Page 50 of Waiting for You

Mr. Ty

Status?

One word, no greeting, the way he opened every message that was really an order. He wasn't on this island, but he was here. He was always here. He'd just learned to use other people's hands.

I was going to make this trip look effortless. A whole week of Xavier watching me laugh with a man who actually paid attention to me, a week of proof, for him and for me, that I'd moved on and landed on my feet. And maybe, if I performed it long enough, the proof would stop being a performance and turn into something real. Andrew was handsome, a gentleman, and brutally honest about his own flaws. There was nothing wrong with the man.

But he wasn't someone I could ever fall in love with.

Andrew came out of the bathroom, and the early night I'd been promising myself evaporated. There was a welcome dinner, because of course there was, penciled into Violet's itinerary somewhere between "arrive" and "sleep."

The whole group gathered at a long table on the terrace, and Andrew's campaign resumed before I'd fully sat down.

He pulled my chair out so fast I nearly sat on the floor. He refilled my water any time it dipped below the rim, like it was a performance review. When I mentioned, once, in passing, that I run cold, a staff member materialized with a cashmere wrap before I reached the end of the sentence.

"Thank you," I said, and draped it over the back of my chair, where it stayed.

Every gesture was textbook. And sitting beside him felt like being courted by an extremely well-reviewed hotel concierge—with not a minute of it moved my pulse an inch.

Then Eliza asked him something about the hotel chain he ran, and I watched the stiffness slide off him like a coat.

He lit up. He talked with his hands. Eliza leaned in and fired back a question that pulled the big laugh out of him, the booming one I'd heard about twice. In two minutes, they were knee-deep in the catastrophic hotel opening in Singapore, talking over each other and not minding it once—as if the rest of the table stopped existing for them.

I watched it and felt nothing I had to fight.

If anything, I felt relief.

Xavier caught my eye across the table. He tipped his head a fraction toward the two of them, one brow climbing, and I read it without a single word attached: Are you seeing this?

I pressed my lips together to kill the smile and lost. The corner of his mouth went up in response.

I looked at the candles to keep myself from laughing.

We drifted back to the suites once the table broke up, and Andrew was asleep within minutes. I lay awake a long while, listening to the water, before I dozed off.

When I woke the next morning, Andrew was still asleep on the opposite side of the mattress, his breathing a soft, steady rhythm, his bare arm thrown at his side. I checked the clock, slipped out of bed, washed my face, and pulled on a sundress. When I came back into the bedroom, he was sitting up against the headboard with his blond hair sticking up at a chaotic angle.

"Morning," I said.

"Morning." He groaned and stretched both arms over his head. "I feel ready to conquer the world."

"Good." I smiled. "Because I have a feeling you're going to have fun today."

"God, I hope so," he sighed, scrubbing his face. "The grind's been brutal lately. I just want to sit somewhere warm and be motionless for a few days."

"How'd you end up in that line of work?" I asked. "Was it always the dream?"

"It was my father's empire," he admitted with a wry half-smile. "Same dynamic as yours, I assume. The only real difference is I wasn't forced to marry someone to inherit the keys."

"Ah, the glorious advantages of being a man," I deadpanned.

He chuckled. "A few of them, yes."

We wandered down to the open-air dining pavilion for breakfast. The rest of the group had already gathered, Violet and Simon anchoring one end of the table, Xavier and Eliza across from them, two empty chairs left at the near edge. The second I walked in, my eyes found Xavier. He was already watching me, chin dipped, his dark brows pulled into a scowl. I broke eye contact and slid into my chair.

Violet slid a laminated itinerary across the table while the waiters set down the plates. Snorkeling all morning, then a grueling jungle hike right after if the timeline allowed.

"Absolutely not," the whole table chorused, more or less at once.