Frowning, Cash settled back into position.With his golden-boy good looks, he wasn’t used to people being unimpressed—if not by his looks, then by his name.But Ashley didn’t know who he was.And she might not be impressed even if she did.
“Cash, what are you doing here?”Audrey asked, shaking her head.She still couldn’t quite believe that he was here at all.
He cleared his throat.Rolled his shoulders back, lifting his chin and sticking his hand in his pocket.
“Audrey Bowers,” he said, suddenly very formal.He dropped to one knee as she stared at him, too frozen in shock to react.
“What the fuck?”Ashley’s voice was a shrill counterpoint to Cash’s as he ignored her and kept going.
“I can’t live without you anymore.”He pulled the box out of his pocket.
Audrey’s heart hammered against her chest.Her palms were sweating, her brain screaming at her to do something, say something, tostophim from saying another word, yet she couldn’t move.So much adrenaline was pumping through her, she was about to explode, but her jaw and every one of her muscles felt locked in place.
Cash flipped the little velvet box open, revealing a gorgeous sparkling diamond ring.Princess cut.Big.At least two carats, if not three.Her brain catalogued all the things she’d been trained to look for, like a computer’s background operating system while the screen remained frozen.
“I don’t want to go another day apart from you.Will you marry me?”
Audrey kept staring at him.
He cleared his throat again, lifting the ring toward her, as if maybe she had somehow missed seeing the massive stone or something.
“Uh, Audrey?I just asked you to marry me.You’re supposed to say yes.”He was looking at her so expectantly, so confidently, she almost said it.Because that was what she was supposed to do.That’s what he expected her to do.
It felt like her chest was going to explode.She couldn’t breathe.She was sweating.The whole world felt like it was closing in on her.
She couldn’t say yes.
Don’t cause a scene, Audrey.
Her mother’s sharp tones echoed in her head.
But she couldn’t say yes.
She just couldn’t say no either.
Then the world exploded around her as glass shattered, the alarm blared, and a shrill scream cut through the air.
Mason
It took him less than thirty seconds to make it down the block, yet that was thirty seconds too long, the entirety of both Black Fox Security teams hot on his heels.
He knew they were there, but he couldn’t think about anything except getting to Audrey.
Barreling through the door, he came up short, taking in the scene in front of him.Cold air blew in through the front window, which had a massive hole in it, explaining the alarm.Glass shards decorated the tables, chairs, and floor beside the window.
Several feet away, a blond man was holding Audrey in his arms—no, wait, she was trying to push herself out of his arms.Mason strode forward, grabbing the asshole’s hand and twisting, making him howl and fall to his knees.He let go of Audrey, which was the point.
“Who is this?”he asked, but his question was lost in the cacophony as the two teams poured in behind him, exclaiming over the mess.Out of the corner of his eye, Mason saw Zeus stride over to between two of the tables and look down at something on the floor before straightening up and raising one arm to draw attention.
Thankfully, the alarm stopped going off—both on his phone and inside the bakery—then Ashley came rushing out from the back, followed by a wide-eyed Alexis.Her eyes widened even more when she saw the group in the main room, and she hung back at the doorframe, while Ashley rushed straight to Lincoln and threw herself in his arms.
“Quiet!”Grant roared, in the way that only he could, his voice cutting through all the noise.
“What the fuck is going on?”David demanded to know as soon as everyone shut up.“Who the fuck is this, what the hell happened to the window, and why the fuck does Mason have the alarm hooked up tohisphone?”
“I think this brick is why the alarm went off,” Zeus said, the hand that had been raised now pointing down at the ground.“If I had to take a wild guess.”
“Someone threw it through the window, right after the Ken Doll proposed to Audrey,” Ashley said, stepping back from Lincoln’s embrace, though still clinging to him.She was as pale as a sheet.
