Page 56 of Crossed By the Stars
Dax chuckled. “We’re not golfing. We’re taking the cart down to the beach so you don’t have to walk the rocky path.”
“You really want me to risk being seen at the beach?” I said, eyes narrowing.
“It’s a private beach,mon bijou. Vanya owns the shore for at least half a kilometer in both directions.”
Outside the window, the day was hardly sunny. Low fog clung to the trees, adding an otherworldliness to the day. Dax saw me glance out the window and shrugged. “It’s just fog. It’ll clear. What else are you going to do? If you really want to read, I’ll pack your romance novel for you.”
“Don’t be all snotty about it. You were reading a romance novel last night.”
His lips quirked again, and I found I wanted to smack the look off of his face, but he didn’t seem to care that I felt prickly. “My book wasn’t quite in the same vein, but there’s nothing wrong with romance novels. I’d be happy to read that one if you’d prefer it.”
He was playing me, knowing quite well that there was no way in hell I was letting him read the sex scenes in that book to me aloud. I’d lose any semblance of self-control if he did.
“You only have twenty-five minutes now,” he said and then sauntered out of the room as if he were king of the manor.
I wanted to throw the book at his departing back, just like the heroine in the novel had thrown one at her hero. I left the room and climbed the stairs. My body hurt like hell still, but it felt a million times better than it had the day before.
I felt guilty for healing while Bobby was being buried. I wouldn’t even be at the funeral. I wondered what his mom and his sister would think of me—the employer who hadn’t even bothered to show up when he’d given his life for me. My throat closed, and my heart twisted. I needed to send flowers—no, money. Gobs of it. And even then, it would never be enough.
I couldn’t think of it for long without becoming a blubbering mess.
I headed to the bathroom, shed my clothes, and stood under the warm water for so long I knew I’d have to hurry if I wanted to be dressed before Dax came looking for me again. But trying to wash my hair had me gasping for breath. I wasn’t sure I got all of the suds out, but it would have to do. I ran a comb through the wet strands and stared at my face in the mirror. The cuts were healing, scabbing over. The dark circles under my eyes were still there. My skin was pale, almost sallow. The sunshine, if it ever popped through the fog cover, would be good for me.
I had no makeup. I hadn’t asked Cara to get me any. I was lucky I had deodorant and a toothbrush that had materialized in my suitcase from nowhere. It didn’t matter. There was no one but Dax and the security team to see me.
I left the bathroom behind and returned to the closet to stare at the row of clothes. None of it felt like it was mine. It felt like I was playing dress-up in my grandmother’s things. But I’d have to make do.
Cara hadn’t bought me a bathing suit, but it was November, and the beach, even this far down the coast of California, wasn’t exactly going to be hot. I reached for a pair of leggings that I could easily roll if I decided to walk in the water and then layered a tank and an oversized sweater over the top.
I was just buttoning the cardigan when Dax appeared in the bedroom’s doorway.
“I thought for sure I was going to have to carry you down to the cart.” His eyes sparkled.
“I didn’t want to give you the satisfaction,” I tossed back.
We made our way down the stairs and toward the back of the house. Dax led me into a kitchen that was the size of a small boat. Some of the security detail were already there, shoveling in the full breakfast that was spread out on the large kitchen table.
“Did you do all this again?” I asked, darting an eye in Dax’s direction.
“Cillian helped this morning,” he said with a shrug.
Dax the cook. Dax the romantic. Dax the protector. I wasn’t sure how to fit all these pieces into my image of him. I wasn’t sure my heart could handle it. These new versions of him battered at my defenses in a way that I wasn’t used to thwarting.
Cillian appeared in the doorway, serious and frowning.
“There was another note,” he said, handing me his burner phone.
Dax’s suave smile was wiped away.
“What? Where?” Dax demanded as I read the words on the screen.
“They left it with the doorman of your building,” Cillian grunted an answer to Dax.
I read the words three times, stomach flipping faster each time, with my heartbeat increasing. When I looked up, both men were staring at me expectantly, waiting for me to translate for them. “It says, ‘We know you left the city, betrayer. Six days. There’s nowhere you can hide.’”
“How do they know we left, Cillian?” Dax growled.
“I’m working on it.”
