I described the cream envelope, the handwritten note, the request for dinner at one of San Francisco's most exclusive restaurants—a place that required connections or a six-month wait for reservations.
"Maison Laurent," he repeated, something shifting in his voice. "Her favorite restaurant.”
"I didn't know," I said carefully.
"There's a great deal you don't know about Catherine," he replied, his tone neutral now. "She's... complex."
"Complex how?"
Another pause, longer this time.
"Brilliant. Cultivated. Calculating. The kind of woman who plays chess while others are playing checkers."
"Should I be worried?"
"Not worried," he corrected.
"Prepared. Catherine doesn't do anything without a purpose. If she's invited you to dinner, she has a specific outcome in mind."
"Which is?"
"That," he said with surprising gentleness, "is what you'll need to discover."
I waited for him to tell me not to go. To insist on joining me. To exercise the control that was so fundamental to his nature.
When he didn't, I felt both relieved and oddly disappointed.
"You're not going to tell me to cancel?" I asked.
"Would you listen if I did?"
"Probably not," I admitted.
A low chuckle, warm with affection.
"Then why waste the effort? You're a grown woman, Savannah. I trust your judgment."
The words wrapped around me, unexpected and precious. Trust.
From a man who dispensed it so rarely, who had built his life around control rather than faith in others' decisions.
"Thank you," I said softly. "I'll call you afterward."
"I'll be waiting." Something shifted in his voice, deepened.
"And Savannah? Remember who you're coming home to."
The possessive edge in those words, the quiet certainty, steadied me in a way no command could have.
"I will," I promised.
Three hours later, I handed my car keys to the valet at Maison Laurent, smoothing my palms down the front of my navy dress. I'd chosen simple gold jewelry and subtle makeup, my hair loose around my shoulders—professional enough for a business dinner, confident enough to face whatever Catherine Reid had planned.
The maître d' led me through the dimly lit restaurant, past white-clothed tables where San Francisco's elite dined in hushed exclusivity.
At a corner table partially secluded by an antique screen sat a woman who could only be Catherine Reid.
Even from a distance, I understood immediately why Lucas had been drawn to her. Striking rather than conventionally beautiful, with silver-streaked dark hair cut in a sleek bob and cheekbones that could cut glass. She wore an understated black dress that probably cost more than my monthly rent, accented by a single strand of pearls that gleamed in the candlelight.
