When I could put him back in the box of all the horrible people, I was able to remember what I wanted to be rude to him about. “Are you really going to keep following me like this?” I taunted.
He shrugged. “It’s my job.”
“So you’re actually going to come inside?”
“After the stunt you pulled back at the house, yes.”
“Later this evening, I’m going on a date. You’re just going to come along for that too?”
He didn’t even blink. “Yeah.”
I held myself together. I wanted to needle him. “My friend and I are going to paint our nails while we gossip about men. Will that be interesting for you to watch?”
He folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the wall beside the door. “No, but I get paid to be bored.”
Frustrated, I turned and pounded on Christine’s doorbell.
Chapter 15
Sienna
Christine didn’t respond, and after a few seconds, I pressed the doorbell again.
“I’m coming. I’m coming,” she called from within. As she pulled the door open she shouted over her shoulder, “Sienna’s here.”
Christine was a curvy blonde and my roommate in London for two years. “Hey,” she said as her gaze darted over to Angelo. Her eyes widened at the sight of him, before she hurriedly swung them back to me. Reaching out, she pulled me into her embrace. “Sienna” she breathed, hugging me tight.
A brunette appeared behind her.
She looked somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t actually tell if I had really met her or she just looked like someone I knew. “Hi, nice to meet you,” I extended my hand for a handshake as Christine let go of me.
To my surprise however, the brunette lightly smacked my hand away. “Don’t you remember me?” she asked.
My eyes narrowed as I tried hard to recall her.
Christine chuckled. “Don’t you remember Mandy? From fifth grade? The girl from Miss French’s class.”
I tried my very best to place her face but nothing came to mind
“Uh, she used to stutter.”
“Hey!” Mandy smacked Christine on the arm.
At that moment recognition came. “Oh! I do remember. Oh, my God. Hi, it’s been forever!”
“It has.” She smiled. “And for the record, I don’t stutter anymore.”
I stared at her in wonder, as a vague picture of the frail ten-year old she had been came to mind.
Her gaze left mine as she noticed the man who silently stood behind me. Her mouth opened to ask the inevitable question.
I didn’t want to start explaining who he was in front of him, so I quickly pulled both girls into the house with me … and shut the door in his face.
I leaned against the door, fully expecting Angelo to ring the doorbell, but he did not.
“Is that the bodyguard?” Christine whispered.
I nodded.
“He’s so freaking hot,” Mandy observed.
There was no lie there, but I made a face. “He’s horrible.”
“In what way?” Mandy asked curiously.
“He’s an insufferably rude Neanderthal,” I muttered.
“Oh, I love insufferably rude Neanderthals. Especially when they throw you over their shoulders and carry you off to their unmade beds.” She grinned wickedly.
“This Neanderthal is more likely to hit you over the head with his club,” I said sourly. For some weird reason, I didn’t like Mandy lusting after him.
“Right, the moody type. Nothing I can’t handle, but can we just take a moment to um … process the fact that you have a bodyguard? I know your parents are loaded, but a bodyguard? I thought only the children of billionaires and celebrities needed that kind of intense protection?”
I applied my age-old avoidance technique and just smiled sweetly. “Let’s move away from the door. I’m sure he can still hear us.”
It worked. The conversation was steered away from my parents.
“Shouldn’t we let him in? Won’t he get lonely out there?” Mandy asked.
“Cut it out, Mandy, this is serious,” Christine cut in impatiently.
I turned to her. “Did you manage to book me a ticket?”
She nodded and led me over to her open laptop on her small kitchen counter. “Just paid for it. Your flight leaves at 6pm this evening, so you have about three hours to get to LAX. What’s the plan?”
“We’ll go together to a mall and while we’re there, we’ll slip into one of the dressing rooms where we’ll be able to ditch him. I’ll call an Uber and be on my way to the airport before he knows what hit him. Since you paid for my ticket, my tracks will be covered, so they won’t be able to stop me in time before I board and return to England. I pressed the home button of my phone to check the time. “I need to get going.”
“You do,” she said, “but you really think it will be that easy to get rid of Tony Stark out there?”
I was surprised by the comparison. “Is that what he looks like to you?”
“Hell no!” Mandy protested from the couch across the room that she had plopped into. “Your bodyguard’s a freaking ten. Isn’t Stark that sassy, middle-aged, Iron Man guy?”