“Theo,” she admonished me, handing off our glasses to a passing waiter and snatching up a napkin to blot at the stain.
“I think that’s making it worse.”
Amaya let out an exasperated sigh. “How did you manage to spill your wine?”
With great ease, since that was my plan.
Now I just needed to excuse myself and exit, and Shep would have to follow.
“Just clumsy, I guess.” I looked over to see a woman with her phone up, no doubt filming my “slip,” and winked. “But I can’t go around wearing this all night.”
I reached for the bottom button and slid it free from the hole, and several women in the crowd cheered.
“Oh, you like that, do you?” I grinned and unfastened the next two, and Amaya moved in front of me and aimed a steely stare at the phones pointed in my direction.
“The prince is going to step out for a minute and get cleaned up.” She glared over her shoulder at me. “Aren’t you?”
“On my way,” I said with a wave to my captive audience. As I headed toward the front exit, I caught sight of Shep slipping in and out of the rest of the security lining the theatre wall.
My lips tipped into a devious smile as I stepped out of the main auditorium and into the empty hall, and not a minute later a strong hand gripped my arm and hauled me away from my head security guard who was posted outside the door.
It probably should’ve concerned me that he didn’t make a move to intercept Shep. But since I’d orchestrated this entire scenario in the hopes of provoking this very reaction, it would be somewhat annoying if he decided to be a hero now.
Plus, he knew Shep. He knew thatIknew Shep. And if we didn’t get out of this hallway now, my head of security was going to know the two of us a whole lot better.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Shep said by my ear as he directed me down the hall.
“I’m going to clean my shirt,” I said. “Iaccidentallyspilled my wine.” I abruptly stopped and turned to face Shep’s glowering stare. “See?”
“It was a little hard to miss it. What the hell was that? You were supposed to be?—”
“Behaving myself? I know.” I pouted. “But I told you, I was bored.”
“So you decided to make a spectacle of yourself?”
“Non,I decided to lure you outside so I could do nefarious things to you.”
Shep rolled his eyes, then shoved me back several steps until the door to the restroom swung open and we were hidden away from the main thoroughfare.
“Are you crazy? The last thing you should be doing is drawing more attention to yourself. Someone is trying to hurt you.”
“If they didn’t make a move in adarktheatre in over two hours, I highly doubt they were going to do it when the lights came up and cameras were trained on me.”
Shep’s eyes widened. “How do you know that? Maybe they were looking for a bang.”
“They wouldn’t be the only ones,” I muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
As Shep cursed and lifted the cap to run a frustrated hand through his hair, I loosened my tie and started undoing the rest of my buttons.
“What are you doing?”
I paused and looked down to see my open shirt hanging on my shoulders. “I’m changing my shirt.”
Shep’s eyes narrowed. “To what?”
