by Fox, Logan
I’m about to stand, but Clover pulls out the empty chair and flops down in it for all the world like she has a rightful claim to a seat amongst studied professors.
“Well?” she asks in that voice I’ve come to know so well over the past six months. “You wanted me over for dinner.” She spreads her arms. “Here I am, Doctor Hill.”
Chapter Eleven
Clover
My heart’s gonna pound right through my ribs. What a bloody mess it’ll make of this dress, right?
But it’s worth it, oh yes. Hill looks like there’s a frog stuck in his throat, and his enlightened friends in their fancy suits and feministic hairstyles are foaming at the mouth.
Thank you, Jack. I owe you an eternal debt. Because nothing puts the fight in Clover Vos like a few shots of whiskey.
If it wasn’t for the jazz playing in the background, the sound of crickets would have been loud as fuck.
A chick at the end of the table leans in—she’s had one too many, just like me—and says, “I’m sorry, and you are?”
I wave. “Clover.” Then I point at Hill. “I’m one of his.”
I didn’t mean for the sentence to come out quite like it did, but what’s done is done, right?
“A patient?” asks a strangled voice beside me.
A nerd with glasses looks shell-shocked, and more than a little inebriated.
Fuck, if I’d known intellectuals partied so hard, I’d have gone to college.
“Not anymore,” I quip, and grab an empty wine glass. There’s a server across the table from me, and he sees me lift my glass but doesn’t make a move to come over and fill it.
Wanker.
“Ms. Vos.” Hill rises to his feet. “I think you misunderstood my earlier invitation.” He sounds like he’s talking through his teeth. The fury in his eyes is a good look on him. Broody, filthy rich maniac. I like it.
“Ohhhh.” I nod and put down my glass again. “‘Dinner’” Yup, air quotes and everything. I laugh and give the girl at the other end of the table a knowing smile. “Silly me.”
I stand, blatantly adjust my bustier to increase cleavage, and point out the hall. “After you, Doctor Hill.” I drop my voice a few octaves.
A guy at the table drops his fork.
Hill’s lips go into a thin line. “If you’ll excuse me,” he mutters, buttoning up his suit jacket with white knuckled hands.
No reply from his friends.
He stalks from the table, and I grab a slice of French Bread from the basket in the table’s middle. I send a wink in Dr. Geek’s direction and hoist up the slice of bread. “Think I’m gonna need my stamina.”
His lips part, but he seems unable to produce words.
Hill is waiting outside the dining room for me, but off to one side so I don’t notice him. He grabs by elbow, spinning me to face him.
Intentionally or not, I crash into him. This close, a circle of green is visible in his eyes, pressing against the brown.
“Hey!” I push back, feeling hard muscles under my palms before I swipe my hands away like he scorched them.
“What are you doing?” he whispers furiously at me. “You can’t just—”
“What the hell do you want from me, huh?” My voice is too loud, but I don’t bother lowering it. Hill tries to grab my arm, perhaps to drag me somewhere quieter, but I’ve only just begun. “I was your fucking lab rat for six months. What more could you possibly want to know?”
“Lab rat?” His eyes crinkle with incredulity.
That might have been too much. Honestly, this place was more a resort than a clinic. I shrug and unnecessarily adjust my dress.
You know what? Fuck this.
“Go to hell, Doctor Hill.” I spin around and stomp to the Institute’s front entrance.
“Where are you going?”
I don’t even stop, throwing the answer over my shoulder. “Away from you.”
“You found a place to stay?”
My steps falter, but I force myself to keep walking. I try to think of something clever to yell back at him but for once, my snarkiness fails me.
Outside, I rip the flower from my hair and toss it away from me. The scent of the moonflowers hangs in a thick cloud at the entrance, and I try to force it from my nose with a snort.
I take out my cellphone and scroll through my phone book. I hesitate over a name, and press dial. Jonas doesn’t answer, and I’m almost grateful. Seriously, he’s my last, last, last resort.
“One hour.”
Stifling a yell of surprise, I spin to face Hill and glare at him. “What?”
Well, he cooled down quickly. There’s even a faint smile on his mouth as he walks closer, hands in his pockets. “I want one hour of your time.”
I shift my weight, glancing away at the blooming flowers surrounding us. He stops a few feet away, watching me. Waiting. I stab the dial button again.
Pick up, Jonas, for fuck’s sake.
But he doesn’t.
I end the call on the seventh ring and shove my phone back in my purse with a muttered, “Fuck.”
“Sixty minutes,” Hill says.
I liked it better when he said one hour; somehow, it sounded shorter. I twist, biting the inside of my lip as I glare up at the stars. It’s a clear night, the moon but a sliver. Out here, the milky way isn’t only a few prominent stars but more a sash of glittering sequins.
“Fine,” I mutter.
His smile deepens. He extends a hand, and I glance behind me. “What?”
“My chauffeur is waiting for us.”
I blink at him.
Chauffeur?
I open my mouth, but he cuts me off. “Unless you have somewhere better to be, Ms. Vos.”
The sad truth is I don’t, and that pisses me off. I’m certain this guy wants to bang me. Almost certain.
