“Excuse me?”
“When you came into Benny’s, you came right to my stage. Why?”
His eyes flick wider for just a second before his lips press into a tight line. He opens his mouth to answer but then closes it again and moves to the kitchen, at the right side of the great room. He steps around the black granite breakfast bar separating the kitchen from the living room and pulls down a tumbler from the glass-front mahogany cupboards, filling it at the tap. “Would you like some?” he asks, lifting his glass.
“No. Thanks.” I turn back to the window and gaze out over the city, and a minute later Blake steps up to my side.
“I made a mistake,” he says, his voice low.
I turn to him.
He sips his water, staring out over the spectacle below as the sun starts to dip over the water, and I feel my insides tighten at the bob of his Adam’s apple when he swallows. He is so incredibly masculine—so unbelievably gorgeous. As he answers, my eyes follow the contours of his face: the strong angle of his jaw, his high cheekbones, the straight line of his nose. “The way you moved . . . the way you looked up there on the stage . . . it just drew me to you. But I was stupid to target the girl I was attracted to. This would be so much less . . .” He rubs a hand down that amazing face. “. . . complicated if I’d gone in another direction.”
His admission stirs something deep in my belly. “I’m complicated?”
He finally turns to look at me. “This is complicated,” he says, gesturing between us with a wave of his hand.
The desire pulsing through me flows into waves of frustration and anger, and they’re all so intense, it’s impossible to decipher one from another. I spin from the window. “Well, maybe if you hadn’t set me up, and put me in so much danger that you had to kidnap me and drag me off to . . .” I throw my good hand at the window, but then my gaze follows. This is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.
I was eleven when Mom married Greg—old enough to remember the cockroaches and bedbugs in our tiny one bedroom apartment. It was the best Mom could do on what they paid her at Food for Less, but I know she wanted something better for us. I’m not really sure if she loved Greg or not when they got married three months after they met, but he was stable, with a decent paying job and small house in Fremont that we moved into. We had the things we needed and not much more. These were the houses that we drove by when family came to visit. The Berkeley Hills were a tourist attraction, not someplace any of us ever imagined living.
But here I am.
My eyes flick to Blake and there’s a subtle twist to his face that could be chagrin.
“I’m sorry, Sam. I never expected things would go this way.”
At the anguish in his eyes when they find mine, I feel myself softening. But then I remember where I am. I’m trapped here, with no ability to contact the outside world for months, maybe. “Mom didn’t answer when I called. Can I try her again?”
He looks at me for several long heartbeats. “I’ll see what I can do.” He backs away from the window and starts across the great room. “Your room is over here.”
I follow him past the elevator and a wide staircase with a wrought-iron rail behind it, through a door into a palatial master suite. Just like in the living room, the western wall is solid glass, with an unobstructed view of the bay and San Francisco. Through French doors there’s a private balcony with a lounge chair and a small table. At the foot of an immense king-sized bed with gold linens, a fireplace opens over a whirlpool tub in the bathroom on the other side, and above the fireplace there’s a huge flat-screen TV. I step through the door next to the fireplace into a bathroom bigger than my bedroom at home. Next to the tub that I saw through the fireplace is a stall shower I could throw a small party in—if anyone was allowed to know where I was. Everything is black granite and brass fixtures. “Wow.”
“I trust you’ll be comfortable here?”
I glance at Blake, who’s leaning against the door frame, and I want to say no. I want to rail against him and tell him that I’ll be miserable here. But I can’t force the lie from my mouth. Instead, I pluck at my top—the same one Jonathan brought me before our fateful trip home. “Despite the posh shower, I’m going to get pretty unbearable to live with if I don’t get a change of clothes.”
He tips his head, indicating that I should follow, and shrugs off the door frame. He moves through the bedroom and opens a set of double doors on the opposite wall from the windows, then steps back to let me pass. Inside, I find a closet as big as the bathroom. There are drawers stacked down the middle of hanging rods on each wall. It’s mostly empty, but on the hangers I see a few blouses, sundresses, a cotton granny nightgown, and a bathrobe. “Check the drawers,” he says with a nod at them.
I pull open the middle drawer. Inside are a four pairs of faded Levi’s, almost identical to the ones I’m wearing. I open the drawer above it and find several T-shirts and cotton tops. And in the one above those there are bras and underwear. I pick up a pair of panties. They’re white cotton Fruit of the Loom bikinis, and though they’d probably fit, I can’t imagine anyone younger than my mother actually wearing them.
I hold them up. “Who bought this stuff?”
“Nichols and me.”
I pull a face. “And you thought these were my style.”
He shifts in the doorway, looking decidedly uncomfortable. “That was Nichols.”
“What did you pick out?” I ask, dropping the underwear back into the drawer.
“The jeans, those,” he says with a wave of his hand at the dresses, “and the swimsuit.”
“What about this?” I ask, fingering the thick cotton of the nightgown.
“Nichols.”
I hold his gaze. “I sleep nude.” It’s a lie, but I’m going for the reaction.
To my disappointment, he stays totally cool. “That’s your prerogative.” He scratches the top of his head and backs out of the closet. “I know there are things we didn’t think of, so if you make a list, we’ll be sure you get it. You know where the kitchen is. It will be fully stocked for you. And I’ll sleep downstairs, in case you need anything.”
Whoa! “You’re staying here with me?”
He nods slowly, his eyes lifting to mine again. “Someone needs to be here with you at all times . . . for your protection.”
A thrill skitters through me, but I keep my voice flat. “You.”
It’s not a question, but he nods anyway.
“Why you?”
He shrugs. “It just made sense. I’m not from around here, so I needed a place to stay anyway.”
“Where is your room?”
He looks at me a long second, then turns. “I’ll show you.”
I follow him to the staircase behind the elevator, and he leads me down one flight to a large room with a pool table on the far side. There’s a fully stocked bar with a black granite top along the back wall, and two large sofas positioned in a wide V, both facing a giant fireplace with a huge screen TV above it in the middle of another wall of windows. From this floor, we’re not high enough to see over the hedges to the bay, but the view is of the deck and the yard beyond. It’s like a park.
“Access to the pool is through those doors,” he says, gesturing to the French doors to the deck. “It’s heated. The perimeter is secured, so you’re welcome to use it anytime you want.” He crosses the room to a door behind the pool table. “This is the panic room. If there’s ever a breach of security, I need you to get in here and lock the door until help comes.” He steps in and I follow. “This door is bullet resistant and it dead-bolts with a pull of this lever,” he says, indicating a small red handle just inside the door.
“You think I’ll need this?”