4. Jace
FOUR
JACE
Jace got Emma through the lobby, into the elevator, and up to the executive floor without losing the argument they’d been having since the sidewalk, which he counted as a personal best.
“You’re moving into a secure property tonight.” He shouldered his office door open and didn’t wait to see if she’d follow—she would, she was still mid-sentence. “I’ve got two available. Pick one, or I’ll pick for you.”
“I have an apartment.”
“You have an apartment with a lock a determined toddler could beat.”
“It has a deadbolt.”
“So did your office.” He rounded the desk instead of sitting behind it, which put him a lot closer to her than furniture etiquette strictly allowed, and watched her clock the move and refuse to step back. Her shoulders squared instead. He counted that as a win.
“I have plants. Living things that require my presence.”
“I’ll send someone to water your plants.”
“You’ll send someone to water my plants.” She said it dry, testing the sentence for ridiculousness out loud, and came up satisfied that it delivered. “That’s not the point, and you know it.”
“The point is you’re a target, and your building’s security is a joke. Diesel could get through that lobby in under a minute without breaking a sweat, and Diesel thinks a challenge is a childproof cap.”
“I’m not abandoning my life over a text message and a bad driver.”
“You’re not abandoning anything.” He planted both hands on the desk between them, leaning in until looking anywhere else took actual effort on her part.
“You’re relocating because the alternative is finding out what comes after the text message and the bad driver, and I’m not running that experiment with you as the results.
Someone cloned your files. Someone drove a van at you on a public street.
Someone knows your face and your schedule. That’s not paranoia.”
“You have a very grim outlook.”
“Occupational hazard.”
“So I hire an alarm system.”
“You hire me.” It came out rougher than he meant it, low enough that his own chest reacted before his brain did.
His wolf had already marked the matter closed—Emma, in the building, within reach, ideally by morning, consent a technicality it had no interest discussing.
The rest of him understood, with real irritation, that consent was not, in fact, a technicality.
“Twenty-two people already vetted and paid for. You don’t have to like it.
You only have to survive long enough to complain about it. ”
“Convenient argument, coming from the man doing the hiring.”
“Didn’t say it was fair. Said it was correct.”
Emma’s eyes narrowed—the same look she’d aimed at his website an hour ago, the one she reserved for auditing a man for fraud. “You know what the last man who used the words for your protection meant by them?”
Jace went still. Her voice had dropped out of the argument completely, gone flat in a way he recognized because he’d used it himself, on people who’d survived things nobody deserved to.
“He meant stay small.” No performance in it.
“He meant don’t make decisions I haven’t signed off on.
He kept right on meaning it, too, until the day I made one he hadn’t approved—and then he meant a considerably uglier thing, and called that protecting me as well.
” Chin up, voice steady even though the rest of her wasn’t. “So forgive the reflex.”
The argument between them ran out of air all at once. Jace came around to her side of the desk—not toward her exactly, only close enough that the space between them stopped being a negotiating tool for either of them.
“That’s not what this is.”
Low. Meant, in a way that unsettled him a little, because he’d known this woman two days and already couldn’t stomach being lumped in with whoever taught her that exact brace.
She studied his face, checking it the way she’d check a column of figures for errors. Didn’t find any. He watched some of the fight drain out of her shoulders without any of the spine going with it.
“Most people say that and mean it for about a week.”
“I’m not most people.”
“No.” Her eyes flicked away and came back guarded. “I’m starting to notice.”
“I still have terms.”
“I’d be worried if you didn’t.”
An administrative assistant’s voice came through the phone speaker. “Sir, you’re wanted in the conference room.”
They never got to the terms, because Jace headed for the conference room. Emma fell in half a step behind him, and he walked straight into an ambush he hadn’t seen coming, which almost never happened and which he intended to remain furious about for a full week.
Gerri stood at the head of the conference table as if she’d always been part of the furniture, white hair immaculate, eyes gone gold with delight—she’d been orchestrating this exact moment.
Roman, Tucker, and Milo were already seated, traffic-cam stills frozen on the wall screen, and all three of them looked up when Jace and Emma walked in, still radiating the argument they’d left behind in his office.
