Lakeside Academy looked like a brochure had come to life.
Manicured lawns. A playground that looked more like a sculpture garden. A lobby with a huge, rotating globe and, yes, a small robot quietly buffing the floor.
Hallie’s eyes nearly popped out of her head.
“Mom,” she whispered, clinging to her hand. “It’s the globe. And the robot. It’s *real*.”
“I see,” Mara said, throat tight.
They’d told Hallie they were “just looking,” but children had a way of reading between lines.
Liam walked on Hallie’s other side, hand not quite touching her shoulder, as if restraining himself from scooping her up and spinning her around.
Parents milled in the lobby, chatting. Some looked like they’d stepped out of catalogues. Others, like Mara, wore their best regular clothes and clutched pamphlets like lifelines.
A woman in a blazer greeted them, name tag shining.
“Welcome,” she said. “You must be the Harts.”
Mara stiffened.
Liam smiled tightly.
“Two Harts,” he said. “One Leoni.”
The woman blinked. “Of course,” she said quickly. “We’re so glad you could make it.”
Her gaze flicked over Mara’s dress, Liam’s watch, Hallie’s curls. There was a calculation there, but not an unkind one. Just the reflex of someone whose job it was to assess fit.
“Tour starts in five minutes,” she said. “We’ll walk through classrooms, meet some teachers, answer questions at the end.”
Hallie tugged on Liam’s sleeve.
“Can we see the library?” she whispered. “Mrs. K says they have shelves that go all the way to the ceiling.”
“I think that’s on the tour,” he said.
“If it’s not, we’ll stage a coup,” Mara muttered.
He huffed a quiet laugh.
As they walked through the bright halls, something inside Mara ached.
Art on the walls. Actual art, not just construction paper but matted, displayed, honored. A room full of instruments. A science lab with child-sized goggles.
Kids in uniforms that somehow looked both comfortable and expensive.
“This is too much,” she whispered at one point. “She’d be…out of place.”
“Look around,” Liam murmured. “Not every kid here is a trust fund baby. That boy?” He nodded toward a kid in slightly scuffed shoes, hair still damp. “Scholarship. You can tell by the way he’s glued to the teacher, taking everything in. Like it might disappear.”
She followed his gaze.
Saw what he meant.
Saw herself, at nine, in that boy. Hungry. Attentive. Desperate.
“This could be her,” Liam said softly. “If you want it.”
Hallie pressed her hands against the glass of a classroom door.
Inside, a teacher knelt at eye level with a girl, listening as she explained something with grand hand gestures.
“Look,” Hallie breathed. “They have easels. And paints. Real paints. Not just crayons.”
Mara’s throat burned.
At the Q&A, a man in a golf shirt raised his hand.
“What’s your policy on…media attention?” he asked. “If a parent happens to be…visible?”
He didn’t look at them, but Mara felt the glance.
The admissions director—a calm woman with steel in her gaze—smiled.
“We have a strict no-media-on-campus policy,” she said. “We protect our students’ privacy vigorously, regardless of their parents’ profiles. Anyone violating that is asked to leave the community.”
Relief washed through Mara.
Later, in the car, Hallie hummed to herself in the back seat, clutching a glossy brochure.
“I want to go there,” she said. “Please.”
Mara closed her eyes briefly.
“We’re…thinking about it,” she said. “It’s…complicated.”
“I can help,” Hallie offered. “I can bake cookies. We can sell them. Mrs. K says I’m very persuasive.”
Liam’s hands tightened on the wheel.
“You’re amazing,” he said.
He caught Mara’s eye in the rearview mirror.
“So?” he asked quietly.
“So,” she echoed.
She looked at Hallie’s reflection—wide-eyed, hopeful.
Her own lists and fears and numbers seemed very small in the face of that.
“Yes,” she said, heart thudding. “We’ll apply.”
Hallie squealed.
“Really?” she demanded. “Really-really?”
“Really-really,” Mara said.
Liam’s lips curved.
“One terrifying decision at a time,” he said.
***
That night, after Hallie had fallen asleep mid-sentence, brochure clutched in her hand, Mara stood in the kitchen filling out yet another form.
This one, at least, was about potential, not crisis.
“Parent occupation,” she read aloud. “Parent occupation…do I put ‘janitor’? Or ‘about to be extremely confusingly unemployed’?”
“Put ‘custodial staff’ for now,” Liam said from the island, where he sat with his laptop open. “And ‘CEO’ for me.”
“Won’t that tip them off?” she asked.
“They already know,” he said. “Trust me. People who run schools like this keep track of which billionaires are sniffing around.”
She sighed, pen hovering.
“Marital status,” she muttered. “Single. Married. It doesn’t have a box for ‘about to marry my boss because of a contract and also possibly love.’”
