Unleashed (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance) (86 page)

I look up from my scrambled eggs on toast, see a kind of burning urgency in his eyes.

“Are you nervous?”

“No.”

“Afraid?”

“No.”

“You just want to be prepared.”

“Fucking right.”

“Okay,” I say. I lick my lips. “Then how can I help you?”

“Help me?”

“Damn right,” I tell him, imbuing my voice with as much conviction as possible. “You’re not alone, even in the cage.”

“I’ll need you to be there,” he tells me. “I’ll need to know what I’m fighting for. What I might lose.”

“I’ll be there,” I say. “What else?”

“For the next five days I’m going to be studying videos of Kaminski.”

“Then I’ll study them with you. I might catch things you don’t.”

“Okay,” he says, nodding slowly.

“How else can I help you? Keep my dad off your back?”

“I don’t need your help for that. He’s terrified of me.”

“Then is there anything else?”

His tongue wets his lips. I see a grin. “Let me fuck you when I want to.”

I pause for a moment, but return his smile. “We’ll see.”

He leans back, plate clean, and sparks up a cigarette.

“You shouldn’t smoke.”

“Not this again.”

“No,” I say. “I mean, I read that people who stop smoking report increased endurance within just days of stopping. It’ll help you. Every little edge, right?”

Chance looks at me, paused in the moment. His cigarette smokes itself, and the wispy trails momentarily shroud his hazel eyes in grey.

He puts it out, crushes up the pack, and leaves it on the plate. He throws down some money after.

“I don’t think they do it like that here,” I tell him gently.

“Like I give a—”

“Yeah, yeah,” I say, waving him off. I don’t let him see it as I get up, but I’m grinning. There it is. “What’s our first stop?”

“National Gallery,” he tells me matter-of-factly.

“You remembered?”

“You made a list of three museums, Cassie.”

“Right. We can take the train.”

“Fuck the Underground. We’ll get a taxi, we’re not that far. Haven’t you always wanted to ride in a London
cabbie?
”

“I wonder what English people think about tourists who come here expecting red double-decker busses, red phone booths, beef eaters, and cabbies?”

“Probably the same thing we think when non-Americans think America consists only of New York, Los Angeles, and the Whitehouse. Oh, and hot dog stands.”

“And yellow taxis,” I say.

“And aliens.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Aliens?”

“Yeah. Whenever they invade Earth, they always seem to attack America first.”