When Emily King saw Paul open the front door of Joe’s Bakery, she straightened up from where she’d been leaning on the counter and went to pour out his large cup of dark roast.
He’d stopped in the doorway, talking over his shoulder to someone on the street. He was grinning when he turned back into the shop—the heart-stopping smile that caused even Emily’s cynical heart to flutter just a little—but his expression sobered as he scanned the shop, eyeing each customer in turn.
If their South Philadelphia neighborhood could be said to have royalty, Paul Marino was it.
Since he’d been five years old, locals had called him Prince Paul, although always out of his hearing. He despised the appellation and had been in the habit of beating up boys in school who were foolish enough to use the nickname to his face.
Emily had his regular coffee order ready when he approached the counter.
“Is that uniform out there all the protection you have?” Paul’s steel gray eyes narrowed as he looked out the glass storefront to the white car with distinct blue police markings parked on the curb.
Even before he’d gone to New England for college, Paul hadn’t looked or sounded like he was from South Philly—yet another reason he was set apart from the rest of them.
“Hello to you too.” Emily accepted the bills he’d handed her and dropped the change into the tip jar. She’d been working at Joe’s part-time for almost two years, so she knew the routine for all the regulars., Since she’d graduated from high school a few weeks ago, she’d started working full-time, trying to save up enough money for living expenses at college in the fall.
He ignored her sarcasm, still frowning out at the street. “You’re a witness in a federal trial and that’s all the protection they give you? Anyone could just walk in here and—”
“Cut my throat as I make coffee? Garrote me in front of the doughnut-eating public?”
Paul had tensed when he turned back to her, holding her eyes in that hypnotizing way he had. “How can you not take it seriously?”
“Your dad isn’t going to kill me.”
“How the hell do you know what he’ll do? He’s dangerous.”
She shrugged, trying to hide the way her stomach churned with the low-grade anxiety she’d suffered for the last five months.
Her father had worked for decades as a security guard in a research facility owned by Vincent Marino. Emily used to stop by to visit and bring him snacks when he worked the nightshift. One night, she’d gotten nosy and had overheard a conversation she shouldn’t have heard, making herself a target of Marino.
Not a good position to be in.
Marino was born into a long-standing organized crime family, but he’d used his ambition and business acumen to catapult his family’s crime business to the international level, setting up well-hidden trafficking networks in drugs, arms, women—anything that could be sold for a high profit margin. He posed himself as a corporate mogul now, but everyone in the neighborhood knew he was a criminal. The feds knew it too, which was why they’d jumped on the testimony Emily offered them.
Paul was Vincent Marino’s only child.
“What about Witness Protection?” Paul asked. He had dark hair—now ruffled from the wind outside—with classic, well-chiseled features and a lean, athletic body.
She’d had the biggest crush on him when she was thirteen years old and he’d been back from college for the summer to visit his mother. All the girls in the neighborhood had been crazy about Paul with his slick cars, sexy rebelliousness, and obsession with extreme sports.
Emily wasn’t feeling particularly charmed at the moment. She frowned back at him. “What about it?”
“Why aren’t you in it?”
The authorities genuinely believed that, despite his mob roots, Marino wasn’t violent, having been taken in by the white-collar persona he’d adopted over the last two decades. The neighborhood knew better. Marino was just a thug in a five-thousand-dollar suit.
“Because I wasn’t offered it, and I wouldn’t take it even if we were. I’m not in any danger, and everyone knows it. I wouldn’t have to be followed around by that cop if you hadn’t raised such a fuss with the local precinct.”
“I know him better than you do.”
“He can be violent, sure, but he’s old-school. He isn’t going to kill a seventeen-year-old girl from the neighborhood.”
“I’m not convinced of that.”
She was silent, wondering if Paul, with his privileged life and innate entitlement to anything he desired, really believed his own father was so completely ruthless.
“He burned down your house,” he added.
“When no one was in it.” She made the comment offhand, but she didn’t feel that way. She’d loved the old row house where she and her father had lived all her life. There wasn’t anything left to salvage after Marino’s men had burned it down as a warning to keep what she knew about him to herself.
The irony was, if he hadn’t burned down their house, she never would have decided to testify against him. South Philly wasn’t what it used to be, but there was still a lingering community loyalty that Emily would have intuitively fallen back on. She didn’t like to be bullied, though, and her instinct was always to resist all attempts to control her.
Marino had tried to do both.
