Kaiden looked at her and grinned.
"Alexandra," he said. "I've come to realize that you wield the strongest weapon in the universe."
She blinked. "Huh?"
"Truly." He nodded with the grave authority of a man delivering a battlefield assessment. "Nothing rivals the tears of women."
Alexandra's red eyes narrowed.
"How dare you," she said, and her voice carried the quiet fury of a woman who had just ugly-cried on live broadcast and was now being complimented on it like a strategic asset.
Then she moved.
It was fast and uncoordinated, the kind of movement that happened before the brain could talk the body out of it. She closed the distance in a burst that was more stumble than dash, her arms coming up and wrapping around his torso with a grip that squeezed the air out of his lungs.
Kaiden parted his arms and let her in.
