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“Okay, so we’re all good?”
“Yes, sir, I have registered your names and your position, so should anyone enquire about you, we’ll let them know you’re safe.”
I hang up and look at Blake. “You mind if I give Thomas a quick call?”
“No, sure, go ahead.”
Once I’ve checked that everything is fine with my brother—he was sleeping in his bed back at the hotel and didn’t feel a thing—I hand the phone to Blake. “Anyone you want to call?”
“I’d better let Evan know I’m fine but not sure when I’ll be back in New York.”
Just as she’s about to input the number, it vibrates with an incoming call.
“It’s Mila,” Blake says, offering me the phone back.
An irrational panic washes over me.
Blake must read the terror on my face because she retracts the arm she had extended to give the phone back.
“Why do you have that look on your face?”
“What look?” I try to be nonchalant.
No one’s buying it.
The phone stops ringing, and Blake stares at the screen. A short vibration informs me a text message just landed there.
Her brows furrow as she reads the text, then her eyes rise to meet mine like a blue fire burning straight into my heart.
If ever there was a death glare, I’m getting one at this very moment.
I’m not sure what I expect her to do. What I don’t expect, is for her to leap over the coffee table with catlike agility and, phone still clutched to her chest, lock herself into the bathroom.
I rake my hands through my hair and sink to the floor, leaning my back against the couch.
I’m a dead man.
36
BLAKE
I turn the lock to the bathroom door and, with a beating heart, call MGM’s assistant back.
“Boss.” She picks up at once. “Didn’t expect to hear back from you so soon. I have good news and bad news; which do you want first?”
I make a sort of animal grunt that I hope she’ll take as a legit MGM response.
“Chipper as ever, I see. Anyway, I’m aware I’m intruding on your romantic retreat, but I just wanted to let you know the actors we’d hired to fake a blockage on the road were clear of the landslide site and made it home safe. They hadn’t even placed the tree across the street when I called them to cancel.” She takes a breath. “As for your current situation, it looks like you’re going to be stuck up there for a couple of days. But, on the bright side, now you get to spend the night with Blake and you didn’t even have to stage a natural disaster. Mother Earth put in a good word for you. And I’m not saying I’m happy there was a major landslide, but since there were no victims—”
I’ve had enough.
“Mila,” I interrupt. “This is Blake Avery.”
“B-Blake. W-what are you doing with Gabriel’s phone?” She sounds terrified.
“That doesn’t matter, now, does it? I’m going to need a bit more information on that fake natural disaster thingy, though.”
Mila sighs. “In his defense, it really was a great romantic gesture. You know, the hero secretly whisking away his woman to a cottage in the woods, the whole forced proximity scenario… He just wanted to have a romantic dinner with you. And the tree wasn’t even a live one, just timber and a few torn branches for the scene. And he called it off anyway, so literally, nothing happened.”
