THE CEO'S HYBRID HEIR

appetizer she didn't eat and the wine she wasn't supposed to drink, because Damian Cros

ss in slow circles on the tablecloth. "We talked about a house. A dog

happ

ogether." She said it flatly, the way you learn to say things you've already cried out of yourself.

people made at that point in the story. He just

went to

five years auditioning men for a role I already knew I could fill myself. I wanted a b

ose. Do you remember

elt now. "Profile said he liked hiking, had no family history of anything alarmi

or the first time that night something in her ches

uld say

hed without ever quite being seen doing it. Mia had assumed a man like Damian Cross would want to be seen, would want the kind of restaurant with a line out

tion tonight, and so far all I've gotten is your v

ce-amusement, maybe, or the ghost

't know is that everything I've built exists to protect something I can't put on paper. A f

someone who hasn't act

There are things about me that don't show up in interviews or shareholder reports. Things I've spent most of my adult life keepi

to tell me yo

ast enough to be almost f

n wh

g weighed-not unkindly, but thoroughly, the way you'd check the load-bearing

. "Not in a restaurant with

e stal

erence, even if it doesn't feel li

ied out of Jason's apartment three months ago, the exact texture of it, a man deciding for her what s

say it. I've had a very long day discovering I'm pregnant with a stranger's

ion cracked, just slight

" he said. "Yo

she realized with some surprise that the stillness she'd mistaken for control all evening mig

trust you. Because I don't trust what happens to people who find out wha

ng to ask a woman you

me anything you want once I've told you. I'll answer. I just nee

ad already won the argument her cauti

lver ring, unremarkable except for a faint pattern etched along the inside that caught

is t

than you'd like it to," he said, and for