion sharp, controlled. “Tomorrow we’ll press the banker. Tonight…” His gaze swept her, slow, scorching. “Tonight, we stop before we burn the place down.”
Her whole body tightened with furious want. But beneath it was something steadier. The certainty that this wasn’t over. That every withheld kiss, every unfinished touch was winding the coil tighter. When it broke, it would consume themboth.
She followed him back toward the living area, the city glittering beyond the glass. They didn’t speak again. They didn’t need to. The silence was alive with everything they hadn’tdone.
And for the first time since the blast, Mariah sensed something that might almost be peace. Not because the danger was gone, but because she wasn’t facing it alone.
