“So generous,” I say, heavily, so that he knows I’m still angry at being here.
“It’s like I told you,” he says. “I’m very generous. What else do you need? You have the bed, are you warm enough? Too warm?”
It seems as though he’s actually being serious. I glance around, uneasily. I don’t want to sit on the bed it feels too intimate, somehow. “I could do with a chair to sit in.”
“A chair.” Tommy nods encouragingly. “That’s good. We have chairs. I will make sure they bring you one. What else? Go on, don’t be shy. Tell me what you need.”
I sigh. “I need designer clothes and diamond jewelry,” I say, my version of flipping him off. It’s the first fantastical thing that comes to my head. I could just as easily have asked for a Lamborghini, or a new house, or a vacation in a five-star resort, or a million dollars. The point is that his question is ridiculous. I need to go home. All this fake concern for my well-being and comfort means nothing if he keeps me here as a prisoner.
“Alright,” Tommy smiles, with an enigmatic look in his eyes. “I can work with that. I’ll make a few calls.”
I hesitate. He can’t be serious, can he? I wasn’t even being serious, and he ought to have been able to tell that. He must be joking – playing with me. It’s probably easier to pretend to humor me than to argue. I won’t see him again – and I probably won’t even get the chair. This is all just a game to him.
But as I watch, he moves toward the door, drawing his cell phone out of his pocket as he goes. He pauses right before he leaves, looking back at me with a funny kind of expression.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he says, making me want to stomp my foot and scream but he’s already gone, closing the door behind him.
I hear only a few words from the other side of the door before his voice disappears too, gone, down the hall where I’m no longer in earshot. But I’m sure I heard him say something about placing an order. That can’t be right, can it? He’s just pretending – speaking into a phone that isn’t even connected to a call. Playing with me.
There’s no way he was actually serious.
Right?
CHAPTER FIVE
Tommy
I make a lot of quick and impromptu decisions, one after the other.
First, that I will give Carina everything she has asked for, everything that she could possibly need. I know her father’s business, he doesn’t make enough to keep her in luxury. She has never experienced it. But I will show her what my power buys, everything she could ever desire. By my side, she could have everything. She needs to know that.
Second, I decide that I will cancel my plans for the night. I was supposed to have an important dinner, a business meeting over food. The kind of thing that often decides the nature of relationships with business owners, with other families, that keeps everything running smoothly. I had already prepared for tonight, I’m ready to present a deal that could help out this businessman very much. But I don’t care about his needs. Tonight, I will see to my own – a chance I rarely take.
Tonight, I will dine with Carina. She needs to not only know my power but my influence, the life I could give her. She needs to know me. And that starts tonight, and I know I can convince her that this is the life she needs.
I call out for Ricky and Enzo, they’re always somewhere around the house, doing whatever I need them to do. The others who work for me are usually out, running businesses on my behalf, shaking people down, ensuring that those who are in need come to me first. Making our presence felt.
They come quickly, and I deliver their orders. A boss like me doesn't pick up the phone and make or cancel dinner plans – he has people to do that for him. I retreat to my study for the moment instead, to finish off the rest of my paperwork and to finalize the plans for tonight. Carina will be here for the week, and there are things I need to do inside that time; commitments and responsibilities that I cannot avoid. I take care of as many of them now as I can, so I can dedicate myself to her. It will be worth it.
It takes me through to the evening to get it all finished, and when I emerge from my study, feeling tired and drained, I know I’ve done all I can. Then I straighten my back and nod an order at Enzo, who quickly rushes off to the kitchen. Tonight’s food has been ordered and prepared as normal, but it’s not going to be eaten by a businessman in a restaurant. It will be enjoyed here, kept warm by my staff, served in her room.
I feel the tiredness fade away as I stride along the corridor. I will see her again, that much is enough to raise my spirits, to make me feel that the effort of the day is nothing. My steps quicken. I will enjoy this evening very much.
I open the door and find her sitting in a plush velvet armchair, brought here at her request. She just looks up sullenly. I wonder what thoughts were going through her mind before I entered.
“Carina,” I greet her. “You’re doing well?”
“You could at least let me have my phone,” she snaps. “There’s nothing to do in here.”
“I will bring you something to occupy your time,” I smile. “What do you enjoy?”
“My phone,” Carina says flatly.
“That is off the table for now,” I tell her. “I can’t have you contacting your father. If you simply want to amuse yourself, I can bring you something pre-loaded with games, books, music. It just won’t be connected to the internet or able to make outgoing calls or messages.”
“You said I could have anything I wanted,” Carina pouts.
“Anything but your freedom,” I remind her.
A knock at the door signals the arrival of our dinner. I open the door to allow them in. Enzo and Ricky carry a table between them, John Twice behind with a chair. At the end of the procession comes my chef, with a cart loaded with several dishes and a decanter.
I watch Carina’s face, not my men, as they set up the table and chair opposite her, then lay out the dishes, so we can dine together. When they are gone, I take my seat and gesture towards the table. “Well,” I say. “Enjoy.”
