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Of course, for the first time in my adult life, I’m not hemorrhaging money. I’m making over ten thousand dollars a month and have virtually no living expenses. I’ve already paid my mother with interest.
Now, if I can just keep myself from climbing the walls. Somehow I always thought that if I ever got cabin fever, it would involve fewer actual cabins.
I guess there is one good thing about Mr. Donovan telling me to cook in his kitchen. I'm facing the challenge of creating a brand new cooking space.
As for Mr. Donovan himself, I don’t quite know what to think of him. Taciturn and grumpy, for sure. I still haven’t so much as laid eyes on him. Sometimes I hear footsteps from the floor above. And maybe a rowing machine?
I suppose he must be fairly fit for such an old codger. Not only does he live in a house all by himself out in the middle of nowhere, but it’s a house with three floors.
With all of my recent spare time, I’ve been reading more and listening to podcasts. One of them was about the health benefits of using stairs daily. So maybe he’s like one of those hundred-year-old women who lives on the isle of Santorini and walks up and down the mountainside every day to stay healthy.
Of course, chances are I’ll never see him. I’ll know nothing about him other than that he likes tacos and panini’s.
I let myself into the house at exactly six thirty and make my way straight to the kitchen. Until now, the most I’ve done is leave food in the warming drawer.
It doesn’t take me long, however, to find the blender and dump in the ingredients for a smoothie. Strawberries, a banana, coconut cream, local honey, collagen powder (because I assume at his age, he needs all the joint health he can get), powdered vitamin D (because I have yet to see him leave the house, so he must need that as well.)
The wing of the house is all one open space. The front door sits in the dead center of the back wall, with the kitchen to the left, a sprawling living room to the right, and an endless wall of floor to ceiling windows looking out on a sliver of yard before the cliff drops sharply off to the lake a hundred feet below.
On the far side of the kitchen, there’s a hall that leads to the private wing of the house. I assume. I’ve never ventured beyond the warming drawer. The view of the lake is absolutely stunning. The sun is just creeping over the hill as I hit pulse on the blender.
The grinding breaks the silence. Predictively, food catches in the mechanism. I release the pulse button, add another dash of coconut cream, and grab a wooden spoon to shake things up a bit. Just as I go to pulse again, a hand grabs my shoulder, turning me around. I glimpse a tall, broad-chested man. Someone young and fit. Clearly, we’re being robbed.
I act instinctively, whacking him over the head repeatedly with the wooden spoon. He grabs my hand to stop me. I grab his arm and turn around, putting my back to his, crouching low to flip him over my head the way I learned in self-defense class.
It doesn’t go quite as planned. I don’t know if he took the same self-defense class I took, or if he’s just that much bigger than I am. I stomp on his toes, trying to jab the wooden spoon into his eye from behind me. All the while yelling, “What did you do to Mr. Donovan? Who are you? Why are you here?”
There’s a series of huffs and grunts from behind me before I find myself wrapped in his arms, completely at his mercy. Oh my God! What if this is the guy who taught my self-defense class? What if he teaches those classes just to mess with women so he can rob them later?
“Stop trying to—”
I stomp on his foot again.
“—kill me.”
“Never!” I scream defiantly, stomping all the harder.
Which would be significantly more effective if I wasn’t barefoot.
I squirm in his grasp, trying to kick at his legs. “What did you do to Mr. Donovan?”
“I am Mr. Donovan.”
It takes a few more seconds of futile squirming for his words to sink in. Gradually, I still.
He’s got his arms wrapped entirely around me, one around my waist, just beneath my breasts that’s latched onto my right wrist. The other around my chest and holding onto my left arm to keep me from gouging his eyes out. My feet are entirely off the ground and dangling uselessly.
After a moment of breathing heavily in my ear, he asks, “If I let you go, are you going to try to kill me again?”
“Yes.”
He gives an indignant huff.
“I mean. No. If you can prove you are who you say you are and you haven’t murdered poor Mr. Donovan.”
“I am Mr. Donovan,” he repeats, lowering me so that my feet touch the ground and then slowly releasing me.
I whirl to face him, wooden spoon still raised, to see him backing away from me, hands raised at his side like he’s surrendering. I get my first good look at the guy.
