Page 31 of Behind the Scenes

This moment didn’t need to have an argument added to it.

They reached the car, and he set her down in the backseat before closing the door to see Lauren waiting to get in with her. Not this time, though. He wanted her alone for the ride back to the apartment.

“What are we going to do about the car that brought us here?” Lauren asked as she reached to open the car door.

Kyle and Malcolm walked toward him, so he pointed at her and told them, “Take Lauren and go with her in the car they came down in. I’ll take Alexis. We’ll meet back at the penthouse.”

“But she needs me,” Lauren said in a tearful voice. “It’s my job to help her with this kind of thing.”

“You already did enough, don’t you think?” he said, barely able to contain his anger over what the two of them had done.

His accusation stunned her, and for a moment her mouth hung open as she struggled to find the words to say in response. Hunter knew this hadn’t been Lauren’s fault. He’d only been around Alexis for a short time, but he knew who called the shots.

Lauren followed. She didn’t lead.

But at that moment, after hours of his emotions ping-ponging from angry to scared and then to furious when he saw them sitting there on the beach as two men harassed them, he couldn’t separate his anger from his relief that he’d gotten there just in time.

As tears filled her eyes, she lowered her head and quietly said, “I would never do anything to hurt her. I swear I wouldn’t, Hunter.”

He felt for her. Of all the people in Alexis’s world, Lauren saw as much of the awful parts of it as she did the good. If anyone deserved a break, it was her.

“I know. Just give me a little time alone with her.”

She wiped her eyes and held out Alexis’s bag. “Here. Give this to her. I put her fudge in there for her.”

Hunter took the bag and tried not to be angry at her for still enabling Alexis even then. As he got into the car, he tossed it onto the passenger seat and looked up at the rearview mirror. Alexis sat curled up in a ball, her face once again hidden in her knees.

As much as he wished he could say something kind or sweet, all he wanted to do was lash out at her. She could have gotten herself hurt or even killed. Why wouldn’t her stalker know she went off on her own without even a single goddamned bodyguard to fucking Atlantic City? He seemed to know her every move, and yet she ran off with no protection and just her best friend to shield her if anything happened.

Which, of course, it fucking did. What made her think she could just put on a brown wig and nobody would recognize one of the most beautiful women in the world? That unforgettable face had been on magazine covers in dozens of countries. How could she have thought she could ever just go sit on the beach like anyone else?

He drove off and headed up the Garden State Parkway, stewing over everything that had happened. As he settled into the drive, he looked up in the rearview mirror again and saw her still sitting there terrified. The sight of her curled up and rocking back and forth made his anger soften enough that he wanted to let her know she had him to protect her.

“It’s okay. You’re safe. You can relax now.”

Alexis looked up and her gaze met his in the mirror. She stared at him with her big brown eyes still full of fear but didn’t say a thing. She didn’t look away before he turned back to focus on the road again, and as he navigated through traffic, he couldn’t get the look in her eyes out of his mind.

The way she seemed so small and vulnerable back there did something to him he hadn’t expected. Without even knowing when it happened, he realized now that he wanted to protect her more than just because it was his job.

The mere idea of her being hurt made his chest ache. That blond guy had his hands on her, and just the sight of that made him want to tear his head off.

As they slowed down for traffic, he grabbed her bag off the passenger seat and reached back to put it on the seat next to her. “Lauren said there was fudge in there.”

She didn’t say anything, and a few minutes later he looked back and saw she hadn’t opened the bag either. Maybe he should have let Lauren come along with them. She seemed to be the only one who knew how to reach Alexis. Obviously, he couldn’t.

The cars in front of him began to speed up as they passed a broken down car in the slow lane. Hunter looked at his watch and saw it was two o’clock already. Most of his day had been spent either worried or angry.

Or a combination of both.

Now he felt strangely calm, like the relief of knowing she sat safely in the seat behind him made all the anger and worry fade away. Odd. He never thought of himself as emotional. In fact, back at the estate, he considered himself one of the more reserved of all the guys there. He certainly was no Gideon or Xavier with their yelling and arguing over sports all the time. And he definitely didn’t act like Julian with his con man bullshit he liked to use to play tricks on people.

All this ran through his head, and he realized just how much being around Alexis had made him feel more of everything. First, it was disgust when he didn’t know much about her. Then curiosity. Then worry and anger over her antics today. And now as he looked back at her while she slyly popped a piece of candy into her mouth and then looked around like she’d done something wrong, he felt protective.

He’d never felt that way about any other client, and more than one of them had been in far greater danger than her. Convinced the difference had to do with the circumstances of this case, he chalked up his changing emotions to her effect on everyone in her world. As soon as he finished this assignment, he’d go back to being his normal self.

At least he hoped he would. God help him, he couldn’t continue feeling like this for much longer.

“I’m hungry. Can we stop somewhere?” Alexis asked in a quiet voice.

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