“Yeah. Because there’s this movie star I know who hired a flaky dog babysitter who then said he’d be home by six and it’s now nine, so I’ve been stuck waiting here for him.”

He was talking to Magnus, and then he called back, “You didn’t have to wait. Magnus would have been fine on his own for a little while.”

Nope. There was no way I was letting this go south for Shelby. She was going to do what she did best and would be a huge success and every movie star in Hollywood was going to put her on speed dial to decorate their houses. I was about to explain to him how responsible she’d been in calling me so that Magnus didn’t escape again when he walked into the kitchen and . . . and . . . and . . .

. . . and . . .

He was dressed as Malec Shadowfire. He had on the wig with the long black hair and his trademark suit of black leather armor. I even saw folded wings.

OMG, I was going to die. I was going to shatter into a million pieces and nobody would ever be able to put me back together again.

Noah walked over to the fridge, took out a half gallon of milk, and drank it straight from the container. It was such an incongruous sight—Malec drinking a modern thing of milk—that my brain couldn’t process what was happening.

Maybe that was because I couldn’t get enough oxygen to it. How had he sucked all the air out of the room just by being dressed that way?

“Could . . . could you go . . . and . . . could you go change? I can’t . . .” control my involuntary hormonal reactions to you. “I can’t take you seriously when you’re dressed like Malec” was what I settled on.

It was amazing I was able to form words at all. I felt like I was having a series of mini-strokes.

“You know who Malec is? Did you finally watch the trilogy?” he asked, not moving to go change like I’d very nicely asked him to. I had asked him, hadn’t I? I couldn’t remember.

And had I finally watched the movies? I owned them all in three different formats. I’d come this close to ordering a life-size cutout of him as Malec. Had I watched the movies?

“Yeah. Yes. Shelby and I binged them after the first time you and I met.” That was technically true, although probably not in the sense of what he would consider the full truth.

And there was no way I was telling him the whole truth now—that I’d lied to him the first night we met about not knowing who he was. Because Shelby had her dream job and it was going to make her career take off, and I would do anything to help ensure that happened.