The city’s skyline glimmered beneath the veil of dusk, and as night crept in, it seemed to shimmer with a promise of change. Emma Carter stood at the floor-to-ceiling window in Jack Hayes’s penthouse, her arms crossed, lips parted slightly, and thoughts racing as she tried to understand the pull this world—and this man—had on her.

Jack watched her silently from across the room, a whiskey glass in his hand. The room buzzed with the electricity of everything left unsaid.

“You’re ...