Page 4 of Stalker

But then again, who was he dressing to impress as a recluse?

I hung the sweater back up, barely fighting the urge to rub the soft sweater against my cheek to see if it felt as soft there as I imagined it would.

I ran my fingers over the other semi-casual clothing hanging and then even more surprising loungewear that was folded in drawers on the other side.

Loungewear of the sweatpants variety.

Gray sweatpants, to be specific. One pair laid on top of others in various colors, but that one pair caught my attention and wouldn’t let it go.

Social media videos I’d seen on repeat of fit, muscular men wearing nothing, but a pair of low-slung gray sweatpants and a baseball capbackward infiltrated my brain and suddenly my fast heart rate wasn’t from the excitement of creeping into my boss’s things.

But from something unfamiliar.

Lust.

“My, my, my, Mr. Bryce,” I hummed to myself and then closed the drawer. I walked from the closet and then from his room and wing all together before I could do something stupid, like snoop through his nightstand drawers from morbid curiosity.

Technically speaking, I had free access to every room in the house, so I wasn’t breaking any rules by being in his bedroom, but I still felt guilty.

Well, every room except one.

Mr. Bryce’s office was off-limits to everyone. Including Mrs. Straight.

She told me when I started, that was one of the few rules to follow without fail because if I broke it, I’d be breaking my contract and effectively terminating myself. Which was no problem for me, I was a rule follower to a fault.

There was no way I would break that one.

I moved back through the house and then left through the rear entrance, using my code to grant access in and out without sounding the alarm and alerting god knows who. My hours were seven am to six pm every day of the week, with a two-hour break from one to three in the middle of the day. Since Mr. Bryce was out of town until the following day at some point, I was free to retire to my room for the evening to do whatever I wanted.

To be honest, though,roomwas a generous term for the immaculate guest house I had all to myself a few hundred feet off the back of the main house on the other side of the pool. Apparently, Mr. Bryce’sdesire for isolation didn’t end with his vast property, but inside of his home as well.

All the twelve guest rooms inside the house were empty.

As in bare walls, and pristinely polished light fixtures, but nothing else.

Every single one of them. The only space on the entire property that was available for guests to stay was in the guest house, physically removed from his home altogether.

Well, besides Mrs. Straight’s suite, which was still down three different hallways off the kitchen with its own private entrance separate from Mr. Bryce’s.

The man enjoyed his privacy; I supposed.

I eyed the large in-ground pool with the attached hot tub longingly as I walked to the guest house, aching to dip into both and enjoy the amenities while I had them.

The apartment I lived in with Tyson back home didn’t even have a washer and dryer hookup and the longer I spent on the Hartington Estate grounds, the less it felt like a job and more like a vacation.

After showering the day off, I climbed into bed with the intent of watching a show. After ten minutes had passed, I could no longer resist the allure of sleep, so I surrendered and snuggled in, preparing for a restful nap.

When I felt my body settle and my mind float away, the same dream I’d been having started seeping into my head like a dark and disturbed movie I yearned to see more of.

It happened almost every time I closed my eyes anymore. At first, I hated the dreams; the intensity left me feeling ill and hung over when I woke up with a sickly sweat clinging to my skin and a hazy brain. After a while, though, I stopped treating them like an invasion into my head and started looking at them as a sign.

I even went as far as asking a tarot card reader at a fair what it meant to have the same recurring dream every night.

And her answer had been simple as her aged eyes darkened and her brows rose.

“Fate, my dear.”She whispered with an eerie gleam to her voice.“You’re seeing your future.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was pretty sure my dreams showed my death and not my future. Because in a way, maybe she was right after all, and maybe my future was my death.

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