Declan slides an arm around me and whispers, “Limp.”
I’m so shocked at his words that I do without questioning it. He sweeps up my bag as we exit the room and then the building. The door to the sleek black car opens and I half expect the blonde to besitting there.
“Where’s your watch woman?”
“Harry? She’s with my brother, Torin, I imagine.” He sits back, taps his leg as we take off, away from the dance center, and head downtown. It’s not until I recognize the street we turn on that my heart beats fast and furious.
I clasp my hands tight. “We’re not staying at the hotel?”
“No.” Darkness turns his gaze into a midnight sea. “And you’re not dancing, either.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t want to—and someone sent you a dead bird, and now this.” He hands me another package. My heart thrashes. Same silver paper. And the box is open.
A single silver feather hangs on a delicate silver chain. It’s pretty, and if no one had sent me a dead creature, I’d find it lovely.
Now?
It creeps me the fuck out. I shove it back at him. “Is that why I’m suddenly injured?”
“You limped on your left leg, remember that. And no,” he says. “You’re suddenly injured because you don’t want to dance anymore. At least, right now you don’t. So…problem solved.”
“Plus, you can keep an eye on me as easily.”
“Plus that.”
The car pulls to the curb and I look up at the familiar building that I’ve only been in a few times before Mom put a stop to me living there. “Why are we here?” I can’t control the trembling, or the stupid runaway thought that he did this just for me even though I’m sure it works for him in some way.
“My people spent the day putting the luggage in there and they set up some things. We need a home base for the protection detail, one that makes you look accessible but also protected. It’ll draw out only the most rabid of fans.”
He pauses, his expression darkening. “Also because someone sent that necklace to the hotel we stayed in last night. And no one should have known where we were.”
“Who?”
“That hotel doesn’t have regular surveillance, but Torin set something up for us. A girl, looking scared, left it. I imagine she was paid. Skinny, twitchy. The type who won’t remember who hired her. She’ll remember the money and her high, but that’s about it. Useless to us.”
I stare at him, heart thudding. “How do you know that?”
“My brother Seamus questioned her.” He motions for me to open the door.
I don’t. “How did you get the key from my mother?”
“I have my ways. It’ll get her answers if I can have you contained and safe and able to look into things.”
There’s something about how he mentioned Mom that sends a shiver through me. Does he trust her? She’s a viper, but she knows how to make the business flourish. She was a business genius who came up from nothing. As a kid, I snooped around and found some old shit they have hidden in our Southampton house. It confirmed that Daddy is the money, the one with the controlling holdings. Which is why she’d never do anything to him. If he dies, it all comes to me. So she’s got good reason to want him alive.
She cares about reputation, so I’m her golden tiara. Rich, well-bred, and educated in all the right and proper ways, involved in the performing arts, even if she had to buy my position.
“So…she handed the keys over?”
“She sure did.”
I want to ask about the bird, if he buried it or just tossed it. I hope it got a nice send off. And then I try to stop thinking about it as I follow him inside and up to theapartment.
He unlocks the door. Stops me before I walk inside.
“Molly,” Declan says somberly, “this is no way for you to treat tradition. You’re my fake bride, this is our fake home. We need to do it right.”
