Mile High Secret Babies (Forbidden Silver Foxes)

Chapter 1

AURELIA

I’m sketching the emergency exit row when he sits down beside me.

The pencil stills in my hand before I can stop it, and I force myself to keep my eyes on the page. Don’t look. Don’t react. Just keep drawing the outline of the window, the curve of the seat, anything that makes me look like a normal person doing normal things.

My heart is trying to claw its way out of my chest.

I’ve been running for two months, sleeping in motels that rent rooms by the hour, jumping every time a door slams or someone looks at me too long.

I dyed my hair black three weeks ago in a gas station bathroom. The contacts that turn my hazel eyes blue irritate the hell out of me, but I wear them anyway because I can’t afford to be recognized. Not when my uncle has people looking for me in every city between here and the Canadian border.

I almost didn’t book this flight to New York. Too risky. Too many Vance connections, too many people who might see through the disguise. But my mother’s buried there, and if I’m leaving the country for good, I need to say goodbye.

It’s stupid and sentimental. It’s the sort of mistake that gets you caught, but I did it anyway because grief doesn’t care about logic.

And now I’m on this plane in first class, paid for with cash from the stacks of hundred-dollar bills I took when I ran, trying not to hyperventilate while Cassian Rourke settles into the seat next to mine.

I knew what he looked like before today.

Two years ago, bored out of my mind during another family dinner where I wasn’t allowed to speak unless spoken to, I hacked into my uncle’s files and spent an entire week memorizing faces.

Every enemy the Vance family had collected over five decades.

Names, operations, and territory maps. It was research, because knowing who wants us dead might be useful someday.

But Cassian Rourke was different.

I stared at his photo longer than the others. Couldn’t stop tracing the line of his jaw with my eyes, the way his mouth was set in something that wasn’t quite a smile. He was older than me by two and a half decades and dangerous in ways I didn’t fully understand.

But the photo wasn’t enough. I found videos—news footage of him at charity events looking like any other businessman, then older surveillance clips showing someone different.

Cassian outside the warehouses at two in the morning, his presence alone making grown men back down.

The contrast fascinated me. Monster or man, I couldn’t tell, and that made it worse.

I spent four months obsessed. Started using his face when I touched myself late at night, fantasies about him finding me somewhere I shouldn’t be and recognizing me as a Vance.

It was twisted and reckless, but it felt like rebellion against everything my uncle wanted for me.

I even convinced Julian to take me to a Knicks game once because I’d found out Cassian would be there.

He never looked my way, never knew I existed, and somehow that made the fantasy stronger.

Then I got into a relationship, and the fantasies stopped, but I never forgot his face.

And now he’s here. Right here.

I’m wearing a mask. It’s pulled up over my nose so only my eyes show. It’s part of the disguise, another layer between me and anyone who might recognize Victor Vance’s runaway niece, but right now it feels like the only thing keeping me from doing something catastrophically stupid.

Like staring at him the way I stared at those photos.

He shifts in his seat, and I catch the movement in my peripheral vision. Broad shoulders filling out a charcoal suit. No tie yet—it’s draped over his knee while he unbuttons his collar, and I hate that I can’t help but look.

The flight attendant stops by, young and polished, her smile bright enough to sell toothpaste. “Can I get you anything before we take off, Mr. Rourke?”

My pencil slips. Just slightly, but enough that the line I’m drawing veers off course and ruins the sketch.

He orders whiskey. His voice is exactly what I remember from the videos I found of him—deep, Irish accent softened but not erased.

The flight attendant turns to me. “And for you, miss?”

“Water’s fine.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel, muffled slightly by the mask.

She leaves, and I’m alone with him.

Well. Alone in the only way you can be when you’re on a plane surrounded by other passengers, but it feels intimate anyway. The armrest between us might as well be a live wire.

I focus on my sketchbook, flipping to a new page and starting over. My hands are shaking just enough to make the lines uneven, but I keep going because stopping means I’ll have nothing to do except sit here and try not to combust.

“You draw.”

I glance up.

He’s looking at me. Those green eyes are even sharper up close, and there’s an intensity to his attention that makes me feel like he’s cataloging everything about me. The mask, the sketchbook, the nervous energy I’m trying to hide.

