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He stopped walking abruptly and she lifted her head in confusion, only to find him glaring down at the phone in her hand.
“Leave that behind.”
“What? My phone? But…”
“No recording devices allowed in the rest of the house.”
Was he joking? One look at his grim face told her what a ridiculous question that was. Despite evidence she’d seen to the contrary in the past, Trystan Abbott did not seem to possess much in the way of a sense of humor. Those interviews of an approachable and laughing Trystan Abbott had to have been staged.
“Recording device? It’s my phone.”
“It’s a camera. And an audio recorder. It stays in the room.”
“You’re paranoid,” she protested. As indictments went it was pretty weak, but it was all she could come up with right now in the face of this outrageousness.
“I don’t think so. I’m cautious around someone who has invaded my privacy and tried to feed me a pack of lies. You can use your phone in your own room…”
“My prison cell, you mean? And don’t you dare call me a liar! I haven’t lied to you, not once. I told you I have messages and texts from Mr. Quinn but you’re being a dick about even looking at them. Here, I’ll show you…”
She swiped at her phone, frantically looking for even one of those messages to shove into his face, but he calmly took the phone from her and held it behind his back.
“Hey, give that back!” she tried to grab it, but he lifted it above his head, flouting her attempts to take the device back from him.
She stopped reaching for her phone. It would be impossible to get it from him and she was merely making an idiot of herself in the process.
She’d never truly hated anyone in her life before, not even the people who had made her life a living hell back in school, but Iris was definitely leaning toward that emotion with this man.
“When you’re alone,” he continued doggedly, as if her outraged interruption hadn’t even happened, which infuriated Iris even more. He disregarded the daggers flying at him from her eyes. “Call your family, laugh at cat memes, shop for more horrendous clothes… do whatever the fuck you want on that thing. But your phone doesn’t leave this room. If it ever manages to find its way out, I’m confiscating it. And if I see anything on social media about where you are, or about me, I’m destroying it and moving your prison cell to the shed. We clear?”
Great. Just like that he’d gone back to being TDH. Iris was grateful for that—she preferred TDH to Trystan. At least with TDH, what you saw was what you got.
But Trystan was dangerous. He had too much power and if he put his mind to it, he could destroy Iris and her family. And while she didn’t care about her nonexistent professional reputation, she very much cared about her family and the business her parents had worked so hard to make a success of. If she got on the wrong side of this man, he could tear that all apart without even blinking.
He handed her phone back and Iris’s lips tightened as she pointedly placed it on the small dining table on their way out of the door. She kept her focus on Luna, ignoring him as he led her from the room.
She hated that his grip was gentle on her arm, hated that he walked slowly out of consideration for the pain she was in. She hated the contradiction and wished he’d remain consistent in his arseholery. Because when he was considerate, it made him feel approachable, made her think they could talk, that she could be herself and joke and laugh with him.
Then, when he turned around and shut her down like she was less than human, it stung. It even hurt. And it shouldn’t. Not when he meant nothing to her.
“Oh,” Iris’s gasp was soft, even reverent, as she took in the high vaulted glass ceilings of the natatorium with its gorgeous, golden exposed beams. The temperature-controlled room reminded her of a greenhouse, with three glass walls to complement the glass ceiling. They had a view of the forest and the lake from this room and the stonework was the color of beach sand. The pool was half-Olympic-sized at the very least. There was a round spa sunk into its far side. Wooden benches and huge, leafy plants added ambiance and comfort to the space, and there was a glass-fronted cedar-wood sauna on this side of the room.
“This is amazing,” she whispered, her eyes huge as she looked around. She loved how lush and green it looked outside, despite the sullen gray clouds above.
“C’mon,” he urged, leading her toward the opposite end of the massive dark blue pool. Before she knew it, she was standing at the side of the spa—which was a few shades darker than the pool—and she could see the mosaics highlighting the shelved seating that ran all-round the tub. “Climb in, I’ll switch on the jets.”
“I really appreciate this,” she told him earnestly, ditching the robe without thinking, and then immediately regretting her rashness when he froze halfway through turning away.
Froze… and stared.
“That’s very—uh—bright,” he said, his words stumbling into one another like drunken sailors. He blinked at the two tiny pink and white triangles cupping her small boobs, before dropping his eyes to her gently rounded stomach, which—she regretted—had always had a bit of sag to it no matter how many crunches and sit-ups she did. She’d eventually given up on the dream of having an ab-tastic toned and taut tummy. She was happy enough with her curves to not stress the shit she couldn’t change without some kind of surgical intervention.
His wandering eyes slid away from her stomach—and dropped to her generous hips, then fell to the triangle at her crotch before jerking back up to her face.
“This is what you brought for swimming? In the Cape? In winter?” He finally managed to ask in hoarse incredulity, and Iris was rebelliously happy that she’d resisted the urge to fold her arms over her small boobs with their hard nipples. For a few seconds there, she’d mistakenly believed he was gawking at her body, when in fact, he’d been horrified by her choice of bathing apparel.
Please. As if the likes of Trystan Abbott would ever be gawking at someone the caliber of ordinary, curvy Iris Hughes.
She immediately berated herself for the appalling lack of self-esteem that thought had betrayed. She’d worked very hard on her body positivity, and on loving herself and the way she looked. She’d be damned if she’d let one scathing put-down from a man with unrealistic beauty standards undo years of hard work.
