Clay noticed it before she ever said a word.

She’d been off ever since Nicki and Simon clung to them at the airport, small hands wrapped around their coats, begging them not to leave for London. Four days ago. Barely anything on paper—but it showed on her now, in the way she stared too long at nothing, in the restless shift of her shoulders during meetings she usually powered through.

He’d even pointed it out that morning, slid a mug of his usual jet-black coffee across the table like it was a peace offering. No sugar, obviously. He knew she hated that. He also knew she drank it anyway.

Now she sat across the conference table, phone face-down beside her. When she finally checked it, Clay caught the reflection before she locked the screen again—Simon’s face smashed happily into a vanilla cake, his own arm slung around the boy, smiling for real, not the cold curve of his mouth his rivals knew too well. Nicki beside them, toothless grin wide, frosting smeared all over her hands like war paint.

Four days, and she missed them like it had been months. Clay felt it too, a dull ache he kept buried under contracts and threats.

The room, meanwhile, was loud. Too loud. A circle of men posturing and snapping at each other, egos colliding over numbers that would bend either way depending on his mood. Clay leaned back in his chair, smugness settling easily on his face—not because he enjoyed the noise, but because he owned the outcome.

She didn’t look impressed. If anything, she looked irritated.

That was when he cut in.

“Another profanity,” Clay said calmly, voice slicing clean through the chaos, “and I’ll do more than make your company’s stock value drop.”

Silence followed. The good kind. The men exchanged looks, muttered under their breath, and filed out soon after—no doubt to insult him somewhere safer.

Clay shrugged his blazer off his shoulders and stood, moving behind her chair. His fingers slipped gently into her hair, grounding, familiar.

“You miss the kids too, huh?” he asked, eyebrow lifting as his gaze softened—just for her.

Because no matter how ruthless the room made him look, this part of him was real. And she knew it.