Oh, great. “I’ll, uh, keep that in mind,” I said.
Anthea looked sheepish. “Did I come off a little intense? I swear I’m only trying to prepare you.”
“No, no, this is good,” I said. At least she was trying to warn me about him, which was far better than Wylder abandoning me in the kitchen. What the hell was that about anyway? If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that the sex we’d had was a scenario I’d concocted in my head. If only it hadn’t been so fucking good.
We passed three girls who I recognized immediately from the groupie room. One of them—one I’d sent running with a few threats the other day—glared at me.
“They don’t know what really happened between Gia and you,” Anthea said, her voice low. “But they have their ideas, none of them good.”
Let them think whatever they wanted. I walked by without giving them another glance, but one of them spit right at my feet.
Anthea whirled in on them. “Do we have a problem?”
Their eyes widened. One of the girls shook her head. “No, we were just—”
“Then you’d better clean that up.” Anthea pointed to the wet spot on the hardwood floor. When they all stayed frozen, she glowered at them. “Well, get on with it.”
One of the girls twitched and fished a tissue out of her pocket, kneeling to dab at the spit. Anthea clearly had a reputation around here. She was still a force of fury, only thankfully it was no longer directed at me.
“Get out of here,” Anthea said when the girl was done, and the three of them took off down the hallway toward the staircase.
Anthea gazed after them, frowning. “I know not to underestimate them now too.”
Memories of Gia flashed through my mind: the fury twisting her pale face when she’d attacked me the other night, the mess of blood and brains after Wylder had shot her in the head. My stomach turned. That wasn’t what I needed to be thinking about when I was about to face Ezra Noble.
“Anything else I should keep in mind about Ezra?” I asked as we started walking again.
“Well… if my brother bothers you too much, imagine him with a carrot on his head.”
I stared at her. “What?”
“Trust me,” she said as if she were confiding a secret. “It really works.”
I still wasn’t sure if she was being serious, but even if she was only making a joke to lighten the mood, it’d worked. I found myself chuckling thinking of the most dangerous person in all of Paradise City with a carrot balanced in his auburn hair.
We turned a corner and headed toward the back of the house. “You’ll be meeting Ezra in what he calls his ‘audience room,’” she said. “He has it set up specifically for meeting with people he doesn’t trust enough to bring into his study. Don’t let that get you down. He can count the number of people he’ll let into his actual workspace on his hands without running out of fingers.”
Fair enough. Why would a man like him invite a stranger into his inner sanctum?
Anthea opened a door at the end of the hall and ushered me into a large, sparsely decorated room. A picture window looked out over the back lawn. Other than a watercolor painting hanging opposite it, the walls were bare. A buttery leather armchair stood on one side of a glass coffee table, looking every bit a throne. A matching sofa sat opposite it, with a few scattered chairs behind that.
“Have a seat,” Anthea said, motioning to the sofa, and then pressed my elbow reassuringly. “Don’t worry, you’ll be good.”
After the hurricane that’d been sex with Wylder, this situation did nothing to calm my nerves. I inhaled deeply and sank onto the sofa, which was almost disturbingly smooth and soft. Like it was meant to lull whoever was sitting on it into a false sense of security. Anthea stayed standing beside the coffee table.
The door on the other side of the room opened, and a man stepped in. At the sight of him, my pulse hiccupped.
I’d forgotten just how much Wylder resembled his father. Ezra had identical bright green eyes and auburn hair other than a few streaks of gray in it, as well as similarly sculpted features and broad shoulders. The most noticeable difference was the way he moved. I’d seen Wylder stalk and prowl across a room, but his father made his way over to his chair with the air of a watchful wolf, absolutely animalistic and feral.
I started to stand up from my seat in case he expected the gesture of respect, but Ezra just motioned me to stay put. He settled into his own chair, poised so regally it was even easier to picture it as a throne. His piercing gaze took me in. “So, here’s the Katz heir in my home.”
“Thank you for having me here,” I said quickly.
“It’s not by my choice.”
The weight of his stare tangled my tongue. “I mean—thank you for taking the time to see me.”
“You’re here to see me,” he said, arching one eyebrow.