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Her glare burns holes in the back of my head as I walk from the room.
After retrieving her handbag from the powder room, I return to the bedroom and take her phone from her bag. I hold it out to her with another order. “Let your mom know you’re safe. Tell her you’ll be home in the morning.”
She yanks her phone from my hand and gives me a cutting look before typing furiously on her phone. After a moment, she dumps the phone on the nightstand. “There. Happy?”
Smiling, I drawl, “Very.”
I drop the towel from around my waist, retrieve hers, and hang both on hooks in the bathroom before going back to bed. She’s slipped under the covers and dragged them up to her chin. I get in beside her and pull her to my side. Her skin is soft against mine, her warmth like homecoming.
This house is the first home I’ve made for myself. The apartment in which I grew up never felt like home. After running away, I followed wherever Ian went. The farm in Zimbabwe and the chalet in Lesotho aren’t my homes either. They’re my brother’s. For the first time in my life, I feel like I belong in a place. For the first time, I feel like growing roots. Maybe even make babies and get a dog. Have a family.
The house is my sanctuary, but it’s not mine alone any longer. It’s Violet’s home too.
Kissing her neck, I tighten my arm around her waist and hug her closer. “How’s the mattress? Not too hard?”
“There’s nothing wrong with the mattress,” she mutters.
“Give it a test-drive tonight. If your back aches tomorrow, I’ll get a different one.”
Her body tenses. “You don’t have to wrap me in cottonwool because of my leg.”
“I’m not. I’m only doing my job by taking care of you. The same goes for anything else. You’re welcome to change the furniture or redecorate the house if my style is not to your taste.”
“Don’t worry,” she says with her usual heavy dose of ire. “I won’t be staying that long.”
Brushing my lips over her temple, I give her more truth. “No, darling. You’re staying forever.”
CHAPTER 24
Violet
An internal alarm always wakes me early. To my surprise, I don’t have a sore back. As the foreign notion registers, I remember with a start where I am. I already sense I’m alone in bed before I turn my face to the empty pillow next to me. Sunlight filters through the window and birds chirp outside.
Pushing up on my elbows, I survey the room. Both the bathroom and bedroom doors are open, revealing the deserted space beyond. Another door gives access to a dressing room with ample shelves and closets. I’m simultaneously relieved and strangely disappointed that Leon is nowhere in sight. Letting a girl wake up on her own after a night of multiple orgasms isn’t good bed manners, but seeing that we’re not in a relationship and will never be, sex etiquette is redundant in our case. Forced relationships don’t count.
I sit up and push the covers from my naked body. My skin protests against the loss of the warmth, the hair on my arms rising. Like the rest of the house, Leon’s bedroom is decorated with African furniture. The wooden headboard is carved with intricate patterns and adorned with brass studs. The thick rugs that cover the wooden floor are sky-blue, setting off the ochre color of the walls and the brass lightshade that hangs from the center of the ceiling. The room looks like it belongs in a mansion on a spice plantation in Zanzibar.
My handbag is on the chair with my clothes. I twist a sheet around my body and take my phone from the nightstand to check the time. It’s just after six o’clock. Despite the hour, the strangeness of where I am won’t let me go back to sleep. A new message notification appears when I wake up the screen. It’s from my mom, telling me to call her when I can.
An unwelcome feeling of shame creeps up on me. I’m not ashamed of what I did with Leon. I’ve never felt bad about my sexual nature. I’m drowning in guilt because of what I stole from him.
For a brief moment, I fantasize about telling him the truth. What will his reaction be? How will he punish me? Will he rat me out to Gus? Will he kill Elliot? I can’t face the answers to any of those questions, let alone what Elliot will do if I spill the beans. I don’t have a choice but to let the knowledge gnaw at my insides while worrying about what Elliot is planning on doing with Leon’s program. Copy it, no doubt. Produce something similar and claim it to be his idea. People have similar ideas in business all the time. I don’t know what Leon is working on, but I can only hope it’s not so original that he’ll suspect Elliot stole his idea.
