Chapter 26
EVE
Andrew Knightbridge said he loved me. Had the world just stopped turning or was that my head spinning with disbelief over the steep trajectory our relationship had taken over the past month?
Not that I was mad about it. Quite the opposite.
I was damn near delirious as I left the dressmaker’s with my hand in Andrew’s.
“I think you made a good choice, Eve,” Lacey said from my other side. “I wish Brodie could get us tickets to come. Oscar parties look wild.”
“If he’s getting extra tickets for anyone, it’s not you, Lacey,” Andrew replied with a scoff. “Besides, those tickets seem rarer than hen’s teeth as it is.” He grimaced, and I got the impression he’d tried to lean on his connections and had no luck.
Lacey sighed dramatically. “Such a party pooper, Knightsbridge. I’ll just have to live vicariously through Eve instead. You’ll send us loads of photos, right?” She bumped my shoulder affectionately and I nodded my agreement.
“Of course.” If I remembered to take any, that was. I could freely admit I was crappy at documenting moments.
“How long will you be in LA for?” Nina asked. “Do you have any time for sightseeing?”
Lacey chuckled. “The only thing Eve will be seeing is the inside of a hotel room if Brodie has his way. A whole weekend without any competition? Girl will come home walking with a limp.”
Andrew’s hand tightened on mine, and when I glanced up I noticed how tense his jaw was. A flash of guilt ran through me, but I quickly squashed it away because he damn well knew what he was getting into with me before we ever took that first step.
“Um, guys?” Nina drew our attention with a worried lilt in her voice. “It might be the free champagne talking, but I feel like that van is creeping closer to us?”
We had only walked a half block from Madame Gwenevere’s store, and the van she’d gestured to was slowly moving forward. All of a sudden it accelerated straight toward us with a loud rev of its engine.
“Evie, watch out!” Andrew shouted, wrapping himself around me and jerking me out of the way as the van crashed through a stack of bicycles and came to a stop on the pavement right in front of where we’d been walking.
Shock and fear held me frozen for a moment as a half dozen people in black ski masks poured out of the van with guns in their hands, and then all of a sudden—
“Eat this, you son of a bitch!” Nina bellowed, swinging her designer handbag like a spiked mace, smashing it into the side of one masked attacker's head. It was forceful enough to knock him off balance, and she followed up with a solid knee to his face.
Chaos erupted around me and I stood there like…like a liability while Lacey turned into a full-on ninja and started fighting hand to hand with what appeared to be a grown-ass man. And Andrew? Holy shit, how did I not know that Andrew could fight?
Not just like throw a couple of punches in a heated argument with Connor.
He could actually fight. He was holding his own against two of the masked men and didn’t even seem to be breaking a sweat.
Honestly, he’d never been sexier. What the hell was wrong with me that I was dead set getting turned on while we were fighting off armed attackers?
Okay, that wasn’t a fair statement. My friends were fighting them off and I was standing there and staring at the three of them—Nina included—like they’d just revealed themselves to be Power Rangers.
“Evie!” Andrew exclaimed between punches, “alert Haze!”
Oh fuck, right. The panic button on my phone!
I fumbled around in my bag and pulled it out, needing to re-try my passcode several times to unlock the screen and then activate the emergency beacon.
Then, for good measure, I tucked my phone inside my bra so that, hopefully, it’d stay with me if I was taken anywhere.
One of the masked guys got behind me and grabbed my shoulder with a rough grip. I reacted on instinct, channeling all five of Connor’s self-defense classes that I’d attended so far and executing what had to be a perfect demonstration of S.I.N.G.
Solar plexus, instep, nose, groin. Okay sure, maybe Connor didn’t teach me that exact one, but it was the first thing that came to mind in the heat of the moment.
I threw my full weight behind each step and gave a little squeal of delight when the man dropped to the pavement with a groan of pain.
Vibrating with adrenaline and terror and excitement, I quickly kicked the man’s dropped gun away from his reach and emulated Nina as he tried to get up, kneeing him hard in the face.
“Nice one, Eve!” Nina whooped, stepping over a fallen attacker right as four sharply suited bodyguards sprinted down the pavement toward us.
I vaguely recognized them as Andrew’s staff, but where the hell were they a minute ago when we’d nearly been run over or kidnapped?
Still, the level of pride I felt when Nina and Lacey high-fived me was something I’d never forget, even when Andrew scooped me up in shaking arms and ran with me back to the bulletproof vehicle.
“Who were they?” Andrew bellowed when one of the guards slid into the passenger seat while we took the back. “What did they want with Evie?”
“Our initial intel indicated that Ms. Lewis wasn’t their target, sir,” the guard responded, grabbing the door as the driver pulled out at top speed. “You were.”
“Wait, what about Lacey and Nina?” I cried out, realizing we were fleeing the scene and leaving my friends behind. “We can’t leave them!”
“They’re fine, ma’am,” the driver said in a gruff voice. “Our team has extracted them in another vehicle.”
“Oh,” I said, my panic easing slightly. “Well, good. Would have been better if your team had been a little more proactive in the first place.” I grumbled that part mostly under my breath as I turned Andrews tightly clenched hand over in mine to inspect his swollen and bloodied knuckles.
