by C. L. Stone
It would have been humorous, but I wasn’t sure laughing at this would have been appropriate.
He ignored it and focused on me, arms folded at his chest and examining me with an intense stare.
He was quiet long enough to make me glance away at the wall of books. “Uhm,” I said quietly and then returned my gaze to him. I didn’t mean to be so sheepish, but his awkwardness was overwhelming. Or was I being the awkward one? In the moment, it was hard to tell. “Thank you for letting me stay. I didn’t mean to pass out, and I should have asked about staying overnight.”
“Don’t think about it,” he said, the blue eyes held their intensity. Did he ever blink? “What color would you say your hair is?”
My lips parted at his surprising question. “My hair?” I said, reaching up to touch a couple of locks around my shoulders. “Mahogany.” Not my natural color, but I often flipped between shades of chestnut and darker tones. I liked how it made my skin look. “According to my hair stylist.”
He nodded slowly and then knocked his knuckles on the desktop, drumming in quick taps. “It’s cute. Works with your baby-doll face. And matches my furniture.”
My heart had lifted at his compliments and then jerked at his odd choice in words at the end. I grimaced, thinking he was joking again. “Thanks?”
“And when were you going to tell me you were a criminal on the run?” he asked in a silvery voice, so calm that it took me a moment to realize he was being facetious.
My cheeks caught fire. I covered them with my palms. Too late to feign ignorance. His face told me he knew who I was. “I had no involvement.” I clamped my mouth shut, shaking my head.
My wallet. I scanned the room, unable to help myself. What did he know?
Did he manage to charge my phone and look at that, too?
“Really?” he asked, a brown eyebrow lifting. “The Georgia police want you for questioning.”
Absurd. Was he lying to throw me off? I scoffed. “Me?”
“I’m thinking they’d want to chat, given what they found at your apartment. That’s pretty normal procedure to bring every person of interest in for questioning.”
Was that true?
Amid the chaos, I hadn’t stopped to think they would want to talk to me. I didn’t consider myself any sort of person of interest. All I heard was my things were getting taken away. I didn’t want to be involved. I was already humiliated. I figured they might ask questions if I was there but just what I knew about my ex, but it would be voluntary and I didn’t want to.
The neighbor who had called me said nothing about the police asking for me.
I clenched my teeth, staring blankly at him without an answer. I had assumed they knew what I knew, that I had no involvement. Why should I? I had a fine job and a reputation. Everyone who knew me should have known I would never do anything of the sort.
I went a long while without speaking. He continued to stare at me, but the spark of amusement in his eyes caught my attention.
Did he find this funny?
I huffed, dropping my hands, balling them into fists against my lap. “Well, I had no idea! I left after I heard they raided my apartment. I left work and just...left.”
“So you ran away?”
My lips twitched at the corner. “Everything important to me was gone. I couldn’t stand the thought of facing everyone. I heard the news cameras were there. I thought it best to just let the chaos die down, avoid furthering any scandal.”
He raised an eyebrow, the humor in his eyes suddenly gone. “What I don’t understand is why you were in the middle of nowhere in those farm fields. You were hitchhiking. If you were innocent, why didn’t you just hop a plane?”
“I passed a bus depot on the way,” I said and lowered my gaze, staring hard at my knees. “I stopped there first, because I wanted to save some money since it could take time to find a new job. When the next bus heading east wasn’t going to arrive until very late, someone else at the terminal said they could get me as far as Columbia.”
He smirked, and then rubbed his chin with a couple of fingers, making a raspy sound across his unshaven skin. “You were nowhere near Columbia.”
“I jumped out when he demanded...sexual favors.”
He sighed heavily, surprising me, and I looked at him.
Our eyes locked. His mouth dipped into a frown. “Why didn’t you check in at your apartment? You didn’t think they’d want to ask you a few things? Like why illegally obtained prescription bottles were stashed in your clothes?”
“They weren’t mine,” I croaked out, unable to help being defensive, the panicked beating of my heart overwhelming. And then realized how ridiculous that was to say. “I mean the pills. I had no idea what he was doing.”
“But they were your clothes,” he said calmly. “How could you not have noticed?”
I had wondered this, too, and I paused, considering the question. “I...” I brushed strands of hair away from my eyes. “I’d talk about what I was going to wear the next day. He had time to switch out pill bottles to other garments if he wanted.” I sat back in the chair, distraught and shaking. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed either before now. “He had been careful enough, because I would have absolutely kicked him out on his rear if I’d known. But there were lots of other places to stash them. Why my clothes?”
His mouth reformed into a very small smirk. “You do realize he could have hidden them in your clothes to pin you, right?”
The thought of that flooded me with anger. “Me? After letting him stay with me? He’d be an idiot...” On top of that, he sold to the kids of my clients, which meant I had a stronger connection to them than he would.
I realized now that I’d made myself possibly look guiltier by leaving. What a disaster.
There was no way any judge would believe that I bailed just to avoid the drama.
