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“No, that’s alright. I took him out earlier.”
She nodded absently, still staring outside, glad that rain had cleared up and that it was proving to be a bright and blue day. A tree shook to the right of the woodland trail and her eyes shot to it, breathing out when a bird hopped out from the brush and pecked at something on the floor.
“You okay?”
Rose looked up, surprised to find Blake still watching her. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
He nodded and drained his coffee, placing the mug into the large sink before heading past the island again to go and get ready upstairs. She might have been watching him leave, and shemighthave gasped when he dropped the towel, showing off his toned, tan ass. She heard him chuckle and knew she was busted but looked away quickly, not daring to lift her eyes until she heard his bedroom door close.
He emerged about twenty minutes later and found her in almost the same position as before, drinking her second cup of coffee. Caffeine had been the hardest thing for her to give up when she’d been taking her meds before, and she was still working on it now. To only be on her second cup was actually pretty good for her, and she now switched to tea after lunchtime.
Blake had a laptop under his arm as he looked in through the kitchen doorway and gestured for her to follow him. It was strange how different a place could look once you got used to it. This place now felt very different from where she’d had her first meeting with Blake, and then subsequently had sex with him, but as he led them into the study, the images started to marry up. Papers were in an orderly pile on the desk, and he’d set up a table in front of the long couch against the back wall for them to sit on while they spoke to Jones.
Rose avoided looking at the desk but thought she saw a smirk on Blake’s face a few times as he set up wires and logged into the computer before moving away and lounging back against the desk he’d had her bent on just over a week ago. Jones’ face soon took up the screen and Rose could feel her tension ratcheting up several degrees at the tight expression on his face as Blake strode over and settled next to her on the leather couch that faced the rest of the room. Blake smiled, but Rose could only nod as the Detective greeted them.
“There’s not much news yet, I’m afraid. We’ve been working on tracing the photograph they sent you, maybe work out where it was printed, but right now it's like looking for a needle in a haystack. I did want to follow up with you though, Mr Blake about the security breach you believe you experienced yesterday evening. Do you have any updates on that yet?” Blake’s eyes flickered to her and back again, and if possible, her stony expression became flatter.Bastard.Chicken-cooking, movie-watching, controlling, lyingbastard.I trust you,he’d said, and she wanted to laugh for being such an idiot.
Blake must have noticed her expression darkening on the screen in front of them, but he didn’t so much as look at her. “We don’t know yet if the security device flagged a human trying to break in or a rabbit too close to the sensor. My team is looking into it, but in the meantime, I’ve got the security team doing extra patrols. The cameras didn’t capture anything, so the likelihood is that it was an animal.” Jones replied, but Rose didn’t even hear it as Blake whispered to her, “That’s why I didn’t mention it. It was so unlikely that it was them I didn’t want to worry you needlessly.”
She didn’t bother to respond, just kept her jaw clenched and her mouth shut. She was an idiot to relax at all around him. This wasn’t her home, he wasn’t her friend, and they needed to catch this guy so that she could get the hell out of here.
“Thank you for the update, Detective. Did the cameras atThe Hartyield anything useful in seeing who snapped the photo of us in the parking lot?”
Jones shook his head. “The angle was wrong, I’m afraid. Plus, whoever took that photo could have been using a long-range lens.”
She nodded absently as Jones rambled on about the importance of staying put and reporting any changes immediately before he hung up.
“Rose–” Blake tried as soon as the call ended.
She stood up and brushed down the blouse she was wearing before looking down at him. “If anything like that ever happens again, I want you to tell me.”
He opened his mouth like he was going to argue before sighing. “I’m sorry. I thought it was the right decision.”
“Yes, well, you were wrong.” How many times did she have to tell him? She wasn’t fragile. She wasn’t going to break. In fact, she was the one who got her and Maia out of there. Why did he insist on not worrying her unless– “You looked inside my package, didn’t you?”
“What? No.”
“I’m not ashamed,” she hissed, “and I’m not weak either. I can handle things. Having anxiety doesn’t change that. Needing medication doesn’t change that.”
His blue eyes were wide and he stood in a rush of motion, grabbing one of her wildly gesticulating hands in his. “I had no idea. I didn’t look in the package. You’ve already been through so much. I just thought I could take care of this for you.”
She tugged her hand free, warmth curling low in her stomach. “I don’tneedyou to take care of me. I’m not a child, Blake.”
“I know,” he said in a low voice that made her heart flipflop in her chest as he moved closer, her chest heaving with deep breaths against his. “Would I do this if I thought you were?” His mouth crashed down onto hers, teeth tugging at her lip, hands spanning her waist as he dragged her impossibly closer. Her senses were full of Blake, his taste, his smell, until he broke away and she was left gasping. “Would I have fucked you if I thought you were some dumb kid? You’re two years younger than me, Rose. That’s nothing.”
“I didn’t think you were picky,” she whispered, knowing it was a low blow and needing him to hurt.
He snorted, moving back from her with a look of disappointment pinching his mouth. “I thought you’d know better than to pay attention to the rumor mill, princess. Sure, I fuck around, but I have standards just like anyone else. Just because I don’t date doesn’t make me a fuckboy. It just means I already know what I want.”
His eyes were heavy on hers with some meaning she didn’t understand before he turned and walked away, leaving her standing in the study with frustration a beating drum in her chest. What else was he hiding from her? How was she ever supposed to trust Blake if he steamrolled over her at every opportunity? Her eyes drifted to the desk, thatinfernaldesk that had the blood rising in her cheeks as she looked at it. She inched closer and rested her hands on the edge before glancing back at the doorway and finding it empty.
The first drawer slid open easily, full of knickknacks and junk like highlighter pens, a stapler, and a squishy red ball that at first she’d thought was a stress ball, but when she squeezed it let out a loudsqueakthat made her freeze. When the tell-tale sound of Bailey’s paws didn’t come, she let out a long breath and slipped the ball back where she’d found it before moving onto the next drawer.
Inside was a myriad of files forHorizonsall labeled in a way that was surprisingly organized –she might have thought someone else had done it if not for the fact that she recognized the curling lilt to Blake’s handwriting. Two other drawers were the same, but the top drawer on the right-hand-side gave her pause.
There were photographs inside, one of Blake and Grace, and another of him and his Dad with a very young Cara, and the other was… her. It was just the one photo, hardly a shrine, but it wasjusther. Not her with her mom or her dad, just Rose and the sunset, her hair whipping out in the beach wind and glinting off of a lens flare while she laughed. It was… beautiful, and she’d absolutely never seen it before. She looked about eighteen in the photo, and thinking back, she could remember going to see her parents at a beach house they’d hired for a month in the summer all the way in Malibu. She’d been mid-way through her first year at college and had flown out on the weekend for a cookout on the beach. In all honesty, she’d forgotten Blake had been there because she’d spent the majority of the time avoiding him and Christopher – the memory clicked into place all of a sudden, and it was like she could almost smell the salty air and hear the gulls. Chris had been going through a photographer phase and had been snapping candids all weekend, but Rose had never seen any of them. It seemed Blake, on the other hand, had. But why this photo? Why her?
It just means I already know what I want.As she stood there with the sunset photo in her hand, Rose had to wonder, for the first time in a long time, what exactly she meant to David Blake.
