Chapter Sixty-Six
Miranda
I hadn’t been that hurt.
Just… terrified.
I mean, it was every woman’s worst nightmare to be grabbed and pulled down an alley. Your mind couldn’t help but run through all the horrific things that could possibly happen to you when someone with bad intentions got you alone.
I’d never felt bone-deep terror like I did in that moment or two.
Sure, waking up in a hospital, confused, then being forced into a psych hold had been its own horror show, but at least I knew I was safe in that scenario.
Being grabbed and slammed against a wall was a whole other thing entirely.
I swear my mind raced through fifty different scenarios so fast I felt like I was spinning.
It overwhelmed me so entirely that I didn’t even think to scream.
Not that a scream would necessarily mean anyone would come to my aid.
People were routinely attacked on crowded subways and no one did anything about it.
Humans, it turned out, were pretty much selfish and heartless that way.
But just as soon as it started, it was over, and I was running out of the alley with blood trickling down my face.
The security at my work had been quick to ask questions, to rush outside to see if anyone was lurking about.
But I was in a rush to get upstairs, to get to my office so I felt safe again.
And who did I call?
Not the police.
Brock.
In my most terrified moment, he was who I wanted to reach out to. He was who I wanted at my side.
Sure, I could lie and tell myself that it was because he was my investigator, he was being paid to figure out who was doing this to me. Or that I was comforted by his ex-military training.
Those were even factors.
But that wasn’t the real reason.
I just… wanted him there.
I didn’t understand it logically. I mean, objectively, I barely knew the man.
But I was finding that I just… liked the way he handled me.
I appreciated his personal brand of sweet kindness and care that never went overboard.
He gave concern and comfort, then went ahead and moved things along, not harping.
It just… worked for me.
When he’d come rushing in and dropped down in front of me, reaching for my hands, giving me the soft eyes and the sweet voice, oh, man. If I believed it was possible to fall for someone you barely knew, I’d have fallen right that moment.
Then when he’d grabbed me and pulled me to his chest?
Good Lord.
The man… he was the dream, wasn’t he?
The guy we all secretly wanted, but didn’t quite believe actually existed.
Then he went ahead and cleaned me up.
I’d never had a man clean a wound for me before. The idea was so foreign it had seemed borderline laughable.
It was all just too much.
I was kind of glad he decided to go and look around, do some investigating. Because things were complicated enough.
I needed some space to put my mind and feelings back into place.
By the time the end of day rolled around, Brock was back and waiting for me, giving me a head shake as if to say he had nothing when he likely saw some hope on my face as I walked toward him.
“It was a bit of a blind spot,” he told me as we got in the elevator to ride down. “I could see the back of someone in a black puffer jacket, but their hood was up, so I really didn’t get much. Six foot, maybe. Somewhere between thin and average. That’s… it, unfortunately.”
“You’ll figure it out,” I said, some part of me picking up on defeat and disappointment in his voice, and not liking hearing it there. “It’s just going to take some time.”
“The super is probably a dead end,” he told me as we walked through the lobby. “He does have your card, but it’s all dusty and shit. I still have to find where the camera feed is, so I can access it, but it wasn’t in his office.”
“Okay. It makes sense. You can totally be a creep without being an attempted murderer.”
“And to put your mind at ease, I went through your place with a fine-tooth comb, making sure no one had planted a hidden camera anywhere.”
“I hadn’t even thought of that,” I said, chewing my lower lip at the idea of that sort of invasion.
“Now you don’t have to,” he assured me as he opened my car door.
That night and the following few days were pretty much the same. Brock brought me to work, then got lost working on the endless employee records and snooping around my building, trying to locate the room where the security cameras were.
Apparently, his best—and last, at this point—guess was the basement. Which was hard to get into since the access was behind the doorman’s desk, and he was rarely away from it long enough to sneak behind, go explore, then come back up.
He’d suggested we might need to work out a plan for me to be a lookout and distract Frank while he came back out.
As for me, well, I worked.
And I tried to pretend I wasn’t jumping at shadows.
“Damnit,” I hissed as the text came in from Cam while I was pulling food out of the delivery bag in my kitchen.
