**Chapter 48 — Sharon POV**
I decided on lamb.
Liam's favorite since forever — slow-roasted, with rosemary and garlic, the kind that filled the whole house with something that felt like warmth made edible. I'd been preparing since four in the afternoon, moving through the kitchen with the quiet satisfaction of someone who knew exactly what they were doing and was enjoying every second of it.
I had the good candles out. The long ivory ones I saved for occasions that deserved them. The dining table was set properly — our actual good plates, not the everyday ones, linen napkins folded the way my mother taught me, two glasses of the Bordeaux he loved breathing on the counter.
It wasn't a party. It was just us. That was the point.
I was reaching into the fridge for the butter when I noticed it.
Not something dramatic. Just — wrong. A slight misalignment at the back of the fridge, near the wall panel behind the bottom shelf. Like something had shifted and been put back almost correctly. Almost.
I frowned, leaning in slightly. The panel looked odd. Like it didn't sit quite flush the way it should.
I reached out and touched the edge of it.
Then Liam's key turned in the front door and I straightened up automatically, the butter in my hand, the panel already half-forgotten.
"Something smells incredible," he called from the hallway.
"Lamb," I called back. "Don't come in the kitchen yet."
"Yes ma'am."
I smiled and pushed the fridge shut.
---
He looked good. He always looked good when he wasn't panicking — which had been rare lately, so I'd almost forgotten. He'd changed into a clean shirt, dark navy, the one that made his eyes look lighter, and when he walked into the dining room and saw the table his face did that thing I loved, that quiet, slightly stunned thing, like he was still surprised after all these years that someone had gone to the trouble for him.
"Sharon."
"Sit down," I said. "Before it gets cold."
He sat. I brought the lamb. We ate.
It was good — genuinely good, I wasn't modest about my cooking when it earned it — and for a while it was just the two of us and the candles and the Bordeaux and the particular kind of comfortable quiet that only exists between people who have shared enough years to not need noise to fill the space.
I had bought him a watch.
Not just any watch. A Vacheron Constantin, steel and rose gold, the limited edition one he'd pointed at in a magazine six months ago and said *now that's a watch* before turning the page like he hadn't just told me exactly what to get him. I'd had it engraved on the back. *Always yours. S.*
I slid the box across the table after the plates were cleared.
He opened it slowly. Looked at it for a long moment.
"Sharon." His voice was different when he said it this time.
"Read the back," I said.
He turned it over. Something moved across his face that I couldn't fully read — something warm but complicated, like a man looking at something he felt he didn't deserve. He fastened it onto his wrist without another word and reached across the table and squeezed my hand.
"Thank you," he said quietly. "Really."
I smiled. "Happy birthday, baby."
We finished the wine. I brought out the dessert — a chocolate fondant, his favorite, the one I only made three or four times a year because it demanded patience. He ate two. I counted.
And then the evening settled.
We moved to the couch. He put his arm around me. I leaned into him and we watched something neither of us were really paying attention to, the way you do when the company is the point and the screen is just background.
I waited.
Not obviously. Not tensely. Just — with the particular awareness of someone who had seen something through a boutique window that afternoon and was now quietly expecting the next act.
Except the next act didn't come.
Twenty minutes passed. Then thirty. He topped up my wine. We talked about nothing — a problem with a supplier at Best Auto, something funny Jason had said last week, whether we should repaint the hallway. Normal evening conversation.
No box. No moment. Nothing.
I shifted slightly, tilting my head to look at him.
"You have nothing for me, babe?" I kept my voice light. Easy. Curious but not demanding.
Liam looked at me, genuinely confused. Not the performed confusion of a man hiding something — the real kind, the slight furrow, the blinking recalibration.
"No, babe," he said simply. "Should I?"
I held his gaze for a second. "It's your birthday."
"Exactly," he said, amused. "It's *my* birthday. You give me things. Not the other way around."
I laughed. "Fair point."
But something had shifted inside me, quiet and small, like a key turning in a lock I didn't know was there.
I leaned back into his shoulder and said nothing else about it.
He kissed my temple. "The lamb was perfect. Best one yet."
