Chapter 248:
She dressed in black—leggings, a hoodie, a cap. She wanted to be invisible.
She arrived at JFK and slipped into the First Class Lounge. It was quiet. She grabbed a coffee and sat in a corner pod, pulling up Julian’s medical charts on her tablet.
A shadow fell over her table.
“Is this seat taken?”
Aurora looked up.
Sawyer Halloway was standing there, holding a boarding pass. He was grinning, but his eyes were alert.
“Coincidence?” Aurora asked dryly, lowering her mask.
“Calculated risk,” Sawyer admitted, sitting down without waiting for an answer. “I have a friend in the airline’s database. Saw you booked a flight to Syracuse.”
“That’s stalking, Sawyer.”
“That’s romantic determination,” he corrected. “Besides, I have business upstate. Total coincidence.”
Aurora rolled her eyes, but she didn’t kick him out.
“I heard about your dinner with your grandmother,” Aurora said. News traveled fast in their circles.
Sawyer’s smile faded. “Yeah. She wasn’t happy about my choice of company.”
“You defended me,” Aurora said softly.
“I told them the truth,” Sawyer said. “That you’re worth more than their entire portfolio.”
Aurora felt a twinge of guilt. He was risking his inheritance for a woman who was already spoken for.
“Sawyer…”
ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇꜱ ɪɴ ɢᴀʟɴᴏᴠᴇʟꜱ.ᴄᴏᴍ
“Don’t,” he said, holding up a hand. “I know. You’re ‘focused.’ Or ‘occupied,’ as you said. But I’m playing the long game, Aurora. Thorne is intense. He burns hot. But I can offer you fun. I can offer you a life where you don’t have to be a warlord every day.”
It was a compelling pitch. Elias was war. Sawyer was peace.
“Attention passengers for Flight 404 to Syracuse.”
They stood up.
“I bought the seat next to you,” Sawyer confessed.
Aurora sighed. “Of course you did.”
As they boarded, Aurora’s phone buzzed.
Text from Elias: Have a safe flight. Don’t talk to strangers. And by strangers, I mean blond bankers with daddy issues.
Aurora looked at Sawyer, then down at her phone. A small smile tugged at her lips.
Sawyer saw it. The jealousy flared in his chest, hot and sharp.
“Thorne?” he asked.
“Thorne,” she confirmed.
They sat down. The plane taxied. For the next hour, Aurora was trapped in a metal tube with a man who wanted her heart, while texting a man who owned her soul.
The Kensington Country Estate loomed out of the mist like a gothic nightmare. It was grand, yes, but it smelled of damp earth and secrets.
.
.
.