Page 15 of Canvas of Lies
Nico might have won the first round, but now that I was rested and recovered from his unexpected return to my life, I prepared for battle. If I was going to linger here, missing work at the business I’d busted my ass to build up from scratch, Nico was going to spill his secrets.
Willingly or under duress, I didn’t care which.
Maybe I should have burst out of the bedroom to demand answers the minute I woke up, but I’d rather face him on my own terms.
Twenty minutes later, washed and dressed, I went to leave the bedroom and found the door locked. It was only the span of a breath before I began pounding on it with my fists. I heard a muffled laugh before Nico’s footsteps moved across the room to let me out.
“You son of a bitch, I’m going tokillyou!” I yelled.
I was about to pick up the small metal trash can from beside the bed and hurl it against the door when it swung open.
“Good morning,” Nico drawled, smirking at me.
His dark eyes glinted as he surveyed my ensemble. With my wet hair pulled up in a bun on top of my head and bare feet peeping out from under the too-long sweatpants, I doubted my responding glare carried as much weight as I would’ve liked.
“I’m going to kick your ass, Nico Beaumont.”
Shooting daggers at him with my eyes, I brushed past, making sure my good shoulder nailed him square in the chest as I went. Nico grinned and followed after me, though he rubbed his palm against his sternum. I was stronger than I looked and he’d do well to remember that.
“You can try,” he offered, “but after all the trouble I went to toasting you up some nice frozen waffles, violence seems a tad ungrateful.”
I muttered a few uncomplimentary comments under my breath as I dropped into a chair at the table. When he set a plateof waffles and a glass bottle of maple syrup in front of me, I thawed ever so slightly, but I still ignored him while I cut into my breakfast. Nico sat down in the seat beside me, his knee nudging my leg under the table.
The frisson of heat that trembled up my spine was harder to ignore, so I covered it with sarcasm.
“So, tell me, oh kidnapper extraordinaire—what happens now? A ransom note made of letters that you painstakingly snipped out of magazines?”
“Come on, I would hope you’d give me more credit than that. Though if you want to play arts and crafts, I guess you’re welcome to do it for me. As an alternative from the current century, I’ve got a computer program. Once you give me the go ahead, I’ll set up an untraceable email to be sent to your father.”
“Untraceable,” I repeated, narrowing my eyes at him.
Nico gave a careless shrug, but his gaze locked on my face. “I’m a man of many talents.”
I snorted. “So it would seem.”
“That will be a first contact maneuver to warn him away from calling the police, but I expect he’ll send his own people to your apartment and to Kat's Keepers to investigate. Presumably, if Erin speaks with him, he’ll convince her to leave it to him to deal with the upcoming demands.”
“So now what? We just sit here and wait?”
A boyish grin lit his face, nearly knocking the breath from my lungs with its familiarity. “Well, there’s a deck of cards inone of the kitchen drawers, but I was thinking we could go for a walk.”
“A walk with your hostage? Isn’t that a little risky?”
“A willing hostage,” he countered, “but I think you’re too curious for escape, aren’t you, Kitten?”
I pointed my fork at him. “You know, maybe that nickname was cute when I was little, but as a grown woman, I find it a little condescending.”
“Do you? I think you enjoy it just as much now as you did when we were younger.”
“What makes you think I ever enjoyed it?” I asked teasingly.
Nico leaned close and let his fingertips trail along my jaw. His eyes studied my face intently until I gave a tiny shiver, then he grinned again.
“Because,” he replied in a low voice, “that’s exactly how you respond when I say it against your ear.”
I shook my head as he sat back in his chair, a smug expression plastered on his face. “You’re impossible. Fine, let’s take a walk in the woods, as long as your kidnapper duties are on pause for the time being.”
It was a silly thing to be excited about, but the prospect of an adventure with Nico delighted me the way it always had. As children, we’d wandered every square foot of my family's extensive property and beyond—trekking through the woods to the creek where Nico showed me how to skip rocks, sprinting across the lawns to the edge of Lake Ontario, biking along the rocky coastline all the way to the Spruce Hill Lighthouse.
