With Everything I Am (7 page)

“I know.”
 

That got a reaction. She turned to look at him and was reminded of the gargantuan joke the cosmos was playing on her because he was way, way,
way
too darned handsome.

She buried that thought and asked, “How did you know?”

“Smelled it. Heard it,” he replied and turned while finishing, “I’ll be there after I wash up.”

Since he was turning, he didn’t see her mouth had dropped open.

Okay, she was cooking bacon. You could smell bacon from a mile away.

But he
heard
it?

How?

She
, of course, could hear the final preparations of breakfast.

She watched him disappear into the bathroom as she felt a shiver run up her spine and decided to bury that too.

He couldn’t know of her gifts so he could pretend to have ones as well. Even Gregor and Yuri didn’t know. Sure, she’d often messed up around them. Still, they’d never cottoned on.

She’d found placemats and napkins and, by the time he was done in the bathroom, she was putting his plate on a mat on the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room.

He slid onto the stool and looked down at his plate.

As usual, Sonia stood at the kitchen counter across from him (the last part not as usual, obviously) and ate while contemplating how she was going to get out of this mess.

Would it take a million dollars?

Two?

Three?

What would he accept to give up his game?

“What’s this?” Callum asked, his voice tight in a way that sounded like he was restraining some impulse and, when she looked at him, his face was carefully blank.

“Eggs, bacon and toast,” she answered.

He looked back down at his plate.

Sonia continued eating.

“I recognize the toast,” he commented with forced politeness and she looked up again to see he was holding a piece of toast between a very attractive thumb and forefinger. “Is there butter?”

“Butter is fat,” Sonia replied and took a bite of her dry toast.

Callum watched her chew like it was fascinating in a watching the devastation of an earthquake in slow motion on TV kind of way.

“What’d you do to the bacon?” Callum enquired after she swallowed.

“I cut off the fat,” she informed him. “The meat is good. Protein. The fat is bad.”

His brows went up and he went on, his voice no longer polite but coated in disbelief, “You cut the
fat
off
bacon?
”

“Yep.”

He looked down at his plate. “The eggs are white.”

“That’s because I threw away the yolks. They’re filled with cholesterol.”

She trained her eyes on her plate and kept eating but she lifted her head when she heard him move.

Then she watched with surprise and not a small amount of annoyance as he rounded the counter, went straight to the trash bin and dumped everything on his plate inside it.

Then she watched with even sharper surprise and an ungodly amount of annoyance when he walked to her, grabbed her plate out from under her, pulled the remnants of toast right out of her fingers and dumped that in the bin too.

Sonia stood staring at him wordlessly as he opened the fridge, nabbed the bacon, dumped a huge lump of it into the skillet and turned on the burner. Then he gently moved her away from the range and grabbed the box of eggs she’d left on the counter.

Then, as he started cracking eggs into a bowl, she spluttered, “You just… you just… just,
threw away my food
.”

“That wasn’t food,” he replied.

“It was breakfast,” she shot back.

“It wasn’t that either.”

“Callum –”

He turned to her as the bacon started sizzling. He advanced, quickly. She retreated, not quickly enough. Her hips hit the counter and he closed in.

His hands on the counter on either side of her, he leaned down so they were face-to-face. “You’re too skinny. You need to eat. Not egg whites, not dry toast and not fatless bacon.”

He thought she was too skinny?

Was he blind?

Sonia couldn’t move but, even so, her mouth dropped open.

He ignored her astonished look and kept talking. “No more of that shit, Sonia. Not for me and not for you either.”

“Are you…” she paused, not thinking she could say it then she said it, “Telling me what to eat?”

“Damn right,” he replied, not having
any
problem saying what
he
had to say.

He pushed away from the counter and turned back to the range.

She watched in growing horror as he cooked breakfast all in one skillet.

