He frowns. “Your parents are famous. Were famous,” he amends.
“ButI’mnot famous.” Another flash. “I didn’t grow up in the spotlight. My mom wanted to keep me away from all that stuff.”
“You two can go in,” the coordinator calls to us. “Thank you.”
We step off the carpet into a side entrance to the hotel lobby. My heart rate descends into a normal range.
“You’re shy,” he says, giving me a curious look.
There’s an unfamiliar, raw feeling in my chest. “Just because I don’t want my face splashed all over the media doesn’t mean I’m shy.”
“It’s part of this gig, being in the media.”
Shadowing him. Working for the team. “Yeah. I didn’t think of that. Not that it would have changed anything.”
A moment of silence passes between us.
“She was a model, right?” he asks. “Natalie?”
I nod. “Until she had me, and then she retired.”
My parents met at an event probably similar to this.
His eyes linger on my hair, my face, my eyes. “That makes sense.”
Being my mom was what she was meant to do, she always said. She looked at me the way Tate looks at his daughter. My chest aches, and I clear my throat. Clear all the unwelcome thoughts away.
He turns back to the event, surveying the attendees. “We could use a safeword.”
I give him a strange look. His mouth is twitching.
“Excuse me?”
The implication of using a safeword with Tate Ward is—yeah. We’re not even going there.
“In case the attention gets to be too much and you want out of there. I can help you, if you ask for it.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“It needs to be something you won’t say accidentally,” he muses, like he didn’t hear me. He still has that amused look in his eye. “How about... horned screamer?”
I choke on a laugh. “You want me to sayhorny screamerif I need help?”
“What? No.” He frowns, but there’s a deliciously interested, playful spark in his eyes, the same one I see when he drinks the gross coffees I bring him. “Hornedscreamer, I said.”
A beat. “Are you fucking with me?”
He looks like he wants to laugh, and I wish he would. He’s so handsome when he laughs. “It’s a type of bird. Bea did a schoolproject on it a couple weeks ago.” He gestures at his head. “It has a long thing on its head.”
“You have a really weird sense of humor.”
He chuckles, and my gaze catches on his broad smile. My fingers tighten on my clutch, thinking about how his stubble would feel beneath my fingertips.
He looks down at me, and his eyes are so deeply green, with a ring of amber around the irises. Dark, thick lashes and tiny crinkles around the corners. This tux he’s wearing, with his crisp white shirt and inky black jacket, is doing extraordinary things for his olive skin tone.
His scent washes over me and I take a step back. Tate Ward is just somuch.
“Yes?” he asks, with an expectant look.