“Sometimes,” I say.

“What are you working on?”

I tilt the page slightly so he can see—just the rough outline of the emergency exit, nothing impressive. “Passing time.”

He doesn’t push, but he also doesn’t look away. I meet his gaze and feel that old thrill spike through me. The one I thought I’d buried.

“Business or pleasure?” I ask because apparently I’ve lost my mind.

His mouth curves. “Business.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

“It is.” He accepts the whiskey from the flight attendant when she returns, takes a slow sip, then glances at me again. “What about you?”

“Visiting my mother’s grave.”

It’s not entirely untrue. I am saying goodbye to my mother, to the life I had, to any chance of being Aurelia Vance ever again.

His expression shifts. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Don’t be. It’s overdue.”

He doesn’t ask what I mean, and I’m grateful for that. The engines roar as we taxi toward the runway, and I grip my pencil tighter, channeling my nervous energy into something productive.

The plane picks up speed. My stomach drops the way it always does during takeoff, but I keep my eyes on the sketchbook and my breathing even.

We’re airborne.

I made it.

I pull the mask down—just enough to take a sip of the water the flight attendant left—and when I glance over, Cassian is watching me again.

“Nervous flier?” he asks.

“Not usually.”

“But today you are.”

It’s not a question, and I don’t bother denying it. “Today’s different.”

“How so?”

I want to deflect, but there’s curiosity in his voice that sounds genuine, and maybe it’s the adrenaline or the fact that he’ll never know who I really am, but I want to tell him the truth.

Part of it, anyway.

“I’m leaving behind a life I never wanted,” I say quietly, my eyes still on the sketchbook. “And I have no idea if I’m going to make it.”

The silence that follows is heavy, but not uncomfortable.

When I finally look at him, his expression has changed. The sharpness is still there, but there’s understanding too, like he knows exactly what it means to run from things that want to destroy you.

“You’ll make it,” he says.

“How do you know?”

“Because you’re already halfway there.”

The certainty in his voice does things to me that it shouldn’t. Makes me believe him, even though he doesn’t know anything about my situation.

The flight attendant announces that we’ve reached cruising altitude, and the seat belt sign dings off.

Cassian loosens his collar another button, and I force myself not to stare at the sliver of skin it reveals. Not to think about the tattoos I know are hiding under that suit, the ones I found in grainier photos that looked like they’d been taken from a distance.

“Can I ask you a question?” I say before I can talk myself out of it.

He leans back slightly, whiskey glass balanced on his knee. “Depends on the question.”

“Do you ever do things just because they’re a terrible idea?”

His eyes lock on mine, and the air between us shifts into dangerous territory. My pulse kicks up. This is insane. I’m flirting with Cassian Rourke at thirty-five thousand feet while he has no idea I’m a Vance, and the wrongness of it makes me feel more alive than I have in months.

Maybe years.

He sets his glass aside and turns toward me, closing the space between us just enough that I can feel the heat coming off him. “What’s your name?”

“Catherine,” I lie.

“Catherine,” he repeats, like he’s testing how it sounds. Then he offers his hand. “Cassian.”

I take it. His grip is firm, warm, and when his thumb brushes over my knuckles, I feel it everywhere.

We don’t let go right away.

The plane hits turbulence. It’s not bad, just enough to make the cabin jostle and the seat belt sign ding back on, but my free hand shoots out to grip the armrest on instinct.

Cassian’s other hand covers mine before I can process what’s happening. “Easy,” he says, his voice steady and calm. “Just rough air. You’re fine.”

But I’m not fine. His hand is still on mine, solid and reassuring, and the way he’s looking at me makes my skin feel too tight.

The turbulence evens out, but he doesn’t pull away immediately.

Neither do I.

When he finally lets go, the absence of his touch feels like a loss. “You really are nervous,” he says, and there’s amusement in his voice but not cruelty.

“I told you. Today’s different.”

I meet his eyes, and the question I see there is layered.

“What are you running from, Catherine?”

I smile behind my mask and lean in just slightly. “What makes you think I’m running?”