AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’d learned my lesson about having a woman, my ex-wife having all but eviscerated me in the end, and the last thing I wanted to feel was that kind of pain again.
She eyed me closely, her gaze starting at my head and trailing down to my feet.
“Your hair grows incredibly fast,” she said. “The last time I saw you it was nothing more than stubble.”
“You saw me days ago,” I pointed out. “Having hair is an inconvenience sometimes. DNA being left behind in places where I don’t want it to be is a bitch.”
“Then why wasn’t your hair shaved yesterday?” she asked. “Though, this thought was in my brain yesterday when I saw you.”
“Because what I did yesterday I didn’t deem to be a risk. There are so many people in and out of your building that finding my hair there wouldn’t have been a smoking gun if anyone were to find out what I’d done,” I explained.
She rolled her eyes.
“You’re an odd duck,” she said as she came farther into the room. “Is this your office?”
I looked around and pointed to the desk. “Obviously.”
“You don’t have a secretary or anything,” she pointed out.
“Actually, I do. It’s just that I don’t keep them on the same level with me,” I explained.
“Why not?” she asked.
I thought about how to answer, then decided that her knowing the truth about me wasn’t going to change anything where we were concerned.
“I have severe ADHD,” I explained. “Anything and everything distracts me, so limiting my distractions—ie: other personnel on the floor with me—is something that’s required if I want to get any work done.”
She walked to the refreshment bar that was kept stocked at all times—the staff came and stocked it when I was gone—and pulled a package of string cheese from the fridge.
“These used to be my favorite,” she said. “But our father always saw them as an added expense that he didn’t want to deal with. I used to steal them from convenience stores.”
“You little klepto, you,” I said as I watched her peel open the string cheese. “Why are you here?”
She peeled off a small string of cheese and devoured it before saying, “I’m curious.”
“About?” I asked, walking up beside her and pouring myself a cup of coffee.
Coffee, my poison of choice, was something that I had morning, noon, and night.
It was one of the only things that calmed me down—which was the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do.
And around Crimson Singh, I needed all the help that I could get.
“Want some?” I asked, offering her the cup.
She grimaced. “No. That stuff looks like you’re drinking black sludge.”
I snorted. “I’m drinking coffee. It’s imported and I grind my own beans and make a new batch every couple of hours. It’s most certainly not sludge.”
“Okay,” she said as she peeled off and ate another bite of cheese. “But also, that’s so black that there’s no way it doesn’t taste bitter as hell. I like my coffee like I like my powdered donuts.”
I chuckled. “You’re a mess sometimes, darling.”
That had her scoffing. “I don’t know what gave you that idea.”
I twirled a lock of her red hair around my finger and she froze.
When she still didn’t look at me, I tugged it.
Hard.
She gasped and looked up at me with wide eyes.
I didn’t let go of the strand of her hair as I said, “Why are you here?”
She licked her lips, causing my eyes to go to her mouth as I thought very naughty thoughts.
“You’re almost impossible to find any information on,” she said, sounding annoyed that I’d forced her to answer. “And it’s driving me insane that you know all this stuff about me, yet I don’t know a single thing about you.”
What was left unsaid was that she really wanted that information, and she was getting the information whether I liked it or not.
I tilted my head. “Some would say that you know me better than anyone. Who else would I have killed in front of and let live? You know me more intimately, I’d say, than anyone else in this world.”
She rolled her eyes. “You wouldn’t have shared that information with me had I not walked in on it.”
That was most certainly true.
I liked to keep my public persona and my personal persona completely separate. And it turned out that this woman now knew both sides of me, and I wasn’t comfortable with that. Not only could she take that information and pretty much bury me with it, but it also put me into a compromising position that was somewhat worrisome.
“True,” I said as I dropped the lock of her hair, noticing the way her shoulders drooped when I did. “But it’s still more leverage than anyone else in this world has on me. Not even my own parents or siblings know that much information.”
