Chapter 686:

🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙

Just as she settled, he stirred. He rolled over in his sleep, his movements slow and unconscious. An arm slid around her waist, pulling her back against the solid warmth of his chest.

Sloane froze, her entire body rigid, her breath caught in her throat. But his breathing remained deep and even. He wasn’t awake. It was an instinctual, unconscious act. He simply held her, not with passion or demand, but with a simple, disarming need for closeness that shattered the last of her defenses.

Sloane woke slowly, disoriented. The first thing she registered was the warmth. A heavy arm was draped possessively over her waist, and she was cocooned against a solid wall of heat. She was being spooned by Alistair Sterling.

Her eyes snapped open. She held her breath, listening to his deep, even breathing. He was still asleep. Moving with the careful precision of a bomb disposal expert, she gently lifted his arm, slid out from under it, and slipped out of the bed.

She showered and dressed in the massive en-suite bathroom, her mind replaying the events of the previous night. The kiss. Her flight. Her reluctant return. The unconscious embrace. It was all a confusing, unsettling jumble.

When she walked into the kitchen, he was already there, sitting at the marble island. He was dressed in a perfect charcoal suit, reading a physical copy of the Wall Street Journal, a cup of black coffee at his elbow. He looked up as she entered, his expression infuriatingly normal, as if he hadn’t spent the night holding her.

𝘙е𝘤o𝘮𝗺𝗲𝗇𝖽 𝗀a𝗹𝗇o𝘃els.cо𝘮 𝘁𝗈 y𝗈𝘂𝘳 𝘧𝗿і𝖾n𝖽𝘀

“Good morning,” he said, his voice smooth. “Did you sleep well?”

The unspoken truce held. They ate breakfast in a tense but civil silence, two CEOs preparing for another day of corporate warfare.

Later, at her office, Sloane’s day went from bad to worse. Her head of programming delivered the news, his face grim. Her flagship new reality show, The Ascent, a project she had poured her heart and soul into, had been unceremoniously bumped from its prime-time Thursday night slot.

“They moved us to Friday at ten,” he said, which was television’s equivalent of a graveyard. “The network executive, a guy named Vance, gave our slot to some terrible new show starring his niece. It’s blatant nepotism.”

Sloane was incandescent with fury. This wasn’t just an insult; it would cost her company millions in advertising revenue. She spent the rest of the day on the phone, fighting, reasoning, threatening, but the network wouldn’t budge. She had hit a wall of old-boys’-club politics.

She returned to the penthouse that evening, dejected and simmering with rage. Alistair was in the living room, reading a book. He took one look at the thunderous expression on her face.

“What happened?” he asked, setting the book aside.

And for the first time, she didn’t shut him out. The frustration and injustice of the day poured out of her. She told him the whole story, venting about Vance, the niece, the death slot, the unfairness of it all.

.

.

.