Chapter 3 - The Leather Strap
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The waiter arrived with their food, breaking the suffocating gravity that had locked table eleven in place.
He placed the roasted sea bass before Brennan with exaggerated reverence, carefully navigating around the giant black dog on the floor.
When the plate of chicken was set before Holly, the waiter gave her a quick, bewildered glance, clearly wondering how an off-shift server had ended up sitting opposite their most demanding regular.
Neither Brennan nor Holly touched their cutlery.
Atlas remained planted firmly against Holly’s knees, his dark eyes half-closed as he breathed in the scent of her skin.
“Delia told me you were quiet,” Brennan remarked, his voice returning to its cool, measured register as he picked up his water glass.
“She told me you worked sixty hours a week and lived in a fifth-floor walk-up on the south side.”
“Delia talks too much,” Holly murmured, feeling exposed under the layers of information he had already gathered.
“She cares about you,” Brennan replied smoothly.
“And she owes me a rather large favor from an intellectual property suit I resolved for her firm last winter.”
Holly set her fork down with a small clatter before she had even taken a bite.
“You set this up,” she said, the realization hitting her like ice water.
“This wasn’t a random blind date.”
Brennan did not flinch, nor did he apologize.
“I don’t believe in random events, Miss Lawson.”
“You tracked me down?”
Her voice rose just enough to draw a nervous glance from the restaurant manager near the service station.
“I didn’t track you down until two weeks ago,” Brennan said evenly.
“The clinic in the industrial district finally upgraded their paper archives to a digital system.”
Holly’s heart skipped a beat.
“The vet signed a confidentiality agreement with me,” she whispered, anger flaring through her shock.
“He didn’t break it,” Brennan answered.
“He simply retained a digital backup of the surveillance footage from the exterior loading bay to protect himself from insurance audits.”
He paused, his eyes narrowing slightly as he studied her flushed face.
“A girl wearing an oversized navy coat and carrying an eighty-pound bleeding dog on her shoulders doesn’t blend into the background very easily.”
Holly gripped the edge of the table, feeling the sudden urge to run out into the winter cold.
As she shifted her legs to stand, her elbow caught the strap of her canvas purse resting on the empty chair beside her.
The bag slipped from the seat and crashed onto the wooden floorboards, its contents spilling out beneath the edge of the tablecloth.
A tube of lip balm, a set of brass keys, a notebook filled with restaurant shift schedules, and a small strip of worn brown leather tumbled into the light.
Brennan looked down instantly.
Before Holly could bend over to grab her belongings, Brennan’s long arm reached down to the floor.
His fingers closed around the strip of leather.
Holly froze.
It was the broken collar leash attachment she had kept tucked away in her coat for two entire years.
The brass ring was tarnished, but the etched initials were unmistakable: L.V. – 1842.
Brennan held the strap in his palm, his hand trembling so slightly that only someone watching him intently would notice.
“My brother made this by hand in his workshop,” Brennan said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper.
“He stamped our grandfather’s founding year into the ring the day he brought Atlas home from the shelter.”
He lifted his head, and for the first time, Holly saw an emotion crack through the billionaire’s polished facade.
There were tears trapped behind the steel of his gray eyes.
“Why did you keep it?” he asked, the authority completely gone from his voice.
May you like
Holly looked down at Atlas, whose nose was nudging the palm of her hand as if urging her to speak the truth.
“Because that night was the only time in my life I felt like I actually saved someone who couldn't save themselves,” she confessed.
