“You want to do a hand-off?” He’s radioing Farrow in the Audi. “…Copy.” When he drops his arm, his large hand just naturally rests on my thigh.
Beneath my purple tulle skirt.
I rub my lips together that rise. His touch sends electric jolts coursing through my veins. Reminding me that our sex has been overwhelmingly real.
Every night since the Bed & Breakfast, Thatcher has snuck out of security’s townhouse and into my room. It feels illicit and clandestine, a covert mission that only we share, one that has scorched my bed with my eagerness and his strength and volcanic yearnings. Blazing strokes of skin to skin as we try to keep quiet, so no one overhears.
And I’ve never been held against a man’s chest the way that he holds me.
I’ve never had a friends-with-benefits ask how I felt. I was fully aware that they wanted me for fifteen minutes of fame or notoriety—to say they hooked up with the daughter of Connor Cobalt and Rose Calloway. But all I wanted from them was sex. I felt like I was using them too, and I chose these guys purposefully knowing I’d never fall for them.
It was easier that way.
But how Thatcher treats me is so catastrophically new from what I’ve experienced. I’ve never felt so appreciated before, during, and after sex.
We’re very careful about being caught, and we have a routine. He must never fall asleep in my bed. As soon as the clock strikes 3 a.m., he must go back to security’s townhouse.
I check my side mirrors, not able to smile or daze off for long. I’m incredibly wedged into the right lane by two silver SUVs and a four-door truck, and our extra security vehicles trail far behind us.
The woes of not breaking the law when paparazzi do—they’ve lost an advantage. But as I check my rearview, I see our Range Rovers trying to catch up by driving in the emergency lanes.
I stay fixed on the street and do my best to stand my ground.
“I’m watching your left.” Thatcher eagle-eyes the truck that tries to creep in my lane. “You’re doing good, Jane.”
I risk a glance his way, and our eyes catch for a sweltering beat. He looks deeper in me with a sort of powerful reassurance that makes me feel invincible. And safe.
“Thank you,” I say, more breathless than I intend, and my cheeks heat while I crane my neck. My sight returning to the red Audi’s bumper. Stay with Moffy.
Stay with Moffy.
Stay with my best friend.
I repeat my clear focus. Maximoff and I are en route to a costume shop. Since October is here, my best friend has a license again.
Despite his speeding habit, it’s difficult to deny how skilled he is at offensive and defensive driving. He has maneuvered us through hoards of paparazzi since we left the townhouse, and if I didn’t follow him so closely, I would’ve been stuck long ago.
I tap my brake a little, and an advance copy of Wildfire Heart slides on the dashboard of my car.
Thatcher takes his hand off my thigh and grabs the romance book, slipping it in the glove compartment.
I’ve already devoured the love story between a cocky firefighter and his best friend’s spunky sister. My second read-through, I’ve started taking notes. Just so I’m more prepared before I go in the studio.
Thatcher adjusts his seat forward, bending his knees. “Are you okay with a hand-off in five?” He knows I’ve done them before, but not under these conditions. He adds, “It might be the only way to get off the highway.”
Otherwise, the silver SUVs will continue to block us from the exits. I’ve realized this too. We could wait for police to pull them over, but that’s assuming they will.
“Is a hand-off even possible at this speed?” I wonder.
It involves bodyguards rolling down car windows and paying paparazzi to move out of the way, and if the cameramen are nice, they’ll even block other paparazzi vehicles for us.
Thatcher explains, “Farrow is getting Maximoff to slow down to twenty.”
I take a breath. “Then yes, I’m okay with one.” Sun crests the horizon, a harsh glare piercing the windshield, and I flip my car visor down, barely blocking the light.
Thatcher hands me my cat-eye sunglasses and speaks into comms. “Jane is good to go in five.”
After slipping on my sunglasses, I edge closer to the wheel. The Audi slowly decelerates, and I follow suit.
I squint at another ray of light, and I shield my hand over my eyes. “How dangerously close am I to his bumper?”
