Chapter 47
Étienne
I needed to leave. Walk back to my study and draft that conversation I'd been postponing—the one where I would firmly establish the boundaries that should have existed from the beginning. She was twenty years old, brilliant and talented and deserving of a life uncomplicated by my inappropriate fixation.
I was turning away when she made a small sound—a low, pained whimper that bypassed every rational thought and sent me striding across the garden before I'd even registered the decision to move.
Her right calf had seized. I could see the muscle knotted beneath her skin, and something in my chest twisted at the sight of her discomfort. I dropped to one knee beside the chair, my briefcase hitting the flagstones with a dull thud I barely registered. My hands were already reaching for her leg, and some distant part of my brain noted how my fingers trembled slightly—not with uncertainty, but with something else entirely.
My palm curved around her calf, and the warmth of her skin through the thin fabric of her leggings sent a jolt through me that I had no business feeling. I forced myself to focus on the mechanics of what I was doing—locating the cramped muscle, applying the right amount of pressure—but I was acutely aware of every point of contact between us. My fingers found the knot with the precision I'd once used to judge tire temperature by touch, and I began working the muscle with slow, deliberate strokes.
Her skin was impossibly soft beneath my hands. I could feel her pulse beneath my fingertips, rapid and fluttering, and I wondered if it was from the pain or from something else. My thumb traced along the length of her calf, following the line of the muscle, and I heard her breath catch. The sound went straight through me.
I should have been clinical about this. Detached. Professional. Instead, I found myself hyperaware of every detail—the way her leg felt in my hands, slight and delicate but corded with the lean muscle of an elite athlete; the way her breathing had changed, becoming shallower; the way she'd gone very still, as though she was afraid any movement might make me stop.
My other hand came up to steady her ankle, and I felt the delicate bones beneath my palm, the vulnerability of that small joint that bore so much of her weight during training. I applied pressure with my thumbs, working up from her ankle to her calf in long, smooth strokes, and told myself I was being thorough. Responsible. That the way my hands lingered had nothing to do with how right it felt to touch her like this.
Her eyes opened, and I felt the weight of her gaze on my face before I looked up. Those amber irises were focused on me with a clarity that suggested she'd been less asleep than I'd assumed, and there was something in her expression that made my hands still on her leg. Not gratitude—or not only gratitude. Something warmer, more complicated, something that made my mouth go dry.
"Better?" I asked, and my voice came out rougher than I'd intended, betraying more than I wanted to reveal.
She nodded slowly, but she didn't pull away, and neither did I. My hands were still curved around her calf, my thumb resting against the inside of her ankle where I could feel her pulse hammering against my skin. The air between us felt charged, heavy with something unspoken, and I knew I should let go, should stand up and put distance between us, should do anything except continue kneeling here with my hands on her like this.
But I didn't move. For a long moment, we simply looked at each other, and I watched something shift in her eyes—a kind of awareness, a recognition of the intimacy of this position that made heat crawl up the back of my neck.
"You have excellent hands," she said softly, and there was something in her voice that made the words feel like more than a simple observation. "Very... precise."
My grip on her leg tightened involuntarily before I forced myself to release her and stand. I could still feel the warmth of her skin on my palms as I stepped back, creating distance, trying to ignore the way my right hand flexed unconsciously, as though seeking to return to where it had been. "It's a simple technique. Anyone could do it."
"But you did it." She sat up, tucking her legs beneath her, and I noticed the way her cheeks had flushed, the way her breathing hadn't quite steadied. "You always do."
The weight of that observation hung between us, fraught with implications I refused to examine. I retrieved my briefcase from where I'd dropped it, using the action to avoid her eyes, to give my hands something to do besides reach for her again. My fingers were still tingling from the contact, and I curled them into a fist around the leather handle. "You should be more careful. Muscle cramps can lead to serious strains."
"Is that your professional medical opinion, Uncle Étienne?" Something in her tone—not quite teasing, not quite serious—made me look at her despite my better judgment, and I saw the way she was studying me, as though trying to decipher something in my expression.
"It's common sense. You have training tomorrow. You can't afford complications."
"No," she agreed, but her eyes said something else, something that made my jaw tighten. "I suppose I can't."
My phone vibrated in my pocket—Rémi, no doubt, with updates on the CEO transition. The timing gave me an excuse to extract myself from this increasingly dangerous conversation, and I seized it with something close to relief.
But before I could reach for it, Elena spoke again. "Maxime came by earlier. He wanted to take me to lunch."
My hand froze halfway to my pocket. Something cold and sharp twisted in my chest, and I had to consciously relax my jaw before I could speak. "And?"
"I told him I needed to focus on training." She tilted her head, watching my reaction with that unnerving intensity, and I wondered what she saw in my face. "Was that the right answer?"