The tires roll over a bumpy part in the road. She holds onto me tighter so she doesn’t fall. I grip her harder to me, making sure she’s safe.
I don’t want to push too hard.
I don’t want to scare her away.
But if she’s afraid that she doesn’t want to be separated…
“Yeah. I’m paying you a lot, but that was our arrangement. We have five minutes before we get to the airport. Tell me what’s on your mind.”
“I’m enjoying this,” she says with a smile. “That’s all.”
“Enjoying… what, exactly?”
“Being with you.” She shrugs. “The way you get all protective and stuff. The way you… I don’t know. Just being acouple.I’ve never been a couple with anyone before and I like it, okay?”
“Fair enough. I like being a couple, too,” I tell her. I lean in and whisper in her ear, “We could take the scenic route to the airport. One push of a button…”
“Means we don’t get back in time for Cosette,” she says on a sigh.
“We’ll stick to the plan. But listen, we need to make sure that we don’t lose sight of what we need to focus on here.”
“Which is?”
“You and me, alone, while you earn your fee when we get back to my room tonight.”
“Yes,sir.So what were you on the phone about?”
I arrange my hands around her back so she faces me, and interlock my fingers. “I was arranging for certain items to be delivered to our room upon arrival.”
A wicked glint lights her eye. “Is that so?”
“It is.”
I kiss her cheek. “But there was more. It seems the man who attacked you had friends and enemies. They’re asking questions. I’ve had to call in some favors.”
“That’s a lot of favors you’ve had to call in,” she notes.
“Yeah, and believe me, that’s never a good thing.” They’ll come back to haunt me, and when I least suspect it. Favors added up are like ghosts hiding in the shadows, waiting to haunt me.
Have I asked her for a favor? My whole life, I’ve wondered what was real, what was authentic. I’ve enjoyed trying on different disguises and playing parts. They were only games, things to keep myself interested with the decided benefit of becoming useful when I had a job to do like I do now.
I’ve paid her for the weekend. I’ve paid her to be mine. I tell myself that I’m only obsessed with her, that I can’t buy love. I’ve stolen and pretended for so long, I wonder what’s real. What’s authentic. What will stay when all else has faded? Whatmatters?
We’re so close to the airport, we’re there in record time. I watch my men take our luggage. I hold Nicolette’s hand and we walk toward the tarmac.
“Can I ask you who was on the phone?”
Maybe the first step to authenticity’s not hiding anything anymore? Maybe the first step is… telling the truth? No matter what the consequences may be?
I’ve been preoccupied knowing I had to find Lyam, that I had to find who was responsible here.
“You know I have men stationed at La Maison.”
She nods. My men put our luggage away and Louis opens the door for us.
“There are rumors?—”
The suddenbangof a gunshot interrupts us. On instinct, I push her to the ground as I draw my weapon, but my men are already on it. Footsteps pound on the tarmac, shouts erupt all around us. “Stay down,” I tell Nicolette.
