Chapter 3 - THE INVITATION IN THE RAINBy noon the next day, the heavy Greenwich mist had turned into a steady, gray downpour. Rain lashed against the massive glass panes of the Mercer conservatory, where Julian usually spent his solitary Saturday afternoons brooding over unread literature.
Today, however, he wasn't reading.
He was watching the stone pathway leading from the main kitchen to the greenhouse.
Emma Reed was out there, struggling against the wind with a heavy canvas tarp to cover the delicate winter ferns. Her hair had escaped its practical bun, wet strands clinging to her flushed cheeks. She slipped slightly on the wet gravel, dropping the corner of the tarp as a sharp gust of wind caught it like a sail.
Before she could scramble to catch it, a large, dark shadow fell over her.
A pair of custom-tailored leather shoes stepped into the mud. A hand—strong, unyielding, and completely dry—grabbed the edge of the canvas, pinning it instantly against the stone.
Emma gasped, stumbling back until her spine hit the greenhouse glass. She looked up, her hazel eyes wide with sheer terror.
Julian Mercer stood over her, wearing a simple black cashmere sweater, completely unshielded from the freezing rain. Water droplets rolled down his sharp cheekbones, but his dark eyes were burning with an intensity that made her breath catch.
"Mr... Mr. Mercer," she stammered, her hands flying to her apron. "I'm so sorry. The wind caught it, I didn't mean to make a mess of the path—"
"Stop apologizing, Emma," Julian interrupted. His voice was low, cutting easily through the roar of the rain.
She froze. He had never used her first name before. It sounded foreign, dangerous, and intimate all at once.
"Sir?" she whispered.
"Nora left a dandelion on my desk yesterday," Julian said, his gaze fixed on her face, searching for every micro-expression, every twitch of her lips. "And three days before that, she brought me a cup of imaginary tea with imaginary honey."
Emma’s face drained of all color. The blood rushed from her cheeks, leaving her looking ghostly in the gray light. This is it, she thought with a sickening lurch in her stomach. The firing. The immediate eviction into the freezing rain.
"Mr. Mercer, please," Emma begged, her voice cracking as she stepped forward to shield her daughter who was watching from the distant kitchen window. "Fire me if you must, put us out on the street, but I swear to you on my life, she isn't malicious. She’s just a child who lost her father and doesn't understand—"
"Her father," Julian repeated slowly, the words tasting like ash. "Daniel Reed."
Emma stopped breathing. The rain seemed to vanish, leaving only the heavy, suffocating silence between them.
"How do you..." Emma clutched the lapels of her uniform jacket, her knuckles turning white. "How do you know my husband's name?"
May you like
Julian took one step closer, closing the distance until she could feel the heat radiating from his chest.
"Because," Julian said softly, his eyes flashing with a dark, dangerous promise, "I just found out that the company responsible for killing him was funded by my own capital. And I want to know why your settlement was stamped 'Denied' by a man who never even saw your file."
