Page 32 of Last Minute

The first brush of his lips to mine is soft, barely a touch, but it fills my chest with the growing feeling I’ve been trying to deny. Erik pulls back a millimeter, but then moves forward again, pressing his lips to mine, firm and warm.

A bright flash from my left blinds me, even with my eyes closed, and we jerk apart. Flashes continue to go off, and my stomach drops as my body recognizes them for what they are before my brain catches up.

No. No.

Erik steps between me and the cameras, and I look up at him, panicked—my heart racing, but not for the reason it was a moment ago.

A stony expression slams down on Erik’s features, shifting him instantly from the man I was kissing a moment ago back to the executive protection agent he is. He turns me by the arm with a grip that’s firmer than the gentle caress he gave me only seconds ago and steers me through the crowd.

CHAPTER 22

Erik

This was all a mistake.

Bringing Ellie to the wedding, letting her distract me…I’ve made some dumb mistakes in my life, but this is the biggest.

I push her ahead of me, keeping my body between her and the paparazzi cameras—how on earth did they find her here?—but the press of wedding guests gawking at us makes it slow-going to the exit. Ellie keeps her chin up and eyes straight ahead as I guide her out of the wedding venue, glaring at anyone who doesn’t step to the side as we pass.

More cameras flash as we step out of the front doors of the building, and I curse that I didn’t find us a side exit. My senses were so absorbed in Ellie—her closeness, her sweet smell, her soft touch—that I auto-piloted to get her out by the most obvious door.

Ellie’s back is straight and her head held high, the opposite reaction I’d expect from someone being hounded by paparazzi. She’s the picture of a princess with nothing to hide, strolling out like it’s an everyday thing to be photographed leaving a stranger’s wedding.

We’re followed by flashes until we reach my car. Moving out of years of habit, I open the back passenger door, and Ellie climbs inside. I hurry around to the driver’s side and slip in, driving away as quickly as I can through the few paparazzi that followed us away from the venue.

Ellie is quiet in the backseat as I drive us back to the hotel in Boston. I glance back at her in my rearview mirror, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of her smiles, signaling that everything is alright, but all I see through the intermittent light from passing streetlamps is a somber expression. The corners of her lips—the ones that were pressed to mine not even an hour ago—are turned down and her eyebrows are pinched together. She stares out the window, not saying anything, for the entire thirty minute drive.

My stomach drops the closer we get to the hotel. Tonight was my fault. I hadn’t done a sweep of the premises like I usually do at new locations. I didn’t pay attention to our surroundings during the reception. And I crossed the line. The line separating me and Ellie as client and EPA. I knew better and I did it anyway.

Even though I’m kicking myself for making that mistake, I can’t bring myself to fully regret it. The echo of her lips on mine still plagues my memory. It was barely a kiss, but it’s one I’m going to be thinking about for the rest of my life—the way my chest felt like it was about to burst from this overwhelming feeling I’m too afraid to pick apart and analyze.

Thankfully, we aren’t followed from the wedding venue, but I have no doubt some snooping reporter is going to find out where we’re staying and will be spreading the details to all sorts of other media outlets by morning.

Ellie is uncharacteristically quiet as we hurry up to our room, locking the door behind us. Without a word, she grabs a change of clothes out of her suitcase and slips past me into the bathroom.

I scrub my hands through my hair and across my face, finally loosening my bowtie and unbuttoning the top few buttons of my shirt. I am never going to hear the end of this when Boss gets wind of it. For all I know, the pictures are already out there—pictures of me…and Ellie…kissing—and Boss has already seen them.

I can already hear his tirade when I get back into the office.

What the hell were you thinking, Donovan? Did you even pause to consider the ramifications of your actions? If this breaks badly, we could have the entire royal family breathing down our necks!

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I should never have brought her here. I should never have let her get as close as she did. An ache takes up residence in my chest, filling the same space that less than an hour ago was filled with the lightest, most amazing feeling as Ellie pressed her lips to mine.

When Ellie comes out of the bathroom, her face scrubbed clean of makeup and the dress that drove me to the edge of insanity draped over her arm, she looks miserable. Her eyes are puffy, like she’s been crying, even though I didn’t hear anything through the thin hotel walls. My first instinct is to reach out and pull her into my arms, making sure she’s alright.

But the lines need to be redrawn.

I watch her as she crosses to her side of the room, deposits her dress into her suitcase, and climbs into her bed, tucking her phone underneath her pillow without plugging it in. She doesn’t say anything to me, and I don’t say anything to her. Any apology out of my mouth would not be enough to make up for the potential scandal we’ve worked ourselves into.

I slip into the bathroom and ready myself for the night, the exhaustion of the last few hours finally settling over my shoulders like a weighted blanket. I do one last lap of the room, making sure everything is secure and cautiously peeking out the window to see if anyone has caught wind of Ellie’s location and is planning on camping outside all night. A modicum of relief fills me when the parking lot is empty of photographers and reporters, although I know we could be facing a different reality come morning.

I climb into my own bed, turning out the lights.

“Goodnight, Ellie,” I whisper to the quiet room before sleep overtakes me.

“No, no, I’m fine. Yeah, we made it back to the hotel without any problems.” Ellie’s voice draws me from sleep like a siren’s song.

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