He didn’t not only
not
cut the fat off the bacon and separate the yolks, he didn’t drain the bacon grease before he dumped the eight (yes, eight!) scrambled eggs into the skillet with it. Not done, he also chucked a handful (and his hand, as Sonia had noted on several occasions, was
large
) of pre-grated cheddar cheese on the lot and sprinkled it all with garlic salt.

Further, he slathered the toast in so much butter it was the added stroke on top of the heart attack that was the egg-bacon-cheese mess.

He served this all up on the plates, got himself a fresh cup of coffee, poured a warm up in hers, dashed it with
not
a splash of milk but a
glug
and handed both plate and mug to her.

Then he picked up his own plate, rested a hip against the counter, leveled his blue eyes on her and ordered, “Eat.”

She looked at her plate.

She had to admit, it looked really good.

And it smelled fantastic.

Then she looked at him.

“I can’t eat this.”

“Eat,” he repeated.

“This is… I can’t –”

“Sonia,” he said her name slowly in a way that denoted strained patience. “You can eat it or I’ll feed it to you.”

She felt her eyes grow wide before she asked, “You’re joking, right?”

He shook his head.

She looked at the plate.

He was, essentially, a kidnapper.

He was, she guessed, going to hold her for ransom if he didn’t charm her (in other words, con her) out of millions of dollars.

He had been, thus far, pretty nice even though he was a jerk.

But, she shouldn’t push it.

Sonia picked up her fork and she ate.

And, while doing so, she told herself it didn’t taste unbelievably great (even though it did).

Chapter Four

Explanation

After they ate their breakfast (Sonia couldn’t finish hers, which Callum allowed, but he cleaned her plate, an act she thought was borderline intimacy which caused her to feel warm and cold and scared and excited all at the same time), Callum demonstrated that he was not quite finished racking up his sins.

Firstly, he took Sonia’s hand and led her to the living room.

When she said, “I’ll do the dishes.” He replied, “Later.”

Sin number one.

Everyone knew you cleaned the kitchen right away. If you didn’t, the gunk would solidify on the plates and skillets and it would take ages to soak it away. Further, Callum wasn’t exactly a tidy cook, he’d made a right mess.

However, considering her varied uncertain circumstances, chief of which was the fact that she’d been kidnapped, she decided at that point not to argue about dishes.

He stopped her by one of the large club chairs, dropped her hand but went to the fire and stoked it, throwing another log on.

Then he walked across the room to the other hearth situated on the wall on the other side of the bed and stoked that fire, putting a log from the huge pile at its side on the burning embers.

Then he committed sin number two.

He walked back, sat in the club chair, leaned forward, took her hand and gave it a firm but gentle tug so she came off her feet with a small, surprised thus uncontrollable cry. He twisted her body as she fell and she landed in his lap.

She pulled up and away but his arms locked around her.

“Um…” she muttered cautiously, “what are you doing?”

“As I said, after breakfast, I’d explain,” he told her, his arms growing tighter, drawing her closer. “I’m explaining,” he finished.

“Um…” she muttered again, even more cautiously, trying not to get alarmed. “Can you explain sitting here while I sit on the couch?”

She thought, considering she just met him an hour or so ago, this was a reasonable request.

“No.”

There it was. Callum being
very
firm.

Apparently he thought it wasn’t reasonable.

Sonia begged to differ.

“I’d be more comfortable on the couch,” she informed him.

“You’d be more comfortable in my lap if you’d relax,” he replied.

Okay, maybe
she
wasn’t insane.

Maybe
he
was.

Instead of relaxing, she tensed.

“I barely know you,” she noted.

“We’ve got a week to rectify that,” he returned.

She stared.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

He completely ignored her question and asked his own, “Why’d you call me ‘wolf’?”

She blinked.

Then she asked, “What?”

“This morning, when you woke up, you called me ‘wolf’.”

Oh good goodness.

She couldn’t tell him about her dream.

Ever.

In a million years.