I rubbed my fingertips against tired eyes, feeling the glimpse of a tension headache forming. “I can’t believe this is happening to me.” I stood, embarrassed and burning with regret. I should have noticed. “I’ll leave. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize...” Of course he was right. I had run away, but I had no car, the apartment and the furniture were rented. The only thing of real value had been my clothes. I had my wallet and my phone. It seemed like a good idea at the time to clear out and allow the police to do what had to be done.
It made sense that the police wanted to talk to me. How stupid...
My shoulder sunk, my hands relaxed by my sides, defeated but resolved. I wasn’t going to sit by, hiding in the shadows in fear of the day police found me. I couldn’t live like that. I could only hope they believed me. I considered a lawyer.
I headed for the door, blinded by my own tears. I had absolutely no plan, and no real idea what to do, but Ace and Soma didn’t need to be involved.
He stood and reached for me, his hand enclosing completely around my wrist. “Hang on there. You can’t just walk back to Georgia.”
I pushed on toward the door, the humiliation coursing through me. I wanted to disappear. “I got here, didn’t I?”
He harrumphed and tugged me around until I was facing him, but I turned my face away.
I didn’t want him to see the anxious tears threatening to spill over or how I was shaking with anger. I didn’t want to know, but yet, I had kept my head in the sand for long enough. “Is it all over the news?” I asked.
He rolled his eyes. “More than it needed to be. It’s a ridiculous police raid, parading out with lingerie and high-heeled boots in front of a line of news cameras. It’s a freak show they’re setting up. You know how everyone loves to band together to hate. The news women were ogling that guy. Said he was too pretty to send to jail.” He tilted his head and eyebrow arched. “Boyfriend?”
“Ex, as of yesterday,” I said sharply, still avoiding looking him in the eye. No doubt if they raided my apartment, they’d found a couple of my photographs and plastered them all over the news. Or worse, they shared my Instagram accoun
t.
“You can’t keep running,” he said quietly, still holding my wrist firmly. There was a tightness to his lips, a steady resolve to his demeanor. “I know the instinct these days is to hide when the internet is coming down on you. Normally, that’s the right thing to do is to lay low. But you did it a little too soon.”
“It wasn’t my intention to evade the police,” I said, twisting my wrist, although halfheartedly. “Not in that way. I just hope they believe me.”
He held tighter, not doing much other than keeping me still. “What are you doing? Where do you keep going?”
I wasn’t sure, and I wanted to figure it out, but then I realized I was causing more problems if I just walked out the door. He had his own problems to deal with and here I was in his home, when he was evading vloggers himself. “If I’d known, I would’ve never let you bring me here.” I stopped trying to tug myself away and stood still. “You’re right, I can’t just run out the door. What can I do? Sneak out the back? Wait until night and then slip out of here?”
“And let you die of heat exhaustion on your way to North Carolina or back to Georgia?” he asked and gave me a light shake. “Are you insane? You could barely get yourself out of the car yesterday. You’re exhausted and in shock. You can’t just walk out of here.”
I sighed. My heart thundered. I looked at him, confused by his concern and how at the same time he still sounded like was scolding me. “I...you want me to call the police and have them pick me up? To take me back to Georgia?”
He released my wrist and rolled his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. What a waste of time...and you.”
My jaw slackened, my body stiff, standing awkwardly with my arms out. “W...what?”
“You’re not a drug dealer,” he said, his blue eyes becoming calculating. “I’ve read about you. The real you. Not what the news is spreading about you.”
“How?”
He turned to his desk, leaning over it to open the drawer. He returned, presenting me with my wallet and my dead phone. “I researched you after you passed out, just in case someone was looking for you. Apparently, I was right but it wasn’t who I thought. But I looked up your blog and browsed your social media feeds.”
I reached out for my wallet, taking it from him and holding it and then reaching for my phone. “My...Facebook? My Instagram? Is everything exploding?”
“Your name already has a couple hundred articles showing on the front page of Google. And yes, you’ve got tens of thousands of followers now, some supportive, but mostly loud and very angry people in outrage, wondering why you aren’t responding. It took a while to dig up what you were doing prior to this.” He brushed a palm across the side of his head, rubbing, stretching his neck. “I’ve been up all night reading.”
Every cell inside me burned. My knees shook, followed by a strong desire to sink to the floor and let the earth swallow me whole. I drew my wallet and phone to my chest and hugged them to my body. “Then thank you for sparing me for one last night,” I said mechanically.
My whole plan was in ruins. My second chance wouldn’t happen.
He laughed— a quick “ha!”— and stopped short. “Why in the world did you want to come to Charleston?”
“I was going to start over,” I said. “Get a new job. Try to get back to what I was doing.”
“A personal stylist, right?”
“Wardrobe coordinator. Stylists do your hair. I work with clothes.”
He raised an eyebrow. “That’s a pretty upscale job, playing dress up with women.”
“And men, on occasion. I just went full time last year on my own, still commission, but no longer limited to just one store to choose from. Before that, I dressed people at a designer boutique.”
“You sent Soma off to return the underwear he bought for you. Not to your taste?”
Soma didn’t tell him? “I take pride in buying only from designers who use humane manufacturing practices as much as possible, with complete transparency in supply chains. I told Soma it was fine, but he insisted on returning them.”
