Page 38 of Stealing His Christmas Present

Chapter 14

“YOU CAN GO UPSTAIRSagain,” Pablo said, a small smile on his lips. “If you cook for me.”

My eyebrows shot up.

Cook for him?

Now that was something I didn’t find overly difficult, unless he had special requests, because I wasn’t a chef or anything.

But I had to wonder why he was asking me to do it. The food I’d been eating must have been takeout or something like that.

Why didn’t he have a cook? His own personal chef?

I was sure he could more than afford it, especially if he was the boss now. But for some reason, he hadn’t done it.

Actually, I hadn’t seen any people here at all. Sure, I hadn’t really gone anywhere much, but I’d seen the dust on the gray floors.

I didn’t think many people came here, if any. It was weird.

Was Pablo here alone? In this huge house? Had he been living here even before he’d brought me with him?

It would be helpful to figure that out for my currently non-existent escape plan.

But there was something else that bugged me.

Pablo should be surrounded by people, and yet, he was here, isolating himself from everyone and everything, as if he wanted to be alone.

As if he believed he should be alone.

I wanted to know why.

“Okay,” I said. “But if I do it, what do I get in return?”

“You get to eat too.”

“Right.” Getting anything else from him probably wouldn’t work, but being upstairs was already a start.

Would we be eating together? Like we’d eaten those sandwiches in Spain?

Maybe I could talk to him then.

I followed him upstairs and let him lead me to the kitchen, which was huge too.

“Careful with the knives,” he said, a smile playing on his lips.

Knives, huh?

I lifted my gaze to his. How fast would I have to be to successfully stab him in the neck?

“It’s not going to work,” he said.

I furrowed my brow. “What are you talking about?”

“Whatever you were just thinking—and I’m pretty sure it involved my death—isn’t going to work. You’re free to try, but you won’t like what happens next.” His face turned deadly serious.

Mind reader.

Was I that obvious? Or was he just able to guess because it totally made sense I would be thinking about trying to kill him?

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