"Do I embarrass you?"
"What? Hell no. I love having you on my arm when we go out."
"Like a trophy?" She asked with narrowed eyes.
"That's it. This discussion is getting pretty dicey." Hauling her against him, he closed his mouth over hers, stopping the conversation altogether.
He knew better than to interrupt her or even go in her space when she was in the zone.
The first time he had made the mistake of entering her office at the cottage with the bright idea of taking her some food, she had thrown a letter opener at him and snarled. At first, he had been highly offended and had stayed away for a couple of days. But the joke was on him, and he had been the one to suffer. She hadn't called him begging him to come over and he had finally caved and made the first move.
But she had explained to him in detail why she didn't like to be interrupted. He had finally learned not to take it personally.
When she started coming over to his place and staying over, he had gone to the trouble of hiring a decorator to create an office for her. Simple and tasteful, he knew her well enough not to go for the elaborate. His woman leaned more to the sturdy and reliable.
The desk at her cottage was one she had picked up in an antique store and had several dings and scratches. When he had commented on it, she had given him a surprised look.
"It's just a piece of furniture. As long as it can hold my laptop and documents I need for the moment, I'm good."
So, he had given the decorators instructions on how to deal with the office at his home. It was adjacent to his and was very different in style. A wall separated them, but whenever she was holed up, it could very well be an entire building.
He always left his door open; she preferred to close hers. He had started to check in on her ever since her pregnancy, something she resented. But he was standing firm on that. He had known her to go without eating whenever she was writing.
It was his duty to take care of her, and he was sticking to it.
They'd settled into this rhythm, a dance of boundaries and care, where he tried to respect her independence while making sure she didn't neglect herself. Sometimes, she'd roll her eyes at his gentle reminders, but there was a softness in her smile that told him she noticed, even if she'd never admit it aloud. Their lives had intertwined in the quiet moments as much as the passionate ones, building something sturdy and real between them.
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing." She stopped rubbing her chest and lifted her head to glare at him. "This is your third time in twenty minutes."
"I never thought you noticed. How's it going?" he nodded towards her laptop.
"Good, now go away and stay gone."
"Your tea is cold." Ignoring the snarl, he moved towards the desk to replace the now cold tea with a fresh pot. "I'll check to see if you've..."
His voice trailed off as his eyes landed on a pile of letters next to the laptop. "What's this? Fan mails? I thought your assistant was..."
He easily held them out of reach when she grabbed. "This is..." A frown touched his brow as he read the one on the top. "I love the way you looked in that turquoise bathing suit. The only thing that spoil the picture was that man you choose to hook up with."
Lifting his head, he stared at her and saw the guilt there. Leafing through the rest, he noticed a disturbing pattern. He also noticed that the letters were dated twelve months back.
Kiara fidgeted with the paperweight he had given her last Christmas. "It's nothing."
"Doesn't sound like nothing to me." His expression was grim as he eased a hip on her desk. "When were you going to tell me, you're being stalked?"
"It's just some fool, with nothing to do and a long lens camera."
"This was two days ago on Saturday. We were hanging out by the pool..." His mouth tightened and she knew the very moment he picked up on it. "Christ Almighty, I made love to you right there. We were both naked."
She jolted when he shoved away from the desk and started pacing.
"I'm sure he didn't see anything or he would have said something." She eased back on the desk when he whirled to pin her with a fiery gaze.
"Oh, is that what you believe. Is it? You have someone taking pictures of you, of us, documenting everything, invading our bloody privacy and you kept it from me." He had to take several breaths to get rid of the rage that had built up inside him. "Were you ever going to tell me?"
The fact that his voice had gone quiet warned her he was on the brink of erupting.
