For two weeks, Alexander lived in hell of his own making. Every morning he watched Sophia interact with his children with professional warmth while treating him like a stranger. Every evening he came home to find her pleasant, polite, and completely unreachable.
He'd done this. He'd taken the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to his family and destroyed it with his own cowardice.
The board meeting that had triggered his panic seemed insignificant now. Richard Hartwell's casual comment about "the nanny situation" affecting Alexander's judgment, Marcus Webb's snide remarks about mixing business with pleasure, none of it mattered compared to the way Sophia now looked right through him.
But it was Emma who finally broke him.
"Why doesn't Sophia smile anymore?" his daughter asked over breakfast, her six-year-old wisdom cutting straight to the heart of things.
Alexander looked up from his untouched coffee to see Sophia's face carefully blank as she helped Ethan with his cereal. She'd lost weight, he realized with a jolt of guilt. There were shadows under her eyes that hadn't been there before.
"She smiles," Alexander said weakly.
"Not real smiles," Emma insisted. "Not the kind she used to give you."
Sophia's hands stilled for just a moment before she resumed her task. "I'm fine, sweetheart," she said softly to Emma. "Sometimes grown-ups just have different things on their minds."
That evening, after the twins were in bed, Alexander stood outside a florist shop in Manhattan, staring at arrangements that seemed inadequate for the magnitude of his mistake. Yellow roses,Elena's favorite- felt wrong. Red roses felt presumptuous. In the end, he chose white peonies, soft and beautiful and honest.
He found Sophia in the garden, reading by the pool lights. She looked up when she heard his footsteps, her expression carefully neutral.
"The twins are asleep," she reported, as if he were just another employer checking on his staff.
"Sophia." He held out the flowers, hating how his hands trembled slightly. "Please. I need to talk to you."
She stared at the peonies for a long moment before slowly closing her book. "What is it, Mr. Steele?"
The formality was like a knife to his chest. "Don't call me that. Please."
"I think it's appropriate, given the circumstances." Her voice was steady, professional, devastating.
Alexander sat down heavily in the chair across from her, still holding the flowers she hadn't taken. "I'm sorry, Sophia. God, I'm so sorry."
"For what, exactly? For leading me on? For making me believe there was something between us? Or for putting me back in my place so effectively?"
The hurt in her voice, carefully controlled but unmistakable, made him want to hit something. Preferably himself.
"All of it. None of it." Alexander ran his free hand through his hair. "I'm sorry for being a coward."
That got a reaction. Sophia's perfectly composed mask slipped for just a moment, revealing a flash of the pain she'd been hiding.
"A coward?"
"I was scared," Alexander admitted, the words feeling like they were being torn from his chest. "That night at the gala, when you said yes... I wanted it so much it terrified me. And then the phone calls started, and Webb's comments from earlier came rushing back, and I panicked."
"What comments?"
Alexander's jaw clenched. "He said I was distracted. That my judgment was compromised. He implied that being involved with you made me weak, made me a laughing stock in the business community."
"And you believed him."
"For about twelve hours, yes. I let my fear and my pride convince me that what we have, what we had was a liability instead of the best thing that's ever happened to me."
Sophia was quiet for a long moment, studying his face in the soft lighting. "And now?"
"Now I know I'm an idiot." Alexander leaned forward, finally setting the flowers on the table between them. "Now I know that losing you would be the real catastrophe. Not what the board thinks, not what business rivals say, not what society pages might print. Losing you would destroy me."
"You already lost me," Sophia said quietly. "The moment you called me 'just the help,' you lost me."
"No." Alexander's voice was raw with desperation. "Please, Sophia. I know I don't deserve it, but give me another chance. Let me show you that I meant every word I said at the gala. That you are mine, and I'm yours, and nothing else matters."
Sophia shook her head, tears finally threatening her composure. "How can I trust you? How do I know you won't panic again the next time someone questions your judgment?"
Alexander stood abruptly, moving to kneel beside her chair. The vulnerability of the position, this powerful man literally at her feet, wasn't lost on either of them.
"Because I can't breathe without you," he said simply. "Because my children ask why you don't smile anymore. Because I've spent two weeks in hell knowing that I hurt the most important person in my world."
His hands hovered near her face, not quite touching, asking permission.
"Because I love you, Sophia. Completely, desperately, irrevocably. And I don't care who knows it."
The confession hung between them, raw and honest and terrifying in its intensity. Sophia stared down at him, this man who'd built an empire through cold control, now broken open with vulnerability.
"Alexander..." she whispered.
"I know I have to earn your trust back," he said urgently. "I know I have to prove that I won't run again. But please, Sophia, don't give up on us. Don't give up on what we could have."
Slowly, carefully, Sophia reached out to cup his face. Alexander closed his eyes at the touch, leaning into her palm like a man starved for affection.
"I love you too," she said softly. "That's what made it hurt so much."
Alexander's eyes opened, blazing with hope and relief and something darker, hungrier.
"Then let me make it right," he said, his voice dropping to that rough whisper that made her pulse race. "Let me show you how sorry I am. How much I need you. How much I worship you."
The promise in his words, the heat returning to his eyes, made Sophia's breath catch. "Alexander..."
"Say yes," he urged, his hands finally settling on her waist. "Say yes and let me spend the rest of the night proving to you exactly how precious you are to me."
Sophia looked down at this proud, powerful man humbling himself before her, offering not just apologies but his whole heart. The hurt was still there, but underneath it was the love that had never really gone away.
"Yes," she whispered.
Alexander's smile was brilliant with relief and dark with promise. "Then come to bed with me, darling. It's time I showed you exactly how a queen should be treated."