Page 14 of Keep Her from Them

I peered through the crowd to the booths. Nope, no creep. Like earlier, he’d been seen then vanished like a ghost.

“I saw someone slip the bouncer money. The one who did this.” I made a grabby hand, taking Dori’s arm in a death grip.

My bodyguard’s eyes darkened. “Ye don’t deserve to have your night splashed over the tabloids tomorrow. Leave while he’s out of the way. I have a car waiting outside.”

Photographers followed me all the time. I’d made an art form out of evading them when needed but had come to accept it as part of my reality a long time ago—interestingly, right at the point the first scandalous headline appeared, with the man in front of me bare-chested in the picture.

That was the turning point in my life. The tabloids and scandal pages changed their tone. They’d always commented on my looks and fashion but shifted it up a notch to my love life. I’d been barely eighteen, yet my adulthood made me fair game for them to hunt. The types of sordid acts I’d read about myself apparently doing were so far from my timid reality it was laughable.

Raphael had been right in the middle of that crossroads of history.

Dori rolled an unsure glance down to where I leaned against him. “Your overfamiliar employee says we should go.”

“He says a lot of things. Doesn’t mean I’ll obey. Who knows what his motivations are.”

We were at the back of the dance floor and close to the rail. I straightened from Dori and wobbled backwards on my high heels. Raphael caught my waist, steadying and releasing me in one smooth move.

A lick of heat curled in my belly. If I ran, he’d chase me, I was certain. That was a far hotter image than he had the right to claim.

I lifted my chin. “Why are you here?”

“I was nearby and saw ye come in. I worried.”

“How did you even recognise me?”

He pursed his lips but didn’t answer, as if it was obvious. Except it wasn’t, because no one else had stared.

“Where were you?” If he’d followed me all evening, I’d riot.

“With Will and Johnnie in a bar across the road.”

I squinted around. “Did they come with you?”

He shook his head, but I already knew the answer. They wouldn’t bother if they weren’t getting paid for it, and wraparound security cost more than the budget allocated to little old me.

“You’ve been on my team for five minutes. Why do you care?”

“I just want to get ye out of here safely.”

Standing next to Dori, Raphael tightened his jaw. Between the two men, my blondie Euro aristocrat bestie and my dark and delicious bodyguard, I was a lucky lady for the view.

I also knew the second my friend made one of his infamous bad choices, as his mother had termed it when we were younger.

Dori’s lips curved with interest. “We don’t need your help. The worst that photographer could’ve got so far is us dancing with no clear sight of my girl’s face. Fuck that guy. If he wants pictures, we’ll give them to him. Point him out.”

All three of us turned. From the bathroom hall, a bedraggled older man strode out, so out of place among the glittering elite that he was unmistakable. He passed the bouncer at the top of the steps, and the two men shared a look. That little interaction confirmed my suspicion that he’d paid good money to be told where I was.

My soul was heavy that there was yet another place I couldn’t be left alone.

Dori laughed. “Never mind. Got him. Let’s have some fun.”

“What are we going to do?”

Ignoring me, he pushed through the people on the dance floor, temporarily clearing a path and providing direct line of sight to the man hunting me. I stood taller, and the photographer raised a small camera in his hand.

Instantly, Raphael stepped in front of me and blocked the shot. For some reason, that gesture amid everything else he was doing hit me in the feels. I peered around him.

Instead of going to the photographer, Dori veered to a clear part of the rail over the dance floor. In a pause in the music, while the crowd waited for the beat drop, Dori yelled at the top of his voice. “Oh my God. It’s Elsie Sale!”

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