Debt

There would be no more cupcakes at three-forty-five on February third, no high tea, no one around to ask and listen about my day and my hopes and fears and dreams.

There would just be me.

But Byron was right about that too... I had no idea who I even was without my father around.

And maybe I was a little terrified to find out.

Later, much later, so late that it was almost early, I went back down to the kitchen, guilt flooding my system at leaving such a mess. I didn't want Ella to walk into a filthy kitchen the next morning.

But when I walked in, the room illuminated by the dim light on over the sink, it was immaculate. The cookies were in a plastic container on the island. My coffee cake was wrapped in plastic and left in the center of the oven, one hefty chunk taken out. All the ingredients I had strewn all over the counters were put away; the dishwasher had been run; the counters had even been wiped of all traces of flour and sugar.

I moved to turn and go back to my room, even more confused than ever about the enigma named Byron St. James who seemed wholly incapable of picking his damn towel up off the floor after his shower, but somehow knew how to clean a kitchen spotless, when I noticed something right in front of the coffee machine. Curious, I walked over to find a sliver of the coffee cake I had made on a small white square dessert plate, a fork sitting beside it.

I reached for it with a weird thrill in my belly and chest.

He left food out for me?

Was that like... his way of apologizing for sticking his finger into an obviously open wound?

I took my plate to my room, picking at the cake as I sat on my bed and stared at my bedroom door.

Finished, I put my plate on the nightstand and curled up on my side, slowly drifting off to sleep.

And it was the first time in my memory that I didn't fall asleep with worried feelings of my father running through my head like some dark, twisted, but familiar lullaby.

No, instead, I fell asleep thinking about Byron.EIGHTPrueThe next five days had me completely and utterly convinced I had imagined not only the orgasm in the den, but the whole conversation in the kitchen thing as well. Because things went back to business apparently. I fetched coffee. I washed sheets. I scrubbed bathrooms. I sat outside his office, his den, his dining room, his bedroom. There weren't more women to listen to him fuck, so what I was doing outside his bedroom was beyond me. There was also no more making me watch him jerk off. There were no glances that made me think he saw me as anything other than some kind of office equipment. There were no soft tones when he spoke to me. Only sharp ones.

The only real difference took place Tuesday afternoon when I walked into his office with his seventh (yes, seventh) coffee of the day. I had just put the mug down when his hand pushed a piece of paper across the dark surface of his desk toward me. My brows drew together because he never gave me papers. It was a simple piece of his watermarked white, expensive (I imagined) paper with... a handwritten recipe.

My head snapped up as soon as I realized what it was, my head shaking a little, to find him watching me intently with those dark, distant eyes of his.

"You're in charge of desserts twice a week," he informed me with the same tone he would if he were telling me I was in charge of washing and waxing his car, instead of giving me the smallest sliver of sunshine I had known since I moved in under his roof.

"Peanut Butter Triple Chocolate Explosion?" I asked, smiling a little.

"Too difficult?" he asked in his usual impatient bark.

"Don't insult me," I said instead, too glad to have a break from my every day monotony to even care about his usual douchebaggery. I even gave him what I would consider a grateful smile before I turned and walked away, looking down at the notes and realizing that he must have written them. It wasn't the delicate, swirly font of a woman. It was neat, almost to the point of anally precise. Which, well, seemed very much like the kind of handwriting he would have. So that meant he not only sat down to carefully jot down the recipe for me, but he had also went online and looked one up.

"Miss. Marlow?" he called, my last name going up on the end in the telltale sign that he was about to say something I wasn't going to like.

"Yeah?" I asked, turning, head tilted.