Chapter 253: Elias Wants to Take Off His Jacket
"An American?" Yvonne asked.
Karen’s eyes brightened at the question.
"Yes," she said. "More specifically, someone from Massachusetts. The client wants the work done without a translator, by someone who understands the language, the social cues, and the exact emotional register the subject will respond to. That is why I called you. With you involved, the success rate would be as close to certain as this work can get."
For reasons Yvonne could not explain, learning that the subject came from home stirred something uneasy in her.
It was not logic.
She had felt that sensation before, though rarely. Usually it appeared before a difficult case arrived at her operating room, a patient with a procedure complicated enough to demand every hour of focus she possessed. Her instincts did not always explain themselves, but they had rarely been wrong.
This felt similar.
Only stranger.
"Who is it?" Yvonne asked.
Karen blinked. "Who is who?"
"The subject." Yvonne’s gaze did not leave her. "What is the name of the person you want me to hypnotize?"
The change in phrasing made Karen sit up.
Not, I will think about it.
Not, tell me more.
You want me to hypnotize.
Relief crossed her face so plainly that it softened every line around her eyes. She had been preparing arguments, numbers, promises of funding, even a few carefully chosen appeals to Yvonne’s medical conscience. Now she no longer needed them.
"You’ll take the case?" Karen asked.
Yvonne did not answer the question.
Karen’s smile widened anyway. "I don’t have the subject’s name yet. The client has kept that private. But now that you’ve agreed, I can tell you who requested the work."
Yvonne’s breathing slowed.
Karen said the name softly.
"Serena Blackwood."
For the first time since the car door closed, Yvonne’s expression changed.
Only slightly.
But Karen saw it.
Yvonne knew Serena. Not well enough to call the connection personal, but well enough. Serena had been the woman standing at the center of Elias’s medical care, the woman who had hired specialists, made decisions at the bedside, and looked at Yvonne with the guarded hostility of someone who hated needing another person’s expertise.
Serena had money. Serena had access. Serena also had a reason to keep certain things quiet.
Yvonne’s gaze rested on the road ahead.
"Does she know who the subject is?" she asked.
Karen shook her head. "She knows. I do not. The target’s identity is compartmentalized until the agreement is finalized. Her legal team was very firm about it."
Of course it was.
Yvonne said nothing else.
The Maldivian road slid past the windows in bands of white sand, palms, and bright blue water. Yvonne looked ahead, face unreadable behind gold-rimmed glasses, while one thought settled with the quiet certainty of a scalpel touching skin.
Serena Blackwood.
So that was why the feeling had come.
Elias had slept long enough on the jet that he had no interest in sitting quietly during the drive.
He stayed properly seated, at least technically. His seat belt was fastened. His feet remained on the floor. Yet the energy in him made it seem as though he were climbing across the car without moving from his place. He kept turning toward the window, leaning forward to look past Giselle, then sitting back only to spot something else along the road.
Palm trees. Open water. Bright little shops. A boat crossing the bay. A cluster of scooters weaving between resort shuttles.
Everything was unfamiliar.
Giselle watched him with a faint smile.
"Don’t rush," she said. "When we get there, I’ll make sure you have enough to do that you won’t know what to try first."
Elias stopped moving.
He turned toward her, a faint flush touching his cheeks.
"Giselle," he said, "do I look like someone who’s never been anywhere?"
The question was offended, but his wide eyes made the real answer obvious.
He wanted reassurance.
Giselle almost teased him.
She hesitated just long enough for Elias’s mouth to tighten. His lower lip caught briefly between his teeth while he waited, suddenly worried that she might agree.
"Maybe a little," she said.
His expression dropped at once.
Giselle’s amusement disappeared.
She turned toward him fully. "That isn’t a bad thing."
Elias looked back at her.
"There are things everyone has never seen," Giselle continued. "That does not mean they are sheltered or embarrassing. It only means the world is bigger than what they have known. That is why travel matters. You get to see more of it."
Her voice stayed calm, but she took the answer seriously.
"You learn what you like. You learn what you want to see again. You become more yourself."
For a second, Elias only stared.
Then he covered his mouth with a loose fist and laughed.
Giselle stopped talking.
"I’m sorry," Elias said, trying and failing to hide the smile. "You just look so serious when you say things like that."
Giselle did not mind.
The disappointment had already vanished from his face. That was enough.
Elias reached out his hand.
