Series: Unhealthy Obsessions Series by Sam Crescent
Total pages in book: 37
Estimated words: 34034 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 170(@200wpm)___ 136(@250wpm)___ 113(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 34034 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 170(@200wpm)___ 136(@250wpm)___ 113(@300wpm)
“What do you do, Evander?”
He understood her curiosity. “I deal in contracts.” Not a total lie. She just didn’t need to know they were contracts of death.
“What kind of contracts?” she asked.
“The secret kind.” He flipped the chicken. “Tell me about yourself.”
He was a master at evasion. With Callie, it was proving to be a little more difficult, because he found himself wanting to share more of himself with her. No woman had ever made him this fucking weak. He knew it made her a dangerous woman. She wasn’t his enemy, and he didn’t have to worry about her giving details away to his opposition. It did make her a target. She didn’t know it yet, but there was no way she was going back to her old life.
In his line of work, he had to always be one step ahead of the game, and he’d already spent too much time in one place. It was how men like him ended up dead, and he planned to live a long and happy life—with Callie.
“There’s not a whole lot to tell, to be honest. I work hard, and you’ve seen where I work, it’s not exactly the nicest place. A couple of the women that work there are okay. I know they strip and then some of them offer a bit more fun, but they’re trying to support their families, or doing what they can, I guess.”
“You’re talking about everyone else, Callie. Tell me about you,” he said.
****
The truth was, Callie wasn’t used to talking about herself. There was nothing to talk about. She worked hard, volunteered at animal shelters, helped where she could. Her life was the same routine, day in, day out. Working at the bar with the same old problems and men attempting to buy her attention for the night. It never worked.
Being attacked by Mitch had actually been new. Usually he sulked back home, without any problem. She didn’t know why he acted so differently. It did make her feel a little uncomfortable returning back to work. Mitch was always trying to get her to go to those rooms, and she refused. She wrinkled her nose thinking about it.
“Stop thinking about him,” Evander said.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“I just did. I can imagine it’s going to be hard to forget something like that, but I promise you, he will never hurt you again.”
It was the strangest thing, because she believed him. She didn’t even know why. Maybe it was just the way he held himself, or something like that. He looked so confident, so sure of himself.
“I don’t want to think about that.”
“Then tell me about yourself.”
She nibbled her lip, and she couldn’t help but look past his shoulder at the luxury that surrounded her. This place was absolutely beautiful. She had no doubt Evander was a wealthy man. His home, his car, even the care she’d been given at the private hospital—everything she’d seen screamed luxury, which was something she’d never had, and she certainly wasn’t used to.
Did he even realize that the moment they stepped into his home, she’d been terrified of touching anything? She felt beneath him, not good enough to tread in his shadow.
“I don’t know what you want to know.”
“Anything,” he said.
“I’m not sure I follow.” For the longest time now, she’d been going through the motions. She hadn’t really lived. She got up and did what she needed in order to survive work and then back to her place to bed. The next day, her endless routine would start again. There was nothing glamorous about it. In fact, it was downright embarrassing not being able to give him a single exciting tale.
Callie didn’t know whether to burst out laughing or sob. When she was younger, before coming to the city, she had stupid dreams about having so many different careers. There was a time she wanted to be an actress, and that ended quickly. Next, she wanted to be a veterinarian, again, that ended very quickly without grades and money. Along the way, she’d had many dreams, the biggest was opening a care home for unwanted elderly dogs, and loving them. None of that had happened.
She’d done okay in school, but she’d never been intelligent enough to get a scholarship, and, well, that would have been the only way for her to get anywhere.
How had she gotten stuck in such a rut?
Tears filled her eyes, and she got to her feet, turning away from him. “I’m so sorry,” Callie said.
She couldn’t believe she was close to tears in front of a total stranger. What was wrong with her? It wasn’t his fault. All he’d done was ask a simple question, to talk about herself. A normal person would have answered him without much thought.
He gripped her shoulders, and she wasn’t afraid of him, which was the strangest thing. His touch comforted her in the best possible way.