Page 36 of Mr. Wrong (Hollywood Knights #1)

Thirty-Six

Ellenore

Like every morning, for the past five weeks, I wake up alone, to a flood of text messages from Derek.

Derek: I’m looking forward

to seeing you today.

Derek: I miss you, Elle.

Derek: Google maps says

it’ll take me forty-five

minutes to get to the coffee

place you insisted on. I’m

going to see if there’s a

place closer to my hotel.

Because if the last five weeks in LA have taught me anything, it’s that forty-five minutes is the minimum travel time to get anywhere and he isn’t going to find anything else closer or to his liking, I fire back a single text.

Me: knock yourself out.

He texts me back almost immediately.

Derek: I can’t wait to get this

whole mess behind us and get

back to New York where people

are normal.

Resisting the urge to remind him that he’s from North Carolina and has been in New York with the normal people for a whole four months, I set my phone aside and push myself out of bed.

Like every other morning, when I get up, there’s coffee waiting and my cat is eating.

Even though I’m supposed to be meeting Derek for coffee in a few hours, I pour myself a cup because even though I’m partial to tea, I’m addicted to Lex’s coffee.

Or maybe I’m just addicted to Lex.

Carrying it into the bathroom, I shower and get dressed, pulling on a random pair of jeans and a T-shirt that Cassie painted for me last week with my low-top Chucks.

Throwing my hair in a ponytail, I grab my purse and am already out the door and halfway down the walk when another text comes in.

Thinking its Derek again, I sigh and pull my phone from my back pocket, prepared to drive forty-five minutes in a completely different direction to get to another coffee shop that Derek thinks is a better choice than the one I picked out.

It’s not from Derek, the text is from Lex.

Lex: Don’t forget to

ask Kill for the keys.

I’m not sure what I expected him to say, but that wasn’t it.

Maybe an apology for last night, even though he has nothing to apologize for.

As I’m reading it, three little dots appear below the text and I hold my breath, hoping…

I don’t know what I’m hoping. Maybe that he tells me not to meet Derek for coffee.

That he tells me he’s just as miserable as I am over the way things ended between us and even though we’ve moved into a comfortable friendship with each other, that he hates it as much as I do.

That last night made him realize that he misses me.

That he’s sorry he left. That he wishes he’d stayed.

Then those three little dots disappear and a text pops up.

Lex: Good luck today.

I hope everything

works out the way

you want it to.

Good luck?

I’m minutes away from leaving to meet my ex-boyfriend who wants me back, by the way, the morning after Lex nearly fucked me to death after five weeks of nothing and all he has to say about it is good luck?

No.

Oh, hell no.

I start to move again, on a sudden burst of laughter that follows me up the cobblestone path along the side of the house. Through the pretty trellis gate before I hook a sharp left to mount the steep set of stairs that climb the side of the garage.

Standing on the small landing, I lift a hand and pound on the door with the side of my fist. When Killian doesn’t answer the door, I pound harder. “Open the door,” I yell. “I know you’re in there and I’m not going—”

The door is pulled open, mid-pound, so fast I almost end up punching Killian in his scowling face. “Is there something wrong, Ms. Pierce?”

“Yes—there’s several somethings wrong—first and foremost, I’ve told you all repeatedly to stop calling me Ms. Anything. My name is Elle ,” I snap back at him, dropping my hand to take a step back. “Would it hurt you people to use it?”

The scowl lifts and his features shift into something resembling a smirk. “ Ohhh ,” he says crossing his arms over his thick chest before leaning against the doorjamb to rake a long, dark look up my frame, from my feet to my forehead. “Now I get it.”

“You get what?” I demand and even though I have no idea what he’s talking about, I feel a warm flush crawl across my skin, just the same.

“What can I do for you, Elle ?” he asks instead of answering me.

“Where is he?” I shift to the side a bit and lift myself on the toes of my sneakers so I can see around his massive shoulder and into his apartment.

