“No,” I say quickly. “I’m going to go shop today. I want to pick something that feels like me.”
“What happens if you have another bout of sickness?” Again, he doesn’t wait for my reply. “No. I think I should just send a stylist. Then you can rest until tomorrow night. Can you be home by three?”
In other words, he’s already set this up. I glance at the clock that reads ten. “Yes. Of course.”
“I put in a tentative call and the stylist said she could come to you then. At the mansion. You can just stay there tonight.”
“No,” I snap. “No, I’m going to be home tonight. I don’t want other people around me and I don’t want to spread germs you might catch. Pick me up at my place for the party.”
“Do you have a fever?”
“Not right now. It too comes and goes.”
“Then you’re right. Stay at your place.” In other words, don’t spread my germs all over his things. “But,” he adds, “I’m sending a doctor to your house as well. Be home at three.”
“That’s really not necessary.”
“It most definitely is necessary. End of topic and back to the party. My tie will be flag-blue. I told the stylist you need a dress that’s either blue or red. We need to start showing how patriotic we are. And I met with the head of my big investment group. After this event, we’ll need to step up our public appearances.”
After this event I’ll be gone, I think. Forever. I just hope that doesn’t mean I’m dead. “Anything I can do to support you,” I say, “you know I will.”
“And you, my sweetness, will be the most stunning first lady to ever grace the White House.”
He’s never called me sweetness before. I wonder if some focus group told him it would be adorable to leak to the press, or he forgot he was talking to me, not his campaign manager, otherwise known as his mistress.
“I’m thinking that you,” he continues, “as the first lady, could design a memorial that becomes iconic.”
There’s a time when I’d be thrilled and honored at such a prospect. Today, all I manage is a weak, “It’s all very exciting.”
“It is. Call me when you pick your dress and after you see the doctor. I love you. Get some rest.” He hangs up without forcing me to repeat those dreaded “I love you” words that I’m pretty sure would have caused Rick to lose his shit. I rotate toward the bathroom and find him standing in the archway, one muscular shoulder pressed to the frame, a snug black T-shirt now stretched across his broad, perfect chest. He doesn’t move but his eyes, those deep sea-blue eyes, are fixed on me.
“I told him I’d be at the house at three to meet with a stylist, and he’s sending a doctor to me. He wanted me to stay at the mansion tonight but I insisted I go to my house. Wes is dead now, so I assumed it was safe for me to go there.”
He doesn’t speak, his expression unreadable but the lines of his hard body are taut, his jaw still shadowed with stubble, set hard. He pushes off the doorframe and slowly saunters toward me, a panther on the prowl, a predator, in that moment he’s a predator. He’s lethal. He’s a killer, at least a part of him is, but I don’t care. And as crazy as it might seem to someone else, I want him insanely right now. He stops in front of me, but he doesn’t touch me. Goosebumps lift on my skin. I want him to touch me. “I hate you with him,” he says, his voice a low, rough rasp.
“Me, too,” I whisper, stepping into him, my hand settling on his chest, the thunder of his heart beneath my palm proof that Gabriel’s very existence affects him. I spent years thinking that he didn’t love me. Years believing he never looked back. I was wrong, so very wrong.
“I want you and me, Rick. I want that very much, but we have to do what we have to do to end this. Let me go to the party. By the time it’s over with, Tag will be gone and so will we. I’ll be on a plane with you to New York.”
He catches my waist and pulls me to him, pressing his forehead to mine. “I can’t promise not to kill him.”
“I know,” I say, and my hand settles on his cheek, over the scar he’d gotten that night he killed Wes’s wife, but ultimately that scar exists because my father convinced him to join the black ops team. I’m not sure what to do with that information.
Rick eases back to study me, his expression probing. “I’m not talking about Tag. I’m talking about Gabriel. If he lays the wrong hand on you, I will kill him.”
“You’ll be too busy killing Tag.”
“If you’re trying to convince me you should be at that party, you’re failing.”
“I’ll be protected,” I remind him. “And the party is high profile. There will be plenty of security present. I need to help you, Rick, and I need my father. If I don’t show up at that party, Tag will know something is up and that puts you and my father at risk.”
He looks skyward, seeming to struggle a moment before he fixes me in a turbulent stare. “You do not leave that party with him. And I mean you do not leave that party with him. I don’t care if you have to make a scene. Do you understand?”
Cotton forms in my throat. I swallow hard. “You’re afraid he’s already decided to kill me.”
“He and Pocher already decided that you’re disposable should you become a problem. We didn’t hear them make the definitive decision to get rid of you, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t made.”
My heart swishes in my ears and begins to thunder while the cotton in my throat grows more dense. I can hardly breathe. I didn’t love Gabriel, but when I met him, I thought he was a good man. I didn’t expect him to turn out to be a man who planned a hit on my life. No one can expect such things.
Rick’s hands come down on my arms. “Candy,” he says, softly, and I stare at him, this man who owns my heart and soul, this man who calls himself a killer. And yes, he is, but he’s not a monster. Gabriel is a monster.
“I need to hear you say it, baby,” he urges.
“I won’t leave with him. I promise. No matter what it takes.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Savage
Candace fixes her face while I stand at the window of the hotel bedroom, contemplating going all caveman and shit on her. I could put her on a damn plane and send her to New York. The only reason I don’t is Pocher who lives in North Hampton. He’s a bad news dude, a powerful man with the resources of the Society, which is basically the backdoor government, Washington’s underground. Which is why I need Kane Mendez. He doesn’t just legitimately own the oil industry, and buckets of cash, he’s connected to a drug cartel. And he and that cartel, hate Pocher. Kane Mendez might be dirty, but he’s the kind of dirty we need.
Minutes later, Candace and I enter the dining room to find Asher, Smith, and Adam at work on laptops. They also have donuts and coffee. I drag Candace to a seat next to the donuts, which places me across from Adam and Candace across from Smith. They have coffee. We’ll fight them for it if necessary. “Where the hell is that dipwad, Adrian?” I ask, opening the donut box.
Adam smirks. “He loves you, too, you know?”