“What is it?”
“A charity event,” I said, sighing hard. “I’d agreed to it a full year ago,” I added. “With everything going on, I totally forgot about it.”
“If you have to be there, that’s workable,” Brock said, taking his clamshell, then mine, and making his way over toward the table.
We’d gotten comfortable with the casual intimacy that came with living together. The morning dance of making coffee. Choosing meals then eating them together.
Aside from Cam, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spent as much time with a person as I was spending with Brock.
I was more than a little worried that it was to the point where I was going to miss it when it was gone. When he was gone. And he would be gone. As soon as he figured out who was out to get me.
I probably should have been trying to distance myself, spending more time alone, things that would make his sudden disappearance easier to learn to live with.
Was that what I did, though?
No, no it was not.
“Will you go with me?” I asked, trying to inject as much confidence in my voice as possible, even though it was the most nervous I’d felt in ages.
Which was absurd. I did multi-million dollar business deals.
I stood up and spoke in front of some of the brightest minds in the world.
And never, in any of those situations, did my belly wobble like it was wobbling in my own dining room, sitting across from a man I liked more than was healthy.
“Yes, of course,” he said immediately, sparing me any further torment.
“I’d be happy to take you,” he added, somehow wiping away the lingering worries that he was doing it because he was obligated, because he didn’t want me to get attacked again.
Because he didn’t say he would go with me.
He said he would take me. There was a distinct, monumental difference between those words.
“And before you ask, yes, I have the appropriate attire,” he told me.
“It’s the Falkes Benefit, right?” he asked.
“How do you know that?” I asked, unable to stop my lips from parting in surprise.
“I’ve attended a few benefits in my time,” he said, shrugging it off.
But this wasn’t something you shrugged off.
The Falkes Benefit was invite-only. And those invites tended to only go out to the very elite.
It had been one of those moments when I’d truly felt like I’d “made it” when I’d gotten my invitation with its thick linen paper with its understated art nouveau style flowers… and my name printed there.
“Have you attended this one?” I asked, trying for casual, but I felt like my tone was a bit too curious, so played it down by opening up my food and poking around with my fork.
“Not in years,” he said, making my gaze shoot up to find him smirking at me, knowing how curious I was, but making me beg for the information.
“When did you go?” I asked.
“About six years ago,” he told me, giving me nothing else.
“You’re being deliberately difficult.”
“Only because it clearly drives you up a wall,” he shot back, making a laugh escape me as I reached for my wine.
“Were you there with a client?”
“An ex-client,” he told me.
“Another in a long line of conquests?” I asked.
“I’d prefer not to think of women as conquests. But, yes, it was someone I’d been casually seeing.”
“There’s nothing casual about the Falkes Benefit.”
“No. But this certain woman wanted to wave her younger date in the face of her older husband she’d just recently divorced.”
“Did he cheat on her?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, I guess I can’t fault her for being petty. Did you enjoy the event?”
“For all the exclusivity, I’d had better food at smaller events.”
“That’s exactly what I said after the first time I went!
” I said, throwing up a hand because no one else had ever said anything negative about it before.
“What is it about ‘exclusive’ events that means the food has to have no flavor and not enough calories to feed an infant? I had to stop for fast food on the way home. In a gown. Because whoever thought one slice of meat and a piece of carrot draped over a single spear of asparagus would be filling was clearly out of their damn mind.”
“So that’s the plan then.”
“What’s the plan?”
“We hit up the benefit. Let you toss some money around. Choke down the disgusting food. Then you and me, we hit up something actually filling on the way home.”
“That sounds perfect,” I agreed as alarm bells went off in my head about how much I liked his use of the word ‘home’ there.
“Do you have a gown already?” he asked. “Or do we need to squeeze a shopping trip in today?”
“I don’t have one that I haven’t worn already,” I admitted. “But I might just have Cam pick me out some options. He has a better eye for evening wear than I do,” I said, reaching for my phone.
“What?” Brock asked when I smiled down at my phone a moment later.
“Cam. He was already at the store, snapping pictures of options.”
“Have you ever taken him?”