Page 22 of Temporary Vows

The ghost who keeps wandering into my sphere.

Exhaustion tightens her shoulders, and she has a lean, gaunt look that makes her uniform hang loose around the middle. It doesn’t distract from her beauty, but it’s noticeable. So is the lost look in her eyes.

She doesn’t notice me yet.Good.Because I’m staring, and I can’t look away.

Has she been here the whole time?

She looks like she’s been here all day. Maybe she has.

Maybe she was working out back and has only come onto the floor now.

Of course, I thought about her when I came in here, but as it’s so late, I never expected to see her. With the exception of the supervisor, who seems to always be here, none of the morning staff usually work the evening shift.

Yet here Elodie is, looking like she might fall over. She’s clearly going through something. She carries the desolate look of a desperate soul.

I should pack up my things and head home. I should avoid her like I used to, way back when I noticed her watching me more than she usually did.

Back when she christened meDorian Gray.

She never called me that because of my looks.

Elodie Harper was the first person to see the darkness inside me, and she never thought to run away.

Instead, she looked at me like I could be saved.

Those eyes find mine now. She freezes when she realizes who she’s looking at.

Curiosity gets the better of me, and I decide I’m staying.

Chapter 6

Elodie

Dorian Vale.

He’s there.

I see him before my brain has time to lie to me.

One second, I’m wiping down the rail, lost in the mindless rhythm of work, and the next, I feel the prickling sensation of being watched.

After the horrific night I had with Marcus’ henchmen, my mind is a haunted house and everything is a threat.

When I look up, I never expect to see Dorian sitting at one of the corner tables, laptop open, his dark gaze locked firmly on me.

For a heartbeat, I can only stare.

This is the second time I’ve seen him in one week, yet I hadn’t seen him in seven years, and I’ve worked here for the last two months.

Like the other day, he’s all sharp lines and shadow. A man who looks like some god of the underworld who’s wandered up to the surface and decided to stay.

Hades in a Manhattan coffeehouse.

His midnight-black Brioni suit clings to him like it was sewn onto his body, the open collar of his white shirt revealing a slice of throat that shouldn’t be distracting yet somehow is.

A Patek Philippe gleams at his wrist, and his sleek Tom Ford brogues are polished within an inch of their lives. The low, tired lighting of the coffeehouse catches on him like a spotlight, carving his features into something almost inhuman.

I suppose that’s fitting. Men like Dorian Vale—billionaires—don’t really belong to the same world as the rest of us. They move through it, untouchable, like they’re made of something sharper and colder than human.