Page 192 of Captive Ruin

“Well, then.”

His self-assurance is irritating. “Maybe,” I amend.

He grins, dimples flashing. “Well, then.”

“Fifty rounds,” I say pleasantly, “and my aim is so bad. I wonder how many shots it would take?”

Forty-Two

Amelia

Van Wyk leaves me alone for the next few days, and that’s fine by me. I need time to process.

I hear him in his office on calls, catching Bastien’s name from time to time. Linda’s off for a week, and I’m not sure if it’s because Van Wyk wants me to himself, or because he recognized she was making me uncomfortable, tiptoeing around me. The house feels empty, and it’s a big house.

I welcome the quiet; I have a lot on my mind. The all-too-often subject of my thoughts seems content to let me stew, or maybe he’s waiting for me to come to him. He’ll be waiting a while if so.

The gun sits in the nightstand beside my bed, loaded. Will I ever use it on him? I don’t know, but now I have the option.

Four days after our first date, Van Wyk walks into the sunroom, wearing an apron with his sleeves rolled up. “I’m tired of takeout,” he announces. “Dinner will be at eight.”

“Oh.” Not a verbose response, but I don’t know what to do with this man. I’m still angry with him while trying to figure him out. Cautious that this new side of him will disappear, and burdened by the history between us.

But it’s late, I’m hungry, and Van Wyk in the kitchen? This I want to see.

When I wander in, pans simmer on the stove and savory smells fill the air: searing beef, white wine, tarragon.

“What are you making?”

He turns long enough to give me a smile. “Chateaubriand with a bearnaise sauce, dauphinoise potatoes and green beans.”

He didn’t pull that out of nowhere, he had it all planned. And it sounds delicious.

“Fine.”

His shoulders tighten at that word, and I remember he doesn’t like it. At least when I use it. Maybe I’ll start using it all the time.

The man can cook, there’s no denying it. Watching him work in the kitchen with his sleeves rolled up is its own kind of satisfaction. I sit on a stool, pressing my thighs together.

We eat in the dining room, just the two of us at one end of the enormous table. With all the trouble he’s gone to, it seems churlish to refuse.

“How is it?” he asks, a few mouthfuls in when I’m yet to say anything.

Because I’m distracted. Not just because of his presence, the way he’s looking at me, and the amazing food he’s cooked, but because I’m trying to understand him. Who he really is.

Reconciling this Van Wyk with the one I’ve known these past months is a challenge. He’s so much lighter, like some of the weight on his shoulders has fallen by the wayside. Smiling more, cracking jokes, with a newfound brightness and easy-going charm that would be attractive on anyone. But on him? With that body, those steady steel-grey eyes, and the dimples that for the longest time I didn’t even know he had? It’s a whole different kind of lethal.

Then there’s the you’re-mine possessiveness that he shows hints of from time to time. The deadly glare that had the man in the gun shop back-pedaling fast. The way he’s handling his steak knife even now, like at the drop of a hat he could turn and throw it into an unwary intruder.

Most disturbing, his lightness and darkness both seem to be focused on me.

No… most disturbing is that I like it.

He’s both my dark knight and my white knight rolled into one, and the notion isn’t as abhorrent as it once was.

When did I start feeling that way? Was it the apology? Or before that, when he spent hours at my bedside in Montana? Was it the tears he’d so obviously shed for me?

I never thought this man could be capable of crying, let alone over me.