Page 191 of Forced Vows

Understanding is making my gut tight. "Are you telling me that you snuck out?"

Did she hear a single word I said that day in my office when we argued over her new security detail? Said detail is in so much fucking trouble.

"I know that look on your face and knock it off. At that time, I didn't have guards assigned to me when I was at home. They didn't know about my plans. Neither did Ollie. No one knew about it and they never found out either."

She sounds proud of herself.

"How?" I'm not relaxed against the wall anymore, but looming over my unrepentant fiancée.

"Everybody thought the three of us were in the theater room for a movie night."

"But you weren't?" How the hell did they get out of the mansion without being seen?

She tells me.

And I am equal parts, impressed, and furious. "You paddled on a blowup raft to a boat in the dark on the bay? Those waters are choppy. You could have capsized."

My throat muscles are straining with the effort it takes not to yell.

"It was amazing. You should've seen Kara, she was so like 007, except she said she was Salt. I felt like a superspy though."

She thought she was 007? Was she carrying a gun? "Do me a favor and explain this amazing escape in tiny detail for me."

The rest of the telling is no less hair-raising than their trip in the boat. "Your uncle's men could have shot you thinking you were intruders," I grind out.

"Oh, no. We timed it right and Kara's hacks worked perfectly."

"What if they didn't?"

"Then the alarms would have blared and we would have yanked off our hoodies so they knew it was us."

"What if there had been a trigger-happy guard on duty?"

"There wasn't. Or if there was it didn't matter because nobody saw us, okay?"

So not okay, but I want the whole story, so I don't say anything.

"Kara was careful not to shut anything down long enough for our enemies to get onto the grounds and sneak up on the guards, or into the mansion undetected."

"I am so glad you were worried about the armed soldiers." Can she hear the sarcasm in my tone?

Her grimace says she definitely does. "It wasn't that bad. We had it all planned out. We got to the boat. My friends took us to another house further up the shoreline. We changed into clothes for our night out in the City and it was wonderful. The perfect night before losing my freedom. Or at least that's how I saw it."

How does she see it now?

Am I her jailer? Or the man she wants to spend the rest of her life with?

"I think that's the problem though. We told Fi all about it. And now she wants a night like that for her 18th."

"You have to be twenty-one to get into Drunk Shakespeare. It's in a bar."

"A lounge."

"The distinction does not matter to me. Your cousin is only turning eighteen." Another thought hits me. "You weren't twenty-one yet. "

She rolls her eyes at me.

Rolls. Her. Eyes.

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