Chapter 24 Devon
DEVON
I stood in the soundstage's corner dressing room, breathing recycled air, industrial equipment, and the sweat of too many people trying to make something perfect under artificial light.
But the worst smell of all was whatever the hell they had used to ruin Lofton’s face.
“Stop,” she said, without looking at me.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking it. Loudly.”
Biting the inside of my cheek, I studied the deep crimson covering the left side of her face from hairline to jaw, blending into something iridescent from cheek to temple with the exception of a long black line curling from the corner of her eye.
An elaborate silver headpiece added approximately four inches to her height, connected by a delicate chain to her left nostril.
The right side of her face was untouched.
Just Lofton.
Well, Lofton minus my favorite freckles. Because God forbid an audience see those.
She huffed. “Just say it.”
“It’s a bold choice. That’s all.”
“It’s a futuristic dystopian thriller, Devon.”
“So you’ve mentioned.”
“Then stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
She finally spun the chair to face me, one eyebrow arched. “Like I have something on my face.”
“You do have something on your face.”
She pinned me with a sharp glare. “You’re the worst.”
I shot her a wink. “You don’t mean that.”
Madison, the makeup artist, let out a laugh from behind the hairpiece she was securing. “You two are funny.”
“Don’t encourage him,” Lofton replied, swinging back to the mirror.
I pushed off the wall and crossed the small dressing room, planting myself directly behind her.
I tipped my chin down to get a proper look at both her and her reflection, taking in the full effect.
Up close, the work was genuinely extraordinary—half warrior queen, half the woman who fed horses in pajama pants.
“For the record,” I said quietly, “you look incredible.” I tilted my head. “Half of you, anyway.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m so glad I brought you.”
“Me too,” I said, before heading back to my wall.
Getting her to that soundstage had been a production in its own right.
The two weeks between her saying okay in that shower and wheels up at Nashville International had been a meticulous circus.
Apollo had gone ahead to LA four days early to wire the soundstage, pulling favors from the studio’s own security infrastructure and layering our equipment on top of it until there wasn’t a corner of that building that wasn’t covered.
Still not sold on Sebastian Cristobal’s innocence, I’d had Leo dig deep into his connections to find out where he’d be that weekend.
Luckily for me, he was scheduled to be in Milan.
We’d still waited until the very last minute to schedule Lofton’s plane—making absolutely certain that douchebag had touched down on an entirely different continent before we ever took off.
Chris and Matt had stayed behind at the farm and Jenn had come back to stay with Lawrence. That particular miracle had required its own negotiation. Listening to Lofton on that phone call had landed Jenn at least two rungs below Brooke on my shit list.
On the drive to the airport, Lofton had been quiet. Not the easy quiet we’d settled into over the past few weeks. It was the quiet that meant her brain was running hard, and she didn’t want me to know what it was running on.
She was an accomplished actress, but I could read that woman like a book.
I’d sat beside her on the plane with my knee pressed against hers, giving her space without letting go of it entirely. When we’d landed and the reality of being back in Los Angeles had hit her, she’d reached for my hand without looking at me.
I’d given it without hesitation.
I didn’t give a fuck who saw it or what bullshit Leo was going to give me.
Lofton was facing her fears, and as far as I was concerned, that entitled her to whatever she needed from me.
Professional optics be damned. She could have held my hand straight through the soundstage doors, and I wouldn’t have moved a muscle to stop her.
When we’d pulled up, she’d loosened her grip, squared her shoulders, drawn one long, measured breath, and walked in like she owned the place.
Because she did. This was her world. The one she’d built from nothing before I’d ever entered the picture. Watching her step back into it—nerves buried deep but not gone—had done things to my chest that my chest did not need any help with.
When it came to Lofton, I was no longer falling.
I was already on the ground floor. Probably in desperate need of a lifeline, but loving every second of loving her.
Especially her.
Even the half in cherry-red face paint wearing an upside-down chandelier.
“Are they going to come over?” she asked, rising from the makeup chair.
“That’s what they said. Lark asked me to once again warn you that Mira is very excited to meet you.”
“I’m not worried about that.” She turned to check the headpiece from another angle. “Are you sure Rhion and Jude are okay staying at a hotel?”
“Hundred percent. It was Rhion’s idea.”
“But it’s her house,” she repeated for at least the tenth time that day, before puckering her lips for the makeup artist to add fifty-percent of her lipstick.
“Babe.”
“I know, I know.”
On the flight over, when I’d walked her through the security roster, she’d looked at me like I’d drop-kicked a puppy. Horrified at the idea of asking the men of Guardian to upend their lives because she needed reshoots.
I hadn’t cared even a little.
Neither had they.
They’d all brought their wives or girlfriends on what amounted to a paid vacation. I’d bet good money Johnson had even packed a Hawaiian shirt. They’d clock a few hours of recon and then disappear to the beach until I needed them again.
Lofton had only found minor relief in learning she was the one funding this company retreat.
She walked over to me, somehow looking gorgeous and completely unhinged at the same time.
My arms ached to hold her, but I powered through, keeping them at my sides. “The house is safer for you. Rhion built that place to be secure. She gets it. She has Jude and not a stalker in sight, so yeah. She’s more than fine with you taking the house.”
She batted her lashes—one set longer than the other for obvious futuristic dystopian thriller reasons. “But they’re still coming to dinner tonight, right?”
