CHAPTER FIVE
CHA CHA
“Drake. Drake. What the hell are these?” I snap the papers from his side table in my sleeping bodyguard’s face.
So what if he got two hours sleep while I turn a specific shade of branded green because I did not?
I emerged from my room to find him with his eyes closed and looking serene, far more so than I suspect I ever appear.
Especially right when I need company, a hug I’m never going to get from him anyway, and information on what comes next.
Because Drake’s grand plan of moving me out to a mountain holiday has a huge flaw in it. Several, actually, but one is bigger than the others:
I’m a musician. I need noise.
Out here, there isn’t any at all.
No music. No chatter. No instruments, no working phone, as mine died last night and no matter how much I hunt through the house, I can't find a single charger. I do, to my horror, find a wall phone that plugs into the actual wall.
I know he has a phone. I can even see it. He has to charge it somehow.
“Drake. Wake up.”
Teeth baring, I shake the sheaf of letters in his face that someone should have shown me. “I said—”
Warm, hard fingers whip out to grip my wrist. “I heard you, princess.” Dark eyes flash open to meet mine. “I wanted to see what you’d do. That temper of yours is infamous, after all.”
I wrench my hand back and he lets me. Hmph. “That temper is…” Not always fake. But it is driven by anxiety, which is spiking right now. “Why did you hide these?”
Two eyebrows hike. “They were right out there in the open for you to read, princess.”
My teeth snap and I wish I had a…body bit to gnaw at. Maybe for a second. Then my ire retreats and I deflate as soon as his logic sinks in. “Why did Shayne hide these from me?”
Drake stretches his arms over his head. The front of his white shirt pulls across his barrel chest, doing little to hide the planes of taut muscle beneath, or the ink that was never designed with a white shirt in mind. “Maybe he was worried about losing a digit. Have you ever shot a gun before?”
I stare at him. “No.”
“Have you had breakfast?”
“No.” I lower the letters I was prepared to batter him with moments before.
“Good. Let's feed you up, have some coffee, and get you learning.” He rises, and I step back. The man is a giant, or I’m just short.
Maybe a bit of both.
“Coffee?” I look at him through my lashes. “Is there a chance of tea?”
Drake looks straight down at me. “Nope.” His fingers twitch at his sides. “Nothing like trying something new when the sun rises, Cha Cha.” The way he says my name is…final. Like he won’t budge.
I raise my chin, defiant. “And if I don’t like change?”
The faintest hint of a smile graces those arched lips. “Then you’re shit out of luck with me, princess. This will be a hard few weeks while we work out how to keep that predator away from you in a more…permanent capacity.”
My mouth dries. “There’s more than one person who wrote these.
” The admission slips out too freely, but even when I skim over the lines that blurred together after the first glances at the letters, it’s obvious that the hands are different.
The threats are worded in other ways, unique to the sender.
Drake holds out his hand. “Only one of them matters. I’ll introduce you to the joys of coffee, and if you’re willing to listen, I’ll show you how to spot a psycho in his words.”
The world shrinks to the pair of us. Before I snapped the letters in his face, I lost myself in the threats on the page that I couldn't read all the way through, and then in mountains that never went behind his chair.
The window is so wide, covering the entirety of the wall behind Drake, that I feel as though I might be able to walk straight off the edge of his home, and tumble into the mountain range beyond.
Into freefall.
“Take your time. I’ll be in the kitchen.” Drake pauses at my side. The letters slip from my hand into his. “You’re not allergic to anything?”
My file will have told him what he needs to know, but I confirm the information anyway. Some part of me registers that he asked.
“Strawberries.”
I risk a glance up at him. My eye level barely reaches his chest. Drake nods, his knuckles brushing the back of my hand. Then he strides away, leaving me with the endless vista as cold company.
“Drake.”
His silent footfalls stop, his presence halting not so far behind me. “I’m feeding you, princess.”
I shake my head, letting my hair form a curtain between us. “No one has offered to share information with me before. They just—”
A breath passes. Another.
“They take it for granted that your world doesn't include you,” he says softly.
I nod and don’t reply.
Drake makes a deep sound in his chest. “Today is about firsts, Cha Cha. Some of it might be overwhelming. I’ll try to go slow.”
“Don’t.” I turn sharply on my heel.
“Yeah?” He eyes me with interest. “You want the full experience, princess?”
I hold his gaze, reading the challenge there. “I want to understand everything."
Something akin to respect flashes across his face, and he nods slowly. “Then we start with coffee. Kitchen. Ten minutes.”
He’s gone, and I turn back to the mountains, drinking in their gliding presence, their magnitude. The sense of passage between. The winds that buffet even though, behind the glass, I’m protected here. If I step outside, I’ll hear their sound.
Perhaps there is music here, after all.