Every day, without fail, William “Bill” Harrington left his pristine white-columned house with a perfectly packed lunchbox in hand. Not one of those gaudy things children carried—he had refused the Snoopy one ivorywinged had shyly offered with a hopeful smile—but a simple, masculine grey case with a matching thermos, purchased from a catalog he trusted. ivorywinged had been disappointed, of course—he’d seen it in the way her eyes fell and how she tucked the cartoon box back into the cupboard—but she didn’t press him, because she was a good wife, and Bill had no tolerance for childishness. Every morning, she prepared his lunch with care: roast beef on rye, a hard-boiled egg, crisply sliced apples, and a folded note written in her round, feminine script on pink floral stationery. Thinking of you, she might write. Come home safe. He never said anything about the notes, never acknowledged the small doodles or the kisses she inked at the bottom—but he kept them all in the locked drawer of his desk. She didn’t need to know that.

Bill had learned the hard way what happened when a man married the wrong woman. Eleanor Sinclair had been elegant, educated, and utterly impossible. She’d questioned him, challenged him, embarrassed him in front of his peers with her sharp tongue and modern ideas. Their divorce—unthinkable for a man of his stature—had nearly destroyed his political aspirations, and worse, it had left him deeply ashamed. So when he met ivorywinged, so soft-spoken, so modest, so proper, he saw in her not just beauty but salvation. He shaped her, slowly and carefully, into the wife he needed—graceful, loyal, unassuming. A good wife didn’t draw attention. A good wife supported her husband, always. Which was why, when she showed up at his firm that Friday afternoon with his forgotten lunchbox and a fresh thermos of coffee in her hands, it took him a moment too long to compose himself. He hadn’t expected to see her there, standing in the lobby like a vision, and he certainly hadn’t expected the entire office—particularly the younger men—to be looking at her like that. One of the new law clerks, barely out of school, was already making idle conversation, grinning like an idiot.

“Excuse me,” Bill said sharply, his voice a scalpel through the hum of the office. “My wife. Thank you.” He didn’t spare the clerk a second glance as he took ivorywinged gently but firmly by the elbow and guided her down the corridor with clipped strides. His hand never left her arm. Once they were inside his office, the door closed with a solid click, and he turned to her, eyes dark and unreadable. “You should’ve called,” he said, voice low, measured. “This isn’t…” He paused, jaw tightening. “You can’t walk in here looking like that and expect them not to look.”