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“Because I’m here to be alone. And I don’t know you. It would be weird to both be here in this small house together.”
“The house is not so small,” he said, looking around. “And I came here to be alone, also.”
“Uh huh!” She capitalized on that. “All the more reason to go find somewhere else.”
“Two people who want to be alone can do so together.”
“That’s absurd.”
“No,” he reached past her, to the coffee pot, and poured himself a large mug of the dark, steaming liquid. “It makes perfect sense.”
“How, exactly?”
“I won’t bother you. You won’t bother me. Simple.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“So what are you going to do with yourself?”
“I have work to catch up on.” Again, that strange, dead look in his eyes, and he turned away, frowning slightly, before returning his gaze to her. “Once you’ve finished your—concoction—I’ll sit here, and you’ll barely know I exist.”
“Presumably you’ll sit there dressed?” she prompted, and then inwardly groaned, because he’d done it again—arguing the small points so she conceded to a much larger one.
“If that’s what you want.”
Another little tremble of awareness passed through Mila. She wasn’t sure how she’d go ignoring him, but there was a part of her that was glad he was trying so hard to stay. Last night had shaken her to the core. Hearing a noise and realizing how completely isolated she was had made her question the sanity of this decision. Her stalker had been able to follow her to multiple cities around the world; why had she presumed this little shack on the edge of the continent would be any different? Memories cut through her—the words written in lipstick on her locker room mirror, the photos taken of her up close, in her home. The animal blood that had been spilled in her bag when she’d been competing, and those incidents all where security was relatively high. Her stalker’s reach was long, and investigations had so far failed to turn up any information.
He always managed to find her.
Suddenly, the idea of being here alone was anathema to Mila, but she didn’t want to reveal as much to this man. To… “What’s your name?” She asked, belatedly.
“Leonidas,” he said the word in a heavily accented way, so it burrowed into her and spread little flames of fascination beneath her skin. “Everybody calls me Leo.”
“Leonidas,” she repeated icily, intentionally keeping things between them formal. “Last name?”
“Xenakis. Would you like my date of birth, too?”
She rolled her eyes. “You’ve turned up in the middle of my—holiday—,” the word was a misnomer; she was recovering and hiding, neither of them particularly recreational. “Don’t you think I have a right to know a bit more about you?”
“Okay. What else would you like to know?” He crossed his arms over his chest, which could have been a gesture designed to confuse her, because she looked down and found her eyes wouldn’t move away. His chest was broad and strong, his pectoral muscles emphasized by a sparse covering of hair, his strength so raw and vital that she could hardly focus.
“Or,” he drawled the word. “You could just stand there and objectify me.”
Heat bloomed in her cheeks and her lips gaped as her eyes sprung to his face. “I was not. I was just…thinking.”
“Sure you were,” his laugh was low and rough, and it succeeded in sending little darts of awareness all through her. Cheeks flaming pink, she turned away from him, and winced as her ankle sent up a yelp of complaint.
“What did you do to yourself?” He asked, coming around the kitchen quickly and putting a hand under her elbow. She’d regained her balance—her core strength was finely honed thanks to her training—but she didn’t shake him off.
“I fell,” she muttered, eyes closing as she remembered the pain of her collapse. “It was a stupid mistake.”
“Falls generally are.”
“Yes, but not like this.”
“What do you mean?” He gently moved her out of the kitchen, towards the sofa. There was no evidence that he’d slept here; it looked just as always.