“You’re going to testify against him now too, aren’t you?” Emily asked, trying to turn around the momentum of the conversation. “What about your protection?”
Paul’s decision to testify against his father had been met with shock and controversy in the neighborhood, with the locals evenly split between those who thought it was the ultimate act of betrayal and those who thought it was the only decent, responsible thing Paul had ever done.
“I’ve arranged for my own security,” he told her. “What about your aunt? Is someone watching her?”
“She’s home sick in bed. She can’t seem to shake this flu. She doesn’t have any important testimony to offer anyway—she’s just confirming what I say. There wouldn’t be any reason to kill her.”
Paul rubbed his chin distractedly, a hint of bristles making a slight scratching sound. “How can you be so casual about this? It’s your life.”
She met his eyes evenly. Paul was six years older than her, and until recently she wouldn’t have dared to give him more than a trembling greeting. “Right. It’s my life.”
“Anyway, the point is you need more security. I can—”
“You can what? Pay a bodyguard to follow me around? Don’t be stupid.”
“I’m not being stupid. I can easily—”
“I don’t care what you can easily do,” she spit out, suddenly angry at his arrogant assumption that he had any say at all on her life. “I’m not a spoiled rich boy who lives on a trust fund and wastes his life partying, sleeping around, and jumping out of planes. I might have to work here every hour of the day just so I can pay for things like clothes and college, but my aunt and I don’t accept charity. We definitely don’t accept charity from you.”
Paul’s expression grew tighter and tighter as she spoke, and his eyes were cold and hard when she’d finished. “What have I done to you to deserve that?”
Emily drooped, letting out her pent breath in a rush. “Nothing. You haven’t done anything to me. I’m sorry if I was harsh.”
The truth was she was scared and defensive, and it rubbed her wrong to see how easy Paul’s life appeared.
His mouth softened slightly. “I really wasn’t offering you charity.”
“Then what would you call it?”
“Reasonable measures to ensure the federal case against my father doesn’t lose its star witness.”
Despite herself, Emily snorted at his dry, lofty tone.
Paul might be irresponsible and entitled, but he’d always been incredibly smart. He finished college when he was twenty and went on to get his MBA. How he managed to successfully earn his degree last month while still indulging his very wild lifestyle she couldn’t even imagine.
“Well,” Emily said, forcing down her defensiveness since it wasn’t really Paul’s fault, “It wouldn’t kill you to get a job.”
To her surprise, he didn’t laugh or shrug her comment off. “Believe it or not, I’ve been trying.”
Taken off guard, she blurted out the obvious question. “Where do you want a job?”
“Simone’s.”
Paul was neighborhood royalty not because of his father’s reputation, since many thought Vincent Marino had abandoned his roots long ago. His mother’s family had been equally important in the community—her great-grandfather having made a fortune by starting Simone’s, a national department store chain, and her father having been savvy enough to transition to successful online retailing just in time to keep the company from going bust.
Currently, Paul lived on a trust fund from his grandfather. His mother had died six months ago, leaving all she had to her son as well, but he couldn’t claim it or his share in the company until he’d turned twenty-five.
Emily could hardly blame the woman for not risking everything her family had worked for to a reckless bad-boy like Paul.
“What kind of job are you trying to get? Mail room clerk? Receptionist?”
The corner of his mouth turned up briefly, as if he were suppressing a smile. “I’m not expecting to be appointed CEO at twenty-three, but I’m perfectly well-qualified for some sort of position. The board just doesn’t trust me.”
“Can you blame them?”
The smile disappeared. “It’s my family’s company.”
“Yeah.” Emily thought about it for a minute, surprised and faintly pleased that Paul was actually serious about his desire to work in his mother’s company. In all the years she’d known him, he hadn’t appeared to take anything seriously. “Good thing the press hasn’t caught wind of that. Evil board members heartlessly shutting out grieving son from his birthright.”
Paul was leaning on the counter, but now he straightened up suddenly. His brows drew together.
“What?” she asked.
He shook his head. He might have said something else, but just then Chris and Laura Mason walked into the bakery.
Emily had been friends with Chris since they both could walk. He’d been the star of the high school soccer team and had gotten an athletic scholarship for college. For years, Chris had been her dream guy, but he’d just never been interested in her that way.
Laura was his older sister.
She was gorgeous and built like a model, and she’d dated Paul for almost six months last year, the longest he’d ever dated anyone. For a while, it looked like he might have really fallen for her, but they’d finally broken up.
Laura was smiling as she approached, and she wrapped an arm around Paul in a half-hug.
