My heart is still racing as I grab my cleaning supplies and rush down the hall. I don’t glance back, but I still feel his gaze on me—warm and heavy—long after I’ve turned the corner and disappeared from sight.
8
ROAN
I watch as Mia rushes away with her head ducked, her footsteps quick and unsteady, and can’t help but wonder what exactly she’s trying to outrun.
Is it the lust I couldn’t quite control while watching her sleep? The same lust that was mirrored so clearly in her eyes when she first woke up, before she registered who I am?
Or maybe she’s just trying to outrun the truth—the secrets she’s hiding.
After all, she knows I’m onto her.
My gaze drops to my hand, the one that brushed her cheek. A faint smear of dark, grainy dirt clings to my fingers. Not the fine dust that accumulates in even the cleanest houses. Not the light traces the maids pick up during their work. This is thicker, almost mud-like in consistency.
I frown, raising my fingers to examine it more closely, rubbing my thumb and index finger together to feel the texture. Gritty. Dense.Fresh.
Where the hell did she get mud on her face?
The mansion is spotless. The gardens are manicured toperfection, the paths clear and paved. There’s nowhere in her normal work areas she should have picked this up.
Unless she’s been somewhere else.
Somewhere she shouldn’t be.
That would explain the shadows under her eyes, the way she collapsed onto the lounge chaise and passed out cold. That wasn’t ordinary tiredness from a long shift. That was bone-deep exhaustion—the kind that comes from pushing your body past its limits.
My heart twists strangely in my chest, an echo of the way it had pounded while I watched her sleep.
She looked so peaceful then.
So soft and vulnerable in a way I’ve never seen her while conscious, her breathing slow and steady, her face relaxed without the careful mask she wears when she knows she’s being observed.
For one insane, maddening moment there, I almost convinced myself she really is exactly what she’s pretending to be—an overworked maid, caught up in circumstances bigger than herself, doing her best to survive.
That would make things so much easier.
If she were just a woman—just an ordinary, complicated, beautiful woman—I could give in to this attraction to her. I could pursue her without guilt, without the nagging suspicion that I’m being played.
But I know better.
My hand flexes involuntarily, muscle memory recreating the warmth of her cheek under my fingertips, the silken softness of her skin. My jaw clenches as a different kind of heat stirs low in my gut, an ache that tightens uncomfortably in my pants.
She’s trouble. Almost certainly a liar. Probably something much worse.
I shake her from my thoughts, ignoring the faint thrum ofdesire still lingering in my veins as I make my way to my office. Once inside, I pull up the security feeds.
I need to know where she got that mud.
Most cameras are fixed on the main house, its perimeter, and entrance, with only a few scattered around the compound—something I’ll be fixing soon. This blind spot situation is unacceptable.
I click on the footage facing the maid’s building and skip through the evening hours until I reach the moment when the last maid enters around 10 PM. Then I fast-forward, watching the silent building, waiting.
At midnight, someone slips out.
There.
I pause the clip and lean in, squinting at the hunched figure with a cap pulled so low it hides their face completely. It could be anyone—but the way the person angles themselves so none of their identifying features can be captured screams professional, and I know instinctively it’s Mia.