“A few inches.” He extends an arm over my seat and assesses our surroundings. “You’re still good, honey.”
My eyes bug and lips part—he called me honey . So innately and instinctively and with such tenderness. I inhale without exhaling, and I can’t help but turn my head to Thatcher.
His attention is plastered to the street. “Jane, brake. ”
“Merde.” I slam on my brake.
Thatcher plants a firm hand on the dashboard. I brake too late, and I crunch into Maximoff’s bumper. Both of our cars jerk forward from the light impact.
My pulse has shot out of my butt, and I am a frozen chunk of ice. “Oh my God.”
“It wasn’t bad. It’s alright, Jane,” Thatcher says, very huskily and seriously and not at all alarmed. I have a soldier in my car. He speaks lowly into comms, then checks back on me.
“Oh my God,” I keep unhelpfully repeating, and I try to peer at the damage of Maximoff’s Audi. I use a phone voice-command. “Call Moffy . I can’t believe I rear-ended my best friend—”
“It was my fault,” Thatcher cuts me off, looking down at me, then eyeing the road.
“No, I should’ve been watching the street.” I do now. My eyeballs are attached to the concrete and the Audi and my mistake.
Thatcher adds, “I distracted you.”
I hear his voice in my head, You’re still good, honey.
My heart skips. “Not on purpo—”
“Janie?” Maximoff’s voice sounds through my car speakers. “Are you two okay?”
“We’re fine,” I say, sitting straighter. Face on fire. “How are you and Farrow? How’s your collarbone?” Back in May, he broke the bone from the force of the seatbelt, and I feel sick at the thought of causing him any pain.
“Totally shattered like a regular Humpty Dumpty,” Maximoff says with complete sarcasm. “I think I died back there.”
I try not to smile. I need him to be serious about his injury. At least in this moment. Before I respond, I hear his fiancé.
“You’re not dead; you’re breathing right next to me, wolf scout.”
“Or maybe we all just died, and we’re in purgatory.”
Farrow lets out a short laugh. “Or maybe you’re just a dork who wants to spend purgatory with me.”
“Or maybe—”
“Farrow,” I interject and instantly feel badly about cutting off my best friend, but I must. “How is he?”
“He’s not hurt,” Farrow says very casually, as though we’re leisurely having a four-course meal in
the middle of nightmarish traffic. “You still want to do a hand-off?”
I glance at Thatcher since he’s been watching the surrounding vehicles.
He nods to me like it’s still possible.
“Yes,” I answer.
“I’m going twenty,” Maximoff tells me, his voice firm and more serious. “I can go slower if you need me to.”
“This is perfect.”
Thatcher takes out a few hundred-dollar bills from his wallet. “Three, Farrow.”
“Eh, let’s do four. I don’t want to barter with these fuckers.”
It sounds like code, but they’ve been doing this for years. Neither one needs to say three hundred dollars to understand they’re referring to cash.
Thatcher instructs me to drift closer to the silver SUV, and the four of us work in unison, despite being in different cars.
Our bodyguards roll down their windows, and paparazzi begin to roll down theirs. Camera lenses directed at our cars. Arms reaching out of the windows on either side, a few loud words exchanged, along with nods.
The hand-off works, and the SUVs slow to clear a passage as we come upon our exit.
* * *
We have the costume shop to ourselves for a few hours. Darkly lit with black-painted walls and stocked to the brim with Halloween decorations, fog machines smoke the concrete floor and spooky laughter echoes from speakers.
Maximoff and I rarely used to close down places, but lately, it’s been more necessary. Right now, over a hundred excitable teenagers are outside the glassed entrance, screaming our names and banging on the windows.
If I do say so, I prefer this crowd to what the Cinderella ad initially roused.
Maximoff and I browse a rack of steampunk costumes, and our bodyguards are in sight but out of earshot, standing at the locked glassed entrance and ensuring no one breaches.