Page 14 of Howl Lotta Love

He’d known going public would put a target on Emma the same motion it put up a shield. He’d run the math in that conference room and let it happen anyway, because the alternative was worse and he trusted his own tactics over almost anyone alive.

He hadn’t accounted for what it would cost to watch the number confirm itself in real time—to know that somewhere in this city, someone who’d tried once to have Emma killed was reading her name next to his and recalculating exactly how much closer that put the stranger to finding her.

“Pull every account that engages with it,” Jace said, already moving toward the monitors. “Shares, mentions, likes. I want a map of who’s watching before the night’s out.”

“On it.” Tucker’s fingers were already flying. “For what it’s worth, boss—the cover’s good. Only going to be a very public kind of good.”

“Then we make the public part earn its keep.” He pulled the building’s rotation schedule up on the second screen, already reworking assignments in his head, already sorting through which of his people he trusted enough to put closest to her. “Double coverage outside her new floor. I want eyes on that building around the clock, and I want to know before Kane does if anyone so much as points a camera at her from the street.”

Roman nodded once and reached for his radio, the joking dropped out of him at once. Some things earned his full attention faster than others. Emma Burke’s safety, apparently, outranked all of them.

Jace didn’t answer beyond that. He was thinking about sightlines, about which safe house had better cover, about the unfamiliar fury sitting low in his chest at the idea of anyone reading Emma Burke’s name like she belonged to a headline instead of to herself.

Down the hall, faint through the walls, he could hear Roman explaining the rooftop venue’s sightlines to Milo, who was arguing for the ballroom on the grounds that it photographed better. Neither of them had asked Jace’s opinion. Neither of them were going to.

Mine.

Unbothered by the timing. Entirely unhelpful. His wolf had never once cared about either.

He didn’t argue with it this time.

FIVE

JACE

Ten days into the fake engagement, and the galas had started running together into one long, over-glamorous evening of donor lists and rented smiles. Jace kept his hand at the small of Emma’s back the whole walk out of the ballroom, and told himself, same as every other time tonight, that it was strictly for the cameras.

It was not strictly for the cameras.

“Two more names for the list.” Emma kept her voice low, chin tipped up, playing at admiring the chandeliers instead of counting exits—she’d started doing that on her own now, without him teaching her, and he tried not to read too much into how fast she’d picked it up, or how much it pleased him that she had. “The couple by the bar funneled money through the same shell as the elder-care trust. I’d bet my license on it.”

“Duly noted.” He steered her toward the parking structure, smile fixed for the two donors still watching from the coat check. Three hours of playing devoted fiancé and his jaw ached—not from the performance. From wanting it to stop being one. “Good work in there.”

“I always do good work. You’re only noticing because you’re contractually obligated to stand this close to me.”

“I noticed before the contract.”

That got her. She missed a step, recovered fast, and he tucked the reaction away with satisfaction.

“So,” she said, once the ballroom was well behind them, “the woman in emerald asked how we met. I told her you tripped over your own feet trying to get my number.”

“I didn’t trip.”

“You barreled out of an office, made a beeline for the men’s room, and steamrolled me on the way. I was there.”

“Different story than the one you told the donor five minutes ago.”

“The real story doesn’t play as well at a gala. Mine has better pacing.” She adjusted her bag strap, and he caught the wince she tried to hide when it pulled at her shoulder—three hours in heels she’d complained about since the valet line, not that she’d once slowed down for it. “Also, yours makes you sound competent, and I’m not currently in the business of inflating your ego. You’ve had a good week already.”

The garage swallowed the gala noise the second the door shut behind them—concrete, sodium light, the dead hush of a place built for cars instead of people. Jace’s pace didn’t change. Everything under his skin did.

Two cars he didn’t recognize, parked wrong for valet. Engines cold—they’d been sitting a while. A man near the exit ramp checking his watch three times in the span it took Jace to blink twice.

Every hair on his arms stood up at once.

Not tonight. Not with her.

“Keys are in my bag,” Emma said, reaching for it.