Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
I’m thinking about how badly I want to touch you and how badly I want to be touched.
“About how I’m going to explain to my editor why I’m attending a presidential fundraiser as your date instead of covering it objectively.”
He gives me a stiff smile. “Tell them it’s method journalism. Deep cover. Really getting into the story.”
“Is that what this is?”
“I don’t know what this is.” His voice is quieter now, stripped of the flirtation. He leans in slightly, his gaze intense, pinning me in place until I feel like I can’t breathe. “Do you?”
The question hangs between us, heavy with everything we aren’t saying. I look at him—this man who makes me feel things I’ve spent fifteen years learning to suppress—and feel my carefully constructed walls tremble.
“No,” I admit. “I don’t.”
Something flickers across his face. Relief, maybe, or recognition. As if he’s just as lost as I am, just as terrified of whatever is building between us.
Because something is building between us, isn’t it?
Or is it just in my head?
God, please let it be in my head. It would be so much easier that way.
As if he hears my thoughts, he reaches over and takes my hand.
The contact sends electricity sparking up my arm—his palm warm and rough against mine, his fingers threading through my own with a gentleness that seems impossible for someone so powerful. He doesn’t say anything. He just holds my hand in the dark while the city twinkles and Danny pilots us toward whatever the evening brings.
This isn’t good, Mia, I tell myself. Let go of his hand. He shouldn’t be holding your hand for a whole bunch of reasons, and none of them are good.
Yet, I can’t pull it away.
I don’t want to.
When was the last time someone held my bloody hand?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art rises before us like a temple to wealth and power, its grand façade lit up against the night sky. Red carpet spills down the steps like blood, flanked by photographers and security and the kind of velvet ropes that separate the important from the invisible.
My stomach clenches as Danny brings the Meridian down, settling it gently at the curb. Through the tinted windows, I can see the gauntlet we’ll have to run—cameras flashing, reporters shouting, a hundred eyes waiting to catalog our every move.
“Ready?” Vanguard asks.
“Hell no,” I breathe, my pulse quickening. Bayo must be picking up on this and wondering what’s happening.
“Good. Neither am I.” He squeezes my hand once, then releases it. “Stay close, darlin’.”
Darlin’. If I wasn’t so nervous, I’d be swooning at his past-cowboy self coming through.
Danny opens the door, and Vanguard steps out first, unfolding from the car to his full height. The crowd noise swells—cheers, screams, his name being called from every direction. He turns back and offers me his hand, and I take it, letting him help me from the car with a grace I definitely don’t feel, keeping my knees together as much as possible so I don’t indecently expose myself.
The cold air hits my bare skin immediately—cold and sharp, raising goosebumps along my arms and back. It jolts me away just as the cameras explode, and suddenly, I can’t feel anything except the blinding assault of flash after flash after flash.
“Vanguard! Over here!”
“Who’s the woman?”
“Is this your girlfriend?”
“Is that the journalist?”
“Give us a smile!”
Vanguard’s hand finds the small of my back—warm palm against bare skin, strong fingers splayed possessively across my spine—and the contact anchors me. Heat radiates from his touch, chasing away the chill, making me hyperaware of every inch of his skin.
“Just keep walking,” he murmurs, his lips close to my ear. “Don’t look at them. Look at me.”
I look up beside me.
Those cornflower blue eyes, steady and calm, are fixed on my face like I’m the only person in the world, like the screaming crowd and the flashing cameras and the chaos around us simply doesn’t exist.
“There you go,” he says softly. “Just like that. Watch your step.”
We move up the red carpet together, his hand never leaving my back. I can feel the heat of him through my thin dress, can smell his cologne—cedar, sandalwood and something more masculine—every time I breathe. The silk whispers against my thighs with each step, and I’m acutely aware of the picture we must make. America’s golden boy and the girl in red.
If only they knew what I really am, that Mia Baxter doesn’t really exist, that this is all the grandest of lies.
Inside, the gala is a fever dream of wealth and power.
Crystal chandeliers drip from ceilings that soar three stories high, scattering light across marble floors and gilded columns. Waiters in white gloves circulate with champagne flutes and canapés arranged to resemble art pieces. A string quartet plays something classical in one corner, the music almost drowned out by the hum of conversation and laughter—the sound of the elite congratulating themselves on surviving the societal collapse they helped create.