I nodded and sipped my coffee.
She pulled on one of my shirts that was left on the ground then sat across from me. Her brown hair was wavy but still soft. Her green eyes were a lot more vibrant now that she had a full night of sleep. She cupped her mug with both hands before she smelled the steam.
I watched every move. “What are you doing?”
“What?”
“Are you smelling the coffee?”
She took a drink before she set it down. “So? I like the smell of coffee.”
She looked so cute when she did it, but I refused to tell her that.
“People smell wine before they drink it.”
True. I wasn’t a big wine drinker, so I’d never personally done it.
“What’s on the agenda today?”
I cut into my egg whites and greens. “I’m meeting with my suppliers this afternoon. Need a few things.”
“Am I joining you?”
I never mixed business with pleasure. “No.”
“So what am I going to do? Stay here all afternoon?”
“Yep.”
Her face contorted into one of annoyance. “I’m in a beautiful place. I’d like to see more of it.”
“Meeting my suppliers isn’t going to facilitate that.”
“It’s better than being stuck in here. You know I’m not going to walk around when Dunbar is hanging around.”
I drank my coffee. “I know he’s a bit ominous, but he would never seriously hurt you—unless you deserved it.”
“His standards for punishment are much lower than yours.” She drank her coffee then stared bleakly at her breakfast. “Seriously, this looks like shit.”
“It’s good for you.”
“There’s no fat.”
“Fat isn’t good for you.”
“Actually, that’s incorrect. We need good fat to help us burn bad fat. We all need protein, carbs, and fat. Without one, you’d be missing a corner of the pyramid, and it would come toppling down.”
Sometimes I forgot she was training to be a doctor before I stole her. “What kind of doctor were you training to be?”
“I was in medical school before you took me, not residency. So I hadn’t made a decision yet.”
I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about, but I didn’t let her know that. “And what would you like your decision to be?”
She pushed her eggs around without taking a bite. “Emergency room medicine.”
“Why?” My universe focused on diplomacy, royalty, and business. I never took an interest in any other discipline, whether it was law or medicine. I lived in my own little world, and I liked it that way.
She shrugged. “Personal reasons.” She pushed the food around again. “Man, I miss Finley.”
I ignored the last thing she said. “What personal reasons?”
She kept her eyes down. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Then why did you bring it up?”
“I didn’t.” She looked up, her mood souring. “You’re the one asking all these questions.”
“And you’ve been answering them until now.”
“I just don’t want to, okay? It’s not like you tell me everything.”
“You’re my slave. I don’t have to tell you anything.”
“I’m not a slave,” she hissed. “Don’t call me that.”
“I can call you whatever I want. Now answer me.”
It looked like her eyes were about to explode with rage. “Why do you care? You’ve never taken an interest in my personal life. Why are you so curious?”
Good question. “Just answer the damn question.”
She knew she couldn’t push me any further. If she did, her brother’s life would be on the line. Coercion was the best way to keep her in line, even if I was just bluffing. “My parents were killed by a drunk driver when I was eight. They were pinned to a tree and died on impact. It wouldn’t have mattered if the ambulance had gotten there sooner or if a better doctor were on staff that night. But maybe I could make a difference to someone someday.”
My fingers were still wrapped around the handle to my mug, but I didn’t take a drink. My food remained untouched, and I stopped breathing. Inexplicable pain washed over me when I heard her confession. I pictured her as an eight-year-old getting the news that her parents had been killed by someone who drank too much. Joseph was just a few years older than her, so he didn’t understand what was going on either. Unsuspecting pain throbbed in my chest, and I actually pitied the woman sitting across from me.
I lost my parents. So did she.
I didn’t know what to say. I had the urge to hug her, to say something to console her for her loss. But I sat rigid and still, unable to think of an appropriate action. I didn’t want her to assume I cared, so I did everything I could to make it seem like I didn’t give a damn at all.
She looked away when nothing was forthcoming.
She showed me sympathy when I told her about my parents. It wouldn’t be inappropriate if I expressed the same understanding. It didn’t mean I cared about her as a person. It just meant I wasn’t a complete asshole. “I’m sorry, Lovely.”
When she looked up, she couldn’t hide her surprise. Maybe she expected me to be rude like I usually was.
“Looks like we have more in common than I realized.”
“Yeah…seems like it.” She ran her hand through her hair, pulling it from her face and fluffing it up in the back. She finally took a bite of her food and didn’t hide the cringe that emerged across her face. “Seriously, how do you eat this crap?”
“I have a waistline to maintain. Don’t act like you don’t enjoy it.”
She rolled her eyes and took another bite. She was probably hungry from not eating much the day before and fasting the entire night. She could either eat now or not eat until I returned from my meeting. “You aren’t that hot.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I didn’t buy that at all. “Sure seems like you think I’m hot.”
“You aren’t bad to look at it. But hot? No.”
I could see the lie in her eyes. “Whatever you say, Lovely. I make you come every time we fuck, so I must be doing something right.”
She took another bite and dodged the statement altogether.
“I think you’re gorgeous.” I wasn’t ashamed to say that. When we first met, I didn’t care for her. But the longer she talked back to me, the more attitude she showed, the more my attraction grew. I loved that fire in her eyes. I loved that sassiness she showed when anyone was crossed. I adored her fearlessness.
Her guard slowly dropped once my confession had been made. Daggers weren’t in her eyes, and she actually seemed to like me—for an instant. “Okay…I do think you’re hot.”
I grinned from ear-to-ear at my victory. “You didn’t need to tell me that because I already knew. But thanks anyway.” I grabbed the newspaper that was sitting on the tray and opened it.
“I want to ask you something.”
“Yes?”
“Everywhere you go, you have a million people with you.”
“More like a dozen, but what’s your point?”