AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Depending on who I was talking to, people either called me the redhead or one of the three. I did have a line I used in response that I said so much it really had become just that, a line I said like an actor delivering a speech. “Oh, I’m hardly the redhead. If you looked about here, I’m sure you would find two or three more. We’re rare but not that rare.”
She smiled. “Oh, you are adorable even in this…wedding dress?”
Zeke took my hand. The act startled me, and I stared at our joined fingers. It wasn’t as though we had some kind of history where we did that sort of thing. He’d tugged me around quite a bit, actually, and I couldn’t say I minded. What did that say about me? Something bad? Something good? But holding my hand was different. More intimate, somehow?
“Sophie, yes, this is Layla Radford. We have to go.”
She stared at our joined hands. “Oh, I see. Yes, you have to go.” She laughed. “I obviously see the attraction, Layla. We’ve all seen the attraction, but you know our Zeke. He doesn’t ever have just one of us.”
No, I hadn’t known that. I was digesting that information when Zeke must have had enough. “Good to see you, Sophie. We’re leaving.”
“Layla,” she called after us as we hustled out of the bar. “I would love to go shopping with you. You will make me look like my best me, yes?”
“Um, sure, if we can do that.” I was trying to be polite. I had to be whenever someone approached me. Every person on the planet had a platform to talk about me if they wanted one. They could post and post and post. Enough people started to say that I was a spoiled, entitled bitch, and eventually, that would be whatI was whether it was true or not. I made sure that I was always kind, always polite, always someone they thought might be their best friend if given enough time.
And my security always made sure they didn’t get the chance to be too close for too long. I guessed that Zeke took that role now since I no longer had any. They’d not really been with me for me anyway, more like to prevent me from being kidnapped so that my father could be forced to pay ransom for me. I didn’t guess he’d pay that now.
My feet hurt, and I wasn’t going to be able to keep up with him much longer like this. “Zeke, I don’t have any shoes on.”
He stopped, looking me up and down for a second. “Really? What happened to your shoes? Or were you always barefoot?”
“I lost them in the run. My feet hurt and…”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Fuck.” A second later, he’d scooped me up and strode out of the hotel holding me like he was going to carry me over a threshold. It was sort of funny. I was in a wedding dress, and he was carrying me around like something out of a movie.
Only I didn’t know him, this wasn’t that, and I had no idea where he was taking me.
“We’re going to the car,” he answered my unasked question. “And then I’m going to take you to your hotel room to get you some shoes, collect your stuff, and we’ll go from there.”
I held up two fingers. “That’s how many stops we have to make.”
“Right, I’d known that. We have to go back to that venue, too. Fine. In the meantime, I want you to consider staying.” Oh, we were back to this. The moment right before Sophie had shown up when I was confused and didn’t know what was going on. I was still in that zone. What was happening here? “How could I do that? I have no money.”
“You don’t need it. You’ll be my guest.”
Being carried like this might have been the most awkward conversation position in the history of all conversation positions. “Why would you do that? We don’t know each other, and I have the distinct feeling that you don’t like me very much.”
“I don’t like anyone that much. People in general. Maybe because I understand them too well after a lifetime of selling them on things they probably shouldn’t be doing. Trust me, if I can make bank executives invest in your father’s crummy platforms, I can make anyone do anything. I’m leveling with you. Keeping you will make your father crazy. He will fume over this, and it will give me the ability to finally figure him out with his guard down. Or he’ll make a mistake.”
He opened a car door in the parking lot. It was a twodoor Porsche. I’d been in a lot of them in my life. I knew men cared a lot about this kind of thing. I shouldn’t be genderizing. Some men and some women probably did, too. Hell, I needed to keep my head focused. When he would have strapped me in, I stopped him. There were some basic things I was absolutely capable of doing for myself.
Zeke shut the door and went around to the other side. With traffic so constantly bad in Paris, I couldn’t imagine he got to open this up around town very much. But it was probably more about having it than actually driving it. There was status to this car, and it probably got girls like Sophie to agree never to be exclusive with him.
“What do you think?” He started the car.
“About what? You haven’t really told me anything. You want to make my father nuts by keeping me. Is that what you want me to help you do? Stay here and make him nuts?”
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel while he pulled the car out into traffic. It was the middle of the day, and it was going to start to rain. My reception would have been ruined. I smiled. That was sort of funny. It would have been a terribledisappointment to everyone. They hadn’t put out the tents. And rain had not been in the forecast.
“I can help you. What I saw today when you booked it away from your chosen life partner was a person who needs to take some control of her life. I can help you do that. By the time you go back to New York, you can have some say over your destiny. Trust me. I pulled myself out of a shit hole. I pulled your father out, and I can help you do the same.”
It sounded lovely. But too good to be true was too good to be true. “That would make you just like my dad. He paid for me, too.”
“By the time I’m done with you, you won’t need anyone else for that the rest of your life. Layla, you can be the captain of your own destiny. Then no one can touch you. Ever. Trust me on that. You’ll say when, who, and how. The world can fuck itself if you tell it to. You won’t have to ask your father or your sisters or anyone for help. I’ll help you. If you help me. A little quid pro quo.”
I sat up straighter in my seat. “Really?”
“Really.” He nodded. “You help me, and I’ll see to it that you will never have to run from anyone ever again. They’ll run from you, honey. I promise you that.”
