It was a life she could get used to. It was the life she wanted. With him.
But it only lasted until the last day of the year.
Neither of them had left the penthouse much and, now that they were away from Madrid and LVG, Siobhan had begun to believe Lorenzo no longer posed a threat. It was the sort of complacency she should have known better than to fall into, but she did.
She booked herself into a spa for the day, one where she knew the massage would put her to sleep. She needed a nap if she was going to stay awake until midnight tonight.
Toward the end of her pampering, when her makeup was done and the stylist was finishing her hair for the party, the woman in the chair next to her looked up from her phone.
“Are you Dorry Whitley?”
The bottom fell out of her stomach. Siobhan reached for her phone while playing it off with a confused, “Why do you ask?”
“This is you, isn’t it?” The woman angled her screen to show Siobhan her own face.
Her phone rang in her hand. It was Joaquin.
“Are you safe?” he asked tightly.
“I think so.” Ripples were traveling through the salon. She was getting surreptitious looks. “Qahira is here.” As a precaution, Joaquin had hired her a bodyguard, one who had so far had precious little to do since she left the house so rarely. “What happened?”
“My father must have discovered your identity. The gossip sites are showing photos of us in Madrid with headlines about Dorry Whitley surfacing after being missing for years.”
As though she was some sort of criminal who’d gone into hiding and had suddenly been spotted? Yuck. But it didn’t surprise her. It was exactly the type of made-up scandal the press had pinned on the Sauveterres for years.
“I’ll call Cin and warn her.”
“Stay there. I’m coming to get you.”
“No, I’m almost done. I’ll leave in a moment.” She glanced at the woman doing her hair. The woman nodded.
In the few minutes it took for her to put on her coat, someone from inside the spa had sold the tip. A number of photographers were gathered outside the spa in the courtyard entrance of potted trees that surrounded a reflecting pool.
Siobhan’s driver pulled the SUV up as closely as he could, but there was no straight path to it. She had to walk around the water into one of the lines of photographers.
As she stepped outside with Qahira, the piranhas closed in, snapping their cameras. That caught the attention of several passersby who halted to record her with their phones. Someone shoved a microphone toward her face and asked a question in Spanish.
Qahira blocked him and shouted for everyone to “Move back!”
Siobhan saw an opening and tried to dart through, but was yanked to a stop when someone grabbed her arm.
She reacted on instinct, surprising her attacker by flowing into the force of his tug on her arm. She continued into a pivot, pulling the photographer off balance. As she did that, she ducked low and threw her hip into his groin. She heard his breath leave him as she reached behind her shoulder, grabbed behind his neck, got her back into his stomach and used his own momentum and the strength in her thighs to lift him off his feet.
She flipped him into the pool of water. His camera clattered to the bricks and the splatter of drops hitting the pavement was overloud. Everyone froze in shock.
“That’s what you get when you touch someone without their permission,” Siobhan said. “Who’s next?” She took a threatening stomp toward the nearest person holding a cell phone.
Everyone stumbled backward.
“Señora.” Qahira opened her long arms, forming a barrier while the driver opened the back door of the SUV.
Siobhan dove in.
Joaquin was livid when he saw the footage.Livid.
Siobhan’s altercation with the photographer was posting on all the social media channels and entertainment sites, all from different angles, all showing her defending herself from the attack.
She called him from the car to reassure him she was safe. Then Killian called him as Joaquin was watching it. Then Henri called him. Siobhan’s phone was pinging like popcorn as he met her in the lobby of his building.
