Page 29 of Lady and the Butcher
The elevator ride was silent. He didn’t press the button. The driver did. The number glowed: 21. Penthouse.
My stomach flipped.
What was I even doing here? I mean, really?
The elevator opened onto a private landing, no hallway, just one set of double doors waiting. He unlocked it with a keycard that looked permanent, not borrowed. Ownership, again.
And then?—
The suite.
Gracious.
I stepped inside and felt my breath catch.
Floor-to-ceiling glass stretched across the entire wall, Charleston unfurling beneath us in sharp daylight. The Ravenel Bridge rose pale against the sky, its cables gleaming like silver threads pulled taut over the water. Sunlight shattered across the harbor, catching on white wakes as sailboats drifted past and cargo ships carved slow, certain lines. The city looked both near enough to touch and impossibly far away.
Inside, everything gleamed. White marble floors. A sectional sofa the size of my living room. A dining table set with champagne already chilling in a silver bucket. One wall was an expanse of black-veined marble with a built-in fireplace, flames dancing even though the day was warm.
It was gorgeous. Luxurious. And utterly, terrifyingly … not mine.
I wrapped my arms around myself, partly to contain the shiver that ran up my spine, partly to keep from reaching for something—anything—that might ground me.
“This is …” My voice faltered. I cleared my throat. “Something.”
Finally, he spoke. “It’s where you are today.”
No explanation. No apology. Just fact.
I turned back to the glass, the city blazing clear in the sunlight, my own body a faint silhouette against the glare. My pulse thudded low, restless. I couldn’t decide if I felt like a queen on display or a captive in a gilded cage. Maybe both.
When I glanced back, Atticus stood between me and the city, dark shirt stretched over the breadth of his shoulders. He looked carved, deliberate. Watching.
Always watching.
“You should shower,” he said, low, even.
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You’ve been working. You’re tired. You’re wound tight.” His gaze didn’t waver. “Shower.”
The way he said it—it wasn’t suggestion, wasn’t kindness. It was a directive softened only by the fact that I could refuse. I think. But the strange part was, I didn’t want to.
The air conditioning hummed low as he led me down a short hallway. The suite’s bathroom opened wide, all marble and glass and brushed brass. A freestanding tub perched near the window, but it was the shower that stole my breath—glass-walled, double-headed, and set so that whoever stepped inside would be framed against the city.
I hesitated at the threshold. “That’s … not very private.”
He leaned one shoulder against the doorframe, arms crossed. “Precisely.”
Heat prickled across my skin. He wasn’t even touching me, and still he was stripping me down.
And, of course, I hadn’t prepared for this. Not in the ways that mattered. I’d been up all night at a birth, and the last thing on my mind had been razors or wax strips. My legs were prickly, my bikini line definitely not runway-ready. The kind of details I usually had handled before a date—or even a casual hookup—suddenly felt glaring in the face of a man like Atticus. A man wholooked at me like grooming didn’t matter, but still made me wish I’d had the chance.
It was silly, maybe even feminist blasphemy, to care. And yet, I did.
I stepped inside. The marble was cool under my bare feet, the air thick with the faint scent of eucalyptus from a waiting bottle of soap. I found the controls and turned them, water hissing to life, steam blooming.
It didn’t feel like my world. Not the wood floors of The Nesting Place, not the warm clutter of my little house with its half-burned candles and stacks of birth books. Here, everything gleamed—stone and glass and money I couldn’t begin to touch. I felt like I’d been dropped into someone else’s skin, a woman who belonged to this suite and this view. And I wasn’t her.
