Chapter 10 #2
As much as I wanted to scream at him, he loomed over my body and beat me to it. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
My head pulled back, the moment still catching up to me. “What am I doing?” I looked out the back window, at the unmarked car still flashing red and blue, then set my eyes back on him. “What in God’s name are you doing?”
His jaw tightened, his eyes darkening. “I’m making sure you didn’t get fucking kidnapped because my guy told me you went off in a random car.”
I felt Finn move behind me, but I didn’t turn around. “Kidnapped?” His voice was so shaky. “No, no, no. Okay? She asked me to pick her up. This is all her doing. Not mine. I didn’t even want to pick her up.”
My body deflated with utter disappointment as I tossed him a glare over my shoulder. “Really?” My eyes narrowed. “Nice to know your panic response is throwing your best friends under the bus.” My smile dripped with sarcasm. “Another thing I’m raising at the meeting.”
His eyes told me he was sorry, but I’d deal with him later. I shot him one last glare before turning around to face my other problem.
My eyes felt like icebergs as they landed on him.
“If you’re that worried about my whereabouts, then maybe you should, oh I don’t know, watch me like you said you would.
” My raised palm reached out between us.
“That is your job, right?" I dropped my head and giggled. "I’m sorry, I must have misheard you when you were barking whatever this relationship is at me.”
Power settled over him as his arms folded, the action causing his muscles to pulse under the strain. And if I wasn’t having daydreams about murdering him, then I would have held onto the way my stomach dropped as I watched it.
“I had something to deal with. And besides, you came out of class early. I was due to let those guys leave the second I got here to get you.”
My head jolted forward, my eyes blinking. “Did you just say guys? As in plural? As in multiple people stationed to grab me the second I left?”
He shrugged, like it was no big deal. “I had one at every exit.” His eyes went dark again, but this time they were rimmed with sarcasm. “You’re not exactly fond of following my rules, Miss Holland, so I’ll take the proper precautions if and when I can.”
“That doesn’t mean you can assign strangers to watch me because your cars need counting or whatever it is you deemed more important than watching me.”
His eyes narrowed. “I thought you didn’t want me watching you anyway.”
I tilted my head. “I don’t. But I’m talking about the principle of embedding in my brain that my safety is your only priority, and then bailing on me because you wanted to shag your assistant in your office—”
His face moved closer, inches from mine and making my heart race like the traffic behind him.
“Not that it’s any of your business what I do when you are otherwise looked after, but I wasn’t counting cars or shagging my assistant, because firstly, I have one car—it doesn’t take that long to count—and two, my assistant is sixty-four. ”
I shrugged, lips tugging down. “Doesn’t mean you can’t shag her.”
Finn shuffled behind me. “I know this is my car but I think I’ll step out while you guys do whatever this is.”
“No,” Marcus instructed, eyes still fixed on mine. He lifted his finger at Finn. “You can go. I’ll be taking Miss Holland home.”
“I’d rather go back with Finn. He’s nice, unlike you.”
“I never promised to be nice. I promised to keep you safe.”
I laughed right in his face, earning me an even darker, harder stare. “Yeah, because tracking and hunting me down makes me feel very—” My words halted as they caught up in my mind.
He’d followed us. Tracked us and made us pull over.
My heart froze.
How did he know where we were if I’d turned off my phone tracking?
My stare turned from icy to an inferno in seconds. “How did you know where I was?” I asked, my teeth gritted.
For a second, maybe a fraction of one, his eyes widened. He was caught out. His pink lips parted, his eyes still on me. It was the most I’d seen him react since that night of the event when he’d cornered me.
He held our stare a dense moment longer before his eyes fell.
“We’re going now.” Before I knew it, he was reaching over and unbuckling my seatbelt.
His hand grazed my hip on the way past, making me shiver in a way I wasn’t sure how to feel about, before his hand slipped into mine and he pulled me out of the seat.
He grabbed my bag and portfolio with his free hand before slamming the door without so much as giving Finn a second glance.
I tried to pull back from his grip as he took me to the car. “Do you have to tug me like I’m a fucking toddler?”
“After declaring you a flight risk? Yes.”
I rolled my eyes as he threw my things into the backseat of his car, then tugged open the passenger door.
“In.”
I couldn’t even be bothered to fight him right now. I’d rather save my fire for when I questioned him about how on earth he knew where I was.
I slid in, the soft black leather slipping underneath my jeans.
It smelt like no one had ever driven it before this moment.
Like no-one owned it. But the longer I sat there the more I picked up on the dull amber that hung in the air, and the slight smell of smoke, like a cigarette had not long been put out.
Not a second later, Marcus barrelled into the driver’s seat, steam practically simmering under his dark strands.
That was as much as I wanted to look at him, so I turned my head out the front window, seeing that the space that held Finn’s car was now clear.
Traitor.
What tugged my attention away from that was the sound of the car starting, and I whipped my head back to Marcus, not thinking before I planted my hand atop his on the gear stick. Immediately his eyes found mine, shock and horror and something else I couldn’t name brewing from the contact.
When I felt my palm begin to mold over his, I yanked it back, my mouth slipping open. “If you think I’m sitting in a car without you answering my question, then you’re even more of an idiot than I thought you were.”
