He returned my smile though his was heavy with entertainment. “Ah-ha!”He pointed at me with laughter. “Excellent choice! Have a seat! Itwill be out shortly. Prepare to have your taste buds mesmerized!”And then he disappeared behind the door.
What a weird little man. At least someonewas in a good mood around here.
I took a seat and made myself some tea. Infive minutes flat, Pascal came out with a fresh batch of cinnamonFrench toast sprinkled with powdered sugar and a side of real maplesyrup. It was the most delicious French toast I had ever tasted. Ithanked Pascal, and he cheerfully disappeared back into thekitchen.
Once I was done with my breakfast, I wandered the house for a while. Ichecked out the theater, contemplating on catching up with some ofmy favorite shows. God knows I had been dying to see the finalseason of Sons of Anarchy. I spent the next hour lookingthrough the library before I became bored of that and headed intothe living room. I had so much space to explore, and here I was,bored with it already. There was no true freedom if you werelimited to a cage, no matter how big the cage.
Since I had no desire to work out today, Iwandered the house for hours—memorizing every room, every corner,every crevice—until I knew it like the back of my hand. Idiscovered the posts of many of the guards throughout the house—notas many as I had thought there would be. Only five monitored theinside of the house, but so far, I had only ever seen three monitorthe outside. I noticed the ones outside carried assault rifles intheir hands at all times, while the ones inside seemed to carryconcealed.
I eventually found myself wandering throughthe library. I decided to look for a book on electricity that mighthelp me figure out how to break this damn collar around my throat.I did eventually find something, but it didn’t really have theinformation I was looking for.
As I sat onthe couch near the bay window, I looked out at the ocean, wishing Icould go jogging on the beach. That would be nice. But themechanical sound of a weed eater coming close by drowned out mydaydream. As it got closer to the window, I realized it was thesame gardener who stared at me the one day.
As he looked up from his work, he caught mygaze, and he stared back at me, obviously focusing on my faceagain. He really was recognizing me! I wondered if he knew me fromthe news. Oh, God, what if he was going to report me to the police?Darren had already warned me about the police being in his pocket.I couldn’t let this man jeopardize himself so I glared at him andslowly shook my head, hoping he would heed my warning. He gave me asad look, nodded, and then went about his work. I hoped that put anend to whatever he was thinkingbecause I knew the consequences of those thoughts would probablyaffect me as well.
Darren met up with me a little while later.We had dinner together on the patio and watched a movie in thetheater. I fell asleep against his side before the movie was over,and he carried me to bed and tucked me in under the sheets. I fellasleep almost instantly as Darren pulled me to his chest andspooned me from behind. My body was still sore and tired, and I wasjust ready for the day to be over.
***
I felt something tickle my hand and trickledown my finger. Reluctantly, I slowly opened my eyes and watched agiant black spider crawl down my finger and onto the bed beside me.Like a fire had been lit under my ass, panic enveloped me and Ijolted from the bed as far away from the spider as I could,practically rolling myself over Darren’s body. He woke instantly,and with his arm still draped around my torso, stopped me fromrolling over him and slammed me back down on the bed back next tothe spider.
“What thefuck!” Darren shouted at me.
“Fuck! No! Kill it! Kill it!” I shrieked, asI tried to inch away from the spider and further into Darren.
“What?” he looked at me angrily and confused.
“Kill it!” I pointed.
He leaned over to look at the spider I wasfreaking out about and immediately laughed at me as if it was thefunniest thing he’d ever seen.
“Are you fucking serious?” He laughedhysterically. “My little warrior princess is scared of a harmlesslittle spider?”
“Just kill it already!”
He shook his head, smirking, as he leanedover and flicked the spider off the bed.
“Did you kill it?” I asked in a panic andleaned over to make sure it was dead, but I couldn’t find it.
“Trust me. I know how to make things dead.”He gave me that sexy shark grin of his.
“Oh, thank God,” I said, ignoring hiscomment about making things dead. I rested my head back on the pillows with a sigh of relief.
“Of all the things you could be scared of, Inever thought spiders would be one of them.”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s hilarious, I know.” Irolled my eyes at him. “But when I was a young kid, I was runningthrough the woods and accidentally ran through a giant web ofspiders. They got in my hair, crawled on my face, and all over myclothes. I’ve been traumatized ever since.”
“My poor little Jaden.” He snickered. “Don’tworry. I’ll protect you from all the spiders.” He leaned over andkissed my forehead, a smart-ass grin smacked across his face.
I put my hands over my face and rubbed myeyes, groaning in absolute embarrassment. I just watched this mantake on four men with arnises, andhere I was freaking out about a little fucking spider. God, I feltpathetic, but I could never shake the trauma I felt whenever Ithought back to that moment where I wanted to rip my skin and hairout.
Darren just continued to chuckle at me andkissed my temple. “So adorable.” He smirked and then smiled down atme.
Wow, that smile was something else. Genuine,honest, and for some reason, sexy as hell. It was suddenly hard tobelieve I
