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I slid my phone into my pocket and made my way down to reception so I could meet her in and whisk her to the relative safety of my office.
After pacing restlessly in reception for a minute, I went to stand outside by the drop-off point for taxis, hoping to see her car from a short distance.
Why was I worried? Luna could handle herself.
The thing was, I couldn’t deal with myself if anything happened to her.
I hoped to hell she made it back here safely.
Luna
“No.”
After I’d arrived back at his office, trying to hold it together, Sylvester had suggested finding me somewhere to hide out from Apollo and Priscilla, assuming the raid on their flat had been their announcement that we were no longer on good terms.
Sylvester looked surprised by my sudden firmness. “No? I’d go with you. Felix, too. You wouldn’t be alone.”
Being alone wasn’t really my problem right now. Okay, maybe it was part of it. But I didn’t want to spend god-knows-how-long in some impersonal safehouse. Especially not when I could use the time more wisely.
I took a deep breath and tried to explain my feelings calmly, rather than shutting down. “I appreciate the offer, really. But I don’t want to go to one of your... billionaire retreats in the countryside.”
“I understand your reservations, but where else would we go? I have houses all over the place, and so do my brothers.”
Suddenly, I had it. “I know where we can go. Somewhere I actually don’t mind being stuck for months on end.”
“Where?”
“My dad’s. He’s the sole porter at an empty warehouse in the Blue Ridge Mountains, North Carolina. There’s no one around for miles. A helicopter comes and brings food and supplies once a week. Besides that, there’s nothing. Besides the occasional lost hiker.”
Sylvester didn’t look convinced. He didn’t look unconvinced, either. “Are there... facilities? Is it comfortable?”
I rolled my eyes. “It might not be up to your usual levels of luxury. But yes. The house my dad gets to stay in rent-free has a bunch of empty bedrooms. It used to be a five-man job until they whittled the role down to only one person. And my dad was the only person antisocial enough to want to take that job alone.”
“You do realize you’re pregnant, right? And we’ll be in the middle of nowhere?”
I hated to admit it, but he had a point. “With all your money and your hundreds of houses... can we just... hire a doctor to come with us?” It was a crazy suggestion.Hire a doctor. Who did that? I guess rich people did. I’d put up with doing rich person things if it meant I got to spend some quality time with my dad. I needed to tell him I was pregnant, and I wanted to do it to his face.
Sylvester, amazingly, seemed to be on board with the plan. “Okay... okay, sure. I can do that. I’ll have to double check with Felix and the band...”
Wait a minute. My eyes widened. “The whole band?”
“Well, our concert’s soon. We had a few weeks of rehearsal scheduled starting in a few days.”
I thought about it. “I guess there’s space for them. If Mark and Petey don’t mind sharing, or something.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine. We all shared a bed sometimes on tour. If it’s only two-to-a-bed that’ll be positively luxury.”
“Okay. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but... fine. Last question: how are we going to get there? I’m not sure there’s a runway for your private jet up in the mountains.”
Sylvester thought about it for a moment, and then his eyes lit up with a singularly demonic glee. “My brothers are always saying that I use this to show off, when I could just use a car... but this is actually the perfect use case for it. How else are we going to get from New York to a mountain in North Carolina?”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
A grin spread across his face. “Helicopters. We’ll get there using my helicopters.”
As it turned out, he wasn’t joking. He had a fleet of helicopters thatBrock Entertainmentused for news reports. I hated to admit it, because it seemed sodramatic, but it was going to be our best bet. The warehouse even had an out of use landing pad.
I called my dad. “Erm, unusual request, but how do you feel about housing me, the entirety ofNeedlehead, and Sylvester’s poet brother Felix for an indefinite amount of time? Starting, possibly, today? Or tomorrow? We’d be arriving by helicopter. I know this is a lot to spring on you, and I can explain more later...”
