I suck in a breath, my eyelids popping open. The remnants of my dream ping-pong around my head, disjointed images of fantastical, nonsensical things. Through the window, I see the beginnings of a new day and the glimmer of the sea. I think it’s dawn.
A soft snore travels across the room.
I swivel my eyes to Cleo’s bed and see a large man lying there, cloaked in shadows.
My skin tightens.
Wait a second.
Oh, those dreams… They weren’t… They weren’t…
OH MY FUCKING GOD.
I slide up against the headboard.
Ras’s ankle slips off the mattress. He’s dressed in a pair of pinstriped black slacks and a white undershirt. His jacket and dress shirt are tossed carelessly over a chair by the bed.
Wait, I remember those slacks.
He wore them at Vale’s wedding.
An indescribable mixture of horror, apprehension, and embarrassment solidifies right in the pit of my stomach.
I think I might throw up again, because there’s no way—no way—Ras has been taking care of me since the night of the wedding.
My body breaks out in a sweat. I haul the covers off me, swivel on my butt, and place one unsteady foot on the floor but stop halfway with the other.
What the hell am I wearing?
Definitely not what I was wearing before. I remember the blue pajamas from when Ras straightened them out for me. I thought it was a dream, but at this point, I’m ready to acknowledge that all of my “dreams” are likely part of a nightmarish reality.
Someone changed me out of my clothes, and the only other person in the room is the most likely suspect.
Heat travels in a slow wave up my chest.
Let’s add vulnerability to that mess in my gut, shall we?
I pull back the neck of the random pink T-shirt I brought with me from New York and breathe a sigh of relief when I discover that my bralette is still on. An image of Ras handling my body with those big hands, dragging a calloused thumb over the bralette’s lacy edge, rudely intrudes inside my head and makes my mouth go dry.
My gaze pings back to my…my…nurse? Guard? Caretaker?
My bare toes dig into the plush carpet.
Ras has been taking care of me this whole time.
On his own.
While my family couldn’t even be bothered to stay behind for a few extra days.
My heart constricts.
He doesn’t even like me.
He’s just doing his job. Which currently appears to be making sure I make it home in one piece.
Everything is slowly coming back to me. When he said he was taking me back to New York and was planning on staying there for a while, I think I momentarily passed out.
That actually may have been the trigger for the rest of the mess in my head.
I rub my eyes. I still don’t really understand how any of this happened.
What on earth is Ras going to do in New York?
Is he going on his own? Does he know anyone there besides us? And frankly, doesn’t he have better things to do here or back in Italy?
I try to run my fingers through my hair only for them to get stuck on a knot.
Knots. Hair knots.
A fuzzy memory of touching something soft, something that might be Ras’s hair, finally gets me on my feet.
I need a shower.
Desperately. And not only because of the multiple layers of sweat that have dried on my body.
I need it so that I can attempt to wash away the thick, humiliating knowledge that I was my most vulnerable, deranged self around my enemy.
My gaze coasts over to the man on the other side of the room.
There are bags under his eyes and he looks like a tired mess, and yet he’s still undeniably, irrefutably gorgeous.
If that’s your enemy, maybe you should take a second look at your friends.
I smooth my palms over my abdomen, feeling incredibly flummoxed at the thought.
The bathroom is a mere step away when his voice halts me. “Hey.”
I fold my lips over my teeth. Here we go. But I’m not a coward, so I turn to face him. “Hi.”
Ras yawns and sits up on Cleo’s bed. “How are you feeling?”
Confused.
My gaze follows the smooth lines of his biceps as he reaches behind his head to tie his hair.
“Like I was run over by a truck and brought back from the dead.”
His eyes sweep over my body before he tips his head in the direction of the side table. “Check your temperature.”
I walk over, pick up the ear thermometer, and wait for it to make two beeps before I check the screen. “Ninety-eight.”
Ras frowns. “I have no idea what that means. Read the Celsius.”
“Thirty-six point eight.”
He nods, his profile illuminated by the sun rising on the other side of the window. “Good.” He scrubs his palm against his jaw and yawns again, looking unruffled.
Like it’s perfectly normal for him to wake up in the same room as me.
I grit my teeth, waiting to see which one of us will be the first to point out the absurdity of this situation.
Instead, Ras asks, “Hungry?”
I blink. Are we doing that thing where we pretend nothing out of the ordinary happened?
Okay, I can get on board with that.
“No. I’m going to shower. Maybe you should do the same.”
“You saying I look like I need one?” He arches a brow, a soft grin on his stupidly handsome face.
When I don’t answer because words are difficult to come by at the moment, he huffs a quiet laugh. “I probably do. Didn’t want to leave you until you were on the other side of it.”
Oh God.
I pull on my bottom lip with my teeth and look away. He really has been here the whole time.
Then I remember something. “Did you…take off my clothes?”
“Ah, so you noticed.” He stands and grabs his jacket and shirt.
