Page 115 of The Crowned Garza

“Ugh. I miss the days when you were easy to con,” I grumble. “You’re getting smart now.”

Chuckling, he opens the car door for me, and, reluctantly, I get in.

Chase takes me to a private boutique, where a team of professionals flocks me. Someone doing my hair, someone doing my makeup, someone garbing me in designer clothes and accessories. In under two hours, I’m transformed from a tired, grease-stained normie, to a fresh-faced, red-carpet-ready smoke-show.

When we arrive at the event in the back of a limousine and I spot the crowd and endlessly flashing lights, I tell him, “I’m not doing this part with you.”

Giving me his signature panty-incinerating smile, he dips his chin and does that smoldering thing with his eyes that makes women all over the world lose their minds. “Please?”

Unfortunately for him, it does nothing for me. “Nope.”

His sigh is loaded with all the unfairness of the world, as if I just told him he has to give up his fame and riches and go live in a hut at the edge of the earth. “Fine, we’ll skip the red carpet.”

“I never said you should skip it,” I clarify. “Just thatIwon’t do it with you.”

“Yeah, I’m skipping it. No chance I’m leaving your side and have you disappear on me.”

“Damn it.” I fake a punch at the air. “There goes my plan.”

He grins, staring at me in that soft, warm way he sometimes does. His pale-gray eyes expressing things his mouth never does. Hiding nothing.

And, as usual, I ignore it.

To circumvent the paparazzi, we take the back entrance. And for the next two hours, I mingle and dine in a room full of the rich and famous. Which only helps to solidify my decision to never date anyone famous. My decision to friend-zone Chase. None of this is my scene.

Chase has sex appeal in spades. I would’ve hooked up with him a long time ago if he didn’t look at me the way he did. If he didn’t wear his feelings for me so loudly.

He wants more than a hookup and that’s not something I’ll ever be able to give.

Becauseheowns it all.

~

LATER,WHEN WE’REending our night outside my brother’s home in Venice, Chase breaks his restraint.

He snakes his arm around my waist, pulls me in, and kisses me.

And I let him.

Against my better judgment, I kiss him back. Because hell, the man can kiss.

As good a kisser as he is, however, these are not the lips I want on mine. Not the body I want to be pressed up against. Not the arms I want around me.

So, slowly, I end the kiss.

“Wow,” Chase breathes. “I’ve wanted to do that for so long.”

I know.

“Can we—”

“I’m really tired,” I curtail. “Between my crazy shift today and that event, I’m just...drained.”

“Oh, okay.” He steps back respectfully, tucking his hands in his pockets. “Thanks for coming with me tonight. You were...the most beautiful woman in the room.”

My praise-loving self blushes and preens. This is why I keep him around. He speaks my love language in the wayhe who shall not be namednever does. “I mean, I’m hot and all. But I highly doubt that. That room was loaded with drop-dead-gorgeous starlets.”

“And still, you are the only woman I saw. You’re breathtaking, Tillie.”