Page 59 of The Kiss that Captured a Billionaire
She’d been found.
Again.
“There’s the van. You know, I thought she was crazy for buying something so… loud, at first, but now I’m glad,” Theo said.
He had spotted the van immediately. Not that it was difficult—it looked like a kaleidoscope had crashed into a flower shop. The thing was parked under a cluster of trees, facing away from the main lot, as if that would somehow make it inconspicuous.
Nikos chuckled. “There’s no way to miss it, that’s for sure.”
His mouth curved despite himself. His Rose was brilliant at hiding in plain sight.
“Now that we’ve found her again, what’s the plan?” Nikos asked.
Theo grinned. “You drop me off and—” Nikos's snort of laughter cut him off, and he glared. “You think it’s funny, but she’ll have to take pity on me,” he finished.
“Like she did at the gas station?” Nikos scoffed.
“This is different,” he muttered.
“Hey, if you want to freeze your balls off and sleep on the ground, more power to you. We’ve been there, done that, once too often when we were in the military. I like my creature comforts now,” Nikos stated in a dry tone.
“Well, the nearest creature comforts are forty miles away, and I’m not letting her out of my sight again,” he muttered.
He switched the SUV headlights to the running lights as he pulled into the far end of the rest area.
The place was quiet, lit only by the soft glow from a couple of low, shielded lights in front of the bathroom. Rose’s van was the only vehicle here.
The rest area was a lot nicer than some places he, Nikos, and the others had camped in during their military service. It was also a far cry from the penthouse skyline of New York. The fact that he and Rose weren’t there—or in London, Paris, Athens, or Rome—was solely on his broad shoulders.
He shifted the SUV into park and unbuckled his seatbelt. He looked at Nikos when his friend grabbed his arm as he opened the driver’s door.
“Are you sure about this?” Nikos asked.
Theo wasn’t sure about anything. Normally, that would have concerned him.
Well, normally that wouldn’t happen, I would know what I was doing,he mused with a rueful shake of his head.
“Give me ten minutes. If—if she doesn’t let me in, then we’ll go to Plan B,” he muttered.
“Aren’t we on Plan X, Y, or Z yet?” Nikos asked with a frown.
Theo huffed out a breath, grimacing at the visible puff in the cold air.
“Ten minutes,” he groused, reaching for his thick, wool jacket in the backseat before he turned away.
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket, thankful that he had it. His mind was running through all the ways Rose might react to his turning up again. Most of them left him feeling less than optimistic.
He slowed, breathing deeply as he approached the dark van. The thought that he might scare her occurred to him. He didn’t want that.
There she was, curled inside, her face lit faintly by the warm glow of a small reading lamp, blanket to her chin, eyes heavy-lidded, and that stubborn crease still between her brows as she studied a large map.
For a moment, he just stood there. The instinct to tap the glass was strong, but so was the urge to watch her like this—at peace, or as close to it as she allowed herself.
Three days of chasing her had left him with too much time to think—about what he’d done wrong, how she’d left without hearing him out, and how he wanted her back for reasons beyond DNA or family ties.
He shivered as a brisk breeze wound through the canyon. He didn’t do passive waiting—or dwell on the past—not when there was only a thin piece of glass and metal separating him from what he wanted.
He stepped forward and tapped the glass lightly with two fingers.