“Write that in,” he said dryly. “See what they do.”
She snorted.
She checked “engaged.” Wrote his name in the partner box.
Liam Hart.
It looked…oddly right.
She slid the form across to him.
“Check,” she said. “Make sure I didn’t sell my soul.”
He scanned it, lips twitching at a few of her answers.
“How did you manage to sneak sarcasm into a standardized form?” he asked.
“It’s a gift,” she said.
He reached the end.
His eyes softened.
“‘What do you hope your child will gain from Lakeside?’” he read. “‘A chance to be a kid without worrying about rent.’”
Heat flooded her cheeks.
“I almost wrote ‘world domination,’” she muttered.
“That’s more my answer,” he said. “Yours is better.”
He set the form down.
They were close, across the island. Closer than made sense for a conversation about paperwork.
“Mara,” he said quietly.
“Mm?” she managed.
“After the wedding,” he said, “we’ll…move some things around. At Hart. I don’t want you cleaning floors for your own husband.”
Her spine stiffened.
“You think I’m ashamed of my job?” she asked.
“No,” he said quickly. “Not at all. But the optics are…complicated. And you deserve to do something that uses more of your brain than a mop requires. If you want.”
“If I want,” she repeated.
“I’m not…reassigning you as a favor,” he said. “I’m…opening a door. You choose whether to walk through.”
She exhaled.
“What would I even do?” she asked. “Sit at a desk and stare at spreadsheets?”
“There are other options,” he said. “Community liaison. Employee advocate. Someone who understands what it’s like in the break rooms, not just the boardrooms.”
“You want me to be your…staff whisperer?” she asked, amused.
“Something like that,” he said. “We can figure it out. Together.”
The word together had started to become dangerously comfortable in his mouth.
She liked it too much.
“First we survive the wedding,” she said. “Then we topple corporate hierarchies.”
He smiled.
“Deal,” he said.
He reached across the island, taking her hand.
His thumb stroked the back of her fingers, slow.
Heat curled low in her belly.
“This is…dangerous,” she murmured.
“Everything worth doing is,” he said.
He stood, coming around the island.
She didn’t move as he stepped into her space.
“May I?” he asked, voice low.
She knew what he meant this time.
“Yes,” she whispered.
His hand cupped her jaw.
He kissed her.
Not tentative, like the first time. Not entirely controlled, like the second.
This one…lingered.
His mouth moved against hers, warm, insistent. She rose onto her toes, one hand fisting in the front of his T-shirt, the other sliding up over the hard plane of his chest to his shoulder.
He made a sound, deep in his throat, and pulled her closer.
Her body pressed along his, curves fitting into lines.
The world narrowed to heat and breath and the faint scrape of stubble against her skin.
His tongue brushed her lower lip, asking.
She opened for him without thinking.
The kiss deepened.
Need flared, hot and startling.
For a moment, she forgot contracts.
Forgot tabloids.
Forgot everything except the way he felt.
The way he tasted.
The way his fingers dug into her hips like he never wanted to let go.
A crash from the hallway shattered the moment.
They broke apart, breathing hard.
“Mom?” Hallie’s sleepy voice called. “My rabbit fell.”
Mara closed her eyes, pressing her forehead to Liam’s chest for a second.
He rested his chin lightly on her hair, chest rising and falling against her.
“Saved by the rabbit,” he muttered.
She laughed, breathless.
“I should…” She gestured vaguely toward the hall.
“Go,” he said, stepping back.
His eyes were dark, pupils blown.
“Later,” he added quietly.
Her pulse jumped.
“Later,” she echoed, then fled down the hall.
Behind her, in the kitchen, Liam braced his hands on the counter and tried to remember how to breathe.
He’d thought he was prepared.
Contracts. Clauses. Boundaries.
None of that had prepared him for the way a simple kiss could undo him more than any hostile takeover.
Somewhere in the city, Alastair Kane read the report his assistant had compiled on the press conference, the open house, the school pickup.
He tapped his finger against the edge of the desk, eyes narrowed.
“Interesting,” he murmured. “He’s…attached.”
His assistant shifted uneasily.
“What’s our next move, sir?” she asked.
He smiled, slow and cold.
“We hit him where it hurts most,” he said. “Not the company. The heart.”
He slid a folder across the desk.
Inside, printed in glossy color, was the photo Dahlia had taken years ago.
Mara in the attic.
Hand on a barely-there bump.
Tears in her eyes.
“Let’s see,” Kane said, steepling his fingers, “how well his new little family weathers a true storm.”
The first gusts had been personal.
The next would be professional.
And in a city built on steel and secrets, love was the most fragile thing of all.
***