Chapter 2 - "Pretend You Know Me"
The cabin air felt suddenly thin.
Noah kept his gaze straight ahead, but his knuckles had gone bloodless where he gripped the armrest. He wasn't looking at the whispers, the raised smartphones, or the flight attendant who had practically stood at attention. He was looking through the seatback in front of him, breathing in measured, deliberate counts of four.
Then, without turning his head, he leaned closer.
His cologne carried clean cedar and rain, distinct beneath the sterile recirculated air of the cabin.
“Emily,” he whispered. The baritone of his voice was so low it barely registered above the engine hum. “I need you to listen to me very carefully, and I need you not to pull away.”
My hand tightened instinctively around Lily’s leg. Every instinct from four years of psychological warfare with Ryan screamed that whenever a man lowered his voice, danger was approaching.
“Who are you?” I whispered back, my throat dry.
Noah swallowed. His eyes darted to the aisle where a man in business casual was pretending to stretch his legs, his phone clearly angled over his forearm to capture our row.
“A photograph is going to be taken in about ten seconds,” Noah said, words crisp and urgent. “If it’s a photo of me sitting alone, or me sitting next to an empty seat, it ends up in the financial press and on three different tabloid networks before the landing gear drops. It will trigger a stock drop on six continents, and it will bring sixty reporters to the terminal gate at O’Hare.”
He glanced down at Lily, who was busy gnawing happily on the napkin bird he had folded. His expression softened with fierce, protective urgency.
“If they see me with a family—if they see a private moment between a man, his partner, and their child—the press guidelines change. Their syndication rules buy me twelve hours to handle an emergency at my company. But only if it looks completely intimate. Unbroken.”
I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
“Would you pretend to fall asleep on my shoulder?”
The absurdity of the question hung between us. Just three hours ago, I was dragging a broken suitcase through Midway security, checking my bank app to see if I had enough money to buy baby formula and a turkey sandwich. Now, an impossibly commanding man was asking to use me as a shield against the international press.
“Why would I do that?” I asked, my voice trembling slightly. “I don't even know your last name.”
“Noah Vance,” he said simply.
The name hit the back of my mind like an electric current. Vance BioTech. Vance Medical Holdings. The name stamped on half the pediatric research centers in the country. The billionaire recluse who had vanished from public life eighteen months ago following a catastrophic family tragedy.
“You’re Vance,” I breathed.
“And you are a mother trying to get your daughter to safety without being trampled by thirty photographers at baggage claim,” he said gently, meeting my eyes with undeniable sincerity. “Help me buy twelve hours. In exchange, you and Lily will walk off that jet bridge into private security. No crowds. No questions. Door-to-door escort to wherever you are staying in Chicago.”
Behind us, a camera clicked. A shutter sound someone had forgotten to silence.
Noah didn’t flinch, but his eyes pleaded.
I looked down at Lily. I thought of the cold sneer Ryan had given me outside the courthouse. “You won’t last six months out there on your own, Emily. You’ll be begging to come back, and I won’t even leave a light on.”
I shifted Lily into the crook of my left arm, resting her head against my chest. Then, slowly, purposefully, I leaned my head sideways until my temple rested against Noah Vance’s broad, rigid shoulder.
He didn't stiffen. Instead, with an ease that felt entirely instinctual, Noah lifted his arm and rested it along the back of my seat, his hand cupping my far shoulder to pull me an inch closer into the warmth of his jacket. He tilted his head down until his chin brushed the crown of my hair.
From the aisle, to anyone looking, we were an exhausted young family sharing an intimate, quiet sanctuary above the clouds.
A flash reflected off the plastic window pane. Someone took the picture.
Noah let out a long, quiet breath against my hair.
May you like
“Thank you, Emily,” he murmured. “Hold on. When this plane hits the tarmac, everything is going to move very fast.”
I closed my eyes against the scratchy wool of his jacket, unaware that eight hundred miles away in an executive lounge in Miami, Ryan Collins’s phone was about to buzz with an alert that would shatter his comfortable, cruel new reality.