Emily turned to Chris, his square face and brown eyes familiar and comforting.
“How’s your aunt?” he asked.
“Even worse. She seemed to have gotten better for a while, but then the flu or whatever just came back.”
Paul and Laura drifted away, absorbed in their own conversation. With their dark hair and movie-star looks, they were absolutely stunning together. Like they matched.
“What were you doing with Paul?” Chris asked, frowning toward the object of his question.
“Just talking. He was being obnoxious, demanding to know why I don’t have better security.”
“He doesn’t really think his dad would…”
Emily shrugged. “Who knows what he thinks?”
“Well, just be careful around him.”
“Around Paul? He hates his father. He doesn’t want anything to do with him.”
The incident that had confirmed Paul as a prince in their neighborhood was when, during the vicious divorce battle between his mother and father, he’d sided entirely with his mother. He never accepted a dime from his father, not since he was thirteen years old.
“Yeah. I know. But you know how he is with girls. He might try to…try to…” Chris cleared his throat, adorably awkward at the topic. “Get in your pants,” he concluded lamely.
Emily laughed out loud, in genuine amusement, her eyes straying to the corner where Paul was smiling irresistibly at Laura.
One thing Emily knew very well.
There were Lauras in the world, and there were Emilys.
The Lauras were adored by all who saw them, winning admirers and lovers by doing nothing more than flashing a smile. The Lauras married rich men and lived lives of ease and safety.
The Emilys of the world had to scrimp for every penny. Even though they were smart and nice and pretty enough, they still made it through high school without ever having a real boyfriend—since no one of interest ever asked them out. The Emilys of the world made stupid mistakes, like overhearing a mob boss’s conversation about drug trafficking and money laundering. And, being too stubborn to be intimidated into silence, the Emilys of the world ended up in ridiculously melodramatic scenarios like becoming witnesses in federal trials.
Emily had daydreams like everyone else, but she’d long since given up hoping they would come true. It was fine. She had a perfectly decent life and good friends. She didn’t need anything more.
There were Lauras in the world, and there were Emilys.
And the Emilys would never get the prince.
***
A month later, Emily sat stiffly in a hospital room and watched her aunt die.
When she first starting getting the fevers, she’d been restless, sometimes violent in her delirium. She wasn’t anymore. She just lay in the bed, so pale she matched the sheets, and she never even opened her eyes.
Maybe it was the medication, or maybe her body was simply shutting down.
Emily made a point of never lying to herself.
She was her aunt. She was all the family she had in the world.
And she was going to die before the week was over.
She’d been sitting by her aunt’s bed for the last several hours in a numb stupor, but a motion from the doorway managed to catch her attention.
When she turned her head, she saw Paul standing just outside the door, in all of his cool, expensive sexiness.
She hadn’t been expecting visitors, and she just blinked in his direction, trying to get her mind to work.
He made a slight inclination with his head toward the hallway.
After verifying that her aunt’s condition hadn’t changed, she heaved herself to her feet and walked on unsteady legs. Under normal circumstances, she would have resisted his summoning her with just a gesture of his head, but she didn’t have enough energy to argue today.
“Is she okay?” Paul asked after she’d joined him in the hall and they walked to an empty waiting area nearby.
She gave a silent half-shrug.
Her aunt wasn’t okay.
“I didn’t realize it had gotten so bad. I wish someone had told me.” Paul’s eyes were sober, strangely quiet, in a way she’d rarely seen them.
“She just kept getting worse. It happened fast.”
“I would have come back from Switzerland right away if I’d known.” He’d been skiing with friends for the last couple of weeks.
She gave another shrug. “What could you have done?”
“What do the doctors say?”
“They still have no idea. They’re assuming it’s a virus, since it didn’t respond to any of the antibiotics they’ve tried. They had the CDC in and everything, but no one has seen anything like it.”
“Has anyone else gotten sick?”
Emily shook her head. “It doesn’t seem to be contagious that way. They say it doesn’t pass from person-to-person contact. They have no idea what’s going on.”
“And the fevers are the only symptom?”
“That’s it. No symptoms except the fevers. But they just get higher and higher and last longer and longer, and they’re going to kill her soon.” She thought she’d cried as much as she could, but her voice still broke on the last word.
Paul glanced away, his expression strangely tight. “I’m sorry.”
She believed him. He’d played around most of his life, but he wasn’t a bad-hearted guy. “Yeah.”
