The Heiress' Return: No More Pretending novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: For the Cameras

"We don't answer it," Ronan said. "We go to dinner."

"Dinner."

"At eight, in Santa Monica, at a restaurant with a ramp and a great deal of window." He set my phone face down on the marble. "Gordon told the internet you're a thief. The best answer is to be seen eating a very expensive steak."

"I don't eat steak."

"You'll learn."

By eight I was in a black dress I had bought for a funeral two years earlier.

My hair was pinned up and my hands were cold.

Ronan drove himself.

His black car had hand controls, and he got in and out of it faster than I dared to help.

He wore a charcoal suit and a dark shirt open at the throat.

Every time I looked at him I had to look somewhere else.

The photographers were at the door before we parked.

"Don't talk to them," he said. "Smile if you want. Don't if you don't."

I didn't.

They shouted anyway.

"Gill! Is it true you're after the Bellingham money?"

"Ronan, are you embarrassed?"

He rolled past them in a perfectly straight line and held the door for me.

The dining room was low and gold, and heads turned as we crossed it.

I heard it all as I walked: the whisper, the click, a man saying distinctly, "That's her."

We sat at a window table, and the waiter came and took the chair away from my side without being asked, and put the menu in Ronan's hand without a word about the wheelchair.

I liked him for that.

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