It’s sparse. A round, wooden kitchen table with one chair.

An upholstered armchair that, judging by the expensive toile fabric it’s covered in, looks like it might’ve been lifted from the main house, and an antique floor lamp positioned nearby.

A framed, tri-folded American flag hanging on the wall next to a framed, black and white photo of a man in what looks like a military uniform.

No television.

No radio.

But there are books.

Lots and lots of books.

The shoulder I’m looking around shifts into my line of vision, suddenly barring my view. “Where is who ?” Killian says. He doesn’t sound amused anymore. He sounds irritated.

I have a feeling that irritated is Killian Davis’s natural state of being.

Dropping myself to the flats of my feet, I force my gaze up to meet his. “Lex—where is he?”

He smirks again. “Despite what you might have been told about me, Elle—I don’t generally make a habit out of tracking grown ass men. My job is safeguarding Cassie—that’s it.” He drops his arms and shows me his hands. “That’s what I do. What I get paid to do, so if that’s—”

“Bullshit.” I must be possessed because I lift a finger and jab it at his scary, Special Forces face and snap it at him like he’s a puppy I just caught chewing on the furniture.

“Excuse me?” With more patience I thought a man like him would be capable of, he pushes my finger, very slowly and very deliberately, out of his face. “I’m not sure I heard you correctly.”

“You heard me,” I tell him, somehow managing to keep the fact that my knees are shaking from bleeding into my voice.

“I said bullshit . Lex is your brother and if I’ve learned anything about this family over the last five weeks, it’s that you’re all completely up each other’s asses so don’t give me that—”

“Lex and Landon aren’t my brothers.” He pushes it through clenched teeth. “I work here, same as you—that’s it.”

No.

Not the same as me at all.

Instead of calling bullshit again, I come to my senses a little and let it go.

“If you say so.” I cross my arms over my chest because I can feel the shake start to spread and I don’t want him to know how close I am to giving up completely.

“Look,” I say, changing tactics. “I know you know about Lex and me and I know you don’t approve—” I untangle one of my arms and lift a hand between us when he unhinges his jaw to tell me he doesn’t care what or who Lex does.

“And I don’t really care about your feelings on the subject one way or the other. ”

“Don’t you have a coffee date or something?”

Shit. I forgot about Derek.

“I’m an excellent multi-tasker,” I tell him, refusing to back down.

He stares at me for so long I’m sure he’s getting ready to shut the door in my face and dismiss me completely. Then he lifts his hand, making an impatient gesture at the pocket of my jeans. “Gimme your phone.”

“What?” My own hand flies to my pocket and presses against it like he’s about to mug me, while I shake my head. “No, I just—”

“Goddamn, woman,” he growls at me while he leans into the space between us.

Pushing my hand out of his way, he reaches into my pocket and yanks out my phone on his own.

“You talk too much.” Stung, I watch his thumbs fly over the screen.

Finished, he flips the phone over in his hand and makes an impatient gesture with it, obviously intending for me to take it.

When I do, he sighs, leaning back to open a metal cabinet mounted to the wall next to the door, just inside his apartment.

“Can you drive a stick?” he asks, flicking a doubtful look in my direction.

“Yes.” I frown at him and shake my head because I have no idea what’s happening and it makes me uncomfortable. “My first car was an old Volkswagen Rabbit. I worked after school and weekends for an entire—”

“Cool story.” He cuts me off while lifting a set of keys from the box before tossing them at me. “I’ll text you the gate code, oh and the car is worth roughly a half mill—make sure you set the alarm.”

Catching the keys, I look down at my hands—a couple of house keys and a fob with what I think is a Porsche emblem on it and a residential address in Malibu programmed into the Google Maps app on my phone.

I own a beach house in Malibu. Lex can stay there.

“House key is on the ring if he doesn’t answer the door. If he barricades himself in, call the fire department,” he says, right before shutting the door in my face.