"Okay."
"Good."
They spoke almost at the same time, their heads close together. Teenagers of similar age always became familiar quickly, and they were unexpectedly in sync.
"Maybe they shouldn't be protecting you to such an exaggerated extent. I have plenty of bodyguards too, but I've never known what there was about me worth protecting."
Tony didn't think this was an appropriate place to get intimate, so he temporarily released the girl hiding in his arms.
Their first time should come after a romantic date unrelated to money, not beneath a bridge pier in the darkness, mating like stray cats and dogs.
The girl poked her head out from behind the bridge pier to look outside, then drew back with a sigh of relief. "This is what my mother calls 'good upbringing.'"
"Um, I'm Tony."
"I heard you earlier," the girl replied with a smile.
Tony looked at their still-clasped hands. "Actually, I wanted you to tell me your name."
"You definitely know it." The girl pinched his palm. "I noticed you hanging around near me all day. My bodyguards think you're a stalker. Didn't you ask your friends what my name was? I'm quite famous at Cambridge."
"Not at all. I mean, I don't have any friends here yet. I just smuggled myself over from the United States."
"You're bluffing, right?"
The girl's eyes lit up. Smuggling sounded so cool. Had he come over in a refrigerated shipping container?
That was really cool.
Tony tilted his head and flashed a smug, toothy grin, indicating that she had guessed right.
But he wasn't dumb enough to climb into a refrigerated truck. In fact, he had bought a plane on the black market and flown low across the English Channel from France in the dead of night.
More precisely, he had