Page 72 of The Rancher's Wedding Deception

The December morning had frosted the floor-to-ceiling windows of his corner office, and beyond them, San Antonio sprawled in miniature—highways threading between clusters of buildings, the River Walk a dark ribbon cutting through downtown, and somewhere out there, past the city limits, the gates of Tranquil Acres.

Where she was.

Without him.

Joyce’s flight to Monte Carlo had departed at six this morning. He knew because he’d made it his business to know. Which meant the girl had been alone in that mansion for over three hours now, and any moment, his receptionist would buzz to announce—

Nothing.

The intercom stayed silent.

Paul turned his attention back to the contract. Mitropoulos Tech was acquiring a struggling biotech firm, and the deal required his full concentration. Hundreds of jobs hung in the balance.Millions of dollars. The kind of stakes that usually sharpened his mind to a razor’s edge.

He read the same paragraph four times.

Fuck.

But he still had no idea what it said.

His coffee had gone cold in its cup. He hadn’t touched the breakfast his assistant had left on the credenza—some arrangement of eggs and fruit that probably cost more than most people’s weekly groceries. Outside his window, a plane cut a white line across the winter-pale sky, heading somewhere warm, somewhere that wasn’t here.

Somewhere that wasn’t this desk, this office, this excruciating silence.

Ten forty-five.

He’d moved to the conference room for a meeting with his legal team. Six attorneys sat around the polished mahogany table, their tablets and legal pads arranged with military precision, debating liability clauses and indemnification language. Paul contributed nothing.

His phone sat face-up beside his coffee.

No messages.

No calls.

He hadn’t given her his number, he realized. A deliberate choice at the time—he’d wanted her to come to him, to seek him out, to prove that she wanted this as much as he did.

Now it felt like a tactical error, with him handing her all the power while keeping none for himself.

“Mr. Mitropoulos?”

He looked up to find six pairs of eyes watching him expectantly. Harrison, his lead counsel, had paused mid-sentence, pen hovering over a yellow legal pad covered in neat handwriting.

“Your thoughts on the non-compete provision?”

He didn’t have any.

“Table it,” he said. “We’ll revisit tomorrow.”

The attorneys exchanged glances but knew better than to argue. They gathered their materials in that particular way people moved when they sensed a storm brewing—quickly, quietly, without drawing attention. The door clicked shut behind the last of them, and Paul was alone again.

Alone with the silence.

Alone with the phone that refused to light up.

Alone with the memory of her face when she’d shattered in his arms, that soft broken cry that had nearly undone him entirely.

They went away.

And he eventually came to a decision.