“Do you have many friends in their forties?”
When you can’t tell the truth, tell a truth. Tell a story. “He was the only one who could take my queen. We had a running bet: If I won a game, he had to let me buy him breakfast. I knew he didn’t have the money to buy it himself. I was afraid he might not eat otherwise, but he hated charity, so I had to win, fair and square.”
I’d done Landon proud—but Monica wasn’t deterred. “So it is your statement that this man is not Tobias Hawthorne the Second?”
“How dare you?” Grayson’s voice vibrated with intensity. He stood. “Hasn’t my family suffered enough? We just lost my grandfather. To dredge up this tragedy—”
“Avery.” Monica knew who the weak link here was. “Is this or is this not Tobias Hawthorne’s supposedly deceased son? The true heir to the Hawthorne fortune?”
“This interview is over.” Grayson turned to block the camera and helped me to my feet. He met my gaze, and even though he didn’t say a word, I heard him loud and clear: We need to get out of here.
He ushered me to the wings, where Alisa was trying to bust past a security guard. Monica followed us, a cameraman with a handheld in her wake. “What is your connection to Toby Hawthorne?” she yelled after me.
The world was falling down around me. We hadn’t prepared for this. I wasn’t ready. But I had an answer to that question. I had a truth, and if they knew this much, then what would the harm be in telling them the rest.
What is your connection to Toby Hawthorne?
“I’m his—”
Before I could get the word daughter out, Grayson leaned his head down and crushed his lips to mine. He kissed me to save me from what I’d been about to say. For a small eternity, nothing in the world existed outside of that kiss.
His lips. Mine.
For show.
CHAPTER 64
The kiss ended as the two of us were shuffled off-camera and into an elevator. My heart was thudding. My brain was a mess. My lips felt… my whole body felt…
There were no words.
“What the hell was that?” Alisa waited for the elevator door to close before she exploded.
“That was an ambush,” Landon replied, her posh accent doing absolutely nothing to soften the words. “If you keep information from me, I can’t keep you from being ambushed. Alisa, you know how I operate. If you won’t allow me to do my job, then it is, simply put, no longer my job.”
The elevator door opened, and Landon left.
As Max would say: fax. My eyes found their way to Grayson’s, but he wouldn’t even look at me. It was like he couldn’t.
“I am going to ask one more time,” Alisa said, her voice low. “What the hell was that?”
“You’ll get your answer,” Oren told her. “In the car. We need to move out now. I’ve sent two of my men to the car and deployed the decoy. We’ll go out the back. Move.”
We made it out of the parking lot before the vultures descended. Alisa let us marinate in silence for a full minute before she spoke again. This time she didn’t ask what was going on. “Who knew?” she demanded instead. “Who knew?”
I looked down. “I did.”
“Obviously.” Alisa shifted her gaze to Grayson. “Are you going to lie and tell me you didn’t?” Then she glanced to the driver’s seat. “Oren?”
My head of security didn’t reply.
“This will be easier if we start at the beginning,” Grayson said, sounding calmer than he should have. Like we never kissed at all. “You will recall that Avery asked you to locate an acquaintance of hers, to whom she was hoping to give economic aid?”
“Harry.” Alisa’s memory was a sieve—and I knew in my bones that she would never forget what had just happened. She probably wouldn’t forgive it, either.
“Toby,” I corrected. I looked over at Grayson. You can’t do this for me. You can’t protect me the way you did back there. “I didn’t know who he was at the time,” I continued, “but then I saw a picture of him in Nan’s locket.”
“You should have told me. Immediately.” Alisa was angry, furious enough that she let loose an impressive string of curse words of her own—some in English and some not. “And you shouldn’t have told anyone else.” She shot dagger eyes at Grayson, so it was pretty clear who she was referring to.
“Xander already knew,” Grayson said quietly. “My grandfather left him a clue.”