Chapter 27

Twenty-Seven

Roc

“You’re sure about this?” I asked as I climbed the stairs into the studio’s private plane with Mason leading the way.

The production assistant bobbed his head up and down without glancing back, looking just as in charge as always, even without his trademark clipboard. “I’m sure. No one needs it until tomorrow, and I told my boss that Harlowe’s team needed it. After the disaster of getting you all here, he was fine with it. Besides, you need to get away fast. I get that.”

I paused at the top of the steel stairs as he hesitated in the open door of the plane. “I’m not leaving my client without protection.”

“Oh, I know. Who do you think met your colleague on the tarmac earlier?”

I shifted from one foot to the other. “Thank you for helping me arrange the staff change.”

Mason’s brows peaked. “Is that what we’re calling it?” Before I could repeat the canned line about needing to return to my office and have one of my orc bodyguards take over the job of getting Harlowe safely home, he fluttered a hand in the air. “Don’t worry. I don’t like seeing her with him either.”

“This isn’t about Zander.” Even saying the name out loud made my upper lip curl.

His brows hadn’t lowered but he patted my arm roughly. “I know how hard it is to see clients make dumb mistakes, especially when they’ve made them before. I work in the film industry, remember?”

I breathed out, on one hand relieved that he thought I was leaving because I didn’t want to see Harlowe repeat her bad relationship with her co-star but also insulted that he thought I would so easily leave an assignment. I’d never abandoned one before and I wouldn’t be leaving now if it didn’t feel like being punched in the kidneys every time I had to watch Zander touch her.

What had been most painful had been the fact that she hadn’t told him to get lost. She hadn’t told him that she couldn’t get back together with him because she was involved with someone new, and she hadn’t treated me like anything more than her bodyguard when she’d sent me away.

I guessed I should be glad that Mason didn’t know there was anything between me and my protectee. I managed a gruff nod. “Harlowe’s mistakes aren’t my business.”

Not anymore, I thought.

Mason stepped back to allow me inside the plane, sweeping his arm at the interior with a flourish. “Thanks again for helping me get her to set on time this week. I’ll definitely recommend you to my clients.”

I didn’t tell him that this was the last job I’d be doing personally. Coming out of my semi-retirement had proven to me that I was better off working in the background managing my team of orc bodyguards.

Instead, I held out my hand. “My company is at your service.”

He took it, his fingers vanishing into my much larger palm. “Have a safe flight, Roc.”

He released my hand and jogged back down the stairs to the tarmac while I stepped into the luxurious jet, where everything was cocooned in buttery beige leather and warm woodgrain polished to a high shine. I glanced around as if expecting someone to leap out and say that I was in the wrong place.

It wasn’t that I was unaccustomed to traveling in style. I’d flown with enough wealthy clients to be accustomed to their jets. But I’d never flown in a private plane without being someone’s staff. I’d always been on duty, on alert, on the job.

I picked one of the wide seats and sank into it, glancing out the window where the sun was setting and sending golden shards of light splintering across the sky. As pretty as it was, I flicked the shade down. After the emergency landing on my way to the shoot, I preferred to pretend what I wasn’t hurtling through the sky to get home.

I rested my head on the back of the seat and closed my eyes, allowing my body to focus on the vibrations from the engines and the clattering sounds outside the jet as they prepared for us to leave. Even as my heart was a twisted ball of suppressed pain, it was beginning to soften now that I knew I was leaving. I was returning to my safe haven, my refuge, my home.

There would be fallout from my departure, but I was willing to deal with that. I could offer my apologies to Jack along with the evidence that I’d protected Harlowe until the end of the shoot. Until I couldn’t any longer.

I despised the idea of keeping the truth from my friend, but the truth wasn’t mine to tell. Most importantly, it didn’t matter anymore. Harlowe had made her choice, and it hadn’t been me.

I squeezed my eyes together, desperate to purge my mind of the memories of being with her. Even more than ridding myself of that torment, I wished I could banish the memory of her sending me away like the hired help I was to her.

“In time,” I whispered to myself like a mantra. In time, I would forget the pain of this rejection, just like all the other rejections and slights in my past had faded.

“What in the actual fuck are you doing?”

My eyes flew open, and I had to blink a few times to register the woman standing in the aisle with her hands on her hips and her eyes blazing.

“Harlowe?”