If I didn’t know he was Hill, if he hadn’t made those comments up there on stage, I wouldn’t even be hesitating right now. In fact, I’d be naked on his bed already, spreading my legs to earn a night’s glorious sleep between Egyptian cotton sheets.
I lift a finger in warning. “One hour.”
He nods, smiles, steps past me, and opens the back passenger door. “After you, Ms. Vos.”
Chapter Twelve
Hunter
“You’ll break it if you keep doing that,” I say.
The girl looks down. She’s twisting her charm bracelet so hard it’s cutting into her wrist. She flicks her hand and runs both hands through her hair. “Those sixty minutes include travel time, you do realize that, right?”
I’m determined to keep a smile on my face, if only so she won’t think I’m a sexual deviant. I’m not sure if it’s making matters better or worse because she keeps glaring suspiciously at me.
“Wasted time is a wasted opportunity,” I say.
She makes a sound that might have been a snort and starts twisting her bracelet again as if she’s not conscious of the nervous gesture.
I touch her fingers, stilling her hand.
She doesn’t pull away, which is to be expected. Red-haired Vos is a seductress, and anything I can do to make her job easier she probably sees as a boon.
I drag the bracelet over her wrist so I can capture the small metal charm and turn it to the light.
“Trifolium repens,” I murmur as I study the poor imitation of a four-leaf clover cast in silver.
“Bless you,” she says, an eyebrow cocked with sarcasm.
I ignore her blatantly ignorant insult. “Only one in five-thousand clovers will ever produce four leaves.”
“Is that so?” she says dryly, and tugs the charm from my fingers with a twitch of her arm.
“A relatively rare phenomena,” I say, in case she doesn’t grasp the significance of my statement. “And it’s still not fully understood whether the occurrence is a genetic abnormality or—”
“Fifty minutes, Doctor.”
My gaze flashes to her face. “It’s Hunter.”
Her lips twitch
, but she doesn’t say anything.
I shift in my seat, hesitate, and tug lose my tie an inch before unbuttoning the collar button. It’s been choking me for the past three hours, and I don’t think I could have lasted another second with it pressed against my windpipe.
She watches me, blue-gray eyes hooded as she toys with the charm.
It must hold some sentimental value if she can’t leave it alone. Rather than letting the gesture annoy me, I attempt to establish what such a trinket means to Clover.
“A gift?” I ask.
“From my mother.” Then her eyes dart away, returning angry. “She’s dead. Bet you know that already, don’t you?”
“It was in your file,” I say, in lieu of an explanation.
“What else was in there?” Her voice is light, and she’s no longer twisting at her bracelet.
“Everything,” I say, and then realize how erroneous the statement is. “Almost everything.”
Her eyes scan my face as if she’s searching for the hint a lie. “So that’s what this is about? You want to make sure you have a complete file on each of your patients?”
“Yes.”
She shakes her head. “There’s nothing to tell.”
“A week after your mother succumbed to her cancer, you disappeared from the grid.”
Her expression turns to stone. “You know what? I just remembered: I do have somewhere better to be.”
“Ms. Vos, I merely—”
“You merely nothing, you freak.” She tugs at her door handle and throws me a furious scowl. “Let me out. Now.”
I watch her yank my Jaguar’s door handle, and it’s all I can do to remain calm. “We had a deal.”
She stops trying to open the door, but her hands stay on the handle. “I stayed at a relative’s house, then I went into foster care.”
“A relative?”
“Yeah, family.” She throws a frown my way. “Do you even know what that is?”
I laugh. The sound is far from a mirthful one. “Oh yes, unfortunately I do.”
My driver halts in front of the gates leading to my home. “We’re here,” I say, and Clover’s fingers slip from the handle.
A familiar expression crosses her delicate face.
Resignation.
Chapter Thirteen
Clover
An orange glow peeks through the thickly clustered pine trees. Hunter’s Jaguar stops in front of a black, ornate gate that opens as incrementally as a glacier. Tires crunch over gravel an eternity later, and my stomach twists tighter the closer we draw to the structure ahead.
Compared to the Institute, Hunter’s house is night versus day. The Institute is all sharp angles, concrete, glass, steel. This house looks like a log cabin designed by an architect with in an inexhaustible budget.
My door unlocks with a quiet snick. I scramble from the car so fast that when I slam the door shut behind me, my dress gets trapped in the jamb.
Hunter comes around the back of the sleek, black Jag, his smile growing from faint to smug as he sees me trying to open what’s now a very locked car door.
I look away, taking in his house as he walks past and instructs the driver to unlock my door again so I can be free.
A hand slides down my side, and I jerk at the unexpected touch.
Hunter is standing less than a foot away, the incriminating hand dangling at his side.
“Don’t touch me,” I snap, taking a big step to the side in case he tries his luck again.
“Your dress was—”
“Forty minutes, Hill.” I refuse to call him Hunter—it humanizes him too much.
He ducks his head, watching me through dark lashes as he passes me and heads for the front door. The Jag drives away, and it feels as if my stomach leaves with it.
Fuck, it’s a beautiful house, but I refuse to retract my claws just because this guy has nice digs. Beautiful? This place is fucking stunning.
