Page 65 of Falling for Mr. Ruthless

Just this. Just now.

Just the acknowledgment that some fires don't die—they just burn differently.

The professional threat I've been tracking and the personal safety I've been guarding feel suddenly, terrifyingly connected. But for the first time in four years, I'm not facing the unknown alone.

And the only person I can turn to is the same man I just swore I wouldn't need again. The same man whose taste is still on my tongue. The same man who whispered‘you've always been mine’while buried inside me.

The same man I'm terrified to admit might be right.

TWELVE

WHAT WE COULD BE

JAKOB

I watch them from the doorway.

Chanel and Jaden bent over the kitchen counter, flour dusting their hands, laughter hanging in the air between them. She guides his fingers as he crimps the edge of the pie crust, her patience infinite where mine would fracture.

The morning light catches in her hair, loose today, falling around her shoulders in waves that I want to touch.

This is what I gave up. What I walked away from. What I destroyed with the arrogance of a man who thought he could compartmentalize love like a business division to be restructured.

I step back, unnoticed.

This truth ambushes me—seeing what was stolen by my choices, what could exist again if we survive this storm, what my soul still yearns for despite everything.

Emotions I've kept contained since the divorce rage within me. I alone bear responsibility for this destruction. It was my doing.

Three days since I had her on the couch. Three days of careful choreography around Jaden. Three days of stolen glances and accidental touches, and the weight of everything unsaid hanging between us.

Three days of playing at family while Megan remains in the shadows.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. Collins, my head of security.

"Nothing?" I ask without preamble, voice low enough not to carry.

"Sorry, boss. It's like she's disappeared. Her accounts haven't been touched. No credit card activity. No property transactions. The private investigator hit dead ends at every turn."

I exhale slowly through my nose, the familiar pressure building at the base of my skull. "Keep looking. Double the resources if necessary."

"Already did. But I'm telling you—she doesn't want to be found."

"Everyone can be found." I end the call, jaw tight with frustration.

Megan's disappearance isn't random. It's calculated, deliberate—timed perfectly with the White Glove Pivot and Chanel's return to my life. The coincidence too perfect to be accident. The threat implied but not yet realized.

Jaden's laughter pulls me from the darkness of my thoughts. I turn back to the kitchen, to this new normal we're creating that feels simultaneously foreign and achingly familiar.

"Dad!" He spots me, face lighting up with the uncomplicated joy that only children possess. "We're making Grandma's apple pie! Come help!"

I move toward them, slipping into the space Chanel creates beside her. Close enough to feel her heat, to catch the scent of her shampoo—vanilla and something darker, richer—butnot touching. Never touching when Jaden might see. Another unspoken rule in our fragile arrangement.

"I'm just quality control," I say, reaching for a slice of apple. "Your mom's the expert."

"You were always good at eating it, not making it," Chanel says, the corner of her mouth lifting in a half-smile that carries memories of Sunday mornings and late-night desserts and moments I forfeited the right to claim.

"My talents lie elsewhere." The words emerge more suggestive than intended, a current passing between us that has nothing to do with pie.