He broad body settled back in his seat, his hand peeling from the gear stick and scrubbing over his face like he knew, much as it hurt him to admit, that I had a right to know.
But when he kept that wicked mouth shut, I cleared my throat and folded my arms. “Go on. I’m just dying to know how you tracked me down when we both know I got rid of whatever shady software you riddled my phone with.
” When all he did was pin me with a glare, his lips thinning out across his stubbled mouth, I answered for him.
“You put a chip in my phone, didn’t you? ”
He didn’t so much as flinch. He didn’t blink. Didn’t react at all. Nothing that let me know what he was thinking. What was going on behind those onyx eyes.
Anger surged forward in my chest, burning me from the inside out. I shook my head at him, disbelief fueling the breath that left me. “I knew it.” Before I could think, I reached for the door handle. “Goodbye—”
His palm, that felt like cold steel, wrapped around my wrist, firm enough to ground me and force my eyes back onto him. He looked like what the anger in my chest felt like, but somehow, annoyingly, he made it a look I would have spent hours painting it had I wanted to paint.
He released a breath before his mouth parted.
“Look, I get it. You hate that I’m here.
You hate me. But you need to come to terms with the fact that this is happening.
I’m here, under an order to protect you.
And before you deny that you need protecting again, you do.
You know you do. And like it or not that’s my job now, Miss Holland. So you better—”
“Cora,” I interrupted.
His face remained paused, but his eyes still searched mine. “What?”
I swallowed, tucking a curl behind my ear and shuffling as though that would convince him I wasn’t getting sad. “I want you to call me Cora. Not Miss Holland.”
His features softened with confusion. “Romano doesn’t address their clients by their first names—”
“Oh, we’re back to rulebooks?” I muttered.
His brow twitched, like he was biting back annoyance. “It’s not a rule. It’s protocol.”
“I know.” I caught the inside of my lip between my teeth. “Because that’s what he called me. And I’d rather not think of him every time you said my name.”
He blinked—once, sharp—like the pieces clicked into place faster than he wanted them to. Something loosened in his expression. It looked like a silent apology, the sort a man gives when he realises he should’ve known better.
His jaw worked. “Right. Yeah. That… makes sense.”
“For someone who’s supposed to be observant, you missed that one,” I said softly.
A corner of his mouth twitched. “I’m aware.”
For the first time since meeting Marcus, I think this was the most intimate we’d been.
Sure, he was standing over me the night of the event, staring at me like a damaged statue in need of repair, but right now he had this look in his eye that looked like he was really looking.
And maybe because it was the first time I was being real with him.
That was when reality hit me like a steam train.
I could still be around Jamie. I could have not run that night he groped me.
I could have stayed silent and let him silently torture me because I was too afraid to take hold of my life.
But I did run. I ran so far away that now I was here, with someone who, despite his overbearing qualities, wanted to keep me safe.
I let a sigh leave my lips, my eyes dipping to my lap before shyly meeting his.
“I’m sorry. Okay? I get what you’re doing and I…
appreciate it. Really. But like you said, this isn’t going to work if we’re not honest with each other, and finding out you’d chipped my phone, that you were tracking me without me knowing, I panicked and got angry and—”
“Told one of my guys that they had a receding hairline?”
My eyes rolled away from him. “Oh my god, are you keeping a list?”
“Of your insults? I’d need a separate file.”
I shouldn’t want to smile this bad. But I did. I let it free and to my utter surprise, it turned out Marcus was capable of smiling too. If I took a moment and thought about the fact we’re both smiling, both doing anything other than annoying each other, then I was scared I’d stop smiling.
Scared he would too.
And that would be a travesty, because his smile was just as devastatingly handsome as the rest of him.
“Okay, in hindsight, that was rude.” A low chuckle slipped from my mouth. “But I was angry and I’ll apologise. I promise.”
His head fell back against the headrest, his eyes still on me.
“You had every right to be annoyed about the tracking thing. And you’re right…
I should have told you. But I thought that keeping it from you would make you feel like you still had some freedom, and I could keep tabs on you without being around you constantly. ”
I lifted a brow. “Marcus Romano can smile and be considerate of other people’s feelings?”
He grunted. “Don’t push it.”
“What timeline have we slipped into?”
“One where we can get along, hopefully.”
Hopefully was what had my eyes meeting his, finding them the lightest shade of brown I'd ever seen. Like looking into a dying fire. And like he felt me watching the embers fly away, he squeezed them closed.
His jaw flexed like he regretted letting it slip, like he wanted to snatch it back before I could make fun of him.
Before I could say anything his eyes flicked back to mine, guarded now.
“Come on, let’s get back to the house and what do you say we make a plan on how to keep you safe without also killing each other? ”
I nodded. “Sounds good.”
After giving me one last look, letting me spot the millionth colour that managed to swirl between his eyes, he started the car.
As I buckled my seatbelt, a lightbulb went off in my head. “Before I forget, if I’m apologising to your guy about the hair thing, I think you might want to do the same with Finn. I thought he was close to passing out when you pulled us over.”
Slowly, he turned his head to me, a soft smile gracing his lips. “I promise, Cora.”