Alessandro’s mind raced through possibilities, contingencies, solutions. Twenty-eight days. He had to be within fifty feet of this woman for twenty-eight days. His work in Manhattan was impossible now. His search for the curse-breaker, complicated at best. His entire carefully structured life had been demolished in the span of an afternoon.
This is a setback. Nothing more. You adapt. You overcome. You fix it.
Except he couldn’t fix it. For the first time in a decade, he’d encountered a problem that didn’t have an immediate solution. He had to wait. He had to endure.
He hated waiting.
In the elevator, Marina broke first.
“I have a business to run.”
“So do I.”
“No, I mean—” She turned to face him, and he was struck again by how small she was. Small and furious and vibrating with defiance. “I have a bakery. I open at six AM. I start baking at four. I can’t just… I can’t abandon my life because you backed into me.”
“I didn’t back into you. You walked into me.”
“You were on your phone!”
“I was conducting important business!”
“You were being rude to a server!”
Alessandro’s dragon stirred, heat building in his chest. Marina flinched, registering his anger as if it were her own.
“Your emotions are very loud,” she said.
“So are yours.” Her frustration and fear came through the bond, and underneath them a stubborn determination that seemed at odds with the shy woman he’d been watching at the conference. “You’re not as meek as you pretend to be.”
“I’m not pretending anything.” Her eyes flashed. “And you’re not as in control as you think you are. I can feel it, you know. All that anger you keep pushing down. It’s like standing next to a furnace.”
The accuracy of the observation stung more than he wanted to admit.
They glared at each other. The elevator dinged.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Alessandro said as the doors opened. “I’ll get a hotel room. You’ll stay nearby…”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said no.” Marina’s chin lifted. Her fear reached him like a draft from an open window; she was terrified, actually terrified of him, but underneath it blazed her determination. “I’m not staying in a hotel. I have a home. I have an apartment above my bakery, and that’s where I’m going. You can either come with me or you can experience what happens when we get sixty feet apart.”
“You expect me to stay in your apartment?”
“I expect you to adapt. Isn’t that what you do? Solve problems?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “Consider this a problem. Solve it.”
Alessandro stared at her. Through the bond, her pulse raced, and beneath it he caught exactly how much it cost her to stand up to him.
“Your apartment is above a bakery,” he said slowly.
“Yes.”
“Which you open at six AM.”
“Yes.”
“And you start baking at four.”