No one knew about her dream and she wasn’t about to share it with some guy she just met who, it was important to note, was her kidnapper!

And anyway, even
she
didn’t know why she called him that in her dream.

“I didn’t,” she lied. “Did I?” she added for good measure.

“You did. You know you did. You remember every second of this morning.”

Holy cow.

She had a great memory, not photographic but close. It was another one of her gifts.

Did he know that? And if he did,
how
did he know that?

She didn’t want the answer to that either.

“I thought I was dreaming,” she reminded him.

“Yes, I got that. You still called me ‘wolf’ and I want to know why.”

“I thought this cabin had burned down,” Sonia switched subjects and explained. “My parents used to own this cabin a long time ago.” Not that
he
, for whatever ungodly reason, didn’t know that. “I’d been told it burned down when I was seven years old. Since it’s still standing, and not burned down, and I’m
in
it, which I thought was kind of impossible, though obviously not, considering it
isn’t
burnt down, I thought I was in a dream. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

His hand which was resting at her hip curled around her waist. His arm, already around her waist, tightened.

Thus, he brought her closer.

Her hand at his chest pressed back.

He was stronger than her but he allowed her some space, not nearly enough, but some.

“Little one, you’re holding out on me,” he said quietly, his eyes serious and not happy. “I’ll tell you only once. Don’t do that.”

She was unsure how to respond.

The fact that he knew she was holding out on him was bizarre and alarming. The fact that his eyes had grown serious and not happy was just plain alarming.

She decided to respond to the serious, not happy look in his eyes and tread very, very carefully.

But how on earth was she going to get out of this?

Oh hell, she was going to have to give him something. She hated it but she was going to have to do it.

She swallowed.

Then she blurted, “You’re very good-looking.”

His head tilted to the side with a surprised jerk.

She ignored that and carried on.

“I thought,” her voice cracked and she cleared her throat, “I was in a dream. I’ve always been…” She paused, pulled in breath then hurried on in a rush, “Once, when I was a little girl, I met this wolf.” His head jerked upright and she watched with concern as his eyes grew intense. “It’s okay,” she assured him, misreading his look. “I was going to mention, I’ve always been really good with animals. He was injured but he wasn’t dangerous. He let me help him.”

“Sonia –” Callum started but she talked over him.

“When I met him, I brought him here, the wolf that is. And… and, I
liked
this wolf. He was a beautiful wolf. I’d seen wolves before out in the woods with my father, but never one like him. He was huge and he had this dignity…” She paused again, realizing she was veering off track and then continued, “Anyway, he made an impression on me. I’ve never forgotten him and I think, being in what I thought was a dream, seeing you here in this cabin and the last time I was here I met that wolf, for some reason, because of him, I used that as an endearment.” She sucked in breath through her nose then said, “So there, that’s why I called you ‘wolf’.”

And that didn’t sound like a lie. In fact, she was pretty pleased with herself and, maybe, that
was
why she called her dream Callum “wolf” too, who knew?

When she’d stopped congratulating herself, she focused on his face. Then she sucked in another breath.

His face was warm and gentle and, she was shocked to see, his eyes weren’t blue, they were tawny.

Oh wow.

She told herself, firmly, she didn’t like it when his eyes went golden (but she did).

Anyway, how did he do that?

“What?” she whispered, forgetting her travails when his eyes were like that but his hand slid up her back to her neck, his fingers cupped her there and he forced her head to his shoulder.

“Nothing, little one,” he murmured but his voice was warm and gentle too.

She took another deep breath and told herself his big, warm body didn’t feel great cradling hers (which it did) and his deep, warm, gentle voice rumbling in her ear didn’t sound wonderful (which it also did). Then she reminded herself that she was in a frightening situation, sitting in the lap of a large, strong albeit handsome man who was likely dangerous and
not
her dream man (even though he was, in a way).

She screwed up the courage to start talking about what
she
wanted to talk about.

“I want to go home,” she told his collarbone.