“Exactly.”
She jerked out of his grasp. Infuriating man. “This was—is—my decision to make.”
Those eyes heated to molten silver. “I won’t apologize for using my resources to keep you safe. Trust that I did it with your best interests at heart.”
Bought her, hired her, whatever. Any reservations she had about not sharing her sister’s problems with Brody vanished in that moment. Fessing up now would toggle Mr. I’m-the-Decider’s control switch to on. He’d go against her wishes, crush her agency. This was Emma’s mess; she would fix it.
“This penthouse is very big,” he said, sensing her discomfort, though he likely thought it was because of the seedy way this had come about, rather than his high-handed behavior. He had bought her time. Her services. To the casual observer, that looked like a pay-for-play arrangement. There was no such thing as a free lunch—or a tin of cat food.
“You’re standing in the middle of ten thousand square feet. We could go years without finding each other,” he continued into the taut silence, like a weird negotiation where he was ceding primacy in the power exchange to her. He may have bought her. She may belong to him in some figurative sense, but that wouldn’t obligate her to pay for her safety on her knees or her back. Her heart bounced hard enough to make her rethink this.
Kevin had curled up in a ball under one of the kitchen island’s high stools, already cementing his place in the new world order. Her cat needed this haven more than she did.
Do it for Kevin.
She’d take the death-row reprieve Brody offered. A week to get her head together and figure out the next move, time to get Daisy out and run.
“So what kind of roommate do you make?”
Triumph conquered Brody’s face. “I would make a very demanding roommate, but as a penthousemate, I can guarantee you’ll hardly ever see me.”
That should have made her happy, but her heart twinged. “You mean I won’t come across you dancing to Taylor Swift in your tighty-whities?”
“God, no,” he said with great gravity. “I wear boxer briefs.”
She laughed, the sound strange on her lips. It had been so long since she had wanted to laugh. Hard to have a sense of humor when your life was circling the drain.
“No one at work can know I’m here. That I’m mooching.”
“Emma, you’re hardly mooching.”
“You haven’t seen how much I eat.”
His lips moved imperceptibly. “I won’t compromise your pristine reputation at work.”
She thumped him. Not such a good idea to touch his amazingly resistant chest muscles. Desire shivered through her. “I know you think that’s funny coming from the failed stripper—”
“‘Failed’ being the operative word.”
“But it’s just another line I don’t want to blur.”
“Right. We seem to excel at blurring the lines. Or blasting through them and leaving the rubble in the rearview mirror.”
She smirked. “Bye-bye, line.”
“While you and Kevin are my secret guests, I’ll be a gentleman.” The way he said “gentleman” sounded like he meant the exact opposite. Along with everything else she had to worry about, she might have seriously underestimated Brody Kane. “And you’ll stay here. No more arguments.”
Ceding control should have been difficult, so why did it seem like the easiest thing in the world to say, “One week”?
It emerged from her lips, not as surrender but a challenge. One week to gather her wits, work up a plan, and resist the sensory onslaught of the man before her.
…
One week.
Wondering if he was mad, Brody stepped into the shower the morning after he had set Emma up in the bedroom the farthest away from his. As if thousands of square feet could minimize the temptation she presented. Sure, the penthouse was large, and her imprint was tiny, but that meant squat when the woman you had fantasized about and brought to blistering orgasm—who happened to work for you—was now living under your roof.
Wearing his clothes.
He had sent the suit and underwear she’d worn into his penthouse out to be dry-cleaned, which left them with a clothing problem. While she made phone calls and scanned apartment listings, she wore his Texas A&M tee (no bra) and a pair of his black silk pajama bottoms, held up on her shapely hips by one of his ties.
Pretty damn sexy.
She would have to buy new clothes soon, but having seen Emma’s taste in suits, he was tempted to leave the status at quo a little longer. Torture himself for a little longer.
Should have set her up in a hotel, idiot. God knew that would have been the sane option, and he could have afforded it, but he imagined a lot of hotels had rules about cats, or cats with demon, clothes-destroying tendencies.