“Have they…” Paul trailed off and started again. “Have the doctors considered the possibility that this isn’t random?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you and your aunt are witnesses against Vincent Marino.”
It was so strange to hear Paul talk about his own father so distantly, as if he were a stranger.
“I know that, but I’m the key witness, and I’m not sick. Besides, they tested for poisons and toxins and everything. They think it’s a virus.”
“I didn’t mean she’d been poisoned. My father traffics in arms, among other things, and he doesn’t just sell guns and missiles. For a while, he’s been interested in the development of biological weapons.”
She gasped. “You think he did this to my aunt on purpose?”
“I don’t know. It might not have been on purpose. Maybe your aunt was exposed to something accidentally on the job. I just want to make sure the doctors look into every possibility. Is it all right if I talk to them?”
Emily nodded, horrified by this new possibility.
It made a bleak sort of sense, though.
Everything terrible that had happened to her in the last year was because of Vincent Marino.
Paul glanced down the hall toward her aunt’s room. “Do they just have the one uniform stationed at her room?”
“Do we really have to go through this whole thing again?”
“It’s not enough.”
Emily was too tired and drained to have another argument about security.
Paul seemed to recognize this and took advantage of it. “One half-competent cop isn’t enough to keep you and your aunt safe. I’m not any sort of professional, but I could take that cop out without blinking.”
For a strange moment, Emily was attracted to him. Not in the old way—the kind of movie-star idolization—but in an intense, visceral surge prompted by the masculinity he exuded.
The weird response came and went in just a moment, since she wasn’t in any sort of condition to process or indulge it.
“And then you and your aunt would be dead,” Paul concluded, still looking down at the uniformed police officer stationed at her aunt’s door.
Emily didn’t know what to say to that, so she didn’t say anything.
“I’m serious,” he continued, turning his gaze back to her. “You may not believe it, and the feds may not believe it, but I know my father better than any of you. He’s perfectly capable of killing anyone he sees as a threat to him.”
She shrugged with one shoulder. “My aunt is almost dead anyway.”
“But you aren’t, and you’re still a threat to my dad if you testify against him. I don’t know what they’re thinking, just putting one half-assed cop on—”
“Would you stop?” she burst out. “I’m so sorry that my aunt dying is putting a crimp in your little vendetta, but I’ve got other things to worry about right now.”
Paul’s expression changed. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know. I know you didn’t.” She exhaled, suddenly as limp as a popped balloon. She swayed on her feet, and Paul reached out to put a supportive arm around her.
It wasn’t tender or gentle, but it was strong, and she needed it.
“When was the last time you ate?” he asked.
She sneered at him faintly, too weak to give his presumptuousness the snide response it deserved.
Evidently realizing she wasn’t going to answer, Paul went back to their previous subject. “I’ll understand if you decide you don’t want to testify against him now, given what’s happened.”
“No. I still want to do it. Your dad doesn’t get to win, just because everything else has gone to shit.”
Paul’s handsome features relaxed slightly. “Thank you.”
“I’m not doing it for you.”
“But still…” He cleared his throat. “Can I please do something for you?”
She looked up at him, surprised.
“Can I hire security to protect you until the trial is over?”
She just stared, wondering why she didn’t feel the immediate defensiveness she’d felt when he made the same offer before.
Paul gestured with his head toward a big man in a suit who stood several paces away. Emily had assumed he was related to one of the patients in the hospital, but she suddenly realized he was a bodyguard. “They’ll be discreet. They won’t get in your way. And they’ll keep you a lot safer than law enforcement seems capable of.”
She swallowed and thought about it. Then made a helpless gesture with her hands. She just couldn’t care about such things when her aunt was dying down the hall.
Paul reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. His grip was warm and heavy. “I might not be able to do anything to help your aunt, but I can keep you safe, Emily. Let me do it.”
For a moment, she couldn’t look away from him. She’d never seen Paul so utterly earnest.
“Can you trust me?” he asked, when she still didn’t answer.
Maybe there was no reason to trust him, since Paul had done little in his life but waste time, money, and relationships, but she did anyway. “Yeah.”
“You’ll let me keep you safe?”
“Yeah.”
He squeezed her shoulder before he dropped his hand. “I won’t let you down.”
***
Three weeks later, Emily buried her aunt with a simple graveside service.
The Masons opened their home afterwards so people could give Emily their support and comfort.
She liked these people. Some of them she even loved. But she didn’t want to talk to any of them. She didn’t want to see them.
She wanted to hide under the covers and wake up from this endless nightmare.
