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ChapterEight
If someone had toldme that morning that I’d end up in Dominic Dane’s car by nightfall, I’d have laughed in their faces. I’d have called them crazy, too. Then I would have laughed at them some more.
Yet, here I was, sitting in a car with the most infuriating man to have ever walked the Earth, and I couldn’t even think properly. Just the smell in there—so leathery and woody and…him. I never realized it before, but that scent always hung around him, and it was…okay. I mean, it wasn’t lilacs, obviously, but it was manly. It was dangerous. Kind of…sexy.
Ugh. Get it together, woman! I chided myself. So he was good-looking, so what? That didn’t mean anything, his scent be damned.
We’d driven in silence for the past fifteen minutes. He never looked away from the windshield, and he gripped the steering wheel so tightly, all his knuckles were white. Every time he switched gears, it was like he was trying to pull the stick from the car altogether. Not to mention he drove like a maniac, but thankfully, I didn’t mind the speed.
Dominic Dane was angry.
Dominic Dane was always angry, and I told myself that I didn’t care.
I cleared my throat and wiped invisible dust from my jeans. “I’m all ears.”
He didn’t say anything.
I waited a minute, then two. Still nothing.
Fine. If this was how he wanted to do things, I would play along. Reaching for the dashboard, I turned the radio of the car on. A song by Maroon 5 burst out of the speakers. The audio was crystal clear, and I did love that song—but Dominic turned the radio off even before it properly started.
“What is your problem?” I spit, holding onto the leather of the seat. “You don’t have to be a dick, you know. It’s just music.”
“The mission is simple,” he said, as if I hadn’t even said anything. “I’m pretending to be some guy with a very rich, very dead father, who was trusted with some information about the father’s business, and I gave all that information for safekeeping to my girlfriend.” He shot me a pointed look. “Who is a pixie.”
Girlfriend.
My chest was strangely quiet just then.
I was a pixie, too. Did that mean I was going to pretend to be Dominic’s girlfriend?
Oh, no.
“Hence the reason you’re here.” He said it bitterly, like he still couldn’t believe the fact.
And the disbelief instantly made way for my rising anger.
“Oh, I see. So, I’m only here because the Chief needed a pixie to pretend to be someone’s girlfriend, and I’m the only pixie working for him. Is that right?”
“Mhmm,” he murmured. “A very naive, very clumsy girlfriend, too. Someone people can look at and think she’s harmless. Cute.”
“But I am not cute.” God, I hated that word. I wasn’t cute.
“Right,” he mumbled, and he dragged the word for miles.
My turn to look at him like I wanted him to drop dead right there behind the wheel. Who cared if we crashed? It would be worth it.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He ignored me completely.
“Where we’re going, the people who’ve been trying to get their hands on that information are going to be there. They’re going to watch you closely until they’re sure you have what they’re looking for, then try to grab you and extract that information out of you by any means necessary.” I swallowed hard. “And when they do, we catch them. End of mission.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said, smiling for some reason. “What do you mean, when they do?”
“I mean when they make an attempt to kidnap you,” he clarified.
“But that’s…that’s…” What exactly? I didn’t have the word yet. “Why not just go and arrest them right now? What’s the point of pretending to be someone I’m not?”
