Page 14 of Beau
“It didn’t,” he said. “Are you ready to get out of here?”
She nodded. “After we get with security and the event coordinator.” After one last glance at her attire, she shook her head. “Let’s get it over with.”
Together, they walked around to the front of the building, where two security guards stood talking to the event coordinator.
The three men were shocked to learn she’d been attacked on the boardwalk.
Aurelie didn’t want to tell them, but they needed to know to keep the guests safe.
“I’ll cordon off the access to the boardwalk to keep anyone else from wandering out there,” the event coordinator said.
“After you inform my father of my departure,” she said with a pointed stare. “Tell him I had a migraine and went home to sleep it off.”
The man nodded.
“Oh,” she added, “and that I caught a ride with one of the guests. Since he will ask, tell him it was with Beau Boyette.”
The event coordinator entered the chateau to tell her father of her departure. One of the security guards got on his radio and informed the other guards of what had happened on the boardwalk and told them to keep an eye on all exits and people coming and going. He had one of the guards position himself in the room with the security cameras until the sheriff’s department could get there to review the footage.
When Aurelie had done all she could do without actually going back into the chateau, she turned to Beau. “I’d like to stop at the sheriff’s office in the nearby town to report the assault before you take me home.”
“We can do that.” He held out his arm like a gentleman offering to escort a lady dressed in the type of ball gown her father had wanted her to wear.
Aurelie was wet, uncomfortable and too tired to argue. She hooked her hand in the crook of his elbow and allowed him to lead her to a big black pickup on the far end of the parking lot. She figured that if he was going to kill her, he wouldn’t have rescued her from drowning or being eaten alive by the alligators in the bayou.
He opened the passenger door, helped her up into the seat and then closed the door.
As she buckled the seatbelt, her gaze followed him around the front of the truck.
His face was ruggedly handsome. Broad shoulders strained the seams of the Robin Hood costume. And the tights...they emphasized his thickly toned thighs and calves. Men like him should wear tights more often.
Her pulse quickened as he tossed the quiver of arrows into the back seat and climbed into the driver’s seat, his thigh that much closer to her. His legs looked amazing in the tights. She wondered how amazing they would look out of them.
Heat coiled low in her belly at the thought of him removing not only the stretchy garment but the jacket and anything else he might have underneath them.
Aurelie tore her gaze away from him and stared at her side window, only to realize it reflected the people in the cab of the truck. She could look at him in the reflection without being so obvious.
He turned to her and winked at her reflection.
Heat filled her cheeks. She faced the front windshield, trying to appear as if she hadn’t seen the wink and he hadn’t caught her looking at his reflection.
Beau chuckled as he started the engine and shifted into reverse, backing out of the parking space. He drove out of the lot onto the highway, heading toward the nearest town.
For the first couple of minutes, neither of them spoke, giving Aurelie too much time to think of how lucky she was that he’d come to the event that night and that he’d been there to rescue her—which had her wondering why he’d come to the ball that night to begin with.
She turned to him, her eyes narrowing. “Tonight’s ball was a fundraiser for my father’s reelection.”
He nodded. “That’s what I understand.”
“The guests paid a lot of money for their tickets, with the money going toward the campaign.”
He glanced her way. “Are you going somewhere with this?”
“You don’t strike me as someone who’d pay a lot of money to go to a masquerade party.”
“And yet, I was there, in costume.”
“How did you end up with a ticket?”