He laughed and stepped back, letting his hand drop from my side. “I should shower. Why don’t you go have some breakfast and then I’ll meet you in there in a bit,” he suggested. I nodded in agreement, and headed out of the room, holding the door open for him to walk through too. He shot me a little smile as he walked in the opposite direction to me.
As I stepped through the door to the kitchen, I groaned inwardly and wished I’d skipped food today. Both of my parents were sitting at the breakfast bar sipping coffee. They stopped talking and looked up at me as I walked in.
I forced a tight smile. “Morning.” I kept my greeting short, not wanting to instigate a conversation with them.
“Annabelle, you look beautiful!” my mom gushed. “Did you get that shirt yesterday?”
I nodded, frowning as I strutted to the coffee pot and poured myself a cup. Did everyone know my every move? “Yeah. I got a few things to take with me to the new school. I spent on the credit card, hope that’s okay.” Too late if it wasn’t. Maybe I should have asked first…
“Of course it is. It’s your allowance, you never spend it,” my dad answered. I turned back to see him smiling at me – a genuine smile. I hadn’t seen one of those for a long time. Generally our relationship could be classified as ‘strained’ so I never really saw them smile much around me anymore. I could see the hopefulness in both of their eyes. Clearly they were reading something into the new clothes. I hated the little, meaningful smile they exchanged because they thought I wouldn’t notice.
Roll on tomorrow, so I can get the heck out of here!
I pulled out a stool at the end of the breakfast bar and sat down, pulling a bowl and box of cereal towards me. The air was thick with awkwardness, and you could probably cut the tension with a knife as I sat there with them. It was probably strange for both of them to be sitting here having coffee with a daughter they had all but been estranged from for the last three years. It appeared no one knew what to say.
Needing to break the silence because it was practically deafening me, I cleared my throat and said the first thing that popped into my head. “Agent Taylor is taking me shooting today.”
My dad’s eyes widened as he regarded me quizzically. Either because I’d volunteered to start a conversation, or because of the topic. “Oh really? I didn’t know you had an interest that that kind of thing.”
“I don’t. Ashton thinks it’ll be good for me,” I replied, shrugging and focussing on pushing my cereal around my bowl with my spoon.
“Well, maybe it would be a good idea,” my dad agreed. I could practically hear the cogs of his brain ticking over, trying to work this all out and read things into it. “I’ll put in a call to a friend and have you some guest passes ready so you don’t have to join and fill in paperwork.”
My mom chimed in then, asking my dad when the last time was that he went shooting, and thankfully the conversation required little to no input from me, so I sat quiet and chewed on my cereal, silently willing Ashton to hurry up.
After ten minutes I was all but ready to run from the room. Talk had been sparse, and the uncomfortable atmosphere had gotten so bad that I could barely sit still. When Ashton strutted into the kitchen, dressed and smiling, I practically jumped out of my seat and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Hi, you ready?” I asked hopefully.
“Er…” he looked from me to the food and back again. My heart sank. I’d had enough and needed to leave. “Yeah, sure.” He turned to my parents and smiled politely. “Good morning, sir, ma’am.”
I reached out and snagged him a bagel and an apple before stepping to his side and holding it out to him, praying he wouldn’t suggest we eat it here. “Let’s get going then, it’s a little way away.” He smiled sympathetically and nodded, before leaning over and picking up a granola bar too. “Bye. See you at dinner,” I said to my parents, knowing that I would never get out of my last dinner before leaving.
Ashton bid his goodbyes as I was walking out of the room. I breathed a sigh of relief as I rolled my shoulders, turning to look at him as he bit into the bagel eagerly. “Thank you. That was… awkward.”
He grinned. “No problem.”
As we walked, I slipped my hand into his, partly because I wanted more practice at the fake boyfriend thing ready for next week, but mostly because I just wanted a little reassurance that everything was okay. I was extremely nervous about going shooting. He turned to face me, a smile twitching at the corners of his lips.
“What?” I asked, confused.
He lifted our hands, grinning. “That’s the first time you’ve taken my hand.”
“Um… Yeah, I guess it is,” I admitted, squeezing his hand gently, willing him not to push the subject further. When we got to the carport, I pulled my car keys from my pocket, tossing them to him and nodding towards the driver’s side of my Aston Martin again, watching as his eyes widened in delight.
“Hell yeah!” he cried, grinning from ear to ear.