Carina hasn’t moved a muscle during the whole process and now she stares down dubiously at the dishes. “What is this?” she asks.
I laugh. “What do you think? Dinner.”
Carina leans forward and takes the lid off one of the dishes closest to her, and then raises an eyebrow. A Caesar salad probably wasn’t what she was expecting, judging by her look. Perhaps she thought I was serving up something more threatening.
“If you’re looking for the horse’s head,” I say conversationally. “It’s on the big plate.”
Carina blinks owlishly at me, her face actually shrouded in fear. I sigh and roll my eyes. If she can’t even trust that I’m not going to do something like that, we have a long way to go. I lift the lid myself, revealing a large bowl of spaghetti ready to be shared.
“Oh,” she says. “That was a joke.”
“I do make them,” I say, though instantly I realize that it’s sort of a lie. Actually, I don’t joke very often at all. But I want to put Carina at ease, and so I suppose I’m trying to use humor to do it. I can’t say it’s working very well so far.
“Why are you doing this?” Carina asks, lifting the lids from the other dishes to reveal a platter of bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, Bruschetta with red pesto, and chicken parmigiana.
“Your father owes me,” I say. “You know this.”
“No, I mean, why are you doing this?” Carina gestures at me. “You don’t have to sit and eat with me. Don’t you have more important things to be doing?”
Well, of course, I really do. But then again, important is relative, and I can’t think of anything I would rather be doing. “No,” I tell her. “I need to eat, like any human. You need to eat. This makes sense.”
Carina makes a humphing kind of noise, I can’t tell if she doesn’t believe me or she’s just not satisfied with the reason. Either way, I steer the conversation onwards. “What do you normally do with your day?” I ask. “What would you be doing, if
you weren’t here?”
Carina shoots me a suspicious look. “Why?”
She isn’t going to make this easy for me. I want to get to know her better, but she doesn’t want to talk. I get it. After all, I’m the reason why she isn’t enjoying that normal daily routine right now. But I will get through to her. “I’m making conversation,” I say.
“You don’t need to. I’m just your prisoner, aren’t I? Let’s not pretend this is anything different,” Carina says sharply.
I’m about to lose my patience. This woman – I can see she will challenge me. Fine. I’m prepared to take it on. People don’t ever challenge me, not since I first proved myself on the streets. She refreshes me. “Alright. What about your father?” I ask. If I pretend this is all about the money, she might even open up a bit more. “You say you look at his books. Can he pay me?”
“I don’t look at the books,” Carina says scornfully. “I balance them. I do all of the accounting for the bakery.”
I look her over. “You’re not qualified for that.”
Carina laughs, a sharp noise. “I’m eighteen years old. I went to math class. I’m qualified. We can’t afford to hire someone to do it for us.”
I stifle a chuckle of surprise. She’s feisty, alright, and smart, too. “The food’s getting cold, accountant,” I tell her, taking the serving spoon and ladling spaghetti onto my plate. “You should eat.”
For a moment she looks like she’ll resist, refuse, but then she picks up the parmigiana and starts to eat it. I smirk. Looks like I’m not getting any of that dish tonight. I watch her eat, almost mesmerized. It’s like poetry in motion. I can see she loves food. She loves this food, even if she wouldn’t want to admit it to me. I have a great chef, and he works very well with traditional dishes. The enjoyment is written all over her face.
I want to see that look on her all the time – for other reasons, too. It makes my own mouth water, and my blood rush down below my waist. I distract myself with more questions about her father, the business, gradually teasing out tiny pieces of information about her. What she does, what she likes, who she is.
The more I get to know her, the more enchanted I am by her. This woman full of contradictions, feisty and fiery, yet nervous, lacking in self-confidence. Smart, but seemingly without ambition. She tells me she will stay at the bakery and work instead of going to college in the fall. Beautiful, voluptuous, and seemingly unaware of it.
Ambition, confidence, self-awareness. These are things I can give to her, more precious than any gift. I will give them to her, if not only in the space of this week, then over our lives together. Because she will be mine – she just doesn’t know it yet.
CHAPTER SIX
Carina
After we finish eating, I expect that Tommy will leave. Of course, he will. He’s not here for a social visit. He’s trying to find out information about Dad’s business. Now that I’ve told him everything he’s asked, I’m sure he will leave me alone again.
I wouldn’t be surprised if, tomorrow, my meal is a bowl of soup served alone. This whole thing was designed to impress me into giving him the insider track. Unfortunately, for both him and me in terms of leverage, there isn’t anything to tell. The bakery is just a bakery, and Dad will struggle to find the money, and that’s it.
But he doesn’t leave right away. He hangs around, moving his chair to sit by the window, still close to me. I watch his tall body, the way he moves with a languid grace after eating his fill, stretching out like a panther.
“So,” he says, drawing my attention to his dark eyes. “You never answered my question. What would you be doing right now, on a normal day?”
“I don’t know what time it is,” I point out. “You took my phone.”
Tommy smiles, though he quickly hides it. I still catch just a moment of it. I think he’s laughing at me. “No watch?” he says, flicking his wrist to look at his own, an expensive-looking timepiece. “It’s ten in the evening.”
