Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 110360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Chris and Matt had stayed behind at the farm and Jenn had come back to stay with Lawrence. That particular miracle had required its own negotiation. Listening to Lofton on that phone call had landed Jenn at least two rungs below Brooke on my shit list.
On the drive to the airport, Lofton had been quiet. Not the easy quiet we’d settled into over the past few weeks. It was the quiet that meant her brain was running hard, and she didn’t want me to know what it was running on.
She was an accomplished actress, but I could read that woman like a book.
I’d sat beside her on the plane with my knee pressed against hers, giving her space without letting go of it entirely. When we’d landed and the reality of being back in Los Angeles had hit her, she’d reached for my hand without looking at me.
I’d given it without hesitation.
I didn’t give a fuck who saw it or what bullshit Leo was going to give me. Lofton was facing her fears, and as far as I was concerned, that entitled her to whatever she needed from me. Professional optics be damned. She could have held my hand straight through the soundstage doors, and I wouldn’t have moved a muscle to stop her.
When we’d pulled up, she’d loosened her grip, squared her shoulders, drawn one long, measured breath, and walked in like she owned the place.
Because she did. This was her world. The one she’d built from nothing before I’d ever entered the picture. Watching her step back into it—nerves buried deep but not gone—had done things to my chest that my chest did not need any help with.
When it came to Lofton, I was no longer falling.
I was already on the ground floor. Probably in desperate need of a lifeline, but loving every second of loving her.
Especially her.
Even the half in cherry-red face paint wearing an upside-down chandelier.
“Are they going to come over?” she asked, rising from the makeup chair.
“That’s what they said. Lark asked me to once again warn you that Mira is very excited to meet you.”
“I’m not worried about that.” She turned to check the headpiece from another angle. “Are you sure Rhion and Jude are okay staying at a hotel?”
“Hundred percent. It was Rhion’s idea.”
“But it’s her house,” she repeated for at least the tenth time that day, before puckering her lips for the makeup artist to add fifty-percent of her lipstick.
“Babe.”
“I know, I know.”
On the flight over, when I’d walked her through the security roster, she’d looked at me like I’d drop-kicked a puppy. Horrified at the idea of asking the men of Guardian to upend their lives because she needed reshoots.
I hadn’t cared even a little.
Neither had they.
They’d all brought their wives or girlfriends on what amounted to a paid vacation. I’d bet good money Johnson had even packed a Hawaiian shirt. They’d clock a few hours of recon and then disappear to the beach until I needed them again.
Lofton had only found minor relief in learning she was the one funding this company retreat.
She walked over to me, somehow looking gorgeous and completely unhinged at the same time.
My arms ached to hold her, but I powered through, keeping them at my sides. “The house is safer for you. Rhion built that place to be secure. She gets it. She has Jude and not a stalker in sight, so yeah. She’s more than fine with you taking the house.”
She batted her lashes—one set longer than the other for obvious futuristic dystopian thriller reasons. “But they’re still coming to dinner tonight, right?”
Unable to stop myself and praying to God that Madison didn’t have Leo on speed dial, I swung my arm forward and hooked my pinky with hers. “Jude, Rhion, Lark, Mira, Alex, Briana, Johnson, Leo, and Sarah. All of them. Yes.”
“Apollo?”
I gave her pinky a squeeze. “He doesn’t count.”
A giggle bubbled out of her, and she swayed into my side. I shifted my weight, angling toward her right side because I genuinely could not bring myself to cuddle up to the red half.
“I’m excited to meet your people,” she whispered.
I caught Madison watching us in the mirror with a grin wide enough to suggest she’d been more than entertained for the last several hours.
I caught Lofton’s eye and pointedly flicked my gaze toward Madison, lifting a brow.
Lofton’s mouth curved, and she spoke at a volume that was anything but subtle. “You could bend me over this table right now and Madison would never say a word.”
Madison set down her brush, pressed both palms flat on the counter, and let out a long breath. “Oh thank God. The sexual tension in this room is thick enough to qualify as a biohazard.”
That was all I needed.
I slid my hand around Lofton’s waist and pulled her in for a kiss that had been building since she rolled out of my bed that morning.