He knew she had changed her answer because she did not want him to feel small. He had to meet that care with something in return.
Giselle took his hand automatically.
Their fingers fitted together without hesitation now. It had happened enough times that neither of them treated it as new. The ease of it should have been alarming. Instead, it felt as natural as the slow roll of the car beneath them.
A few minutes passed.
The road was warm outside, bright enough to make the view shimmer. The air-conditioning worked, but the heat had still settled into the car. Their palms grew damp where they held hands.
Giselle noticed first.
She could have let go. That would have been the practical thing. Their hands were warm, their grip a little sticky, and there was no reason they had to stay like that for an entire drive.
She did not loosen her fingers.
Neither did Elias.
The awareness made Giselle strangely quiet. Back home, she could have explained it away as reassurance after the flight, or a response to the argument at The Pinnacle Club. Here, with sunlight flashing on the ocean and nothing urgent waiting inside the car, the reasons felt thinner.
She chose not to examine them.
Elias looked at Giselle.
"I’m hot."
Giselle glanced toward the driver. "Lower the temperature."
The driver adjusted the controls immediately.
Cooler air started to move through the vents, but the tropical heat still clung to the car. Elias fanned the front of his shirt once, then glanced at the bright water beyond the tinted window.
"It’s not helping," he said.
Giselle looked at him with a slight crease between her brows, ready to tell the driver to turn the temperature down further.
Elias let out a small, unhappy breath. "I want to take off my clothes."
Giselle’s face changed.
For a single instant, her imagination went somewhere entirely different.
Then she realized he meant his jacket.
A quiet flush reached her ears.
"Go ahead," she said, turning her face toward the window. "Take it off."
Elias released her hand and pulled down the zipper of his lightweight travel jacket. He shrugged it off, leaving himself in the thin long-sleeved shirt Giselle had chosen for the climate. It covered his arms from the sun but was light enough for tropical weather.
"Finally," he said.
The relief in his voice made him sound as though he had escaped something catastrophic.
Giselle looked over despite herself.
The fabric had picked up a little moisture under the jacket, darkening faintly near his collar and clinging just enough to show the warmth in his skin beneath it. Nothing improper. Nothing she should not be able to look at.
Still, she looked away a beat too late.
Elias caught it.
"Are you hot too?" he asked.
Giselle turned back to answer properly. Looking at someone’s eyes while speaking was basic courtesy, and it was a habit drilled into her long before she learned how to question it.
"I’m fine," she began.
Then her gaze fell again.
Elias had hooked two fingers into his collar and was tugging it back and forth to make air move against his neck. It was an ordinary reaction to heat, careless and open because he trusted her enough not to think about it. Each small pull loosened the neckline, showing a little more flushed skin at his throat and the edge of his collarbone.
Giselle abruptly turned toward the window.
"Giselle?" Elias asked, innocence filling his voice.
His smile said something else.
So this was what she got for choosing the shirt.
She had wanted him protected from the sun. A thicker top would have made the heat worse, so she chose something light. She had not anticipated that he would turn a simple collar into a weapon.
Giselle kept her hands folded in her lap and focused on the passing view. Her posture remained immaculate. Only the faint color at the tips of her ears betrayed her. Elias noticed that too, and his mood improved immediately.
[System Theta: Poor Giselle.]
Elias had no intention of stopping.
This trip was only the two of them. Serena was back in the city. Liora was nowhere near them. Yvonne had not entered the picture yet, and Victoria was not here to turn every quiet moment into an inspection. Giselle had brought him abroad, placed him in a private car, and then sat beside him while the ocean waited outside.
He would be wasting the opportunity if he did not play with her a little.
After the road curved twice, the water shifted to Giselle’s side of the car.
Elias moved closer at once.
He slipped both arms around one of hers and leaned against her shoulder, pressing the warm line of his body along her upper arm as he looked through the window.
"It’s beautiful," he breathed.
Giselle sat perfectly still.
Her gaze stayed fixed on the sea.
"Yes," she said, voice steady. "It is."
Elias smiled to himself.
The ocean was beautiful.
So was she.
The SUV continued down the coastal road, carrying them toward a resort neither of them had yet seen. Elias stayed tucked against Giselle’s arm, his gaze returning to the water every few seconds. Giselle kept looking out the window too, though she no longer seemed to be watching the view.
Neither of them mentioned the warmth between their joined shoulders.
Neither moved away.