Page 24 of Fearless
Sucking a breath, Kitty pushed herself to sit up and face what she had coming. She shook her head.
“Did one of them attack you?”
Sort of, but not really. Coming at her because she stood between it and the water didn’t really constitute an attack, and she knew it. Kitty shook her head again.
“Look at me.” His tone sounded light, and cheerful, and completely masked the very real fact that he wasn’t happy with her right now.
Dragging her gaze up from her arms, Kitty met his angry stare. Her heart began to beat hard again, but not for the same reason that it had outside.
He was sitting up straight, big hands braced against his thighs. The corners of his mouth were faintly upturned, as if he were trying to smile, but it wasn’t real and didn’t hide the sternness in his glare. “What is Rule Number One?”
“Leave the wildlife alone,” she answered.
“What did I tell you those were the very first day you arrived?”
“Wild animals.” Her stomach tightened. Noah was angry with her. She was going to get punished. She looked at his hand, resting on the table. He had big hands, bigger than Ethen’s, calloused and rough and used to hard physical work. She looked at his belt too. She already knew what he could do with a strap. Her stomach dropped, a sickly sinking sensation that almost sent her running to the bathroom.
“You knew they were out there, didn’t you?” he continued. “They’re not quiet. I could hear them calling all the way down at the barn.”
“They were out of water.” Her face burned slow but hot. She felt stupid. “They were thirsty.”
Noah nodded. “When I hear them squabbling like that, I know they’re out. I was coming up to give them water when I saw you. My problem here is: admirable though it was for you to want to ease their discomfort, that was not your job. For all that they look cute and cuddly, they can and do bite people quite savagely.”
She didn’t for a second doubt that.
“Do you know what trust is?”
That hurt. Kitty stared at him.
“How about obedience?” he countered with equal ruthlessness when she didn’t answer. “Because if I can’t trust you to do what I ask you when I am here, how can I trust you to do it when I’m not?”
It was amazing how quickly her thoughts turned mutinous. She dropped her stare to her hands, trying to hide them. She felt stupid enough as it was, she didn’t need him rubbing it in deeper.
The phone in the living room rang. When he glanced away, she crawled away from him toward the head of the table. That stopped when he snapped his fingers and pointed to a spot on the floor directly in front of him.
“If I can’t trust you, you’re not a roommate. You’re a guest. Guests don’t answer my phone.”
Kitty sat where she was, hating every nuance of that scolding while he went to answer the phone. In short syllables, he responded with yeses and nos, but he was staring right at her while he did it. Towards the end of the brief conversation, he only asked one question: “What’s the address? …I’ll take care of it tonight… Yep… Ta.”
She couldn’t remember the last time someone had made her feel this small with nothing but a stare. Not scared, per se. Not panicky, really. Just guilty and small. She hugged her shoulders for comfort, determined not to let him know how much this bothered her. She hadn’t meant to break his rule. To be honest, she hadn’t given any of his rules much thought. But okay, she did break one and maybe that gave him a reason to be a little upset, but hadn’t she been through enough? Did he really need to make her feel worse than she already did? Because if he wanted to play that game, she thought mutinously, somebody should tell him she’d been taught these particular rules by the best of them. Compared to Ethen, Noah didn’t even rank. He didn’t even slam the phone when he hung it up. All he did was give her that same hard, hands on his hips glare, and if that was the worst he intended to do, well… she’d survived Ethen’s beatings. She could survive Noah’s fake smiling glares, too.
“Well,” Noah said with mock cheerfulness. “I’ll get the tea, shall I?”
The hell he would. It was her kitchen. Kitty crawled out from under the table, fully prepared to march straight past him into it and maybe even let him know how unhappy she was by rattling a few dishes louder than she needed to while she got the damn tea. Perhaps not. It had been a long time since she’d thrown a fit. She never would have dreamed of it with Ethen. She wasn’t entirely sure she could bring herself to do it now. But it was a moot point. The minute she gained her feet, he snapped his fingers and pointed at her chair and she dropped with all the shaky defiance she had to sit where he told her.
“Nah,” he said. “Trustworthy, obedient roommates help in the kitchen. Guests sit at the kitchen table and do nothing more strenuous than rest and relax.” He walked past her, rolling up his sleeves. “Don’t bother yourself, love. I’ll get the tea.”
Every thought Kitty had about banging cups on saucers and fit throwing went straight out of her head. As it turned out, beatings weren’t the worst thing he could have done. Without raising his voice or his fist, Noah showed her how wrong she could be. In the half second it took him to strip her of her new-found responsibilities, Kitty gained a whole new respect for the awfulness of what punishments Down Under could be as Noah made her tea, and sandwiches, and cut up cold slices of cucumber and mango from the fridge and brought it all out to her as if she were Royalty and he nothing more than someone put in this house to serve her.
No one had ever served her before.
“Bon appetite,” he said, setting that plate in front of her.
She didn’t feel small anymore. Now she felt useless all over again.
“Rule Number Seven,” he told her, when she neither touched her sandwich nor sipped her tea.
Eat every bite.
