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“Then what? Why bring it up to me?”
“Why didn’t you just Google me?”
“Because I need this job. I need the money from the bonus. And I wasn’t sure…” I shrug, giving a vague gesture to the house. “I don’t know what kind of surveillance techniques rich people have to watch their employees. I thought there would be some fancy tech way you were tracking what I was doing. It didn’t occur to me you would just look in the trash.”
“If you wanted to know who I was, why not just ask? And why wait until now?”
“I thought if you go to the trouble of hiding your identity, then you must really not want me to know who you are. Your identity didn’t seem to matter when I thought you were old and fragile. Now it does.”
He’s frowning, clearly confused. I don’t want to come out and say it. Now that I know you’re young and hot, it’s much harder not to stalk you online!
Pretty sure admitting that would be the fastest way to get me fired from this cushy job that I desperately need to keep. Thankfully, I’ve been mentally rehearsing my excuse.
“Now that I’ve seen you in person, now that I know you’re—” I gesture to his shoulders and his height. “big and strong, it seemed unwise to just live here on your property without knowing more about you.”
“Unwise?”
“I’m a woman living alone on the property of a man she knows nothing about. Miles from civilization.” He’s still frowning. Still clueless. So I spell it out for him. “In the case it wasn’t obvious to you, you overpowered me.”
“You’re afraid of me?”
He sounds appalled.
“Not exactly, but you’re obviously stronger than I am. And I don’t think of myself as a weak person. I don’t think of myself as small and fragile. But you…”
You make me feel small and fragile. Delicate. Defenseless. But not in a bad way.
Which is the most alarming part of this entire situation.
I should be scared of him and I’m not. He could overpower me, but I trust him not to. I have this baseless, instinctual trust in him.
“You’re afraid of me.” He repeats again. Suddenly those eyes that looked so hard and unyielding just a moment ago flicker with something I can’t read.
I feel like I kicked a puppy.
Before I can deny it, he pulls out his own phone, types on it, and then hands it to me. I take it from him automatically, glancing down only briefly before looking back at him.
He must see the question in my eyes, because he says, “There. You haven’t googled me. I googled me.”
“Okay. I’m confused. What do you want me to do?”
“Read. Whatever you want. For as long as you want.” He gestures to a stool on the other side of the island like he wants me to sit. Once I’m sitting, he eyes the food on the stove suspiciously. “Will that…?”
He doesn’t seem to have the vocabulary to form the question he’s trying to ask.
“It’s a Bolognese sauce. It needs to simmer for another 30 minutes, anyway. I’ll stir it every few minutes.”
“No. You read. I’ll stir.”
He turns his back to me like he’s giving me privacy with his phone. He picks up the spoon and starts stirring with a sort of methodical intensity. You’d think he was in potions class.
God, I really need to find things to read that aren’t fanfic.
Luckily, my boss has given me plenty of material. I look down at his phone. The number of search results is staggering. The top one is a Wikipedia article so I start there.
Ian Donovan is an American entrepreneur best known for creating the financial services app Cookie Jar.
My gaze jerks up to take in the man standing with his back to me.
