CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Chane's eyes locked with hers.
For a moment, everything around him faded—the chatter in the restaurant, the clinking of glasses, even Simone's sharp voice. It all melted into a blur as he stared at the woman standing just a few steps away.
Danelle.
His ex-wife.
The woman he hadn't seen in over seven years.
The woman he believed had disappeared from his life forever after she signed the divorce papers and vanished.
And now she was standing right there, her hand wrapped protectively around a little girl who looked up at him with the same fire in her eyes that he once saw in Danelle.
He was stunned.
Utterly, completely stunned.
Danelle looked even more beautiful than he remembered—matured, elegant, glowing in a way that only a woman who had survived pain and risen from it could glow. Her curves were more pronounced, her confidence more grounded. She didn't look like a woman broken by betrayal—she looked like a woman who had rebuilt herself brick by brick.
