She looks up from the counter.
The milk bottle jerks against her chest. Her eyes go wide, catching the light, the gold flecks in them bright with adrenaline. Her lips part and she makes a sound, a small intake of breath that isn’t a gasp but the precursor to one, and every muscle in her body goes taut.
This is the reaction I recognize from years of watching people register my presence for the first time.
Fear, the primal kind.
She’s afraid of me. She should be.
We stand frozen for three long seconds. The kitchen hums. The refrigerator, the clock, the distant murmur of the house doing whatever the house doesat night.
She’s gripping the milk bottle with both hands, knuckles white, and her chest is rising and falling with breaths that are too fast and too shallow. I see her pulse in her throat in a rapid, visible flutter that the cameras never showed me.
I should speak. Whatever a normal employer would say to a normal employee.
I’ve been watching you, but you’re even better in person.
No, obviously not that. So, instead I go with the obvious.
“You must be the tutor.”
10
ELLIE
He’s enormous.
That’s the first thing I notice. Not just tall, though he is tall. Absurdly tall. The kitchen ceiling instantly feels lower and the walls closer. He’s also broad, his shoulders filling the space between the refrigerator and the island.
He’s wearing a white shirt, untucked, the sleeves rolled to his forearms. Even in the dim light, I see the way the fabric strains across his chest and arms, as if the shirt is barely containing his frame.
The light catches the planes of his face, sharp jaw, high cheekbones, angled with a nose that might have been broken once. His hair is dark and slightly pushed back, like he’s been running his hand through it. And his eyes…
The recognition hits me. They’re Anya’s eyes.
Pale blue. Ice blue. The exact same shade I’ve been facing all week, only different. His are ice that chose to stay frozen. Same color, same intensity, same unsettling capacity to make you feel seen in a way you didn’t consent to. But where Anya’s gaze asks questions, his delivers verdicts.
He’s her father. Of course he is. I knew this, but knowing itand standing in front of the physical evidence of it are different things.
He’s beautiful. Ridiculously beautiful. The kind of beauty that belongs on magazine covers and European runways. Not standing in front of me while I’m holding a bottle of milk in my Hello Kitty pajamas.
Oh God.
The Hello Kitty pajamas.
I’m wearing my pink shorts, with the silly little cat’s face printed all over them, paired with a too-short-to-meet-my-boss blue shirt.
I’m also not wearing a bra…
Yeah, this would be how I met my new boss.
Just my luck.
“You must be the tutor,” he says. “Elizabeth Calloway, is it?”
I clutch the milk bottle closer to my chest.
His voice. Dear God, his voice.