He leaned in, ignoring my concern, and kissed me hard on the lips for a moment, then heaved a long sigh. “That scared the hell out of me,” he admitted. “I thought they were coming for you again.”
I shook my head. “Apparently I was in no danger at all, Mister President’s son.”
“This time,” he muttered with an angry growl. “How sure are you that I was the target?” His question was directed to the men up front, as he dragged me across the back seat into his lap, seatbelts be damned apparently.
Nope. No, my car crash with Lacey was too fresh in my mind, so I quickly wriggled back out of his lap into the center seat so I could securely belt myself in while remaining close. “Sorry,” I whispered, my face heating with embarrassment. “I get nervous without a seatbelt.”
Andrew looked at me startled for a moment, then quickly buckled his own seatbelt before wrapping his arm around my shoulder. “Nothing to apologize for, Evie. I should have…yes, of course. Safety first, always.”
We drove the rest of the way back to Bluebell House in silence. By the time we arrived, I was deep into trembling shock, so Andrew needed to carry me inside because my knees wouldn’t work.
“Connor!” Andrew yelled as he entered our cozy house. “You here?”
The ripped jeans and leather jacket-clad badass came clattering down the stairs with a gun in his hand. He quickly made it disappear the moment our eyes met, and panic flashed across his gorgeous face. Haze was just a step behind him, his dark gaze steady and assessing as he took me in.
“What the fuck happened?” Connor barked, already taking me out of Andrew’s grip without waiting for a response.
In fairness, Andrew seemed compliant in letting Connor take me, and I was still shaking all over, just one breath short of hyperventilating, so it was in everyone’s best interest to just go with it.
“Attack on Elmtree Grove,” Andrew snapped. “Did you get Evie’s emergency beacon, Haze?”
The big guy grunted affirmation. “I did, but then your tracker started moving toward us, so I hacked Evie Marie’s microphone to listen in and make sure you were all safe.”
Connor wasn’t sticking around, striding through to the living room with me securely cradled in his arms, leaving Andrew and Haze to discuss the attack in the foyer. He carried me over to the couch, sat down with me firmly in his lap, and buried his face in my hair.
“You scared me, brat.” It was a heartfelt sentiment, and the strength of his embrace soothed my own trembling.
“Why? I wasn’t the one in danger this time,” I tried to joke, but my voice came out weak and shaky. Yuck. “Besides, I took one of the guys down with your self-defense moves. I think you’d have been proud if you saw.”
That made him loosen his grip enough to peer at my face. “You did?”
I nodded, mustering up a smile. “Yeah, I used S.I.N.G.”
“Sing?” he repeated, clearly puzzled. “What is that?”
“Solar plexus, instep, nose, groin,” I recited with a grin, very proud of myself.
Connor’s brow furrowed. “Brat, I never taught you that.”
I huffed a sigh and shrugged. “No, but Gracie Lou Freebush did. Anyway, that’s beside the point. I beat up a guy! Aren’t you impressed?”
“Very.” And he backed that sentiment up by kissing me deeply, his fingers sliding into my hair and twisting at the roots like he wanted to pull it. It was exactly what I needed to chase the lingering shock of the attack away, and I shifted my position to straddle him.
Connor gave a low chuckle at my bold switch-up. “Careful, brat, you’ll make me forget my gentlemanly manners and I might end up fucking you right here on the couch for the whole house to watch. I’ve been dying to get another taste.”
I shivered, rocking my hips against his rapidly hardening length as I kissed him again. “Maybe I’d be into that,” I whispered in his ear, biting his lobe between my teeth, making him groan. “They could watch or…more. Would you be into that too?”
His answer was a groan as he grasped my hips and ground me hard against the tight ridge of his jeans. “I’m into anything that makes you whimper the way I heard you last night. Was that my brother making you fall apart like that?”
Before I could inform him that it was likely a combination of his brother and Brodie, or…
depending on the time, maybe it was Andrew, the front door slammed open and Ethan announced he was back, along with Brodie.
In less than a minute, Connor had resituated me to sit with my back to his chest as all the guys entered the living room to chat.
“So, what was the conclusion from your team, Drew?” Ethan asked after Andrew finished a brief rundown of what had happened.
“They were environmental activists intending to hold me for ransom until my mother changed her mind about an oil deal with Turkey.” Andrew sighed, shaking his head and looking more disheveled than he usually preferred. “Harmless, ultimately, as they didn’t even have their guns loaded.”
“But it could have been worse,” Haze murmured, his eyes on me.
I shivered, and swallowed hard, because he was right. “But it wasn’t. You guys are always going to have people that want to hurt you, so we may as well get used to it, right? Con is going to take me for some private sessions to improve my self-defense moves too.”
“I am?” he grunted, still rock hard under my ass.
“You definitely are,” I replied firmly, giving him a teasing butt wiggle until his fingertips bit into my hips with warning. Suddenly I was very excited to train with him one on one. Connor was a very hands-on teacher, after all, and I desperately wanted his hands on me. All over me.
Wow, I might have developed an addiction.