“You okay, Ace?” Concern etched across his face.
The trembling from earlier redoubled as I glared at him. I was so fucking happy to see him, and I did not want to be happy to see him. “Do I look okay?”
“You look gorgeous and in one piece.” Did he sound relieved? He glanced up the hill. “But we have company, come on…” He held out his hand to me. “Come with me.”
It was like the scene from The Terminator. Come with me if you want to live…
Did I want to?
A car door slammed, and there was a motorcycle just there and someone had a camera. Shit…
“C’mon,” Lachlan said. “Trust me, Ace. I’ll get you out of here.”
Not like I had much choice. I clasped his hand and turned my whole body away from the top of the hill. Lachlan’s grip tightened on me as he tugged me to him.
“Stay with me,” he urged, then started jogging. Thankfully, I could move in these boots, and they didn’t have heels on them. He ran and I kept up with him, mostly. We ran across the green belt to where a silver Mercedes sat waiting with the hazard lights on.
“In,” he ordered, pulling the passenger door open for me. I slid inside and he shut the door before hurrying around to the driver’s seat. He’d barely slid in before he had the car in motion, accelerating down the road… that was some kind of private road. We circled and then raced back up the road.
He barely got his seatbelt clicked in when cars hurried past us, heading to where we’d been.
“You okay, Ace?” he asked, flicking his gaze at the rearview. “Yeah, they’ve already figured out where you are. Hang on.”
Figured out? He cut a corner so tight I almost bit my tongue. The car was smooth as aces though, as he ran two yellows, barely cutting under them before the lights turned red.
I glanced behind us as our pursuers were caught by the lights. But not all of them…
“Motorcycle is still back there and an SUV just ran that light.”
Legit ran it. Like up on the curb of the sidewalk and around then down. Were they insane?
“We’ll be fine,” Lachlan assured me as he shifted gears. We were going faster. I gripped the oh shit handle and glanced at the dashboard.
It read over three digits.
Oh, that was a mistake.
“Lachlan,” I said as he turned another corner, barely touching his brakes. The tail of the car slid around, the whole car kind of gliding with the turn before we hit the straightaway again.
My heart and lungs were back there somewhere.
Red lights ahead warned me of stopped traffic, but Lachlan wasn’t slowing down. I couldn’t breathe.
“Lachlan!”
“We’re fine, Ace. Hang on.” Except those red taillights were getting closer and closer. At what seemed like the last minute, he cut to the right and followed a ramp up to a highway that I hadn’t even seen. There were lights up here, not as many as below, but a lot heavier traffic. While the speed of the car slowed, Lachlan hopscotched his way up the lanes.
At one point, I had to close my eyes. He was making the car fit in places it absolutely should not. I couldn’t breathe, and sweat soaked my shirt. The shaking from earlier redoubled and I gripped the oh shit handle so hard, I would probably have a permanent indention.
We left the highway after a couple of miles, and then he was heading through the city, moving at much more reasonable speeds. The traffic could be bad, but at least it was moving. In almost no time, we would be back in Beverly Hills.
“There you go,” he said, smugness rolling off him. “Safe, just like I promised.”
I didn’t throw up, but it was close. As it was, I just ran a hand over my face. The shaking wouldn’t stop.
“Thank you,” I managed, though the syllables wobbled a lot like I did.
“You’re welcome,” he murmured, then pulled over to glance at me. “You shouldn’t have taken off in the club.”
“You shouldn’t have just walked up and started hitting on me.”
“Ace, the way you were dancing…?”
“The way I was dancing, what?” I dared him to finish that sentence. “I was dancing. By myself. Having fun.”
“So maybe I wanted to have fun with you.”
“So maybe you should learn to use your words instead of your tongue.”
He chuckled. Asshole. “I’ve missed you, Ace.”
“Give me five minutes, and I’ll get myself a rideshare and you can go back to it.”
The door locked and I glared at him. “Hey, I want to make sure you’re all right. You were just in a car accident.”
Fuck. “I need to call Dix.”
“Who the hell is that?” From concern to fury, the switch was enough to give me whiplash. “That the asshole with his hands on you?”
“It doesn’t matter who he is,” I told him. “I just need to let him know about the car.” I opened the rideshare app on my phone then reached for the door handle. We were in L.A. I could get it from here.
The door didn’t open.
“I’ll take you home,” he said. “You’re not calling Dix.” He said it like I’d told him Dix was an ax murderer. “Or some rideshare to end up a statistic on the news.”
“I’m already a statistic,” I muttered.
“Put your phone down,” he ordered. “I just said I’d take you home.”
“You truly are just an asshole.”
“I’m also the guy who just got you out of that whole situation.”
“And the reason I was in it,” I pointed out. Even if it had been my own stupid fault for trying to drive. My head hurt. My heart was racing. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to throw up or curl into a ball and cry.
Neither sounded appealing.
He growled, then slammed the car into drive and pulled back onto the road abruptly. “You shouldn’t be out clubbing, anyway. You weren’t old enough to be in there.”
“I wasn’t drinking, and you’re hardly my father, so shove it.”
“No, your father…”
I snorted.
“What? I know Gibs, I know exactly what he’d do.”
“Must be nice to be so sure.”
It wasn’t long before I recognized where we were. I was definitely having him drop me off outside the gate. Then I’d call Dix as soon as I got in. Fuck, he was gonna kill me.
“Who is Dix?” Lachlan asked after another brief, albeit a welcome, bit of silence.
“None of your business.”
“Boyfriend?”
“See my previous answer.”
“Ace…”
“My name is Kaitlin Crosse. You can call me Ms. Crosse. Or Kaitlin—”
“You go by KC.”
“To my friends,” I fired back. “You and I are not friends.” I shouldn’t even be in his car. It wasn’t until he pulled up to the gates that it hit me. He’d driven straight to my mother’s place without looking at directions.
They knew where we lived.
Great.
More things they knew that we didn’t. I reached for the handle, but he touched my arm. “Ace…”
It was a mistake to look at him. I knew it was a mistake, but the door was still locked. I didn’t even get a word out before he cupped my face and slanted his mouth over mine.