“Wonderful.” Gerri clasped her hands, beaming at them both, every bit as proud as if she’d personally engineered every second of it. “It’s about time. The engagement party is next week.”
The room went off like a grenade.
Roman shot up, cheering. Milo had his phone out and was typing with the focused urgency of a man watching an investment mature, muttering odds under his breath that had apparently paid off for the second time that week.
Tucker, without glancing up from his laptop, said, “The Plaza does a Tuesday rate,” which meant he’d had that shortlist ready since roughly the ballroom.
“We are not engaged,” Emma said to a room that had already stopped listening.
“Caterer’s booked.” Gerri typed on her phone, reciting from a script only she could see.
“Small guest list, obviously—can’t go public with a threat still active—but the announcement does the real work.
Paranormal community believes you’re a couple; nobody blinks at Jace standing three feet from you every hour of every day.
Suspicious becomes romantic. It’s efficient. ”
“We are not engaged.” Louder. Same lack of effect.
Jace opened his mouth to argue and found the argument dissolving somewhere behind his teeth, because it was, infuriatingly, a solid plan—cover with built-in proximity, a reason for round-the-clock security nobody would question twice.
His wolf had checked out fully around the word engaged and was currently marinating in a feeling suspiciously close to satisfaction, a development he intended to address never.
“Operation Happily Ever After,” Roman announced, already retitling the mission file on the presentation screen with the reverence of a man who understood he’d peaked professionally.
“That’s not the mission name.”
“It is now.”
“Priced four venues already.” Tucker spun his laptop around, a spreadsheet on display that had clearly existed before this meeting started. “Rooftop’s got the best sightlines if this ends up being real eventually, which, statistically, given the trajectory—”
“We are not engaged,” Emma said, a third time, color climbing her throat in a way Jace found himself tracking with more attention than the moment strictly called for.
Diesel, silent until now, glanced up from an animal-rescue video on his phone and offered, with total sincerity, “I can guard the cake,” which nobody had asked for and which ended the argument faster than anything else in the room had managed.
“We. Are not. Engaged.” A fourth time, aimed at Gerri specifically, delivered with the determined precision of a woman lodging an objection nobody planned to keep on record.
“Of course, you’re not, darling.” Gerri patted her cheek on the way to the door, utterly unbothered.
“You’re fake engaged. Do try to keep up.
” She stalled at the threshold, glancing back at Jace, thoroughly satisfied with herself for calling her shot months in advance.
“And, darling—wear the blue tie to the party. Gold makes you look like you’re compensating. ”
She left before anyone could argue, which Jace was beginning to understand was the entire operating principle of Gerri Wilder: detonate, depart, let the wreckage sort itself out on its own time.
Roman pulled up a ring site on his phone, holding it out for a vote nobody had requested. Milo recalculated odds under his breath, a wedding date freshly factored into the math, and flagged Jace down long enough to add, “I called this in week one. I want that on the official record somewhere.”
“There is no official record.”
“There will be. I’m starting one.” Milo was typing it into his phone, dead serious. Tucker, meanwhile, had three browser tabs of venue photography open and no plans to close a single one.
“This is not happening,” Emma said, quiet, aimed at Jace alone.
“It’s already happening.” He steered her toward his office by the elbow, ignoring Roman’s wolf-whistle at his back. “The only choice left is whether we do it well.”
“So.” Emma dropped into the chair across from his desk the second his door shut behind them, cutting off the sound of Roman workshopping toast material down the hall. “Fake fiancée. That’s a new one for me.”
His brow rose. “I didn’t sign off on the timeline, if anyone’s keeping score.”
“You didn’t exactly fight it either.”
He hadn’t, and he wasn’t in a hurry to examine why. “It’s a good cover. Gets me close enough to do the job right without every pack and pride and business contact in this city wondering why I’m personally shadowing one accountant.”
“So it’s tactical.”
“Extremely tactical.”
“Nothing to do with the face you made when Gerri said the word engaged?”
“My face didn’t do anything.”
“Your face did a whole production number.” She flashed the first real smile he’d seen out of her since the van, quick and startled like it had gotten loose before she authorized it.
Warmth turned over low in his chest, and he decided not to examine that either.
“Fine. If we’re doing this, we do it my way. Terms.”
“Go.”