Chapter 2: A Life of Her Own

Grant stared at the breakfast Mrs. Palmer set before him.

Eggs, toast, black coffee. All prepared correctly, and none of it was what he expected.

"Where's the porridge?"

Mr. Alden paused beside the dining table. "The millet porridge, sir?"

"What other porridge would I mean?"

"Miss Whitmore made it herself. She soaked the grains overnight and added yam and lotus seed in the morning." The butler cleared his throat. "Mrs. Palmer tried once, but the texture wasn't the same."

Grant pushed the eggs aside. "Then bring the chili sauce."

The jar that appeared carried a grocery-store label.

He tasted it and frowned. "This isn't right either."

"Miss Whitmore's was homemade. We used the last of it yesterday."

Breakfast had never required thought before. It arrived warm, seasoned exactly as he liked it, beside medicine he had not remembered to buy and coffee adjusted to how little he had slept.

Grant stood so abruptly that the chair scraped the floor.

"Sir?"

"I'm not hungry."

He told himself the irritation came from the hangover. It had nothing to do with Clara, who was probably waiting for him to call.

He had no intention of rewarding the performance.

* * *

"Wake up, sleeping beauty."

Clara pulled Sloane Bennett's comforter over her head.

"It's after nine," Sloane said. "Shouldn't you be racing back to prepare breakfast for His Majesty?"

For years, Clara had left sleepovers before dawn. Grant liked breakfast at seven, and she had treated his preference as an appointment she could not miss.

"We broke up," Clara said from beneath the blanket.

Sloane went still. "For how long this time?"

Clara lowered the comforter. "For good."

Her friend's skepticism was painful because it was earned.

Sloane studied her for a moment, then picked up her handbag. "There are sandwiches in the kitchen. I have work, and I have a date tonight. Stay as long as you need. Just don't vanish the second he snaps his fingers."

After the door closed, Clara lay in the quiet apartment and watched sunlight move across the ceiling.

She could not remember the last time she had slept past seven.

The realization felt less like freedom than discovering a locked door had been open all along.

At noon, she took the settlement documents to the bank.

The private-banking director appeared within minutes. Clara divided the cash among long-term deposits and liquid accounts, reviewed every fee, and negotiated the rates until the director stopped treating her like someone's sheltered girlfriend.

By the time she walked out, the money was under her name, under her control, and beyond Grant's power to turn into another test of loyalty.

She stopped at a salon next.

"Just a trim?" the stylist asked, lifting one of her long, burgundy-tinted curls. "This color must have taken years to perfect."

Grant loved those curls. He used to wrap them around his fingers and say they made her look soft.

Clara met her reflection. "Cut it to my shoulders. Straight. Black."

When the last curl fell, the woman in the mirror looked sharper. Not healed, not yet, but recognizable.

She traded her silk dress for jeans, a white T-shirt, and flat shoes from a nearby basics store. Then, with no plan beyond refusing to return to Sloane's apartment and wait for Grant, she took the train toward Ashford University.

Cyclists crossed the old brick gates. Students crowded the lawns with laptops and iced coffee. The sight struck Clara with such force that she stopped on the sidewalk.

This had once been her world.

Two students passed behind her.

"Owen, are we all going to the hospital?"

"No. Professor Caldwell just had surgery. Two people from the bioinformatics group are enough."

Clara turned. "Excuse me. Professor Miriam Caldwell?"

The taller student looked surprised. "Yes."

"Which hospital?"

"Beacon Hill Medical Center."

"Thank you."

She walked away before he could ask her name.

Professor Caldwell had supervised Clara's undergraduate research, argued for her place in a direct doctoral track, and treated her talent as something worth protecting. Clara had repaid that faith by walking away after graduation because Grant said he was tired of coming second to a laboratory.

Back at Sloane's apartment, Clara found Miriam's number in her phone.

Her thumb hovered over the call button.

She could face a bank director with seventy million dollars on the table. She could walk out of Grant Holloway's home after six years. But the thought of hearing disappointment in her mentor's voice turned her hands cold.

She locked the phone and set it facedown.

Sloane returned early and stopped in the doorway. "You're still here."

"You sound disappointed."

"Astonished." Sloane dropped her keys into a bowl. "Grant once called during a thunderstorm and you crossed the city in twenty minutes."

Clara went to the kitchen and lifted the lid from a small pot. "I made porridge."

Sloane tasted it and closed her eyes. "That man did not deserve you."

"Wash your bowl when you're done."

Clara carried her laptop into the spare room. Behind the closed door, she opened the Ashford graduate admissions page for the first time in three years.

* * *

At the Holloway villa, Grant stood before the windows of his study as his banker finished speaking.

Clara had deposited the check.

The deed transfer had also been filed.

Grant ended the call and looked at his silent phone.

Taking the settlement was supposed to mean finality. Clara knew that. She had refused the same offer before with tears in her eyes, swearing she wanted him and nothing else.

Now she had accepted every dollar.

He almost called her.

Then pride hardened over the impulse. This was strategy, he decided. A larger gesture designed to frighten him into chasing her.

He opened Mason's contact instead.

"Drinks," Grant said when his friend answered. "Tonight."