AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Because I know how this is going to end.
Okay. How is it going to end?
The way it was always meant to end. When the year of her employment is up, she’s going to get that big bonus you promised her. And she’s going to walk away.
This situation isn’t different because she’s my employee. It’s different because I’m her boss.
Setting aside the fact that you’re not her boss, I’m not sure I see the difference.
The difference is, she doesn’t see me as anything other than her employer.
Yeah, you keep saying that. But unless you talk to her, you don’t know that for sure.
Chapter Ten
Savannah
* * *
I dream I’m in a boat, curled up asleep on one of the cushioned seats in the back while my grandpa fishes off the front, like I used to do when I was little. I would beg him to take me fishing and then get bored and fall asleep, lulled by the gentle rocking of the boat.
This time when I wake up, I feel better. Slightly.
My chills have passed, probably due to the Tylenol and tea Ian forced down me during the doctor’s visit.
When I reach out to pat the bed, I can feel Mr. Sniggles curled up beside me. He purrs the second I pet him—despite being a heartless traitor.
“Don’t think I don’t remember your betrayal,” I mutter to him. “And while I was defenseless no less.”
“You can’t blame him. He was hungry,” a sleepy voice says from the darkness.
I sit up, my head still spinning a little. “Ian?”
“Yeah?”
That’s when I realize I’m not in my own bed. The bed in the cottage is a full. Comfortable. Fine. But nothing special.
The bed I’m in now is a vast, cloud-like expanse of fine-spun cotton and … “Is this a weighted blanket?”
A light flicks on from the bedside table to reveal Ian sitting in a chair beside the bed.
The room is huge and sparsely decorated in the same sleek, mid-century modern lines as the rest of the house. It’s too big to be a guest room, so it must be Ian’s room. Which means I’m in his bed.
“Yeah,” he says, his gaze roaming over my face like he’s searching for an answer to a question he hasn’t yet asked. “I hope it’s okay that I put it on you. Some people find them claustrophobic.”
Okay? No. It’s more than okay. It’s amazing. Like being hugged by the bed.
“Yes,” I murmur, my voice rough with sleep. I swallow, wincing at how raw my throat feels.
The discomfort brings everything else into sharper relief. I’m in Ian’s bed. What the hell?
I sit bolt upright. Or rather, I try to sit bolt upright. That’s my instinct, at least.
Between the weight of the blanket, Mr. Sniggles, and my general fuzzy headedness, I don’t sit bolt upright so much as flail around, like some sort of infant. Eventually, I shove the blanket off enough to angle my upper body off the bed. I look around, taking in my surroundings.
The room is dimly lit by a shaft of light pouring in from an open doorway through which I see a slice of cool white tile. The bathroom then. There’s another doorway and another light on, on the far side of the room. Ian was seated in the chair a few feet from the bed, but when I started to flail around, he came to stand beside the bed. “What do you need?”
“This is your bedroom.”
