Page 50 of On Thin Ice

And starving to death.

After making love face to face the night before, Sinclair had hopped out of bed and put on a robe, leaving the room for a few minutes. When he returned, I’d been asleep but woke at the sound of the door—and the smell of Indian food. I’d never eaten it before, but I was too tired to try. Soon, I fell back asleep, even though Sinclair had gone to a lot of trouble to set up a table and chairs, complete with a lovely linen tablecloth and a single red rose in a simple vase.

But when I awoke, I was in Sinclair’s bed, so I knew he must have carried me here—and I was happy he had, even though I had no memory of it. Although the ultimate outcome of last night’s “punishment” session had been amazing, it had also been quite trying, and I didn’t want to think about it.

Sitting up in bed, I stretched my arms and back. Sinclair was probably already working out, something he did even on the weekends. Saturdays were my day to do all the things I didn’t have time for during the week.

Like reading the last journal—and I was dying to do it.

As I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, I realized I was sore. It was mostly in my arm and leg muscles but even a little bit in my pussy, making me think last night had been too much of a good thing…bordering on punishment territory for sure. But the rose in the vase was now on the nightstand next to my side of the bed, and I smiled. It was such a simple gesture, but it told me so much.

He really did care for me.

I was afraid, though, that my feelings for him had grown out of control, like the weeds in the flowerbeds outside would do if Henry didn’t diligently tend to them. And I really did equate my emotions to that very concept, because I was falling in love with the wrong man. Although I didn’t have a “right” man in my life to choose instead, Sinclair was certainly not the person my father would want to walk me down the aisle toward with the intent of giving me away.

Oh, God, I hoped my father would be able to do just that one day. Some days he could walk well while others found him bound to a chair and using a walker. In fact, over the past year, he’d had to use that walker more and more.

Which was why I wanted him going to that appointment in October. It offered hope when there was little of it available.

As I stood, I looked around for my clothes and couldn’t find them anywhere. Maybe they were still in the other room. So I took a t-shirt out of Sinclair’s dresser and slipped it on—and then I decided to head to my room to shower without locating my clothing.

And I wanted to take the rose with me.

I glanced at his bedside clock and realized I only had about a half an hour before breakfast—and I could hardly wait to see Sinclair, so I moved quickly, even while feeling tired and sore…because I was fueled with the buoyancy of love.

When I headed down to breakfast, Sinclair was already there—but he wasn’t eating. Instead, he was at the stove.

Cooking.

“There she is,” he said, using a long metal spatula to fold over one side of an omelet on the big flat grill next to the stove.

“Ooh…I’m impressed.” I made a beeline for the coffee pot, not far from him.

“Do you like Denver omelets?”

“I have no idea.” What I more than liked—and what I really wanted to do—was approach him and wrap my arms around him, but that would have been breaking our unwritten rules. Although Edna was gone for the weekend, there was always a chance that Greg or his wife could appear at any moment.

I doubted that would happen, but I did know I’d be in trouble if I broke a rule, in the contract or not—and, after last night’s punishment, I didn’t know if I’d have the energy to do it again so soon.

“Then that’s breakfast—with toast and strawberries. And we’ll have leftover Indian for lunch.”

“Sounds great. What can I do to help?”

While I buttered the whole wheat toast, Sinclair finished up the second omelet, and it wasn’t long before we were sitting at the table. I couldn’t help but look at him smiling, hoping I wasn’t giving anything away. This time I wasn’t worried about someone else figuring me out. Instead, I wondered if Sinclair had determined how I really felt about him now. Because I had no idea if the feeling was mutual. I wanted to believe it, thinking the rose was a symbol of words he couldn’t say, but there was always that smidgen of doubt.

What if Sinclair had an ulterior motive, a plan I wasn’t privy to for obvious reasons?

What if his whole motivation had been nothing more than a ruse to make me fall for him? And, once I was head over heels, I’d be even easier to manipulate.

And I wondered if that was already happening. When I’d first arrived, Sinclair had offered to slash my service time in half if I slept with him—and I’d refused. Now he got to sleep with me and have me working for him for the entire decade we’d agreed to. As much as I didn’t want to believe he would do that, I knew it was a possibility.

But if that was his plan, he hadn’t revealed a bit of it yet. I would observe—but there was no way I could keep my heart out of any of it. I’d fallen hard and I didn’t see a way to stop that.

No, not true. I knew there were a couple of ways I could fall out of love with this man. The first would be to find out that he was, in fact, only using me…that he didn’t care for me at all, that he wasn’t irresistibly drawn to me as he’d indicated.

The second would be to neglect my father who needed help.

There was a third way—lying and deceiving—but I hadn’t thought of that yet.

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