at a brisk pace. “No one for you to worry about, love.”
Ronan looked over my head at his brother with a glare I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. His gaze then cut forward, and he scanned the lobby we were about to walk through. “We’ll brief you upstairs.”
Fear crawled up my spine and tightened every one of my already strained muscles. “There’s been another threat?” I’d seen the envelope in that man’s hand. All the other notes had come in a plain white envelope.
“Darling, you’re fine,” Vance appeased.
But Ronan did no such thing. “Not the place,” he warned in a quiet tone that belied the storm that lived just below the surface of him.
Feeling safer surrounded by four witnesses than when I was alone with Vance, I glanced at him. “Don’t patronize me again.”
Vance chuckled. “Never dream of it.”
“If there’s something new, I need to know. I’m not paying you to withhold information.”
Putting on a serious air, he nodded. “Of course not.”
In that moment, I hated him. I didn’t understand how someone could look exactly like Ronan and be so very different. I also didn’t understand how I had been putting up with it for three months, but something snapped. Maybe it was seeing the drastic difference in the two men side by side, or maybe it was too much alcohol earlier, or maybe I was just losing it, but suddenly I wanted to crawl out of my own skin just to get his hand off my back.
Not wanting to make a scene as the six of us stepped into the lobby proper, but not wanting to feel another second of Vance’s hand on me, I turned my head toward him and lowered my voice. “Remove your hand.”
His gaze sweeping across the lobby, he didn’t even look at me, but he dropped his hand and put the Vance persona back on again. “Yes, of course, darling.”
My jaw clenched. “I have a name.”
“Right,” he answered vaguely as my name was called out and a rushing tide of people came at us.
Forcing myself to smile with a perfectly calculated expression of demureness I’d learned years ago, I turned toward my fans and made eye contact with no one. Stretching my lips wide, projecting who everyone wanted me to be, I gave a graceful wave I’d been carefully taught and blew a kiss.
The chorus of my name called, cried, and yelled by countless people countless times all blended together, and it didn’t matter that we were in an enclosed building. It could have been Times Square, a sold-out arena, or a Sunday stroll in my old neighborhood in a poor community forgotten by urban sprawl—it all sounded the same to me, and anything more than one person saying my name was too much now.
It had been too much.
Which was why I hadn’t renewed my contract with my label.
As if reading my quiet was uneasiness in disguise, Ronan glanced down at me. “Almost to the elevators.”
“Thank you,” I murmured, keeping pace but unable to see past the wall of tall muscle surrounding me.
Shocking me, he gave me a short but cordial reply. “You’re welcome.”
It felt like the first civil exchange between us since he’d stepped on the airplane and back into my life.
Foolishly letting my guard down, I breathed in a lungful of hope as we all stepped onto the waiting elevator hotel security was holding for us.
The door quietly slid shut and, with it, the noise of the lobby receded. Even with all the men surrounding me and their different colognes, deodorants and laundry soaps, I could still single out Ronan. As little as a hint of his scent made me feel homesick for a life and a future I’d lost.
Mentally shaking myself out of despair, I asked what I needed to know. “Who was the man in the crowd?”
The first thing I noticed was Ronan’s jaw tic. Then Vance exhaled.
I looked between the two of them. “Tell me,” I demanded.
“He had a note,” Vance admitted. “But he isn’t our bomber. He was paid to deliver it to you personally in the guise of getting close enough to get an autograph.”
Anxiety prickled at my nerves. “What did it say?”
Ronan pulled out his cell phone, swept his thumb across the screen and showed me an image of a handwritten note.
Did you think 4500 miles would save you?
My blood ran cold.
A cell phone’s distinctive buzz with a text alert echoed in the sudden heavy silence of the elevator, and Tyler pulled his phone out.