Page 65 of Always Been His

I look up at him through my lashes, my front teeth catching my bottom lip.

“I care about you.” His voice has none of its usual inflection, just the words, sitting there plain and earnest on the kitchen counter between us. The worry is all over his face. He hasn’t been able to put it away since last night.

“I know,” I murmur.

“So, you understand,” he says, setting his mug down and leaning forward on both forearms, “that I am going to be pissed when someone isn’t treating you right. And I am going to want to fix it. Because I cannot stand anybody hurting you.”

I look down at my mug. The coffee is still steaming. “I know that too. But you have to know I can take care of myself. I know what I am doing.”

“Okay.” He nods, his long fingers reaching across the counter toward mine. “Only if you acknowledge that I can take care of you better.”

I snort, looking at him across the counter, his shoulders filling out the thermal the way they fill out everything, those blue eyes steady on my face like I am the only thing in the room worth looking at. And the idea of being taken care of by Grayson Douglas, properly, out loud, does something to the inside of my chest that makes it genuinely difficult to pull in a full breath. I’ve been taking care of myself for eight years. I’ve been the one person in every room whose job it was to keep Sienna Rhodes running while everyone else fussed over Echo. And here is this man offering to share the load like it’s non-negotiable, and I cannot tell if I want to cry or climb over this counter and kiss him.

I pick up the mug and switch my hips out from behind the island.

“I can see why you believe that, Gray,” I say, quirking a brow at him over my shoulder. “But you are not the only multimillionaire in the room.”

“Sure, baby,” he says, picking up his coffee and following me, his voice dropping into that low husky register that makes my heart race. “But one of us is a billionaire baby.”

His hand claps down on my ass before I reach the doorway, sharp and satisfying, and I yelp and dissolve into a giggle I have absolutely no control over as I rush out into the hall ahead of him.

The rental car came back to the same place it was last night. A black BMW, older model, the kind of nondescript executive choice that screams corporate account, the paint slightly dulled from a life of airport pickup lots and unfamiliar roads. One of the rear hubcaps is a slightly different shade than the others. The tinted windows give nothing away.

I take one step down the porch.

Grayson is one step behind me.

I stop. “Stay here,” I say, not turning around.

“Sienna,” he says.

“I mean it, Gray.” I turn now, looking back up at him on the porch. “If I go out there with you behind me it looks like I need backup, and the second it looks like I need backup they’ll know they have me.”

“They already know they have you,” he says. “That’s why they’re parked in my driveway at nine in the morning.”

“All the more reason I walk down there alone,” I say.

His jaw tightens.

“Grayson.” I go back up and put my free hand on the front of his thermal. “If he tries to kidnap me, I will holler.” I grin at him.

He looks at me for a long moment. Then he drops his chin and presses his lips to the top of my head tender and calm, and his hand comes up to the back of my neck for one second before he lets go.

“Holler loud,” he says against my hair.

“Always do,” I say.

I turn around and walk down the porch steps and across the gravel toward the car, the mug warm in both hands, the anxiety sitting in the center of my chest doing what anxiety does, spreading outward from the middle, into my throat and my shoulders and the tips of my fingers. I breathe through it. I’ve walked onto stages in front of fifty thousand people. I can walk to a rental car.

Forty feet. Thirty. Twenty.

I stop at the driver’s side window and knock twice on the glass. The window immediately rolls down, and reveals Joshua Eds, the label’s lawyer. I met him once, at my contract signing eight years ago. I hated seeing him then, because he was pushy and used words I didn’t know and confused the hell out me. I hate seeing him more now, because he looks annoyed and bored, and he’s strangely silent.

“Morning, Joshua.” I beam, handing over the mug to him through the open window. “I thought you’d want coffee this early.”

He looks at the mug for a beat too long before taking it like it might be poisoned. “Thank you,” he says, with the warmth of someone reading gratitude off a cue card.

“Of course.” I keep my smile fixed. “You flew in all the way from California. Least I can do.”