“I see,” he said, his voice softer. He stepped close to me, almost toe to toe. I wasn’t short, but it caused me to tilt my head if I wanted to look at his face. I didn’t dare back away.
I waited for him to dismiss me, to tell me how he planned to get rid of me. Was his curiosity satisfied enough to allow me a graceful exit?
“Honestly, Evelyn Lacroix, you’re not a very good judge of character, are you?”
I winced at hearing him speaking my real name but was partially surprised he pronounced my last name correctly the first try. “Actually, I go by Eva.”
“Really? I like Evelyn. It suits you. Pretty.”
I breathed in sharply, thinking he was mocking me.
I got the most innocent, most sincere and honest depth of blue, enough to take my breath away.
How he could push me with his gauche humor and drag me back with those compliments? He knew just what buttons to push on me and he barely knew me. I couldn’t stand it. I needed to get away from him. “Do I need to turn myself in? Are you going to call the police, or aren’t you?”
He scanned me head to toe, and then shrugged. “Maybe.”
Maybe! I shook, every nerve vibrating and on edge. “Well, get it over with,” I said.
“If you want me to,” he said. “But I think I can help you.”
My mind reeled. Was he a lawyer? Because that’s the only thing that could help me, and I wasn’t sure how much one would cost to fix the mistake I made in running away. “What?”
He tilted his head slightly. “What if I told you I believe what you’ve told me? I’m actually in need of a favor. Maybe we can help each other.”
I sputtered again, trying to form a sentence. Very undignified, but with so many shocks to my system, I was a conflicting mess. “W-what kind...o-of...”
He slid a finger across my lips, not touching, just hovering to get my attention. “A colleague of mine is causing problems for me. Like yesterday morning...”
“The vloggers to your hotel room?” I asked, my breath falling on his finger so the warmth returned to my lips.
He nodded and lowered his finger from my face. “I found out it was him, or at least he was the reason the girls were looking at me. I think he’s doing it to irritate me or distract me from something else. It’s very annoying.”
“I can imagine.”
“Help me stop him, and I’ll make some phone calls and see if we can’t get your face off the television newsfeeds and you out of trouble. I have a few lawyers in that area that owe me favors too.”
“You can do all that? For me?”
He nodded. “Although you may need to change your looks and your name...For now at least.”
I touched the cotton blend of the pants I wore, rubbing the material between my fingers. “I’m not sure I could do anything for you. Getting involved with me guarantees if he sends more vloggers, they will find...me, which would give them a lot to work with. Besides, the damage is done for me. I can go the police and not implicate you. Once I’m cleared for not being involved with the drugs, I can try another city and...I don’t know. Wait a little while until my face is forgotten perhaps?”
“Getting charges cleared won’t be as easy as you think. You could be charged as an accessory, and it’s worse since it looks like you fled. It’ll be hard to prove you were ignorant of your boyfriend’s deals with him stashing them in your clothes.”
Was he right? Was going back just asking to be put in jail even if I hadn’t been involved? I pressed my lips together. “But what could you do? You can clear my name?”
“I can do a lot of things.” He rolled his shoulders back, standing taller with his broad chest out. “And I think you’re perfect for what I need.”
I bit my lower lip, and then stopped when it stung my sunburn. “If you think I can do it, but how am I supposed to stop this person and get the vloggers off of your back? Isn’t that something you should get the police
involved with? Charge him with harassment?”
“They’d never do anything about it,” Ace said quickly.
A little too quick to dismiss calling the police. When he turned his back on me, I raised an eyebrow, following his movements as he stepped across the room again.
He didn’t meet my eyes until a full couple of moments passed after what he said.
He wasn’t being totally honest with me.
Afraid to involve the police on harassment charges?
Or was he afraid to call them now, because of me?
He returned to leaning against the desk and folded his arms across his chest. “But I have a plan. I think. I’m working out the details. In the meantime, we’ll change your appearance, give you a new name, a new history, and for the sake of why you’re here, we’ll just call you my new girlfriend.”
I scoffed. “You’re joking. With my face on the news? Makeup can only do so much. They’ll know who I am. You’ll be ridiculed.”
“I think we can pull it off,” he said. “There’s an event soon. Some charity thing. I need someone who knows how to behave, but also someone completely new. Someone who isn’t familiar at all in the local social circles. You’re just what I need.”
I shot him a you-are-completely-crazy look. “How would pretending to be your girlfriend in public get him to stop irritating you? Why can’t I just be...your assistant, or business partner of some sort?”
He laughed, his voice a little raspy. He reached for me, taking my hand, drawing me back into the room as he sat against the desk. When I was close enough that I was standing in front of him, he brought my hand to his lips, bowed his head over it, and touched his lips to my knuckles. A hint of something mischievous sparkled in those blue eyes. “Ace Waris doesn’t have a business partner, and I can’t bring assistants to events like this. Girlfriend works better; it’ll drive him crazy. There will be fewer questions. No one will blink an eye at it. Trust me, this is the easiest.”