Unable to stop myself and praying to God that Madison didn’t have Leo on speed dial, I swung my arm forward and hooked my pinky with hers. “Jude, Rhion, Lark, Mira, Alex, Briana, Johnson, Leo, and Sarah. All of them. Yes.”
“Apollo?”
I gave her pinky a squeeze. “He doesn’t count.”
A giggle bubbled out of her, and she swayed into my side. I shifted my weight, angling toward her right side because I genuinely could not bring myself to cuddle up to the red half.
“I’m excited to meet your people,” she whispered.
I caught Madison watching us in the mirror with a grin wide enough to suggest she’d been more than entertained for the last several hours.
I caught Lofton’s eye and pointedly flicked my gaze toward Madison, lifting a brow.
Lofton’s mouth curved, and she spoke at a volume that was anything but subtle. “You could bend me over this table right now and Madison would never say a word.”
Madison set down her brush, pressed both palms flat on the counter, and let out a long breath. “Oh thank God. The sexual tension in this room is thick enough to qualify as a biohazard.”
That was all I needed.
I slid my hand around Lofton’s waist and pulled her in for a kiss that had been building since she rolled out of my bed that morning.
“Not the—” Madison groaned. “Lipstick.”
Too late.
I angled deeper anyway, because at that point it was a matter of principle.
My hand drifted up her—
Smack.
Madison slapped it away. “And don’t even think about touching the hair.”
Lofton laughed against my mouth, shoulders shaking, and just like that, the moment broke.
I dragged a hand down my face. “You really oversold that bending you over the table thing.”
Lofton laughed.
Madison grinned, prepping to repair what I’d undone.
And I stood there, wishing we were back at the farm where bedrooms existed and over fifty percent of the woman I loved was accessible.
Once the reshoots actually started, the day moved fast.
I ran threat assessments and monitored access points. I walked the perimeter three times, checked in with Apollo twice, and kept one eye on every entrance and exit without ever fully removing the other from the woman on set.
It wasn’t the makeup. It wasn’t the costume, though both were genuinely…mindboggling. It was the transformation. The way she walked onto that set and became someone entirely different.
Different posture.
Different energy.
Different tone of voice.
While somehow remaining completely, unmistakably herself at the same time.
I’d seen that woman cry in a barn. Laugh until she couldn’t breathe. Stand in her kitchen at six in the morning in mismatched socks, singing something under her breath while turning bacon.
And now she was this.
And, fuck me, she was extraordinary at it.
I stood there with an enormous smile on my face and nothing but pity in my chest for the rest of the world that only got this version of Lofton. The polished, painted, camera-ready version. Because the best pieces of Lofton Beck existed before the makeup went on and after it came off.
Those pieces were mine.
By the time the director finally called a wrap on the day, it was dark outside and the entire Guardian team was already at the beach house waiting for us.
Lofton emerged from her dressing room looking fully herself again in a simple off-the-shoulder black t-shirt dress and a pair of heels I distinctly recognized from her button-down seduction routine.
“We’re late!” she called, trotting down the hall, stopping disappointingly short of my arms.
I didn’t bother feigning professionalism. I glided my hand from the small of her back down to her ass. “Nice shoes.”
She turned her head to look up at me, eyes bright, mouth tipping into something shy and private. “I’m slightly offended you even noticed I had feet that night.”
“I notice everything. Including the fact that you wore those shoes specifically to torture me tonight, knowing good and damn well I’m gonna have to spend the next few hours counting down the minutes until I can get you out of them again.”
“Maybe you should let me keep them on this time.”
“You bring your overalls?”
She scoffed. “God, no.”
“Shame.”
Laughing, she fell into step beside me, close enough that our arms brushed with every stride. “Tell me somebody already let the chef in.”
“Handled.”
She hooked her arm through mine. “Devon Grant, First of His Name—”
I closed my eyes briefly. “Please. Not tonight.”
“Rightful Heir to All My Orgasms and Provider of Entry to Personal Chefs.”
“Lofton.”
“I’m just filling in titles as you earn them. It’s a living document.”
I steered her toward the exit, the SUV already waiting at the curb, and for one brief, uncomplicated moment, everything was right.
One hallway left.
One turn.
Twenty feet to the door.
I came to a dead stop so sudden that Lofton walked two full steps past me before she registered I wasn’t beside her.
“Devon?”
I didn’t answer her.
My eyes were already locked on the man by the door and my body had gone completely still as every alarm I had fired simultaneously.
Carter Olsen.
Six-five. Black hair. Built like a tank with an attitude that matched.
Time folded in on itself.
He’d been front and center for the worst night of my professional life. Every excruciating, career-ending, whiskey-soaked second of it. He’d been the one who’d moved first. The one who’d put me on the ground and kept me there. The one who’d carried me out while my life burned down around us.
My entire fucking body locked up tight, my heart pounding in my chest as the train wreck of my past collided with my present.
Carter held my gaze for a long moment. His expression unreadable as if the world didn’t deserve to know what he was thinking. He showed absolutely no reaction to me before flipping his gaze away, and if that didn’t tell me absolutely everything I already knew, I didn’t know what would.
He wasn’t going to make a scene.
He wasn’t going to invade my closet, gather all my skeletons, shake the dust from their bones, and set them on display for Lofton.
Because Carter was a professional to the nth degree.
But you know who wasn’t?
“Henry!” Lofton’s voice came from beside me, bright with recognition.
Fuck.
Me.