She inclines her head. “And then I met you.”
Fuck, this is so not going the way I wanted it to. I mean, seriously, what woman in her right mind (who isn’t a gold digger) would stay? It’s not like I have anything but more headaches to offer her.
“Seriously, though. This whole story we’ve spent the last twenty-four hours concocting isn’t going to work if you go running off to Paris.”
“Well, then, it’s not going to work.” She shoves a frustrated hand through her hair and starts to pace the room. I feel bad about upsetting her, but everything inside me is screaming to keep her off that plane. Warning me that if she flies to Paris, the whole jig is up. “My flight leaves in a little over three hours, Garrett, and I am going to be on it.”
“Don’t you understand? No one will believe a woman in the first stages of a relationship goes running off to another city.”
“Maybe not in your rarified world where half of everyone’s job is learning how to manipulate the press and the public. But in the real world where I live, nearly everyone will believe it. People have relationships and manage to go to work all over the world.”
I think of the months of being chained up, of sleeping sitting up with my arms above my head while my body screamed from pain and exhaustion. “My world’s not that rarefied.”
“Dude, your world is as rarefied as it gets. And you’ve got three security guards sitting outside to make sure it stays that way.” Lola swings her suitcase off the bed with a roll of her eyes. “And I get it. I understand that you were raised to believe the sun rises and sets on you, and that every time you so much as breathe it’s national news. But really. You aren’t that special.”
Things are getting tense between us and I know I’ve got two choices. Continue down the road to a full-blown fight that will get me nothing or try to defuse the situation.
I settle for the latter as I raise my brows at her. “That’s not what you were saying an hour ago.”
Surprise flickers in her eyes, then is gone as quickly as it came. “An hour ago I was under duress,” she answers with a sniff.
I waggle my brows at her. “And here I thought you were under me.”
She snort-laughs, then slaps a hand over her mouth like she wants to pull the sound back in. But it’s so unexpected that I kind of love it. The same way I love that she talks in her sleep and has a star-shaped cluster of freckles on her left hip. The same way—
And fuck. Just fuck. I really am falling for this woman and, apparently, there’s not a damn thing I can do to keep her from walking away in three hours. It shouldn’t matter, but it does.
I just wish I knew how I got here. Lola was supposed to be a distraction, a fun means to the ends I’ve been working toward my entire life. She sure as hell wasn’t supposed to be something more for me to care about. Something more for me to lose.
What the hell am I supposed to do now?
The doorbell rings before I can figure it out, and seconds later my phone buzzes with a text. I pick it up and read the message from Samuel. Then say, “The shipping service is at the end of the driveway. Are you ready for them?”
“Yeah, send them up.” She grins, as if she doesn’t have a care in the world. Lucky her. “I can totally get used to this security thing. I love the idea of them stopping solicitors before they ever get to the door. I mean, sure, making them do it every time is probably an abuse of power, but—”
“It’s their job to do it every time. One man’s solicitor is another man’s terrorist.” The words—and my voice—are harsher than I mean them to be, but I can’t help it. Not when I’m talking about this stuff.
She shoots me an alarmed look. “That’s a strange way of looking at it.”
“Not really.”
“Why do I think there’s a story there?” She studies me with thoughtful eyes that see just a little too much. I turn away, making a show of reaching for my socks, before she sees everything I don’t want to say. Everything I can’t say.
Because there is a story there, but I’m not going to tell it to Lola—and not just because it’s classified.
It’s how they got me all those months ago. A guy and his kid selling popcorn for a local scout troop. When they’d tried to get my attention, my guys stopped them cold. I’m the one who told them to let the kid through. And I’m the one who ended up getting my whole detail murdered, guys who had been with me since I was a teenager. Men with families and children of their own. I made a mistake and they all ended up dead.
I can hear Lola in the living room, talking to Bastian as they wait for the delivery guy to make it up the driveway. They’re talking about places to eat in Paris—just a casual conversation, no big deal.
But it hits me hard, because it’s significantly more than I’ve allowed myself to have with my new detail. Not because I don’t like them, but because I do. They seem like decent enough guys. I can’t get close to them, though, can’t go through again what happened last time.
I learned my lesson when I was abducted. No way am I going to lower my guard or get so close to my detail that I end up best man at their weddings or godfather to one of their daughters. Not when one mistaken order from me can get them all killed in an instant.
Samuel recommends one of my favorite bistros, just off the Champs-Élysées, but before Lola can answer, the conversation gets cut off by the arrival of the shipping driver. I stay in the bedroom—experience has long taught me that everything is easier if I don’t show my face at unexpected times in unexpected places. As I wait, I try to come up with a solution that will keep Lola with me for just a little while longer, a solution that will let me figure out the confusing maelstrom of feelings whipping through me.
I understand that her business is important to her, understand that the whole reason she entered into this little charade with me is because it helps boost her business. But the more time I spend with her, the more I come to realize I’m in this thing for way more than another shot at the throne. I just wish she felt the same way, wish that I weren’t alone and sinking fast.
It takes about ten minutes for the guy to load up all the fancy wardrobe boxes of clothes, and I wait impatiently for him to finish. I’m determined to find a way to be with Lola long enough to figure out exactly what it is I feel for her—and if she feels anything for me.