After an hour and a half, she couldn’t take any more sympathetic smiles or soft voices asking how she was. She felt too hot. Claustrophobic. She slipped away from the crowded rooms where people were mingling and eating from paper plates.
She went outside to the front porch and breathed deeply of the summer air, trying to catch her breath since it seemed impossible to cool down.
She hadn’t cried all day, but the world felt like a gray, slow-motion dream.
“Are you ready to leave?”
She stiffened at the unexpected voice and turned her head to see Paul standing on the walk that led up to the house. He wore the dark suit he’d worn to the graveside service and stood with his normal confident, almost arrogant stance.
He hadn’t come over to Chris’s house with her after the graveside service. She didn’t know why but didn’t care enough to ask.
“I shouldn’t,” she said, her voice sounding hoarse like she’d overused it, although she hadn’t really been talking that much. “They went to so much trouble.”
“They did it for you. They’ll want you to do whatever you need to do.”
Emily looked longingly at the chauffeured car—which was the vehicle Paul had started to use now that he went around with bodyguards all the time.
She still didn’t think Vincent Marino was capable of violence against her. Or against his own son.
But Paul evidently did.
She wondered what it was like for him to believe that his father might try to kill him.
She didn’t have the emotional capacity at the moment to wrap her mind around it.
“Let’s go,” Paul said. He held out one hand in a subtle beckoning gesture.
Emily took a step toward him before she remembered her manners. “I need to tell Chris and his folks first. I need to thank them.”
“I can tell them, if you want—”
“No. I’ll do it.”
She went back into the too-hot, crowded house and managed to explain that she needed to leave. The Masons looked at her in kind pity, and Chris gave her an awkward but sincere hug.
He’d given her a surprise party in this house for her seventeenth birthday. Less than a year ago.
He’d given her a birthday kiss at the end of the evening, and she’d had dreams for weeks afterwards that he was finally starting to develop feelings for her.
He wasn’t. It was one of those daydreams that just died.
All of them did eventually.
Now she could hardly remember being the girl with such a crush on him.
Paul was waiting by the car when she returned.
When they got in and the driver pulled away from the curb, she leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes.
She was so incredibly tired. Her mouth and her eyes felt so dry.
Paul sat in the seat beside her, and she could feel his presence. He wasn’t a naturally quiet person, so he must be trying to give her some space.
He was used to being the prince of whatever room he walked into. Which was why she was vaguely surprised that he’d been so helpful for the last few days, taking care of all the logistics so she didn’t have to do anything but just show up.
On that thought, she opened her eyes. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“For helping me out with all the arrangements. For everything.”
He glanced away, looking uncomfortable. “It was nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing to me.”
When he didn’t respond, she changed the subject. “Any luck with getting a job?
“Actually, yes, thanks to you.”
“Thanks to me?”
“Yeah. You gave me the idea. I threatened the board with going to the press, and they caved and gave me a position.”
“Really?” She tried to be happy for him. Even felt a few flickers of interest. “What’s the position?”
“Assistant Vice President of Management.”
“What does the Assistant Vice President of Management do?”
“From the first week of work, he evidently is the dumping ground for all tedious or impossible projects that anyone wants to get rid of.”
She gave a huff of something close to amusement. “Oh. Well, at least it’s something.”
“Yeah. It’s better than nothing.”
There was silence for a moment until Paul changed the subject, asking carefully, “Have you thought about what you want to do now?”
“I want to go home and sleep for days.”
“I meant long term,” Paul explained. “Where do you want to live? What do you want to do? I know you’re emancipated and working at the coffee shop, but you’ll need to figure out a long-term plan.”
“I know that.” She frowned, annoyed he was bringing up things she didn’t want to think about. “I can’t sort all that out today.”
“You don’t have to figure it all out right now, but you must have some idea. Isn’t there anyone you want to live with?”
She shrugged and looked out the window, trying not to snap at him the way she wanted.
“What about your former stepmother? Weren’t you close to your stepsister? What was her name?”
“Stacie. We’re not close anymore. We haven’t talked since her mom walked out on my dad.”
“But you liked them, didn’t you? If they’re as close to family as you have, maybe—”
“No,” she bit out, jerking her head back to glare at him. “They aren’t family. I have no family.”
He appeared briefly annoyed at her tone but quickly masked it. Evidently, he wasn’t going to argue with the pitiful girl whose aunt just died. “You need to live somewhere. You’ll start college in the fall, so maybe—”
“I’m not sure I’m going to college.”
