Chapter 62
Chapter 62
Alejandro’s POV
Candy Reeves had a decorator.
I discovered this on Friday morning when I came downstairs to find a woman I had never seen before standing in my living room holding paint swatches against my wall while Candy stood beside her nodding with the focused energy of someone who had been given an assignment and intended to complete it thoroughly.
I stood at the bottom of the stairs and stared at them both for a long moment.
“What is happening?” I asked flatly.
Candy turned with that bright practiced smile. “Good morning. This is Diane, she’s wonderful, she did my mother’s entire townhouse in Belgravia and it was absolutely stunning. I thought since we’re going to be living here together we could refresh a few rooms, make it feel more like—”
“Stop.”
Diane froze with her paint swatches mid air.
“Get out,” I told her pleasantly.
Diane looked at Candy.
“This is my home,” I continued, keeping my voice completely even. “It already feels like one. Diane, I appreciate your time but Marcus will see you out.”
Marcus appeared from the hallway with the timing of a man who had been listening from a respectful distance and had been waiting for exactly this cue.
Diane gathered her swatches with the practiced speed of someone who had been removed from expensive properties before and understood that the graceful exit was always the better option.
The front door clicked shut.
Candy looked at me and I looked back.
“You could have just told me you didn’t like the idea,” she said, her voice faint,
“I just did,” I replied, heading toward the kitchen.
She followed me, which I had expected.
“I’m trying,” she pressed, directing the words at my back. “I know this isn’t ideal for either of us but I am genuinely trying to make this work and it would help if you met me even a fraction of the way.”
I poured coffee without responding.
“My father thinks very highly of yours,” she continued, pulling out a stool at the kitchen island and settling in with the composure of someone preparing for a longer conversation than I intended to have. “I understand the business dimensions of this arrangement. I’m not naive about what this is.
“Good,” I muttered.
“But we’re going to be living together,” she pressed. “Potentially for a very long time. And I’d rather we found some way to coexist that doesn’t feel like I’m sharing a house with someone who actively wishes I didn’t exist.”
I turned to look at her properly for the first time this morning.
She was watching me with an expression that was more direct than I’d expected. Less performance, more actual person. I’d been writing her off as decorative and ambitious and not particularly worth engaging with, and now she was sitting at my kitchen island at eight in the morning making a reasonable point with her shoulders square and her eyes steady.
It didn’t change anything.
But I gave her credit for it.
“I don’t wish you didn’t exist,” I replied carefully. “I wish the situation didn’t exist. Those are different things.”
“Because of her,” Candy said quietly.
The kitchen went very still.
“Her?” I repeated flatly.
“The woman your father mentioned.” She wrapped her hands around the mug she’d poured herself without being offered, which I noted. “Martinez. Mira Martinez.”
I took a slow sip of my coffee.
“He mentioned her to you,” I said.
“He warned me about her actually,” Candy answered, tilting her head slightly. “He said she was a distraction you’d been dealing with and that once the arrangement was properly in place you’d move past it.”
Something tightened in my jaw that I kept very still.
“He said distraction?” I repeated slowly.
“His word, not mine.” She held my gaze without blinking. “I’m not here to compete with anyone. I want to be clear about that. But I’m also not going to pretend I don’t notice that every time someone says her name your entire face changes.”
I set my mug down.
“You’re very observant,” I remarked.
“I’m very practical,” she corrected evenly. “There’s a difference.” She paused. “Was it serious?”
“That’s not a conversation we’re having, Candy.”
“I’m just trying to understand what I’m walking into,” she pushed back quietly.
“You’re walking into a business arrangement my father made without consulting me,” I shot back, keeping my voice level. “That’s all you need to understand about your position here.”
She absorbed that without flinching. Which told me she was tougher than she looked.
“Is she the reason you’re determined to make this difficult,” she asked softly. “Or is it just me?”
I looked at her for a long moment.
She deserved a straight answer and somewhere under all the irritation I knew that.
“It’s not you,” I admitted. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“But you’re in love with someone else.”
The words landed in the kitchen between us, plain and undecorated, and I didn’t answer them because I didn’t need to.
My face had already answered for me, exactly the way Candy had just pointed out that it did.
She nodded slowly, something shifting in her expression. Not hurt exactly, more like someone updating a calculation they’d been running for a while.
“Okay,” she murmured simply.
She finished her coffee, stood up, smoothed down her blouse, and walked out of the kitchen without another word.
I stood there alone.
Thought about Mira on Zara’s couch again.
Thought about three unanswered calls sitting on my phone that I hadn’t been ready to pick up yet, because hearing her voice before I had the full picture felt like picking up something fragile without knowing where to hold it.
Thought about the word Reeves had used.
Cardiology.
I rinsed my mug and set it in the sink, then I went upstairs and called Reeves.
“The medical records,” I started the moment he picked up. “How much more can you get me?”
“I’m already working on it,” he answered.
“Work faster,” I told him, and hung up.