He broad body settled back in his seat, his hand peeling from the gear stick and scrubbing over his face like he knew, much as it hurt him to admit, that I had a right to know.
But when he kept that wicked mouth shut, I cleared my throat and folded my arms. “Go on. I’m just dying to know how you tracked me down when we both know I got rid of whatever shady software you riddled my phone with.” When all he did was pin me with a glare, his lips thinning out across his stubbled mouth, I answered for him. “You put a chip in my phone, didn’t you?”
He didn’t so much as flinch. He didn’t blink. Didn’t react at all. Nothing that let me know what he was thinking. What was going on behind those onyx eyes.
Anger surged forward in my chest, burning me from the inside out. I shook my head at him, disbelief fueling the breath that left me. “I knew it.” Before I could think, I reached for the door handle. “Goodbye—”
His palm, that felt like cold steel, wrapped around my wrist, firm enough to ground me and force my eyes back onto him. He looked like what the anger in my chest felt like, but somehow, annoyingly, he made it a look I would have spent hours painting it had I wanted to paint.
He released a breath before his mouth parted. “Look, I get it. You hate that I’m here. You hate me. But you need to come to terms with the fact that this is happening. I’m here, under an order to protect you. And before you deny that you need protecting again, you do. You know you do. And like it or not that’s my job now, Miss Holland. So you better—”
“Cora,” I interrupted.
His face remained paused, but his eyes still searched mine. “What?”
I swallowed, tucking a curl behind my ear and shuffling as though that would convince him I wasn’t getting sad. “I want you to call me Cora. Not Miss Holland.”
His features softened with confusion. “Romano doesn’t address their clients by their first names—”
“Oh, we’re back to rulebooks?” I muttered.
His brow twitched, like he was biting back annoyance. “It’s not a rule. It’s protocol.”
“I know.” I caught the inside of my lip between my teeth. “Because that’s what he called me. And I’d rather not think of him every time you said my name.”
He blinked—once, sharp—like the pieces clicked into place faster than he wanted them to. Something loosened in his expression. It looked like a silent apology, the sort a man gives when he realises he should’ve known better.
His jaw worked. “Right. Yeah. That… makes sense.”
“For someone who’s supposed to be observant, you missed that one,” I said softly.
A corner of his mouth twitched. “I’m aware.”
For the first time since meeting Marcus, I think this was the most intimate we’d been. Sure, he was standing over me the night of the event, staring at me like a damaged statue in need of repair, but right now he had this look in his eye that looked like he was really looking. And maybe because it was the first time I was being real with him.
That was when reality hit me like a steam train.
I could still be around Jamie. I could have not run that night he groped me. I could have stayed silent and let him silently torture me because I was too afraid to take hold of my life. But I did run. I ran so far away that now I was here, with someone who, despite his overbearing qualities, wanted to keep me safe.
I let a sigh leave my lips, my eyes dipping to my lap before shyly meeting his. “I’m sorry. Okay? I get what you’re doing and I… appreciate it. Really. But like you said, this isn’t going towork if we’re not honest with each other, and finding out you’d chipped my phone, that you were tracking me without me knowing, I panicked and got angry and—”
“Told one of my guys that they had a receding hairline?”
My eyes rolled away from him. “Oh my god, are you keeping a list?”
“Of your insults? I’d need a separate file.”
I shouldn’t want to smile this bad. But I did. I let it free and to my utter surprise, it turned out Marcus was capable of smiling too. If I took a moment and thought about the fact we’re both smiling, both doing anything other than annoying each other, then I was scared I’d stop smiling.
Scared he would too.
And that would be a travesty, because his smile was just as devastatingly handsome as the rest of him.
“Okay, in hindsight, that was rude.” A low chuckle slipped from my mouth. “But I was angry and I’ll apologise. I promise.”
His head fell back against the headrest, his eyes still on me. “You had every right to be annoyed about the tracking thing. And you’re right… I should have told you. But I thought that keeping it from you would make you feel like you still had some freedom, and I could keep tabs on you without being around you constantly.”
I lifted a brow. “Marcus Romano can smileandbe considerate of other people’s feelings?”
