Isobel’s breath hung suspended in the gilded air between her ribs and throat, caught like morning mist over a Tennessee meadow. The revelation settled heavy as humidity before a summer storm.
“You’ve been hiding this from me?” Her voice carried the weight of betrayal, soft as velvet but sharp as a spur’s edge.
Ryder lowered himself into the butter-soft leather chair beside her—a chair that probably cost more than most folks’ trucks—his knee brushing hers with the same casual intimacy he’d shown in dusty arena bleachers. But here, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows that framed Manhattan like a glittering promise, everything felt different. Dangerous.
“Wasn’t hidin’, darlin’,” he drawled, though twenty years of Wall Street boardrooms had polished the roughest edges off his East Tennes
