Page 16 of Caesar DeLuca
“I’ll do a perimeter check.”
“You’re supposed to be in bed!”
“Something’s out there,” he says. His hand tightens on the handle of the baseball bat. “I’ll check it out.”
“Give me back my bat!”
“Only if you’re going to trade me for a gun. You don’t have any firearms on hand, do you?”
I blink at him even though it’s too dark for him to make out. “Where do you think you are exactly, Caesar? This isn’t an armory.”
“Every home should have a firearm for protection. Especially a person living alone in the middle of nowhere. And even more so as a woman living alone in the middle of nowhere. Did your man leave you this unprotected?”
He walks past me for a glance out the window.
I’m stuck on what he just said.
My man?! What man!?
There was an edge of something in his voice. Irritation? Bitterness? Jealousy?
It’s the same edge I’d detected earlier when he’d refused to wear the shirt I’d given him. He seems to be under the impression they belong to a romantic partner of mine. Technically, it’s true, but no one currently in my life…
He can’t be jealous, can he? That would make no sense!
“You standby,” he says. He walks over to the front door. “I’ll make sure it’s nothing.”
“Caesar, you’re injured?—”
“You wait here. Lock and unlock the door for me.”
“This is ridiculous!”
But if there’s one thing I have learned about him, it’s that there’s no stopping Caesar once he’s made up his mind. He’s too decisive to backtrack. He’s serious as he opens the door to the baleful howls of the wind, then steps out, fearless as can be.
The total opposite of me.
Someone who prefers to hide away from everyone and everything.
I hurry to do as he says, locking the door. I wait every agonizing second he’s gone. He loops around my property—or what he can of it considering it extends into the surrounding woodland. He returns paler than when he left though still somehow just as commanding.
He clutches the bat casually at his side, a scowl on his face, looking menacing in his own right.
Who in their right mind would want to fuck with him?
He knows it too.
“Whatever it was is long gone,” he says, handing me back the bat. “Do you got cameras?”
“Only on my front door.”
He shakes his head in disapproval. “A property this big needs to be heavily surveilled. Your man lets you be out here all alone like this? No firearms? No real alarm or surveillance system?”
“My man doesn’t let me do anything. I’m my own person!”
…wait. What man?! Ari, correct him!
“He’s no good,” he goes on with another shake of his head. “I’d never let my mistress be this vulnerable. Let alone my wife.”
