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I jumped out and opened the door to release the count, rain spattering my face.
“Jax is going to drive ye to Alex. I have something else to do. But keep your head down. One of the people hunting her is around.”
Dori tilted his head, his expression shifting to the aristocrat I’d first seen at the nightclub, when he’d been outraged at getting kicked out. “Who?”
“Barrington Bray, the head of her old security team. Have ye met him?”
“Once or twice, so he knows my face.”
“Which means you’ll need to lie low.”
I wheeled around, needing to get to my car and out of here. I was fucking disappointed that I couldn’t see Alex. I didn’t want to show it.
Dori called my name. “Thank you. I mean that. It’s been a shit couple of weeks and I’d be stuck at the embassy trying to arrange an emergency passport if it wasn’t for you. You saved my skin.”
I had so many questions, but at the same point, they weren’t for me to ask. “Just glad to help a friend of Alex’s. Again.”
On that, I left him to lead a hunter on a wild goose chase.
Chapter 31
Alexandra
Tyres crunched on the driveway outside the cottage, and I jumped back from the canvas. All afternoon, the rain had picked up, and I’d lost track of time. But I wasn’t about to miss Raphael’s homecoming.
I flew to the door and peeked out, careful not to show myself in case of unwanted eyes.
Dori climbed from a car, and I shot my hand to my mouth. Yet somehow, my gaze still clung to the other door, and my heart fell when Jackson appeared.
He gave me a curious look, then Dori was in my face and I was hugging the idiot, urging him inside.
“Oh my God. I was half expecting you to be beat up.”
He moved past me and dropped onto the sofa with a heavy sigh. “Inside bruises don’t show.”
So dramatic.
I turned back to Jackson who approached the door. “Is he…?”
“Leading Barrington a merry dance. Safer that he doesn’t come here until we’re sure he’s been seen and discounted as having hidden ye somewhere.”
But that could take a long time. I managed a small nod, then the bodyguard left us, and I locked the door then turned to Dori.
“You jackass. I’m so happy to see you. Tell me everything about Elsie Sale.”
He’d started to laugh but palmed his face. “Shit. You worked it out.”
I flapped my hands in a go-figure gesture and took the other end of the sofa, curling my legs underneath me. “You gave me no choice but to go snooping. This is the woman you dated a year ago, right?”
My best friend took a moment, ruffling his fingers through his damp blond hair, seeming to be piecing through what he wanted to say. “Yes. She’s the woman I dated a year ago. I fell as hard and as fast for her as you have with your hot pilot.”
My heart thumped. “Did you just upgrade him? Never mind. Continue.”
“I thought she felt the same for me. In fact, I was certain. I still am. We met at Cano.” He used the nickname for an island resort in the Grenadines that his family holidayed in every year. “We spent two weeks together. From day one, we were inseparable. I mean from instant fascination on the first day to complete certainty that I’d found my person by the time we realised a week had passed and all we’d done was hang around each other. We swam in hidden coves and took romantic walks at sunset. We held hands and didn’t even kiss for days, because the weight of it felt so fucking huge, it couldn’t be rushed. We talked. Endlessly, and we slept hugging each other. With her, I felt like I was breaking apart and reshaping myself piece by piece.”
Love-them-and-leave-them Dori had never been poetic, yet his description hurt my heart.
“She was supposed to be relaxing before heading into the recording studio for her next album. Yet she’d taken an acoustic guitar with her and wrote songs while staring into my fucking eyes like I somehow inspired her.”