Chapter 3
Étienne
We went inside together, and I tried very hard not to notice the way she walked slightly ahead of me, the way my awareness of her seemed to fill more space than it should. We reached the entrance hall, and my phone vibrated—a text from Mrs. Blake.
Miss Elena hasn't eaten since breakfast. Please make sure she has a proper meal.
I looked at Elena, who was already moving toward the stairs. "When did you last eat?" I asked.
She paused, one hand on the banister, and I saw the guilty expression that meant she knew she'd been caught. "I had lunch," she said, but the slight hesitation told me she was lying.
"Elena."
"I had an apple," she amended. "And some almonds. That counts as lunch."
"No," I said firmly, "it doesn't. Dinner is in twenty minutes. Go wash your hands and meet me in the dining room."
She opened her mouth as if to protest, then seemed to think better of it. "Is Isabelle joining us?" she asked instead.
"Mother is at a bridge game with the Duchesse de Montfort," I said. "It's just us tonight."
Something flickered in Elena's expression—relief, maybe, or something else I didn't want to interpret. "Okay," she said softly. "I'll be down in a few minutes."
I watched her climb the stairs, noting the slight tension in her posture that suggested she was carrying more weight than she wanted to admit. When she disappeared from view, I made my way to the dining room, where Mrs. Blake had already set two places at one end of the long table—an intimacy I hadn't requested but that she'd apparently decided was appropriate.
I stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at those two place settings, thinking about all the dinners we'd shared over the past five years. Hundreds of meals, thousands of conversations, an accumulation of small domestic moments that had somehow transformed from obligation into something I looked forward to, something that felt more like home than anything else in my carefully ordered life.
This was dangerous. Elena was twenty years old, nine years my junior, and she was my responsibility. More than that, she was Marc's daughter in every way that mattered, and I owed it to my brother's memory to be the stable, appropriate guardian she needed, not... whatever it was I was in danger of becoming.
Tomorrow, I reminded myself. Tomorrow I would reestablish boundaries, would fix this before it became something that couldn't be fixed.
But tonight—tonight I would sit across from her at dinner and pretend everything was still simple, still safe, still exactly what it had always been.
Elena appeared a few minutes later, her hair damp from washing her face, wearing a soft gray sweater that made her eyes look even more luminous. She slid into her chair with that unconscious grace, and I found myself watching the way she moved, the way every gesture seemed choreographed even when she wasn't trying.
"So," I said, forcing myself to focus on safe topics, "tell me about this difficulty element Coach Michel wants you to add. What's the concern?"
Elena's face lit up the way it always did when she talked about gymnastics, and for the next several minutes, she explained the technical details—something about the ribbon routine, about the risk-reward calculation of adding a higher-difficulty throw when her current routine was already scoring well, about the pressure to stand out in a field of competitors who were all pushing the boundaries of what was physically possible.
I listened, asked questions, made suggestions based on risk-assessment frameworks I'd learned in business, and tried not to notice the way she leaned forward when she was excited, the way her hands moved expressively, the way her eyes stayed fixed on my face as if my opinion was the only one that mattered.
Mrs. Blake brought out the first course—a light salad with citrus vinaigrette—and Elena picked at it absently, still talking about the qualifying rounds and the competition schedule.
"You're overthinking it," I said finally, reaching across the table with my fork to spear a piece of roasted beet from her salad and holding it up toward her. "Stop analyzing every variable and trust your instincts. You're one of the best gymnasts in Europe—act like it."
Elena stared at the fork I was holding out, and I saw something shift in her expression. Then she leaned forward slightly and took the bite, her lips closing around the fork in a way that made my pulse spike inappropriately, her eyes never leaving mine.
"I allow it," I heard myself say, the words coming out rougher than I'd intended, and I wasn't even sure what I was allowing—the feeding, the intimacy, the way this moment felt charged with something that had nothing to do with salad or training schedules.
Elena chewed slowly, her eyes closing briefly, and when she opened them again, there was something in her gaze that made my chest tighten. "Thank you," she said softly. "For always knowing what I need."
I set down the fork carefully and picked up my wine glass, taking a long sip to buy myself time to regain control. This was exactly what I'd been afraid of—these small moments that felt too intimate, too weighted with meaning.
"Tomorrow," I said, changing the subject deliberately, "what time do you need to be at the training facility?"
"Seven-thirty," Elena said. "But I can take the Metro—you don't need to—"
"I'll drive you," I interrupted. "I have an early meeting anyway, and the training facility is on the way."
That was a lie—the training facility was nowhere near where I'd be spending my morning—but Elena didn't need to know that. She just needed to know that I would make sure she got there safely, on time, with everything she needed.
"I like riding in your car," she said, so quietly I almost didn't hear it. "It's... I don't know. It feels safe."
Safe. The word echoed in my mind as we continued through dinner, as I watched her eat the truffle pasta Mrs. Blake had prepared, as we talked about inconsequential things and avoided the larger questions that seemed to hover just beneath the surface.
Safe was what I was supposed to provide. Safe was my entire purpose in her life. But as I sat across from her, watching the way she smiled at something I'd said, seeing the way her eyes lingered on my face just a moment too long, I couldn't shake the uncomfortable certainty that "safe" was the last thing either of us actually felt.