“What is it with boys and cars?” I mused. “Hey, that reminds me, we’ll have to buy a car when we get to Arizona. Unless you want them to arrange one for us.”
He opened the door for me. “Never thought about that.” He popped the rest of his bagel into his mouth before walking confidently around to the other side of the car and climbing in.
“What sort of car do you want?” I wasn’t really into cars, as long as I got from A to B, that did me.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Something we can both drive.”
“I can see you in a Porsche or Ferrari.” I narrowed my eyes, picturing him getting out of a little, sexy sports car. I bet that would be a good look for him!
“Ooh, how about one of those yellow ones from the transformers movie?” he joked.
“You do know it wouldn’t turn into a robot though, right?” I countered, poking him in the ribs.
“Aww man, really?” he frowned, faking disappointment. We laughed for a few minutes while I searched for the shooting range on the GPS. “Do we really need to choose a car?” he asked after a few minutes, when we’d finally gotten going. I nodded in confirmation. “Okay, how about a four by four then. You’ll drive that, right? They’re nice and safe. If you have an accident, you can pretty much just drive over the other car.” His face was serious and thoughtful.
“Are you saying I’m a bad driver?” I gasped, faking hurt.
He laughed and nodded. “Yeah.”
I rolled my eyes and shrugged. “Whatever. Like I said, you choose something you like. You can be my glorified chauffeur considering you’ll come everywhere with me anyway.” Then I had a thought, was he planning on coming everywhere with me? “Hey, what happens if I have a ladies appointment?”
“Ladies appointment? Like what?” he questioned, glancing at me curiously before concentrating on the road again.
Is he seriously going to make me spell it out? “I don’t know, a waxing or something like that,” I muttered, embarrassed. I forced myself to go for a bikini and leg wax every few weeks because sometimes the paparazzi liked to stalk our house and take shots for magazines. Especially with the election coming up, they would be all over my family soon; hopefully I would avoid all of that though being at school.
“A waxing? Why couldn’t I come with you?” he asked, raising one eyebrow, looking like a little, confused puppy dog.
“Ashton, seriously?” I scoffed, shooting him a warning face. There was no way I was standing for that; I drew the line at that one.
He sighed in defeat. “Okay fine. I guess I can’t really do things a boyfriend wouldn’t do, so for things like that, you’d have to take Dean with you and get him to stand outside the door,” he explained, shrugging.
That was what happened now, a guard waited in the car for me outside the building. “Outside the door? Well, what happens if the lady tries to kill me with hot wax?” I asked with mock horror.
“Don’t start me worrying about that or I will come with you to your appointments,” he replied, smirking.
“Oh shut up! Why can’t I just go on my own? Nothing will happen at a beauty salon, for goodness’ sake. I think you’re taking this job way too seriously. So what if my dad needs to beef up his security because of the election, no one’s seriously going to attack me,” I scoffed, frowning. This whole thing was just stupid. He didn’t say anything, so I looked over at him; he was frowning at something and looked a little unhappy. “What’s wrong, Pretty Boy, cat got your talented tongue?” I flirted, and then blushed at what I had said. Oh man, did I really just say that? I turned towards the window and bit my lip to stop the giggle escaping at the obvious slutty comment I’d just directed at my bodyguard.
He burst out laughing. “Damn it, Anna, will you stop making me laugh? I’m driving!” he scolded, trying to be serious.
“I apologise,” I said, still giggling. I glanced over at him, and he gave me a wicked grin and winked, making my face burn even more.
Despite the GPS, we still got a little lost on the way there so it took well over an hour before we pulled into the shooting range parking lot. The anxiety and worry had been building inside me the whole ride, so by the time he cut the engine, my stomach was churning so much that my cereal was threatening to come back up.
Dean’s car pulled in and stopped beside ours, but he didn’t bother to get out. As far guard, he was just to wait outside the building in the car and be on call to jump in and save the day if he was needed. Ashton smiled at me encouragingly as I forced myself to climb out of the car and look over at the large, and incredibly intimidating, brick building.
As soon as the door to the place opened, the noise made me want to run. There were already a few people inside, so a gunshot sounded every couple of seconds. Each shot made me squeal and press myself against Ashton’s side as he spoke to the assistant and signed us in with the guest passes my father had arranged. Ashton was handed two black trays, and I could see a small handgun in each one as the assistant led us over to the last two lanes in the building.