“What?” His gray eyes had widened, and his abrupt tone and intensity were really getting on her nerves. “That’s crazy. I thought you were planning—”
“I might go sometime. I just can’t stand the thought of it right now. I can’t go about life like nothing happened.”
Paul’s expression softened slightly. “I guess I can understand that.”
“How nice for you—to be so understanding.” She’d intended to sound sarcastic but not quite so bitter. She rubbed her face and wished it wasn’t so stuffy in this car, wished Paul’s body wasn’t emanating so much heat. “Sorry. I just want to get the trial over with. I can’t worry about anything else until that’s done. After it’s done, then…” She sighed thickly. “Then I’ll try to start my life again.”
He was silent for a really long time.
Finally, she turned to study him through narrowed eyes. “What?” she demanded, when she saw what looked like reluctance on his face.
“I don’t know. It just doesn’t sound very…healthy. To isolate yourself from your friends, to put your whole life on hold for so long, after going through—”
“Oh, just shut up.” She hated how young she sounded even as she said the words. She straightened up and managed to say a bit more lucidly, “You’ve put your life on hold for this vendetta against your dad, so I’m not sure you can lecture me about emotional health.”
“It’s not a vendetta.”
“Isn’t it? Aren’t you doing everything you can to get him sent away to prison for life?”
“But not for retribution.”
She raised her eyebrows. “For justice?”
“Why do you sound so dubious?” He looked almost offended, as if he’d forgotten he was supposed to treat her with kid gloves.
“You’ve never struck me as someone who would move heaven and earth for some sort of high-blown ideal.”
“Thanks a lot.”
He wasn’t meeting her eyes. He was looking out the car widow past her head, but she suddenly wondered if she’d offended him.
“I didn’t mean it as an insult,” she explained. “But he’s your dad, and a belief in justice isn’t really enough to…to do what you’re doing.”
“Betray him, you mean?”
She swallowed and felt her whole body flush at his frigid tone. “I didn’t mean that. I think you’re doing the right thing. But it’s got to be hard—since he’s your dad.”
“Our relationship was never anything like yours with your father.”
“I know.”
“He was never really a father to me.”
“I know.”
Neither said anything for a full minute.
Then Paul added, as if as an afterthought, “I owe it to my mother.”
“Owe what?” Even two months ago, she never would have had the boldness to question Paul Marino so directly. He’d always been a prince—too distant to really touch.
But nothing felt the same now. Not even Paul.
“I owe it to her to make something of my life. To do something…something worthwhile.”
Emily suddenly understood Paul in a way she hadn’t before.
His mother’s death had been a kind of turning point for him. He was trying to buckle down and work a real job. He wasn’t in the gossip columns for partying, drugs, or wild stunts nearly as much as he used to be. She hadn’t really thought about it much, since so much had happened to her in the meantime, but he must be trying to turn over a new leaf.
“Oh.” She was so hot she was sweating, and she shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I thought it was about winning. Beating him.”
“That too.”
His tone was dry, but she was sure he was speaking the truth.
Everyone had something that was most important to them. Getting justice for his father—for his mother’s sake—was the most important thing to Paul.
Emily wasn’t sure what was most important to her anymore, and the idea of figuring it out nauseated her.
“Are you sure you don’t want to call up your former stepmother and stepsister? Surely you want to be around people you know and trust at a time like this. You’re just seventeen, and I’m not sure it’s a good idea—”
“Who the hell asked you whether it’s a good idea?” Her voice was more bad-tempered than she’d expected. “I’m the one who gets to make decisions for me. I’m letting you protect me. I’m not letting you boss me around.”
She sucked in a ragged breath, suddenly so hot she could barely breathe. She fumbled at the door, trying to find the control for the window.
“I wasn’t trying to—”
“Can we please open a window?” she interrupted, suddenly panicking as the air blurred and thickened in front of her eyes.
Paul reached over to roll down her window, and she leaned toward the rush of fresh air, breathing it in desperately.
When she finally leaned back against the seat, she could sense Paul watching her, scrutinizing her. She was vaguely embarrassed but felt too bad to care.
He didn’t say anything.
Finally, he reached over and put a hand on her forehead.
She pulled away from his touch immediately, but he must have felt what he needed to feel.
He pressed the intercom that connected to the driver and said in a voice that was upsettingly urgent, “We need to get to a hospital. Now. Now.”
And that was the first time it occurred to Emily that she might have a fever.