“It’s not?” Disappointment flickered across his face, leaving me confused. He was the one who got weird, not me.
“It doesn’t have to be,” I amended, although the words made my mouth fill with the taste of ashes. “If you don’t want it to be.”
Callan swallowed. He looked like he was going to say a million things, but that hint of uncertainty kept him from saying it. “Why don’t we get inside?” he asked instead.
I nodded, and after grabbing his duffel, we walked up the flagstones to the front door. “I could show you around,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure you went through every room just now.”
Callan smirked. “I did, but a personal tour would be appreciated.” He shook his bag. “You can tell me where you’re comfortable with my leaving this.”
We walked through my house, and I tried to explain the clutter. He reached out and ran his fingers over a pink glass jar with a picture of a kitten printed on it. “When I bought this place, I wanted to restore the vintage charm of it... but then, I just kept buying kitschy stuff.”
The house was built in the 1920s, refurbished at some point, and it was functional for now. I liked the warm woods and hominess of it, but most people only saw that I didn’t have granite countertops in the kitchen, and my house looked like I actuallylivein it, despite sometimes going months without actually doing so.
“I like it,” Callan said as I showed him up a flight of stairs and down a hall to the guest bedrooms. “I’ve been in plenty of homes that remind me of museums. This doesn’t.”
I flushed. “That’s what bothers me about modern architecture. It’s cold.” I opened one of the bedroom doors. It was the more “masculine” of my guest bedrooms, with a navy quilt stretched over the bed. The curtains were a gauzy material, and the furniture was a soft, honey wood. “Let me know if you need anything,” I said. “More pillows or whatever.”
“I promise you,” Callan said with a grin, “I’ve slept on a lot worse. This place looks like heaven.” He put the bag down and turned around. “Where’s your room?”
His words knocked the air out of my lungs. “What?”
Callan had the decency to look flustered, like he hadn’t meant his words the way they came out. “I need to know where you’ll be,” he explained, “so I know where to find you if something happens.”
“Oh.” If my cheeks got any hotter, I could cook an egg. “Technically, the master’s suite is downstairs.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “Technically?”
“It’s nice having a room with its own bathroom and all, but I’ve never had a huge bedroom, so it was uncomfortable sleeping down there.” I motioned him further down the hall and opened a door to my room. It was roughly the same size as his, but the furniture was white and the quilt many different shades of yellow. I liked to think of it as my sunshine place, where I could go after being out on location for so long. “My mother told me that when I’m ready to grow up, I’ll move into the bedroom downstairs.” I shrugged. “I’ve lived here nearly a year, and I haven’t moved yet.”
Callan’s eyes were still on my bed. “It looks cozy,” he said, but his eyes were darker, almost smoldering in a way.
I cleared my throat. “Are you hungry? We can have dinner, and you can go over the contract with me. I was going to make dinner tonight instead of ordering out, but I can get anything you’d like.”
“Make whatever you were planning,” he insisted. “Whatever it is, I promise I’ll love it.”
I giggled. “You sound like someone who dreads making their own meals.”
He shrugged, obviously trying to play it cool, which made me giggle all the more. “It’s not like I burn the kitchen down,” he protested even as I laughed. “It’s just not a fun experience for me.”
Leading him back down to the kitchen, I dug out the chicken breasts and vegetables from my fridge. “Chicken fried rice okay?”
“You are agoddess,” he moaned exaggeratedly and sat on the stool at the peninsula. His eyes were trained on me. I could feel them as I cut up chicken and chopped vegetables.
Normally, having someone staring at me would be unnerving, but with Callan, that ache between my thighs was back, and as I moved around the kitchen, I squeezed my thighs together as subtly as I could to get some kind of relief.
I tossed the chicken chunks into a hot pan, but instead of the normal sizzle, I heard apop, and then the world shifted. Something large and warm slammed into me, and I landed on the kitchen floor with a hardthud.
I tried to push against the thing on top of me, uncomprehending and unseeing, but it wouldn’t budge.Did the roof cave in!?The weight crushing me into the tiled floor was unyielding, and I panicked and flailed.
“Adrianne! Stay down!” Callan practically shouted in my face, and that’s when I realized that he was the thing on top of me. I stopped fighting and stared up into his face, breathing hard.
“What the hell is going on?” I wheezed.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “Could have been gunfire. Stay down until I tell you differently.”
His weight began to shift off me, and fear gripped me anew, and I clutched at him. “Where are you going? You can’t leave me!”
Callan hushed her gently. “I have to go and check out whatever it was,” he said, “but I’ll be back. I promise.” I shook my head, even as he explained himself. “I’ll be right back.”