Page 124 of Under Arthur’s Protection

“Call me when you’re ready.” Merlin hung up, leaving me with Lance.

Lance started putting the files back into the cabinet, as though hiding our break-in mattered. He closed a drawer, opened the next, and replaced folders. Without turning around, he said, “I need to confess something.”

I leaned against the desk and ran my hands over my face. How many men would they have? There were two of us and not enough time to fly the guys in from the States. Even if we still had the little drone, it was for monitoring, not backup. I had to get her back. But how? “Go ahead.”

“I didn’t sleep with Gwen.”

Whatever I’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. I dragged my hands down my face. “What?”

“When we were together. We went on dates. Dinners, movies. I liked her.” He closed the drawer and moved to the next, keeping his back to me. “But I didn’t sleep with her.”

“Why not?”

“Because I thought she was special, and the no-strings discussion didn’t feel right.” He closed the last drawer and turned around. “Plus, I had a feeling someone had treated her badly, and I didn’t want to be the next guy who hurt her.”

I stared at him. Sleeping with women was one of Lance’s things. Mostly one-, two-, or three-night stands, but he never committed to them, and he never pretended he wanted more. At least, that’s how his stories had always gone. I’d stopped trying to track their names around the time we turned twenty-three.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I just grew a second head.” He crossed to the desk, flicked the monitor off, and put the sticky note with Hopkins’s password back in the drawer. “I’m capable of restraint.”

“Since when?”

“Since a woman I found interesting wanted to spend time hanging out with me.” He shrugged, like none of it made sense. “And it turned out I liked it, too.”

“Maybe you were losing your touch?”

“Hardly.” He gave me his signature lopsided grin and gestured to his body. “I mean, who doesn’t want all of this?”

I let out a small laugh and closed my eyes. The thing in my chest wasn’t going away. It kept growing and demanding my attention. I couldn’t defeat it, couldn’t redirect it, couldn’t run from it.

So stop running.

“I can’t explain it. When she’s around, there’s this—” I put my fist against my chest. “It won’t stop.”

Lance nodded slowly and let out a heavy sigh. “That’s love, you idiot.”

“Not likely. I’ve only known her for what? A week and a bit?”

“Your parents just celebrated their thirty-ninth anniversary.” He leaned on the desk next to me. “Do you honestly think time has anything to do with love?”

For thirty-nine years, my parents had performed for cameras, clients, and colleagues. Thirty-nine years of handshakes, dinner parties, and choreographed closeness. I’d spent my adult life using their marriage as an excuse to keep my guard up.

But Lance was right. If thirty-nine years didn’t mean love, what did it matter how long I’d known her?

“Let’s go get her,” Lance said, nudging my arm. “So you can figure that shit out with her, because I’ve exhausted my ability to provide relationship advice.”

I pushed off the desk. My knee protested. My ribs protested. Everything protested except the thing in my chest, which for the first time in a week wasn’t telling me to run. It was telling me to get my woman back. “I think I need to call my father.”

Chapter 38

Arthur

My father’s phone number sat on the screen under my thumb. When I’d needed Pendragon resources in Prague, I’d called their switchboard like any other company requesting help. The direct line was for Christmas mornings and the obligatory birthday call. In my whole life, I’d never once used it to ask him for anything. Calling this number for help meant asking Gerald Penn, not Pendragon Security.

Lance pulled out of the spot in front of Hopkins’s office. “Where am I going?”