Kind of like what she was doing now, out by herself in the streets of Manhattan. Having escaped her bodyguards. Alone.
They would be looking for her already. She’d shut down her phone the moment she’d turned the corner and left her apartment behind because she had no doubt her father would be tracking her through it. Then she’d walked and walked, not too fast because the damn shoes were killing her, but steadily and without looking back.
It had been so good to be alone. To not have someone trailing at her elbow.
“It’s for your own protection,” her father had told her whenever she’d protested about Thing One and Thing Two’s presence in her life. “You know I have enemies. I want you to be safe.”
She didn’t bother to point out that he was the one who’d created those enemies. That if he didn’t do what he did then he wouldn’t have any. She’d accepted it because really, her choices had always been limited at best.
But not now. Now, for the first time in her life, the choices were all hers to make.
Probably she should have kept walking, not headed into a bar, but she’d wanted to get off the streets and find somewhere quiet where she could plan her next move. Whatever that was going to be. Without friends or money, she was pretty much screwed.
As Pandora stepped up to the bar, her heartbeat loud in her ears, the pressure of the man’s gaze on her was like a hand resting on her skin. She was next to him but didn’t look at him. Couldn’t look at him. Not yet. Not until she was ready.
“Don’t you know it’s rude to stare?” she finally said, keeping her gaze on the bartender as he got another customer a drink.
“You want me to stop looking?” The man’s voice was deep, with an edge of iron to it and a shiver chased down her spine. He sounded like a man used to giving orders. Used to being obeyed. Like Sergei.
Pandora gripped her purse. Shit, she wasn’t going to stand here, voiceless like a stupid teenage girl. Being silent was all she’d been doing for the past twenty-four years, like a good girl while everyone talked around her. As if she wasn’t even there.
Well, that wasn’t happening tonight.
She turned her head and met that blue gaze head-on.
Looking at him still knocked the breath from her body, but this time she was able to take in the man with the gaze and voice. A tall man, extremely tall. She could tell even though he was sitting on a bar stool. His coal black hair was short and he was wearing a dark charcoal suit, no tie, his white business shirt open at the throat, like your average businessman out for an after-work round of drinks.
Except there was nothing average about this man. For a start, that suit was custom-made and had to have been worth a couple of thousand dollars—and she should know since she was surrounded by those kinds of suits every day. Then there was the fact that he wasn’t built like any businessman she knew of, not that she knew many, but still. Even under all that charcoal wool she could tell he was built broad and muscular, more like one of her bodyguards than a man used to sitting in a cubicle all day.
No, not a cubicle. This guy was not in any way a cubicle kind of guy. With his hard jaw and high cheekbones, there was a quiet kind of arrogance to him that had corner office written all over it.
Something tugged inside of her. He was familiar in some way but she couldn’t quite place him. And that made her wary. She didn’t want to run into anyone that might be familiar to her because that would not be good, especially since the only people she had any face-to-face contact with tended to be friends of her father’s.
“Have we met?” she asked bluntly.
“No,” he responded with absolute certainty. “I would have remembered meeting you. But that doesn’t answer my question.”
“What question?”
“Do you want me to stop looking at you?”
No. She took a slow, silent breath, trying to calm her racing heart. She was used to men looking at her since her father paraded her around whenever he got a moment, showing the world his lovely daughter.
But even though those men had looked at her with lust, none of them had looked at her like this man did. None of them saw her, they only saw Nick Garret’s daughter. This man though, didn’t know who she was. And the look in his eyes, yes, it was desire. Yet something more, something fiercer. Hotter.
“No,” she said, the breath catching in her throat. “I don’t want you to stop looking at me.”
He didn’t smile. Only kept looking. “What’s your name?”
“No. I don’t … let’s not do that.”
“You prefer anonymity?”
“Yes.” It was safer if he didn’t know who she was. Safer for both of them.