“You don’t need to do that!”
“You are my best friend.My family.I definitely need to do it.So expect me.It’s a done deal.I figure I’ll find you at his big-ass mansion.”
Atlas filled the doorway.He didn’t approach.Just stood there wearing all black, looking dangerous and sexy.His eyes were on her, seeming to brand her.He looked even bigger than normal.His shoulders so wide they almost touched the wood of the doorframe on either side of him.His right hand gripped a manila file.
“That’s where I am,” Lily agreed quietly.In his big-ass mansion.Though she wouldn’t have described it quite that way.
“I am on my way.Seriously, moving now, as fast as I can get there.And don’t youdareget kidnapped by some psycho killer again before I get to you, do you hear me?I will be so pissed at you if that shit happens.”
“We’re not supposed to call them that, Sloane.”
“Fuck it.Like I care.A man kidnaps my best friend, he blows up a house and kills a cop, then he counts as apsycho killer.Sorry if he doesn’t like the label, but that’s too bad for him.You stay safe.Wait.Know what?Better plan.Stay close to Atlas Bennett.Stick to him like glue.No way his guards are gonna let anything bad happen to him again.”
The guards were certainly working in overdrive.
“You do not get separated from Atlas.Twenty-four, seven, you stay with him, got me?Lily?Lily?You’re not responding.I am giving you an order from your best friend.”
Sloane was her only friend.
“Tell me that you will follow my order.”A plea had entered Sloane’s voice.“I need to know you’re safe.Tell me that you will stay with Atlas.”
“I will stay with Atlas,” she dutifully confirmed as she held his stare.“Twenty-four, seven.”
His eyes gleamed.
“Goodbye, Sloane,” she said.
“Stay alive, Lily,” Sloane returned.“If you don’t, I will never, ever forgive you.Friends don’t die on friends, understand?”
“I understand.”
Sloane hung up.Lily slowly lowered the phone.She put it on the nightstand, then stood by the bed, her hands rising to twist a bit awkwardly in front of her.“That was my friend Sloane.”
He took a step into her bedroom.
“She’s my partner in my research, too,” Lily added.She forced her hands to release and fall to her sides.
He advanced another step.
“I wanted her to know what had happened—with our files, that is.She’s insisting on flying here to see me.Told her that I was safe.”
Another step.His eyes were locked right on her.Blazing so blue that it almost hurt to look into them.That gaze of his was really quite unsettling.
“I explained to her about the fake engagement bit.Said it was for my protection.Not real.Not because you looked at me and fell hopelessly in love.”Immediately, she wanted to yank those words back.Why, oh, why had she just uttered them?So unnecessary.Why was she rambling?She didn’t ramble.She didn’t talk unnecessarily.Often, she’d been accused of not speaking enough.She was the shy one.The quiet one.The reserved one.Not the oversharing one.
That would be Sloane.
Atlas stopped right in front of her.He lifted the file.“The NDA.The one I signed for you.So you’ll know that I’ll go to my grave before I ever reveal secrets you tell me.”
Not that she was a legal scholar, but Lily didn’t think that was quite how NDAs worked.“You didn’t have to sign that.”
“Neither did you.”A twist of his lips.“We both know I wasn’t walking away from you, no matter what.”He put the file on her nightstand.Hesitated just a moment.
“Atlas?”
His hand shoved into the pocket of his pants.
What was he doing?
