Page 23 of Her Keeper
She considered this for a moment... and then nodded firmly. “Make sure you have your phone. I’ll be in touch.” Her eyes flew to Sloane. “Did you pack an overnight bag?”
Sloane was already moving. “Of course I did. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Michael stooped and picked me up, not giving me a choice about whether or not I wanted to walk myself, and together, we all moved for the door and our separate—and hopefully safe—destinations.
10
MICHAEL
Istrode out of the building with Penny in my arms like I knew exactly what I was doing, and had never doubted my position in the world.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. Two weeks ago, I’d thought I knew exactly how and what and when and where, and I was better at it than anyone had ever been. Everything had been under my thumb, and if there were things that went sideways I always knew how to handle them and turn them to my advantage.
And then Penny Lane had stumbled into my life and turned everything on its fucking head. She’d done even more damage when she got herself into this position with Monica Hart, and by the time that happened, I’d been in way too deep to walk away from her like I should have. Now that word was out about what she’d done, and my own father had put an order out for her life, things were sliding even further from my control.
This was all very, very bad. And it might have worried any other man.
But I wasn’t any other man. And anyone who wanted Penny Lane was going to have to kill me to get to her.
Of course, I wasn’t planning on letting anything get to that point. I was, after all, always the man with the plan.
And now that I knew Penny trusted me with her life, I was even more certain that I was going to do whatever it took to save her.
I let my mind brush over what she’d said upstairs—that she’d done all of it to try to save me—and felt the statement drive right through my heart. This girl, this tiny, sunshine thing who knew absolutely nothing about how the mafia worked, had thrown herself right into the life just to try to protect me from a reporter who was out to hurt me. Yes, it had been the wrong decision and she’d probably caused more damage than good.
But that didn’t change the fact that she’d done it to try to shelter me.
I’d never been sheltered from anything in my entire life. I’d been born into a family that ruled the mafia, and had been trained starting from an early age to take death and violence on as parts of my daily life. No one had ever tried to cover my eyes or stand between me and anything bad that might happen. Joseph had protected me as much as he could when we were young, but he’d never been able to shelter me from what our life was going to be.
Penny Lane was the first person who had ever thought they could—or should—protect me. And that had given me feelings I hadn’t even known existed.
So I would be well and truly fucked if I’d let anyone else hurt her. She’d protected me, and now it was my turn to shelter her from the bad guys coming after us.
No matter how much it turned me against my own father.
And right now, that meant getting her away from Brooks and Sloane, who stood out like sore thumbs in this town—and who my father would know had her. We had to get to shelter. A spot that didn’t hold either of Penny’s best friends.
Luckily, I had just the spot.
I gathered her closer to me and bent over her as we hit the cold air of the evening, trying to shelter her from anyone that might be out there waiting. That didn’t stop her from being able to see, though, and I heard her gasp when we hit the sidewalk.
“You’re kidding,” she muttered.
I almost stopped to see what she was talking about, but stopping would make us sitting ducks out there, and that was the last thing we needed. “What?” I asked, my eyes on the spot where I’d left my car.
“That car that we just passed. I know it.”
Okay, that was vague.
“Know it from where?” I asked, jerking open the passenger door of my car and sliding her in. I slammed the door and walked as quickly as I could manage to my own door, yanking it open and hoping to God no one was watching, because we looked the opposite of relaxed right now.
The moment I was in the driver’s seat, Penny answered like there’d been no interruption in our conversation. “From outside my building,” she said quickly, her eyes straight ahead but her spine stiff like she was expecting something to go wrong at any moment. “He was parked in the parking lot across from my building. Watching me when I left.”
Shit.
“Which car?” I asked, scanning the street for any vehicle that looked familiar.
She gestured a black sedan with her chin, but didn’t look directly at it.
