"I have fancy clients with helicopters."
I watched Fritz reach my caravan door. He tried the handle. It was locked, I wasn't an idiot. I had a special way with the handle that nobody else knew. And of course, thenewspaper wedged at the bottom helped. He frowned at it, said something to Etienne over his shoulder.
Etienne stepped forward, gripped the handle, and pulled.
The door didn't open so much as partially detach. The hinges screamed as the plywood splintered where the lock met the frame.
"Oh, that's lovely," I muttered. "Just brilliant. All you had to do was lift the bloody handle in the opposite direction."
Hastings stood back, arms crossed, watching his packmates break into my home with the casual patience of a man who was used to getting what he wanted. Then he turned and glanced toward the café and toward the window where I stood watching.
Our eyes met.
Even through dirty glass and fifty meters of distance, there was that pull again. That awful, inconvenient pull I'd felt in his office, the one that had made me want to lean closer instead of run.
I untied my apron.
"Dave," I said, "I need ten minutes."
"Take twenty." He was still staring at the helicopter. "Is that a government thing?"
I was already out the door before I could answer.
8
Presley
The cold hit meimmediately. The jumpers helped but couldn't fully block the wind cutting across the open field. I walked fast, then faster, icy grass crunching under my boots. By the time I got to my caravan, all three alphas had turned to face me.
They looked absurd here. Like magazine cutouts pasted onto a gray, muddy background. Fritz in his smart coat and with those cheekbones that were sharp enough to cut glass. Etienne with those hazel eyes that tracked my approach with unsettling intensity. Hastings in his perfect suit, not a hair out of place despite the helicopter wind.
I glanced at my caravan door, hanging at a drunken angle, and the lock ripped clean through the aluminium.
"Hello." I stopped a few feet away, crossing my arms. "Mister... Fritz. Etienne. Hastings." I nodded toward the damage. "Someone owes me a new door."
Hastings barely glanced at it. "We'll get you a new caravan at the end of the nine months."
My heart did a flip. "I got the job?"
"How did you get travel back here?" Etienne asked.
"Train."
Hastings narrowed his eyes. "I thought you had no money."
"I didn't pay."
"You—" Hastings looked suitable shocked.
"You have the job," Fritz interrupted, his eyes traveling over me, assessing the three jumpers and the wind-chapped cheeks and the fact that despite how much I was wearing, I was visibly shivering. His jaw tightened. "But you're coming to London. Now."
"Now?" I blinked at him. "I can't come now. I have a shift at the café."
"I'm offering you a fortune, Presley." Hastings' voice was flat, that controlled CEO tone I'd heard in his office. "What would you prefer? Serving bacon sandwiches or financial security for the rest of your life?"
Putting it like that, it sounded simple. It wasn't simple. Nothing was ever simple.
"Financial security. I just thought..." I trailed off, grasping for an explanation that made sense. "I'd get a kitten. Maybe paint my bean tins."
