Did you become a problem, Noelle?
She was running out of questions. Some of this information was interesting but nothing was particularly helpful, and she couldn’t shake the suspicion that Cal was lying to her, although she wasn’t sure why, or about what.
She glanced at him accusingly; he had leaned forward again, causing his collar to buckle around his protruding collarbones. She could see right down his shirt.
For a moment, her mind went blank. When she’d seen him in his office, she had wondered, with a charged curiosity, if he had hair all over his body. The answer was apparently yes. His pectorals were dusted with dark curls, and in his forward sprawl, she could see all the way down to his scrunched abdominal muscles. She had felt them, too. Hard and solid beneath his shirt.
“Here’s your omelet,” the waitress said, and Cal leaned back to give her more room to set the plate down while Nadine hastily busied herself with the water. “And your avocado toast. The chef said our seasoning powder has cornstarch in it, so we’ve just given you the spread and some finishing salt. Enjoy.”
“Okay,” said Nadine. “Great. Uh, thanks.”
“You seem distracted,” Cal remarked, cutting into his omelet with a private smile.
“I’m just thinking.” She picked up her toast, trying to decide where the neatest bite would be, before deciding “screw it” and going for a full corner, trying to push the image of a half-naked Cal out of her head. “What did my sister do around here, anyway?”
“For fun? She did some charity planning with my mother, went on walks. She tried to befriend some people in town but you can imagine how that went. Odessa tried to involve her with some of her design work, but mostly she just spent a lot of time with Ben.”
God, this avocado toast was amazing. It tasted like it had been blended with mayonnaise to give it an extra smooth spread. When she glanced at Cal, he was watching her. She gulped. “Did she go to the Running of the Dear festival?”
“Initially. Ben sent her home early because he thought it might upset her.”
The thought of Noelle being forced to blind obedience like a recalcitrant puppy was upsetting.And did she always do what she was told?Nadine nearly asked, but that wouldn’t be helpful and she suspected Cal was spiteful enough to count it as one of her ten. “Did Ben—would he ever hurt my sister?”
“I never saw him raise a hand against her. Her leaving wrecked him.”
Well, she was wrecked, too. And she had a postcard where her sister was all but begging for help, and more and more evidence was piling up suggesting that something had upset her before she did. Both were alarming, but together, they made Nadine very worried about what her sister’s situation had been like within the walls of that house.
“He’s intense,” she said at last, and it wasn’t quite an apology.
“Yes,” Cal said, watching her closely. “I’ve been told we all are.”
Nadine wanted to push for more details about where Noelle had spent her time in town, just in case there was maybe another note waiting for her somewhere. But she didn’t want to alert Cal to that. He might tell Rael or Ben, and she didn’t trust them enough to want them as her competition when it came to looking for clues.
But she only had three questions left.
Cal had nearly cleaned his plate, whereas she had only polished off one of her toast slices. He was looking at his plate currently, but even when he wasn’t focusing on her directly, she still felt his attention like a magnetic pull.Intense, he’d said. Was that what this was? Either way, it was hard to resist.
“You were going to kiss me at the wedding.”
His cheek lifted. “That’s not a question.”
“Why then?”
“Because you looked so scared and lost. Like a bird in a cage. And all that nervous fluttering you were doing made me wonder what you’d be like in bed.”
“What,” Nadine said, in a high, faint voice.
“You looked trapped,” he said. “Unhappy. But you don’t look quite as trapped now. That just makes me think you need the bars, though. Some women do.” His eyes flicked to hers. “Does it scare you, Nadine? How badly you want it? Having control taken from you again and again, while someone tells you to do things you can pretend you don’t want to do?”
He set down his knife while she stared at him, open-mouthed. “Maybe I wanted you to pretend with me.”
“Howdareyou.”
“You asked, Nadine.” His face was unrepentant, and a little cynical in its assessment of her. “Did you want me to lie and say it was because you looked sweet? Because you do—but you can still be sweet, even if you kiss like you don’t want to be.”
Oh my god.
She drew in an uneven breath.