"I know," I said.
He laughed.
---
Later, when Liam was asleep, I lay in the dark with my eyes open.
I wasn't dramatic about it. I wasn't spiraling — not yet. But I was thinking, the way I thought when something didn't add up and my brain refused to let it go until I'd turned it over enough times to find the angle.
He'd been in Celeste today. I'd seen him with my own eyes. I'd seen the ring — blue diamond, flower-shaped, velvet box, card already out. He had *paid* for it. I'd watched him sign.
And tonight he had looked at me and said *no babe* like the question made no sense.
So where was it?
I stared at the ceiling.
And then, threading through that question like smoke under a door, came the other thing. The thing I'd rolled my eyes at in the car and told myself was a weird coincidence and nothing more.
Madeleine.
Standing outside Celeste. Cigarette in hand. Gone the moment she saw me, fast, guilty-fast, the way people moved when they had a reason to.
And Liam's car parked right there.
Same street. Same afternoon. Same hour.
I turned onto my side, away from him, and looked at the wall.
*It's nothing,* I told myself. *It's a small city. People end up in the same places. She was probably just in the area. She probably panicked because she knows she left weirdly and didn't want an awkward conversation.*
The rational explanation sat in my head perfectly neatly.
I didn't believe a word of it.
Something was off. I could feel it the way you felt weather changing before the sky showed it — in the pressure, in the stillness, in the way the air held itself differently.
I didn't know what it was yet.
But I was going to find out.
---
The next morning, I was still in bed when Liam came out of the bathroom already dressed. Not his usual clothes — a proper shirt, pressed trousers, his travel watch. Not the Vacheron Constantin I gave him last night. The old one.
I sat up slowly. "You're dressed early."
He moved to the wardrobe and pulled out his weekend bag. The one he used for trips.
Something cold moved through me.
"Liam."
"The German investor called last night," he said, his back to me, folding a shirt into the bag with more focus than folding a shirt required. "After dinner, when you were in the kitchen. He wants a meeting — in person. I need to fly out today. A week, maybe less."
I sat there and looked at him.
The German investor. Klaus Brenner. The one who had been in discussions with Best Auto for the past two months — discussions that I had been part of. Every email, every call, every negotiation. Liam and I had sat across from each other at that desk and gone through every detail of that proposal together.
Klaus Brenner had never once indicated he wanted an in-person meeting. He'd been perfectly content with video calls. He'd said so himself, twice.
"He called you?" I said carefully. "Not the office line. You."
"My personal number." Liam zipped the bag. "You know how he is — old school. Prefers direct contact."
I knew exactly how Klaus Brenner was. I had spoken to the man for four months.
"And he called at night," I said. "After dinner."
"Time difference, babe." He finally turned and looked at me, and his face was perfectly normal — calm, a little tired, slightly distracted the way he always was before a trip. "Germany is nine hours ahead. It was his morning."
Every single thing he said was reasonable.
I smiled. "Of course."
He came to the bed, leaned down, and kissed me. Long enough to be genuine. Short enough to be leaving.
"I'll call you when I land," he said. "Don't forget to eat properly. You always forget lunch when I'm not here."
"I'm a grown woman, Liam."
"You're my wife," he said simply, like that settled it.
He picked up the bag. He walked to the door.
"Take care of yourself," I said. My voice was steady and warm and gave away absolutely nothing.
He smiled. "Miss you already."
And then he was gone.
I listened to his footsteps on the stairs. The front door. His car starting in the driveway. The sound fading down the street until there was nothing left of him but the indent in his pillow and the faint smell of his cologne.
I sat in the silence of our bedroom for a long moment.
Klaus Brenner had not called about an in-person meeting. I would have known. I would have been included. That was not how any of this worked and Liam knew that I knew that.
The ring that had never appeared.
Madeleine outside Celeste, running the moment she saw my face.
And now a trip that had materialized overnight to a country that hadn't asked for one.
I got up. I went to the window. I watched the empty driveway for a moment longer than necessary.
*There is something going on,* I thought. *And I don't know what it is yet.*
I pulled my robe tighter.
*But I will.*