Page 20 of Twins for the Enemy

I stop.

Sitting at the kitchen island, legs crossed and eating applesauce, is Farah.

I cancel the call as I hear Craig’s voice answer. I slide my phone back into my pocket. Farah looks back at me, unfazed, with the hint of a mischievous flicker in her eyes.

“What on God’s earth did you do to my door?” I ask.

“Opened up the space a bit,” she says, licking the spoon. I look over at the refrigerator, ignoring my cock stirring. “You don’t like it?”

“If the interior design theme is a crack house, it’s perfect. Was that your intention?”

“It seems fitting to me.” She sets down her spoon. “Wouldn’t a crack house keep pregnant women captive?”

“You make this hypothetical woman sound innocent.” I take a few steps closer to her, not breaking eye contact. She doesn’t react. The men I’ve faced off in litigation were more unnerved than she is. “Did you expect better accommodations? Would you like me to supply you with gasoline and a lighter?”

“I’d like you to supply me with a basic level of respect,” she says. “I know I’m… I’ve done immoral things. I’m not a great person.”

The way her lip twitches tells me that she’s being honest. It should vindicate me, but it scrapes inside my chest.

She swallows and raises her chin up. “But I’m not going to lie down and let you mistreat me. Maybe a few months ago, I would’ve, but now that I’m going to be a mother, I know I wouldn’t want anyone to treat my children that way.”

It sounds rehearsed. It also sounds sincere.

“You want me to treat you with respect? Then explain to me how burning a woman and leaving her to diein a fire is showing respect.” I take her face in my hands. She flinches, but she stares back at me, her lips tightening together. “Do you know what those flames did to her? The way it burned her?”

My thumb etches along the sides of her face, curving into her hairline.

“Her hair burned right here. Have you smelled burning hair before? It barely missed her eye. It kept burning down. She never said how much it hurt, but it must have been unimaginable.”

My thumb continues to trace around her cheek and to the corner of her lips. Her mouth slightly opens, almost inviting me in.

She slowly pulls away. While she’d seemed dazed as I was talking, now pain cuts through her expression.

“I know you see yourself as judge, jury, and executioner,” she says. “But using a woman’s tragedy to hurt me is low. I wasn’t the one who started the fire, and I didn’t know anyone was in the building, so—”

“Explainthat one to me,” I say.

“What?”

“You were fired from the business that was set on fire. Motive. You were spotted there by your boss. A witness. You were seen on nearby businesses’ surveillance cameras. Physical evidence. But you weren’t the arsonist? That would be an unprecedented number of coincidences.”

“It’s… there’s more to it than that.”

“Explain it.”

She stares at me. “You wouldn’t understand. You wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

“I don’t believe you now, so that wouldn’t be a change.”

She turns away from me, her elbow hitting against the spoon in her applesauce container. The container topples over, empty.

“The twins can’t survive on you eating only applesauce,” I say. “You need to consider what they need.”

“I’ll eat again when I’m hungry,” she says. “Do you enjoy making women feel sick all of the time?”

“My chef has the day off, but I’ll make an omelet.” I stand up and walk over to the refrigerator. “If you have to choke it down, you’ll choke it down.”

Because I’m afraid she may decide to bolt after all, but it’s also the way she looks from across the kitchen island. Like she doesn’t know she’s the kind of trouble that gets a man hooked before he sees it coming.

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