Page 90 of The Game

“Absolutely. I promise I won’t jump you.”

“Me, too,” I say, crossing my fingers behind my back.

He takes our plates over to the kitchen and puts them on the countertop.

“Let me show you where everything is.”

He leads me up the spiral staircase to a large double bed sitting inches off the floor. Two warm sidelights illuminate the space and a row of built-in closets sit along one wall with a door in the middle.

“The bathroom you saw earlier,” he says, pointing back down the stairs. “Have a look in the cabinet above the sink. There should be a toothbrush, makeup remover, cleanser, and other things.”

My stomach plummets. He has all this stuff for women in his cabinet? But … but … he said he hadn’t had sex in a long time? I tune back into what he’s saying.

“… My sister stays over every so often. She’s an accountant and occasionally works in the city.”

He heads over to the closet and opens a door to perhaps the tidiest set of shelves I’ve ever seen.

“Wow.”

“What?” He turns around with a T-shirt in his hand and then looks back at the shelves. A reluctant smile curls over his mouth.

“Yeah, fighting against the compulsive tidiness and the desire to sort everything is an ongoing struggle.”

“All your T-shirts are in color order.”

“You see, you say that, but what other way would you arrange them?”

“As a heap at the bottom of the closet?”

He laughs. “I’m sure you don’t have them in a heap, do you?”

“No, but only because my housekeeper does all my washing and ironing and tidies everything away.”

“That sounds pretty amazing,” he says, holding out the T-shirt to me.

I shoot downstairs and do my business in the bathroom, and when I come out again he’s puttering around in the kitchen and putting the dishwasher on. As I head back upstairs, Pepper’s claws click on the wooden floor, no doubt following him in the hope of another treat. Bribery, ha! Then his steps hit the stairs, and he appears with Pepper tucked under one arm, chuckling when he finds me cocooned under the duvet.

“You look very cozy.”

Normally, I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow, and as he puts Pepper down, I let out a huge yawn and he chuckles again before shucking his jeans and T-shirt and folding them neatly on a chair in the corner.

And now he’s just in his boxers, and I try very hard, and fail, not to peek athis chest and his abs.What am I doing here, despite everything?It’s like my head says one thing but my body does another. He slides under the duvet, reaches out and turns off the lamp on his nightstand and plunges us into darkness. I can dimly make out his jaw and his hair on the pillow next to me from the light drifting up from the living-room windows downstairs.

“Is everything okay for you?” I whisper. “I just turned up here in a panic and didn’t ask about your company and …”

His fingers wrap around mine, squeezing my hand. “It’s all good, Anna. The business is fine. The numbers are ticking up nicely. I might want to borrow Pepper again sometime.”

“Anytime.”

We’re quiet for a little longer, before he rubs his thumb over my knuckles. “What are you going to do about Konstantin?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t really give me a choice.”

He turns on his side, and I can tell he’s looking at my face, so I turn my head toward him.

“Is he dangerous?” he asks.

“Probably. He has this way of threatening people that’s very effective. I suspect there’d be reprisals of some sort. I just don’t know what they would be.”

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