She looked insanely beautiful, but despite the convoy, the bodyguards, and the carefully maintained seriousness she wore like armor, the sight of her stepping out to meet him carried a strangely simple implication.
Amelia Don had come here personally. Which meant whatever had brought her to his place wasn’t business that could be delegated. And it was pretty obvious what it was.
The doors of the four cars behind her opened in perfect, coordinated sequence. Eight armed female guards stepped out and spread into a loose but disciplined formation behind her. Stan recognized Emma at the front of the group, the leader of the original detail, looking far more composed and confident than she had at the abandoned building.
Amelia raised a single hand and the entire formation stopped instantly.
She didn’t want this to feel like an act of intimidation. She didn’t want him to think she had come looking for trouble. If anything, she wanted the opposite. But she also knew that a man who had broken through a steel door and disabled six armed kidnappers in twelve seconds was not someone who would be intimidated by a few bodyguards. The display was for the people watching around them, not for him.
Leaving the guards where they stood, she walked toward the Huracán alone.
She reached the driver’s side window and looked inside.
Stan looked back at her. For a moment, she simply stood there, taking him in.
The man behind the wheel was the same man whose photograph she had memorized while lying in her hospital bed, but the picture hadn’t captured him properly. It had shown a young executive at a corporate event, polished, ordinary, forgettable.
The man sitting in the Huracán was something else entirely.
He seemed settled. Alert. Watching her without any of the defensive habits she had spent her entire life learning to recognize in men. His expression was calm. His eyes steady. He regarded her with the quiet curiosity of someone studying a complicated puzzle that had unexpectedly arrived at his gate.
’I’ve finally met him.’
The thought came with a slow, warm certainty, carrying the weight of emotions that had been building inside her for days.
’The man who saved my life.’
He looked even more handsome in person than in the photos she had stared at for hours on her phone. Before she could stop herself, a small, gentle smile touched her lips.
At that exact moment, Stan’s vision filled with notifications.
[Amelia Don: Favorability 115 → 120]
[Amelia Don: Favorability 120 → 126]
[Ding!]
[You have fulfilled the conditions for additional rewards.]
[Amelia Don has surpassed the 125 Favorability threshold.]
Stan, outwardly, showed no reaction. Internally, he was briefly stunned.
The last time he had checked, Amelia’s favorability had been sitting at 115, climbing steadily but slowly. Thirty seconds of standing face-to-face with him had pushed it past 120 and all the way to 126.
While he didn’t know about this but whatever effect his photograph had had on her hospital bed, the reality of meeting him in person was proving considerably more potent.
He kept his expression composed and spoke first; "How long have you been waiting out here, Miss Amelia?"
The question was casual. The implication, that her impressive convoy had clearly been parked outside his gate for quite some time, was considerably less subtle.
Amelia coughed softly into her closed hand.
It was the small, half-deliberate sort of cough people used to buy themselves a moment when caught off guard. She could already feel a faint warmth creeping up the back of her neck, and she knew that even behind her sunglasses, it was probably noticeable.
’What would he think of me if he knew I’d spent the entire night waiting out here? No. I can’t answer that question.’
She was absolutely not answering that question.
Straightening her shoulders, she chose to deflect.
"How long I’ve been waiting isn’t important." Her voice remained steady, though quieter than she intended. "What’s important is that you saved my life. I owe you a great deal, Sir Stan."
Stan let the deflection pass without comment.
"That’s a generous way to put it." His gaze flicked briefly toward the assembled convoy. "Although the setup out here does make it look like I’ve done something deeply wrong."
She blinked. Then, to her own embarrassment, she glanced over her shoulder at the line of vehicles and guards.
"That’s exactly why I think we should have this conversation somewhere less..." She made a vague gesture at the spectacle behind her. "Formal."
A hint of color touched her cheeks.
"Coffee. Breakfast. Somewhere we can actually talk."
Stan’s lips curved into a slow, amused smile. Locking eyes with her through the open window, he asked;
"Are you asking me out, Miss Amelia?"
Amelia coughed again. Harder this time. She turned her head away for a moment to recover her composure as the warmth rising up her neck spread visibly to her cheeks.
’Is he teasing me? Is he flirting? Or does he just talk this casually about things like this?’ She had no idea.
And worse, she had no idea how she was supposed to know.
The truth was that her vocabulary for this sort of exchange was woefully underdeveloped. She had spent her entire adult life avoiding precisely this register of conversation with men. She had no memories to draw on. No experiences to reference. No practiced responses waiting in reserve.
What she did know was that he had just called her out for asking him out, and she was...
With a small, distant sense of horror, she realized she was blushing.
She had never blushed in front of a man before. Not once. The closest she had ever come had been the cold, controlled flush of anger she’d felt at fourteen when one of her uncles had leaned far too close into her personal space. That had been blood under pressure.
This... This was something else. This was warmth.
And she had absolutely no idea what to do with warmth.
[Amelia Don: Favorability 126 → 128]
Stan watched the delicate color climb across her face and, for once, decided to be merciful.
"Alright, Miss Amelia. I accept your offer."
He tilted his head toward the opposite side of the street.
"There’s a small restaurant over there. No need to drive." His smile deepened slightly. "We can walk."
Amelia nodded immediately.