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“No.”

“Threatening a barista?”

Sterling’s mouth twitched. “Not recently.”

Marvis stared at him for a long beat, then shook her head. “Jesus, take the wheel. I raised you better than this.”

I took another sip despite myself, because my body had already sold me out and pledged allegiance to the coffee. It warmed my hands and settled something in my chest. I eyed him sideways. “You’re enjoying this.”

He met my gaze and held it there, like the truth of it didn’t require softening. “I enjoy you,” he said, a certainty in his voice that I didn’t know what to do with. “The way you talk when you’re pretending you’re not flustered. The way you square your shoulders like you’re bracing for impact. Even the look you’re giving me right now, like you’re deciding whether to run or throw the mug at my head.”

My pulse skidded. “I don’t look like that.”

“You do,” he said calmly. “And I like it.”

Marvis cleared her throat loud enough to crack the moment clean in half. “All right, that’s enough.” She turned, wielding the hot pan like a warning. “Breakfast is ready. And you will not have sex on my table while I’m still breathing in this house.”

I considered spontaneous combustion as a viable exit strategy.

Sterling just smiled as he sat. “We’ll save the table sex for one of your days off, Marvis.”

She huffed, unimpressed, but when she set a plate down in front of him, she leaned in and pressed a brisk kiss to his cheek anyway.

“Sit,” she told me next, jerking her chin toward the chair. “Before he starts getting ideas and I start throwing things.”

I obeyed.

The plate she set in front of me looked obscene. Perfectly poached eggs sat on thick slices of ham over toasted bread, glossy hollandaise cascading down the sides like it had been poured with reverence rather than ladled.

One bite in, and my eyes nearly rolled back.

I made a sound I absolutely did not mean to make.

Sterling’s gaze flicked up instantly.

Marvis snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself,” she said. “That noise was about the food.”

“I don’t care,” Sterling said, still watching me. “I’m taking it as a win.”

I kept eating because self-control had left the building, because this breakfast was wrecking me, because somehow this woman I’d met five minutes ago had fed me like she knew exactly what I needed, and Sterling was sitting across from me like he’d planned that, too.

By the time I set my fork down, full and warm and strangely content, the truth settled heavy and undeniable in my chest.

I hadn’t just been kidnapped and taken into a ranch.

I’d been placed right into a trap that tasted like home.

CHAPTER 28

SIENNA

Ilearned three things that Sunday when I attempted to help on the ranch.

One: Animals can sense fear.

Two: I radiate it.

Three: Sterling Hayes was a mastermind of the highest order, and I was furious about it.