Which meant the threat to Katrina’s anonymity was growing. He gave Jia a short nod and stepped around her to head to the front doors of the main house. “I’ll take care of this.”
“It’ll be okay, right?”
“Yes.” He’d make sure it was okay.
Jia trailed him all the way to Katrina’s office. Jas paused. “Give us a moment alone, please.”
She bit her lip and nodded. He knocked once on the heavy wooden door of Katrina’s office, and waited impatiently for her faint “Yes?”
The light from the overhead halogens lit up Katrina’s shoulder-length light brown hair. She didn’t glance up from her computer screen when he walked in, which worried him even more. Katrina was given to dreaminess, but she was hypervigilant if she was completely alone. His heart ached every time she jumped at a noise.
He stopped in front of the desk. He tried to put himself in the shoes of someone who may not have seen her for years. He remembered when her hair had been darker and longer. A carefully screened stylist came to the house every few months and touched up her highlights—balayage, Katrina had once told him, was the correct term—and trimmed her hair. Her round face was fuller now, her body different. Still beautiful, though. She’d been beautiful then, she was beautiful now, and she’d be beautiful sixty years from now.
Now is not the time for waxing poetic.
“Jia told you,” she said, forestalling his greeting. Her voice was flat, which ratcheted his worry up more. He hadn’t heard her sound like this in a long time. Generally speaking, her voice was as warm and golden as her skin, bubbling underneath, like she was barely suppressing laughter.
He linked his hands together in front of him, because he wanted to grab her. “It’s a security breach. You should have told me.”
The rare rebuke did catch her attention. She blinked up at him. Her robe gaped at the neck, revealing her collarbones.
He came around the desk and glanced at the computer screen, which was open to the tweets he’d skimmed on Jia’s phone. The numbers on the faves and retweets were flipping every second. God, had she been watching this counter all day? He infused calm into his voice. “It will be fine. These things blow over. What’s viral today will be a forgotten meme by tomorrow.”
“Oh God,” she whispered. “I’m a meme too?”
“No,” he said instantly, though she could very well be a meme. He understood computers, but memes still baffled him. “Of course not. It’s a figure of speech.”
She rubbed her temples. “Who would do something like this? This is such a . . . gross invasion of privacy.”
What was privacy now, anyway, in a world where everyone carried a recording device? “She probably assumed it was harmless.”
Katrina swallowed. “Maybe for her.” She straightened and clicked on another window to bring up the spy’s Twitter page. BeccaTheNose was her handle. “Look. Reporting gigs, endorsement offers, a book deal. She got hundreds of thousands of followers today alone. Off of me as content.”
Katrina’s bitterness actually eased Jas. Anger was better than fear or panic.
“It’s bullshit,” he agreed.
“She’s going to benefit from this and I’m . . .”
“Nothing will happen to you, because no one will know it’s you.”
Her breathing deepened. He knew the sound of all of Katrina’s breaths now, and these were long and deliberate, the kind of breaths she took when anxiety was creeping in.
A few weeks after he’d met Katrina, he’d witnessed one of her panic attacks. He’d spent enough time around soldiers with PTSD to have an idea of what was happening. Her attacks didn’t always have a clear trigger, but getting twisted up with anxiety didn’t help.
“What if someone figures it out? How long will it take to track me to this house?” She picked at her cuticles.
“A long time,” he said firmly. He couldn’t touch her, but he eased closer. “Katrina King didn’t buy this house. They’d have to unravel shell company after shell company. Or bribe someone who knows, and that’s a handful of extremely trustworthy people who can’t be bribed.” Katrina’s investment fund consisted of three employees, all vetted and there for the long haul. A couple of select people at Crush knew who she was. Him. Her roommates and their families. Samson. That was it.
After the incident that had scarred her, Katrina had made it plain she wanted nothing more than to disappear. Jas had done his best to give her what she needed. If she wanted to disappear, she’d disappear. If she wanted to stay in her house forever, he’d facilitate that. If she wanted to venture out, he’d have her back there too. She was a grown, smart woman. She knew what was best for her.
She fiddled with her collar. “It used to be I was scared of having a panic attack in public. The fear, the embarrassment. What if I couldn’t get away, or if people saw me, or someone hurt me when I was incapacitated?”
She didn’t seem to need him to respond, so he didn’t. He didn’t know the full history of Katrina’s panic disorder. She didn’t talk much about her life with her father, but he imagined it hadn’t been pleasant.
“Then that man kidnapped me. And I had something else to fear.”
His heart clenched, hard. He often forgot about the scar that ran down Katrina’s cheek. It was simply a part of her now, the same as her hair or legs. But right now it seemed like it was pronounced and white, more obvious than ever.
Her voice dropped so low, he had to lean forward to hear. “If I’m . . . nobody, then no one will want to hurt me, no one can capitalize off me, no one can use me, do you understand? I have to stay nobody.”
Oh, he understood. He understood perfectly what it was like to want to go someplace where no one knew who you were, to want to run from attention and the spotlight.
He didn’t fully realize what he was doing until her soft, smooth hand was in his. A part of him was aghast at the liberty he’d taken.
Another part of him was dying at the warmth that simple touch filled him with.
He tightened his grip when she looked up at him, her eyes pools of worry and fear. She wasn’t a small woman, but she felt fragile and delicate, and if he hadn’t already felt protective of her . . . well, it was all over now. “When you were kidnapped, I wasn’t with you.” She’d been shopping on crowded Oxford Street in London. He’d been with Hardeep when he’d gotten the panicked call from her security detail. “I’m with you now. I promise you. Anyone who wants to hurt you will have to get through me first.”
Chapter Six
KATRINA LOOKED DOWN at Jas’s hand. He’d never touched her before. Not like this, not bare palm to bare palm, for no other purpose but to touch her.
The kicker? She couldn’t even properly enjoy it!
Thanks a fucking lot, Becca.
Katrina had watched with an ever-growing knot in her belly as the metrics for that god-awful Twitter thread climbed ever higher. She’d watched as the woman who had photographed her and narrated a made-up encounter batted her lashes at her new followers and watched hashtags be born and trend in real time: #CafeBae and #CuteCafeGirl.
They weren’t even good hashtags.