Maybe this mysterious news has reached the internet. We both check our phones for cell service.
None for me.
Thatcher shakes his head and slips his phone in his pocket.
“Ms. Ramella.” I spin toward the cluttered desk. “You wouldn’t happen to have an entertainment magazine with you? Like Star, Us Weekly, Celebrity Crush ?”
“I don’t read any of that.” She’s still drilling a ginormous crater into Thatcher’s forehead.
Thatcher finally settles his gaze on Ms. Ramella. “Michelina—”
“You come into my store and you don’t even say a hello?” She throws up her frail, age-spotted hands at Thatcher. “And then you bring all this…” She spouts off another Italian word, her pointer finger jabbing toward the glass entrance where cameramen scream my name. “What’s wrong with youse? Ha? ”
Thatcher hardly bats an eye. He stays behind me, but with his height, he’s able to stretch over to the elderly storeowner. “I’ll make sure they clear out when we leave. It’s nice to see you.” He cups her face tenderly and kisses her cheek in greeting. “You look good.”
I glance keenly from her to him, him to her. I’m seeing much more of Thatcher today than I would’ve ever expected.
She huffs but simmers down a great deal, and then she taps his jaw twice in affection. “Don’t be a…” The Italian word may as well be redacted for me.
I can’t be sure what she called him.
Ms. Ramella tries to lower her voice, but she’s still very audible. “You take care of that famous girl, you hear? What’s her name?”
“Jane,” Thatcher says, nearly cradling the one syllable like he’s protecting all four letters from harm.
My lips ache to rise. Why do I love that so much?
Ms. Ramella seems to know more about Thatcher working in security than she knows about my famous family. Which is terribly sweet.
“Are you related?” I ask while she’s eyeing me.
“No.” She points to him. “I play pinochle and Canasta with his grandma on Thursdays, and my grandson is the boys’ age.”
The boys. She must be referring to Banks, too.
Thatcher talks more urgently to Ms. Ramella, and after a short exchange, she hands him this morning’s paper.
He eagle-eyes the rowdy paparazzi and then looks down at me. “Let’s go in the back. It’ll be more private.”
“Why the newspaper?” I ask before we move a foot.
“The team is now telling me it’s in The Philadelphia Chronicle .”
I used to read that newspaper when I was a little girl. My mom would pass me the business and finance section whenever I asked for them.
But I’m at a loss now. Why would I be mentioned in a reputable newspaper that rarely prints salacious gossip about my family?
“You don’t know what it is?” I ask my bodyguard.
He shakes his head. “Not yet.”
5
THATCHER MORETTI
Fucking comms.
Bad signal—it’s frustrating, but after I get word that this situation revolves around Jane, most of my irritation goes up in flames. Leaving my purpose clear.
Focused.
Protecting her is all that fucking matters.
At the back of Michelina’s store, I lead Jane to a small, enclosed area where fabric swatches are staple-gunned in chaotic array to the wall. Supplies like scissors and rulers are packed in cardboard boxes on utility shelves—shelves that Banks and I helped put together for Michelina years ago.
It’s not every week or even every year that my childhood collides with work. On the ride here, I’d been hoping that Michelina would be absent. Home picking parsley from her pots or stuck watching morning game shows.
Not because I wouldn’t want Jane to meet my grandma’s friend (I shouldn’t want that)—but because when I’m on-duty, I need to be on-duty.
Family and family friends—they’d rather I switch that off and act like I’m on a fucking weekend stroll sipping boxed Chardonnay.
But being vigilant is usually my default setting, no matter what, and Jane’s life is too important to me to be anything less than what I know and who I am.
Muffled voices crack in my eardrum. Comms chatter is close to fully down, but I received enough intel to figure out the rest on our own.
After she skims our new surroundings, Jane perches her hands on her hips. Blue eyes fixed on me with a poised determination. Like she’s ready to help a fighter pilot navigate air space in combat.
I love that—don’t fucking go there, Thatcher. I have a job to do. My cock needs to stand the fuck down.
Neither of us shifts our gazes.
Jane asks, “Is there anything I can do?”
Protocol: do not engage your client in a crisis. It could inflict unnecessary stress on them. For Xander Hale, the protocol is applicable. But pushing Jane out of these conflicts has always made her more anxious.
I edge closer. “You know how to read these?”
“I do. There should be a table of contents in the front.” She glances quickly at me. “Have you read a newspaper before?”
I stand right beside Jane. “I never read through one.” I pause and decide to add, “My grandma reads them all the time and she’ll line drawers with old newspapers. I just use them to clean grill grates.”
She smiles at that image, for some reason. I think I’m a pretty plain person. Too quiet, too serious, I’ve been told. But she appreciates even the simplest things I say.
I lower the newspaper to her height. Careful not to touch my body to any part of her body, the space between us like a tense void, and I fan out the paper with strict hands.
She skims the inked words. “The entertainment section begins on page thirty.”
“We’re not looking for that section from what I heard.” A sharp electronic frequency from the comms suddenly nails my ear. I breathe in. Angry bands of my muscles tighten, but I can’t recoil. I stay fixed in place.
Fixed on this mission.
I hold her gaze. “We’re looking for an ad.”
Her brows jump. “An ad?”
“I don’t know what kind,” I explain. “All I could hear was that there’s an ad in a newspaper. It might not even be in this one.”
She nods and then peers closer, practically tucked to my side. My muscles tighten while I resist an impulse to place my hand on the small of her back.
Jane points a finger to the table of contents. “Ads should all be in this section. The classifieds.”
Page 52.
Good to go. I flip pages while I hold the paper between us.
One more page.
I turn the last one—and the advertisement is impossible to miss.
Jane freezes, wide-eyed at the paper, and my harsh gaze narrows on the typed headline and full-page ad below.
MODERN DAY CINDERELLA: JANE ELEANOR COBALT IS LOOKING FOR HER PRINCE CHARMING.
Are you single and searching for love? Are you a gentleman ready to spend your life with a studious young woman? Jane Cobalt, daughter of Rose Calloway Cobalt & Richard Connor Cobalt, is seeking a man who is…