“Earth, please swallow me,” I muttered under my breath as heat crept up my neck. I bent to retrieve it, acutely aware of both pairs of eyes tracking the movement as I hooked it on to one finger and reached into my purse with my free hand. The men stiffened instantly, bodies going taut and hands hovering just a second too close to what I realized were their weapons.
Jesus, do Albanians walk around carrying weapons?I hadn’t seen any armed men so far on my trip.
When my hand reappeared holding nothing more than a crumpled twenty-euro note, their tension eased.
I held out the money, juggling my purse as it slid off my shoulderand the sandal threatened to slip from my finger. Everything felt off-balance—me included.
Gosh. I was an absolute mess.
“No, thank you.” The man pushed my offering away.
“Please, consider it hazard pay,” I insisted, drawing a sardonic breath from the stranger.
“Thank you, but you keep it.”
“Oh no, I insist,” I grumbled, because apparently humiliation was my personal brand now. “Buy yourself something nice for rescuing an emotionally unstable woman in the Albanian Alps.”
That earned me a faint smile before he turned away, his bodyguard falling into step behind him like a well-trained shadow. And all the while, I stood there, clutching a useless twenty with my heart still racing and my eyes firmly locked on the man’s backside.
“Whatever.” I peeled my eyes away from his ass. “Your loss, buddy.”
I climbed into the SUV, tossed my bag and sandals into the passenger seat, then locked the doors, scanning every inch of the cab like my life depended on it. Because if a snake could get into this car, it definitely would.
Once I was sure there were no reptiles, assassins, or ghosts from bridges past lurking inside, I let out a slow breath and put the car into drive, hauling ass out of there and headed for Vlorë, a beach town on the other side of the country.
I hoped to never see that man or his bodyguard again.
Chapter 5
Kian
“For fuck’s sake, she lost the shoe again,” Amir grumbled. “Should have glued it to her feet or her finger… whatever.”
He despised chaos, and Dr. Baldwin seemed to embody it perfectly—brilliant, capable, and yet perpetually chaotic, leaving disorder in her wake as if it were an unavoidable side effect of her presence.
It was how River had described her. And then there were his entertaining texts that were slowly but surely getting annoying. I recalled a few, shaking my head.
River: This woman is trouble on two legs. She ran into a centuries-old statue with her ice cream while staring at the buildings. An old woman started to scream about vandalism and cops were called. She’s lucky the Croatian police officer found her, and her red hair, cute and decided to give her a free pass.
River: She’s eating ice cream again. Someone really has to tell that woman there’s such a thing as too much ice cream.
River: She’s stopped at an ice cream shop again. The woman eats it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I guess we should be thankful she isn’t lactose intolerant.
The man tailed her through Croatia before deciding he’d had enough, handing her over to Astor, who was something of a chaos demon himself. His reports were less theatrical… in the beginning.
Astor: 8:46 a.m. coffee on the balcony.
Astor: 9:44 a.m. Subject has left the villa, en route to the village.
Astor: Subject never made it to the village. Got sidetracked by local goats.
Astor: Subject got lost on her way back to the hotel.
Astor: Subject stopped for ice cream and lost her car keys.
Astor: Fuck. God help me with this woman.
Needless to say, even he ended up feeling nauseated by Sophie’s patterns—or lack thereof—and was more than happy when she crossed the border into Albania.
