“Good morning, sleeping beauty,” he says.
“Morning. What time is it?” I ask on a yawn. “How long have I slept?”
“It’s nearly noon,” he says.
I sit up quickly. “I’ve slept half the day away!”
He chuckles. “You did, but something tells me you needed that.”
Sitting on the edge of the bed, he slides the tray on the table beside me. The smell of bacon makes my stomach rumble with hunger.
“Sit up, little one,” he says. I do, eager for some food, but when I reach for it, he shakes his head. “Let daddy do it.”
So that part wasn’t a dream, then. I bite my lip and nod, not sure how to respond. How do I feel about this? But when he puts a large forkful of eggs in front of my mouth and says, “open,” it’s easy enough. I take the bite between my lips and eat the eggs, then after I swallow, he follows it with a strip of bacon.
“Mmm,” I whisper. “This is delicious.”
“Good,” he says approvingly. “It should tide you over for a little while, anyway.”
He got up and showered and dressed, ordered food and everything. Wow. And I slept through it all.
After feeding me another bite of eggs, he continues. “We’ll dock in about an hour, and I want you well fed before the next leg of your journey.”
Your journey?
Wait. Why mine, and not “ours?”
It seems an odd choice of words, but I don’t question him as he feeds me a bite of toast, another strip of bacon, and a wedge of orange. I finally hold up my hand to indicate I’ve had enough, and he lays the fork down on the tray.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” I ask him.
He smiles, but for some reason the look in his eyes is distant. “I ate hours ago. And anyway, I want you to get ready before we dock, so let’s get moving.”
I throw the blanket off me and push to my feet, my body aching in reminder of what we did last night. All of it. Somehow in the bright light of day, I feel a little bashful about it, but he doesn’t seem troubled at all.
“Get ready,” he says, pointing to the bathroom. I do, and just as I finish, I hear Stefan call to me from the other room. “We’re here. Let’s go.”
I come into the room where he is, and he already has our bags packed and ready to go. He takes me silently by the hand, then to my surprise, pulls me to him and kisses me so fiercely, I gasp, falling back a little, but he catches me. His touch feels nearly desperate, his kiss hurried.
“What was that?” I whisper, giving him a curious look. “Stefan? Is everything alright?”
There’s a fire in his eyes and a firmness to his jaw that unsettles me. “Everything’s fine,” he assures me.
But I’m not so sure. I want to know that nothing has changed between us. That everything is still in place. “Tonight, we need to go to the wharf.” I tell him what I found out, and watch as his jaw tightens.
When he shakes his head and doesn’t meet my eyes, my stomach tightens. “I’ll be going to the wharf,” he says, busying himself with folding the blanket at the foot of the bed. “Tonight, you’re getting a plane back to Atlanta.”
I’m having trouble making my mouth work. “I—Stefan,” I whisper, then on a whim, “Daddy. What are you talking about?”
“Don’t do that, Taara,” he says, his back to me. “Don’t question me in this. It was hard enough to make this decision.”
But no. I’m not going to cave that easily. I didn’t work this hard and give up so much just to turn tail and run, leaving the rest of this battle for him to fight.
“What decision?” I say, unable to mask my anger. “To send me away from you?” I can’t keep the hurt out of my voice.
“I’m not sending you away from me,” he spits out. “And watch your tone of voice, Taara.” He shoots me a warning look over his shoulder that makes my pulse spike, but I don’t care. He has one hell of a nerve going all master on me after dropping a bomb like that. I don’t care if he takes his belt to me again or canes me or does whatever the hell he thinks he has to, to get me to obey him. I’m not agreeing to this. No way.
“Watch my tone of voice?” I repeat, my voice rising in pitch. “Are you kidding me?”
“You really want to push this envelope?” He turns to me and crosses his arms on his chest, and I swear for one minute, I almost lose my resolve. He can be scary. His deep voice rumbles, warning me. “Keep it up, little girl, and you know exactly where this will land you.”