Page 34 of One Filthy Kiss

“Yes.” I don’t trust myself to speak.

“Will you take us to the zoo?” Amber asks.

Ric lowers his hand by his side and smiles at her. She has that effect on people. “Sure, if Meg’s okay with that.” He raises an eyebrow in my direction.

They’re both watching me, so I force the weapon out of my mind and smile. I need to keep our life as normal as possible, because there’s still no guarantee that it won’t come crashing down around us in the very near future. We are not Gio’s responsibility. We don’t belong here. This is not real life.

“Okay, thanks Ric.” I offer him coffee and breakfast.

Gio trusts him to keep us safe, therefore I should trust him too. But the niggling doubts are starting to creep back under my skin in Gio’s absence. Can I really trust anyone? What is there to stop Ric from handing Amber over to her father if his own life is threatened?

I must never forget that this is our problem. No one else cares about Amber the way I do, and ultimately, I’m the one who must keep her safe.

A dog runs over to us as we step out of the penthouse elevator and into the private underground parking lot. A champagne-colored chihuahua with a gem-studded collar. Amber drops to her knees, and the dog reflexively climbs into her lap and settles there, turning three-sixty and resting its head on its front paws.

“Meggie, can we keep it?” She raises wide innocent eyes my way.

“No, sweetie, the dog must belong to someone.”

Just then, a middle-aged woman with dyed blond hair wearing a pantsuit so crisp and white it must’ve come straight out of a designer carrier bag, comes over in a mist of equally expensive perfume.

“Orion, you naughty boy.”

She tries to take the dog from Amber’s lap, and it snarls at her, exposing tiny lethal teeth. The woman snatches her hand away and inspects the dots of blood on her finger.

“Are you alright?” I ask.

She shakes her head at the dog, who promptly closes his eyes and turns his back on his human. “You’d think that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, wouldn’t you?”

I can’t help smiling. Something about her looks familiar, but I can’t place where I might’ve seen her before. The diamonds in her ears sparkle, and her hair looks as if she has just stepped out of a salon.

“Are you staying here?” I ask.

“Only for tonight. I’m flying to the UK tomorrow morning.” She narrows her eyes. “Is that a British accent? Where are you from?”

Before I can respond, Ric steps in. “We should be going.” He flashes me a warning glance, reminding me that he’s my bodyguard, and this woman is a stranger.

He tries to take the chihuahua from Amber, and the dog latches onto Ric’s finger, top lip curled away from his gums, a low snarl rumbling from somewhere deep inside his tiny chest.

I laugh at Ric’s face as he tries to yank his finger from the dog’s jaws. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t laugh.” I suck my lips in to quell the giggles threatening to keep right on coming.

The woman grimaces. “I’m sorry, I usually warn people not to get too close.” Hands on hips, she studies the chihuahua who has once again settled in Amber’s lap like a prince on his royal cushion. “Would you mind if your daughter carries him up to my suite? You can come too, of course.”

I’m too busy scouring my mind for a memory jogged by the woman’s voice to correct her.

“I promise I won’t try to kidnap her. My agent will vouch for me—” she rummages in her purse for her phone “—here, you can speak to her yourself. I’m Roma Fielding… The actor?”

Roma Fielding!

No wonder she looked so familiar. I’ve watched some of her movies on Netflix. Most of her movies. She was one of my mom’s favorite actors.

“Oh my God,” I blurt out before I can stop myself. “I thought I recognized you.”

She smiles. Despite the designer labels and the hair groomed to within an inch of its life, she seems … normal. “I would risk losing a finger to take my dog back, but he seems to like your little girl.”

She’s still waiting for me to agree to her unusual request, only I’m fangirling so badly, I can’t even remember what she wanted us to do.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Fielding,” Ric says, “but I don’t think it’s a good idea.”