He’s at the door, and I slow down, expecting him to take out keys or a keycard or something, but it opens for him as if he never even bothered locking it.
Well, if I have to run, at least I know I won’t have to break through one of those massive glass walls to get out.
I step inside, trying to keep my eyes to myself and failing miserably. Natural materials abound—reclaimed wooden beams in a vaulted ceiling, exposed stone trimmings, a fur throw on the leather sofa, antlers as decoration bedecked by a wreath of tiny dried flowers.
And then there’s the silence.
Utter silence.
“Where is everyone?” My voice sounds hollow in the space between us.
Hunter pauses beside the leather sofa and shrugs off his suit jacket. He turns to me wearing the first relatable expression I’ve seen on his face all night—relief. His tie comes off next as he steps out of his shoes.
Jesus Christ, whatever happened to foreplay?
My hand tightens around my clutch. I’d have to be an idiot not to know this was coming, but sometimes it’s fun to pretend I’m naïve.
Laughable, I know. But a girl can dream, can’t she?
“It’s just me and the staff.” He’s in his shirt and suit pants, face the most relaxed I’ve seen it all night as he loosens the strap on his antique-looking watch. He glances at the watch face before letting it drop on the table. “Who’ve left by now.”
Alone.
Something tells me the front door’s will be locked if I happen to try it.
But why, Clover? Why would you want to run?
Because there’s something I’m not seeing. I know how to read people, and I can’t read Hunter’s face for shit. I can see nothing in his eyes about his intentions with me. He doesn’t look horny, doesn’t look tired; but he does look relieved to be home.
“Thirty-five minutes,” I say, but my heart really isn’t in it.
He cocks his head. “I only need ten.”
My eyes go wide before I can stop them. His lips perk up and then he crosses the floor and stops in front of me. “Would you like a drink?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?”
His smile fades as he heads for the kitchen.
He didn’t even ask what I wanted. Maybe I don’t have a choice in the matter. I follow him if only because I don’t like him being out of my sight.
A bottle of port rattles on a granite countertop. He pours two fingers in a pair of tumblers. “Ice?”
“Thanks.” Look, maybe this is the extent of his civility. Not everyone can be as charming as me.
He hands me the glass. Our fingers brush. Exactly like it happened in the Jag on the way over here, the hair on my arms stands up in a rush. I pluck the glass away and swipe a hand over my skin. “It’s cold in here,” I mumble into my glass. “I thought log cabins were supposed to be warm?”
“There’s no heat to retain,” he says.
Wait, was that a diss?
He returns to the living room on silent feet. He even took off his socks, but fuck knows when. Which is how I can see that his feet are slightly grubby underneath.
Hunter Hill, barefoot stroller. I snort quietly into my port as I take another sip. Weirdo.
Instead of sitting on the sofa, Hill crouches in front of the fireplace. It’s in the space where a flat screen television would normally go, but I guess Netflix and chill doesn’t form part of Hunter’s schedule.
I sip at my drink, twisting left and right as I hug my free arm around my stomach. I’m still in the kitchen, but the design is open plan so I can keep an eye on Hunter while I try to locate something to defend myself with just in case.
He’s acting like a gentleman now, but I’ve known evenings like this to turn rather unpleasant. Then again, drugs were usually involved in those—I sincerely doubt that’ll be the case here.
“What’s so funny?” Hunter asks.
Does he have superhero hearing or something?
“Nothing.” I go closer, watching as he packs logs into a triangle.
“Have you built a fire
before?” he asks, but his eyes are solely on his task as if my reply is kinda irrelevant.
“I live in this century.” I know it’s a silly comment to make, but he’s got my guard up again. I mean, how does someone who wears a billion-dollar suit know how to make a fire?
I go sit on the sofa. The port is delicious, of course, but as much as I want to down it and just lose the rest of tonight in a haze of alcohol induced amnesia, something tells me to stay alert.
Outside, what little light beams from the cabin reaches only the closest pines where they press against the house’s driveway. Everything beyond those first trees is utter darkness.
I shudder, unable to tear my eyes away from the inky nothingness brooding out there.
Fuck, imagine getting lost in those woods. Scared, alone, utterly disorientated. I’m the furthest thing from a hippy—I prefer concrete sidewalks and alleyways reeking of piss. Yeah, it’s fucking gross, but it’s familiar. Alleyways always end. Someone’s always around—even if they’re not the type you necessarily want around you.
You can get lost in the city, but you’ll never, ever be alone.
Not for long.
Something thuds on the fireplace’s grate, and I almost jump halfway out my fucking skin.
Hunter stretches out a hand to reposition the fallen log, and I notice a mark on his wrist. It's small, something he’d easily covered with his watch’s strap, but for some reason I can’t look away.
I expect him to pull out a lighter or turn a switch that’ll magically ignite the fire…
He doesn’t. He takes a piece of dark stone from a container on the mantle and a pocket knife from his belt.
I’ll admit, the knife scares me. Who the hell wears a knife with their suit? He scrapes at the stone, letting a few shards fall onto a bundle of fluff that could be cotton or wool, who the hell knows?
“See, the trick is to ensure your tinder is as dry as possible.”