I look away for a moment. “I would be sleeping,” I say. For some reason, I feel tired. It must be because my nerves are all on edge. It’s been an eventful day. “We wake early to start baking.”
Tommy nods. “Then I suppose you want to sleep now.”
I don’t feel it, really, but it seems like the right answer to give. If I say yes, then he will leave – or so I expect. He’ll leave me here and let me rest, no more inquisition. “Yes,” I say, without thinking too deeply – though it’s strange how the moment I say it, I feel a kind of regret.
“Then I’ll leave you to it,” he says, getting up with that same fluid elegance. He extends a hand toward me, and it takes me a moment before I realize that I’m expected to take it.
As soon as our hands touch, I feel a jolt of electricity run through me. It’s as though he shocked me with a hidden buzzer. But it’s not that at all. It’s something else – something completely unfamiliar. In my shock, I can barely react before he pulls me to my feet and then releases me, staring down at me with a look I can’t decipher.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says. A threat or a promise, I can’t tell. And suddenly, something catches in my throat. A request for him to stay.
I don’t know what it is. Maybe the touch of his hand combined with the danger of the situation, the stress of the day. But as he looks down at me, his dark eyes boring into me through his lashes, something grabs hold of me. A fervent desire – a need for him. I want him, I realize. I want him to stay and lay me down on this bed, and…
Where is this coming from? I keep my mouth firmly shut, dropping my eyes to the floor. I can’t want this. Not from this man, the man who kidnapped me, threatened my Dad. And even if I do – something I can no longer deny to myself thanks to the feelings surging in my blood, the way my veins feel like they’re filling up with stars – I can’t say a word.
It’s too forward, for a start. I can’t just jump on him like that. And even if I was to do such a thing, what would I back it up with? I have no experience. I can’t perform the way he might expect me to.
And he kidnapped me, for God’s sake!
I turn away, facing toward the bed so that the urge doesn’t tempt me anymore. I hear his steps moving away, hyper-aware of every sound, and then the door closes behind him. A short moment later, the sound of a key in the lock.
Tension floods out of me and is replaced by regret. I should have said something. I could even call him back – but no, I can’t do it. I turn off the lights and fall into the bed instead, not bothering to worry about my clothes. It’s not like I brought pajamas with me. I lay there, in sudden and unfamiliar darkness, and I can’t get the image of his eyes nor the feel of his hand out of my head.
I try to reckon what I would even have done. Told him to stay, then looked at him so intensely until he had no choice but to kiss me? In spite of myself, the thought of his kiss sends my pulse racing, makes me lick my lips, and shift uncomfortably. Heat pools in the pit of my stomach and my cheeks, burning as I guiltily continue the fantasy.
I imagine he would be forceful – that he would like to take charge. He would manhandle me over to the bed, lay me down, strip off my clothes. And, oh… how that would feel like. I brush my hands lightly over my breasts, the ghost of a touch, thinking about his hands there.
It’s almost too much to take. The heat builds up inside me as I imagine him leaning over me -
And I stop, rolling over to face the wall away from the door. This is so stupid. I can’t even finish the fantasy – I have no idea what comes next. I’ve never been that far, and I can’t imagine how it would feel, what it would be like. It’s a reminder that, next to him, I’m a kid. He probably has so much more experience.
I close my eyes and try stubbornly to sleep, hoping that by the time I wake up, I won’t find myself lost in his dark eyes anymore.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tommy
The determination that Carina will be mine doesn’t fade in the morning. It never will. I have my goal. Make he
r mine. And that starts with the first step, letting her know that she can trust me, that I’m a man of my word. That I will give her anything that she wants.
I’m awake bright and early, and I guess that she will be too, given that she’s used to having to wake up at such an early time. I take delivery of the things I ordered yesterday and set them up on racks and on a cart with wheels that my chef often uses to deliver food to various rooms of the house. That done, I enlist Enzo to push them along with me – and we move them upstairs, to the hall outside her room.
I knock loudly. “Carina? You are awake?”
I hear a rustling inside. I picture her just getting out of bed, which surprises me. Perhaps I’m too early. But then she replies with a soft yes, and I push the door open.
She’s sitting by the window in her armchair, one of the blankets from the bed wrapped around her. She looks tired. It’s probably my fault, but it seems it’s to be expected. After all, as she seems keen to keep reminding me, I did kidnap her.
But that discomfort at being here will go away soon. She will see how good it is. How happy she can be at my side, I just have to show her.
“What’s this?” she asks, sitting up in her chair and leaning forward a little as we wheel everything in.
“What you asked for,” I tell her with a smile. “I promised you could have anything, and here it is. Designer clothes and diamond jewelry – that’s what you ordered, right?”
She gives me a wide-eyed look and slowly rises to her feet, dropping the blanket, as Enzo backs out of the room at my signal. He leaves us alone together, and I watch eagerly as Carina approaches on cautious feet. She’s still wearing the clothes from yesterday – of course – and she looks tousled, mussed by sleep.
Falling For His Captive Page 2