My cheeks prickle. “Ras—”
“You were soaked with sweat,” he says, glancing at me from under his brows while he adjusts his hair tie. “I couldn’t let you sleep like that. It would have made the nightmares worse.”
I don’t know what to say, so all that comes out is a strained, “Oh.”
He studies me, his hazel eyes shimmering with something guarded. His voice drops lower. “I had to. I was quick.”
Rough hands brushing over my bare skin, nudging my shirt over my breasts. When he sees my lacy bralette, his eyes darken.
“Do you like it?” I breathe, delirious.
He sweeps his thumb beneath the strap over my shoulder and then sighs and jerks his hand away. “Put this on.”
I blink a few times, my face all hot.
That wasn’t a dream either.
Something desperate rises inside of me, and its only intent is to bring us back to safer ground.
Wherever that is, it’s not here. Not in this room. Not in these memories.
“Now you want me to believe you’re capable of being a gentleman?” I ask.
It’s as if the walls suck in a collective breath.
The air stills.
Ras’s eyes flash with hurt before he gives me a withering look that fills my chest with bright, hot shame.
This is better, isn’t it? The voice in my head is feeble.
“You think I’d take advantage of you while you’re sick and unconscious?” His jaw hardens. “You’re unbelievable, you know that?”
Is this how you thank him for what he’s done for you?
I slump against a bedpost. No, this isn’t right. I should apologize.
“The doctor said once your fever’s gone, you’re in the clear. I’m going to arrange our flight.” He crosses the room with jerky steps, irritation emanating off him like a cloud. “Get yourself ready. We’ll be leaving today.”
“Ras—”
The door slams behind him.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
Okay, I earned that.
That man probably has my vomit somewhere on his shirt, and here I am being an asshole before he’s even had a chance to change his clothes.
I’ll need to fix that.
Add it to the never-ending list.
But it’ll have to wait until after that shower. I move to the bathroom. A strip of light from the skylight above bisects the space. I step into it and turn to the mirror.
A gasp escapes me.
My makeup’s gone.
And on my left cheek, there’s a fading bruise.
Five hours later, I’m showered, dressed in clean jean shorts and a button-up blouse, and my things are all packed up in the trunk of Ras’s car.
“We need to make a short detour to my apartment before the airport,” he says gruffly as we exit the driveway of the house. Behind us, two guards draw the gate closed and wave goodbye.
I pull down the sun visor and check my reflection in the small mirror. Ras hasn’t brought up the bruise he had to have seen, and that makes me nervous. I mean, it was obvious until I meticulously covered it up with makeup a few hours ago. Why hasn’t he asked how I got it?
Or did he?
He seems like the type that wouldn’t let something like that slide.
Another fuzzy memory surfaces briefly before I lose the thread.
My lips pinch together. It’s so frustrating to only have glimpses of what happened over the last few days.
Ras would mention the bruise to Vale. She texted me earlier, checking in on how I was doing, and she made no mention of it.
It’s strange.
I shift in my seat. Have they already made up their minds about what happened? That would be bad. Very bad. I need to set everything straight, but if I bring it up, I might just make it seem like a bigger deal.
If Vale finds out Papà hits me, there will be no coming back from it. Our family would be finished. It would be civil war with repercussions I can’t even attempt to imagine.
When did everything get so damn complicated? So messy?
I close the sun visor with a loud snap and glance at the man beside me.
“How far is it?”
“Not far. Ten minutes.”
He’s so angry with me. It’s been curt responses and zero eye contact ever since he came to collect me from the bedroom, and it bothers me.
A lot.
“Ras?”
Silence.
“Ras?”
His jaw hardens, but he says nothing,
“Ra—”
“What?”
“Look, I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
I open my mouth and shut it, unsure how to phrase it. I settle on, “For what I said. For assuming the worst.”
“It’s fine, Gemma. You already made it clear what you think of me the night of Mari’s wedding.”
I wince. “Yes, well, things have changed since then.”
“Have they?”
“It’s not lost on me that you didn’t have to—”
“Oh, but I did. I was just doing my damn job.”
“Why didn’t you ask someone else to watch over me? One of the staff?”
“I did. And then you woke up crying five minutes after I left. You were inconsolable. The staff called me back. Took me a half hour to get you to calm down.”
That renders me speechless.
My bottom lip makes an embarrassing tremble as I attempt to process what he just told me. He had to comfort me for half an hour while I cried? Did I mentally revert to a five-year-old child?
What the fuck is wrong with me?
“You kept saying how you didn’t want to be alone.”
A bitter taste floods my mouth.
I hate being alone. It terrifies me.
I’m not even sure why. Probably some incident from my childhood that I can’t remember. I don’t have a lot of clear memories from when I was a kid.
So I’d lived through one of my fears with Ras watching me from a front-row seat.
But he didn’t just watch.
He helped me through it, not leaving my side for two whole days, and even though I can’t recall everything, I recall enough.
His gentle touch against my skin. His soothing words when I was scared.
His familiar scent.
I cup my hands over my face as a realization cascades through me.
I don’t hate this man anymore.
