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Petra’s face remains composed, but she has gone very still.

Alester stands. He does it slowly, without any sudden movement. That’s the thing about men like him. They don’t need to slam doors. They make quiet feel dangerous.

“You are very well informed about matters that do not concern you,” he says.

“I’m informed enough to know Maggie should have been protected.”

“Maggie,” he says.

I hate that my body reacts before I can stop it. A tightening of the jaw. A shift in my shoulders. Small things, but Alester sees small things. Men like him build entire traps out of small things.

He walks around the desk. “You call her Maggie.”

“She is my patient.”

“My staff calls her Miss Hanes.”

“I’m not your staff.”

“No,” he says. “You are not.”

He stops a few feet from me, close enough that the conversation becomes more personal than professional, but not close enough to be crude. Alester understands distance. He uses it the way other men use knives.

“I find your concern touching,” he says. “Almost moving.”

“It is medical concern.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you look at me like a jealous man?” The words are soft.

I don’t answer quickly enough.

His mouth curves. “There it is.”

“There is nothing.”

“No?” He tilts his head. “Strange. Because I saw you with her.”

Petra looks at him. That’s how I know this is not for her benefit. He hasn’t told her everything. Maybe not anything.

My pulse doesn’t change. I make sure of it.

I keep my face still. “You are mistaken.”

“I am many things, Dalton. Rarely mistaken.”

“I don’t know what you think you saw.”

Alester’s gaze doesn’t leave mine. “The night of the party.”

Petra looks up from her tablet.

I say nothing.

He smiles faintly, and there’s no warmth in it. “You remember the party, I assume. The evening I announced Maggie Hanes to a room full of people who have spent months trying to decide whether my future belongs to them.”