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Lachlan smiled.

“Aye. Once we’re up here, you can move around. The bedroom’s perfectly safe.”

“This aircraft is designed for people to eat, work, sleep, shower, and occasionally spend sixteen hours avoiding one another,” Nik explained.

Lucian snorted.

“That last part is why he bought it.”

Nik gave him a bored look.

Lachlan unfastened his seat belt, stood, then reached over and released mine.

Before I could ask what he was doing, one arm slid behind my back and the other beneath my knees.

“Lachlan.”

He lifted me effortlessly from the seat.

“I can walk.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you carrying me?”

“Because I want to.”

I slid my arms around his neck and tried to relax against him as he carried me down the aisle. My body still trembled from the adrenaline crash, but pressed against his chest, the shaking began to ease.

With his arms around me and El Salvador already behind us, I couldn’t help thinking about everything that had happened since Lachlan was dragged into the dungeon beneath my room.

He had utterly changed my life.

I hated everything he had suffered before we reached this moment. Marcela had tricked him, drugged him, handed him to Ciro, and left him cuffed to a chair to be tortured.

He could have died there. Or worse. He could have survived only to end up trapped in whatever future Marcela had planned for him.

Instead, I’d helped give him his freedom back, and somewhere along the way he had helped me take mine.

I had no idea what Manhattan would do to us once ordinary life began.

But even if everything changed, I would never regret the part I had played in getting Lachlan Byrnes home.

Freedom was worth fighting for, and I knew that better than most.

Chapter thirty-one

Lachlan opened the door to a compact but surprisingly luxurious bedroom with a wide bed, a small sitting area, and its own private bathroom. The window shades were down, leaving the room dim except for the warm glow of a lamp beside the bed.

Lachlan carried me inside and set me on the corner of the mattress.

Instead of standing, he lowered himself onto one knee between my legs and took my face gently in both hands.

“Look at me, Isabella.”

Something in the roughness of his voice made me obey.

His green eyes held mine, and hearing my name wrapped in that deep Irish accent made everything else recede.