Page 11 of Faking Cinderella
Margie Johnson has pluck, even if she’s not attempting to command the room.
“Had the door code,” he reminds me.
“But no one knew you were coming.”
“Decker told me to come.”
“Hetoldyou to come?”
“Said I could stay here until I find my own place.”
Good. This should be temporary. A few days at most. A few very awkward days if the way we’ve met is any indication. “You’re moving here from somewhere?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“None of your business. I’m leaving this room, getting my bag, and going to the bedroom. Don’t hit me again, or I’ll defend myself this time.”
“I’m in the bedroom.”
“Of fucking course you are,” he mutters to the ceiling.
I channel my inner Margie Johnson, the housekeeper. “But if they’d told me you were coming, I would’ve left a blanket on the couch for you. Lucky told me the pull-out sofa is surprisingly comfortable.”
He doesn’t ask me again why I’m here.
Doesn’t ask me to repeat my story about how I know Lucky so he can find holes in it, which is what I’d expect of any halfway adequate executive protection specialist.
Instead, he does exactly as he said he’d do, and he moves intentionally toward me.
A behemoth of a man, moving like a glacier, with streaks of hair dye running down his forehead and disappearing into the beard on his cheeks, but still so large and poised that he’s probably intimidating the paint on the walls in here.
And Ilikeit.
Deep, deep down, somewhere way inside me, a bone-deep respect and appreciation for this beast blossoms.
He’s unknown. He’s danger. He’s a challenge.
Large enough that he could’ve hurt me when I attacked him, but he didn’t fight back.
He’s your brothers’ friend, and this is already too messy, I remind myself.
He gets closer, and ohhhh shit.
His eyes are gonna be dyed too.
I step gracefully out of the way, remember Margie would be less composed, make myself scramble, and I slip on the flour on the wood floor behind me.
“I’m not cleaning that up,” Rhys informs me as I right myself without any assistance from him.
Cyril would’ve helped me even if he was mad at me, even if I told him not to, that I’d clean up my own mess. But Cyril can’t be spotted. Especially by a guy who’s apparently done security too. “I’m a housekeeper. I’ve got it.”
He slides another look at me as he grabs his green duffel bag from where he dropped it beside the door.
I don’t like it.
The look he’s giving me, I mean.
