It’s deep, not low but resonant, coming from somewhere in his chest. He says my name, adding weight to it. Each syllable is deliberate, and the faintest trace of an accent curls around the consonants. Every functional neuron in my brain goes offline simultaneously.
I want to ask him to say it again. I want to say,I’m sorry, could you repeat that? I wasn’t listening because your voice did something to my central nervous system, and I need a moment to reboot.
Instead, I say, “Yes. And you’re—” My brain reaches for his name and finds nothing. I’ve been living in this man’s house for a week, and I don’t know how he looks or what his first name is because he’s been a ghost. “You — I’m sorry, you’re?—”
“Rolan Belov.”
Rolan.
Of course, his nameis Rolan.
“Mr. Belov,” I say, my voice strange to my own ears. Too high, too thin. “It’s — yes. Hi.”
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Three years of higher education, and the best I can produce is “yes, hi.”
He doesn’t respond. He stands there, impossibly tall, impossibly composed, watching me. His expression gives away nothing. It’s like facing a wall. A very attractive, extremely well-built wall, but a wall, nonetheless.
And then his gaze drops over me.
Down from my face to my shoulders to the Hello Kitty shorts to my bare legs and to my socked feet on the cold marble floor. And back up.
A single, unhurried sweep that takes approximately two seconds and covers my entire body, leaving me feeling disoriented.
He says nothing.
I want to die.
If I’m being specific, I want the marble floor to open up and swallow me into the earth’s core, where I can live out the rest of my days as magma, which is a preferable state of existence to standing in front of my boss in Hello Kitty pajamas.
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” I say and extend my hand, because that’s what you do when you meet your employer, even if you’re holding a milk bottle and your face is producing enough heat to power a small city.
My hand hangs in the air.
One second.
Two.
Long enough for me to wonder if he’s going to leave it there. If he’s the kind of man who doesn’t shake hands with employees, or maybe with people who seem to have lost a pillow fight at a slumber party.
Then he reaches out, and his hand engulfs mine. His fingers are long, his palm wide and warm and calloused in places that suggest he does more with his hands than sign documents. The grip is firm. Not aggressive, not trying to prove anything, but revealing a man who has no concept of his ownstrength. Or has a precise concept of it and is choosing to restrain it.
The size difference is almost comical. My hand vanishes into his. I’m suddenly, intensely aware of how small I am.
An electrical current runs through me at the contact. A warm, startling pulse that travels from my palm up through my wrist, along my spine, and settles behind my sternum.
It’s involuntary and immediate.
“Anya’s wonderful,” I say, pulling my hand back. “She’s incredibly bright. I’m really enjoying working with her.”
He says nothing. His gaze moves to the milk bottle in my other hand. One eyebrow shifts, not quite a raise, but a micro-movement, barely perceptible. The question is implied so clearly that he might as well have said it out loud.
“Oh, this.” I hold up the bottle, presenting the evidence. “Anya had a nightmare. She was upset, so I offered to make her hot chocolate. It’s — it was — my dad’s specialty when I was little. He had this recipe. Well, it’s not really a recipe. It’s more of a technique. You heat the milk slowly and add the chocolate in stages, so it doesn’t?—”
I stop myself.
“It’s very good,” I finish weakly. “I promise.”
Rolan Belov studies me one more time. I can’t tell if he thinks I’m charming or insane or beneath his notice entirely.
