Chapter 2

The first ray of sunlight hit Chloe directly in the eye, slicing through the haze of sleep and cheap whiskey like a laser. She groaned, rolling over, and her hand hit something solid. Something warm. Her eyes flew open. She was staring at a broad, heavily muscled back. The expensive silk sheets were tangled low around his waist. In a flash, the events of the previous night crashed over her like a bucket of ice water. The parking garage. Kate straddling Brennen. The neon lights of Elysium. The fifty-thousand-dollar check. Oh God. The check. She had paid a man for sex. A complete stranger. A high-end escort. Panic, sharp and acidic, rose in her throat. She sat up abruptly, her head spinning. As she did, her gaze landed on the glowing digital clock on the mahogany nightstand. 7:15 AM. "Shit!" Chloe gasped, the sound loud in the quiet penthouse. Her flight to Paris boarded in less than two hours. If she missed this shift, she was fired. She had to get out of here. Now. She slipped out of bed, wincing as her bare feet hit the freezing marble floor. She scavenged the room for her clothes like a madwoman, finding her skirt draped over a velvet chair and her blouse crumpled near the door. She dressed with trembling hands, her fingers so clumsy and frantic that she misaligned the buttons on her blouse. She grabbed her purse from the floor, yanking it up so hard that the metal clasp popped open. She didn't notice the small plastic card—her airline ID—slip from the side pocket and land silently on the thick Persian rug. She cast one last, frantic glance at the bed. He was still asleep, one arm flung over his face, his dark hair messy against the white pillow. He looked even more devastatingly handsome in the daylight. It wasn't fair. She didn't leave a note. She didn't have the time or the courage. She just grabbed her heels and fled, pulling the heavy door shut with a soft click. She didn't take a full breath until she was in the back of a cab speeding toward JFK.

An hour later, Chloe was standing in the employee security line at Terminal 4. Her head was pounding with a vicious hangover, her swollen, red-rimmed eyes hidden behind oversized sunglasses. She clutched her boarding pass, desperate to just get on the plane, hide in the galley, and cry for the next eight hours. "ID, please," the TSA guard said, his voice a monotone drone. Chloe reached for her lanyard. Her hand patted her chest. Nothing. Frowning, she opened her purse and dug through it. Lipstick, wallet, phone, a loose bottle of aspirin. No ID. Her heart began to hammer violently against her ribs. "Just a second," she muttered, pulling the bag open wider. She frantically scraped the bottom, her nails catching on the lining. It was gone. "Ma'am?" the guard prompted, his patience visibly thinning. "I need your airline ID to clear you through this checkpoint. You're holding up the line." "I... I know, I just had it," Chloe stammered, her face flushing hot. Panic clawed at her chest, making it hard to breathe. "I must have dropped it. " "I can't let you through without it," the guard said, his face an impassive wall. "You'll have to go to the admin office in Terminal 1 and get a temporary badge. Next." Chloe's stomach plummeted to her shoes. Terminal 1 was a shuttle ride away. It would take at least an hour. This was a nightmare. She was going to get a mark on her record. Tears of sheer, overwhelming frustration pricked her eyes. She pulled out her phone, her hands shaking uncontrollably, ready to call her supervisor and beg for mercy. "Excuse me! Miss Carr? Chloe Carr?" Chloe spun around. A young man in an airport concierge uniform was jogging up to the checkpoint, slightly out of breath. He was holding up a small plastic card attached to a familiar blue lanyard. Chloe stared at him, then at the card. It was her ID. "Yes!" she gasped, lunging forward. "Yes, that's me!" "Thank God," the young man panted, handing it over. "A gentleman just dropped this off at the VIP desk. He saw the Aura Airlines logo and told me to run it to the staff check-in for the Paris flight. Said it was an absolute emergency." Chloe took the ID, her fingers closing tightly around the plastic. It was still warm. "Which gentleman?" she asked, her voice breathless. "Where is he?" The kid shrugged, catching his breath. "Didn't catch a name. But he was... intimidating. Wearing a custom suit, looked like he owned the airport. He just handed it to me, tipped me a hundred bucks to run, and walked away." Chloe stood frozen, the ID clutched to her chest. She looked down at her own face staring back at her from the plastic. The male prostitute. It had to be him. She must have dropped it in the penthouse. He had found it, figured out her flight schedule, and personally brought it to the airport—or sent someone to do it. It made absolutely no sense. A man who sold his body for fifty thousand dollars a night didn't do favors. He did transactions. He should have taken the check and disappeared. Instead, he had gone out of his way to save her job. "You good to go, ma'am?" the guard asked, interrupting her racing thoughts. "Yes," Chloe whispered, sliding the lanyard around her neck. "I'm good." She walked through the metal detector, her mind spinning faster than the turbines on the tarmac outside. She had paid for a night of mindless distraction, but as she touched the plastic ID card, one terrifying question echoed in her mind. Who was he, really?