Chapter 10
ELLIE
He’s enormous.
That’s the first thing I notice. Not just tall, though he is tall. Absurdly tall. The kitchen ceiling instantly feels lower and the walls closer. He’s also broad, his shoulders filling the space between the refrigerator and the island.
He’s wearing a white shirt, untucked, the sleeves rolled to his forearms. Even in the dim light, I see the way the fabric strains across his chest and arms, as if the shirt is barely containing his frame.
The light catches the planes of his face, sharp jaw, high cheekbones, angled with a nose that might have been broken once. His hair is dark and slightly pushed back, like he’s been running his hand through it. And his eyes…
The recognition hits me. They’re Anya’s eyes.
Pale blue. Ice blue. The exact same shade I’ve been facing all week, only different. His are ice that chose to stay frozen. Same color, same intensity, same unsettling capacity to make you feel seen in a way you didn’t consent to. But where Anya’s gaze asks questions, his delivers verdicts.
He’s her father. Of course he is. I knew this, but knowing it and standing in front of the physical evidence of it are different things.
He’s beautiful. Ridiculously beautiful. The kind of beauty that belongs on magazine covers and European runways. Not standing in front of me while I’m holding a bottle of milk in my Hello Kitty pajamas.
Oh God.
The Hello Kitty pajamas.
I’m wearing my pink shorts, with the silly little cat’s face printed all over them, paired with a too-short-to-meet-my-boss blue shirt.
I’m also not wearing a bra…
Yeah, this would be how I met my new boss.
Just my luck .
“You must be the tutor,” he says. “Elizabeth Calloway, is it?”
I clutch the milk bottle closer to my chest.
His voice. Dear God, his voice.
It’s deep, not low but resonant, coming from somewhere in his chest. He says my name, adding weight to it. Each syllable is deliberate, and the faintest trace of an accent curls around the consonants. Every functional neuron in my brain goes offline simultaneously.
I want to ask him to say it again. I want to say, I’m sorry, could you repeat that? I wasn’t listening because your voice did something to my central nervous system, and I need a moment to reboot.
Instead, I say, “Yes. And you’re—” My brain reaches for his name and finds nothing. I’ve been living in this man’s house for a week, and I don’t know how he looks or what his first name is because he’s been a ghost. “You — I’m sorry, you’re?—”
“Rolan Belov.”
Rolan.
Of course, his name is Rolan.
“Mr. Belov,” I say, my voice strange to my own ears. Too high, too thin. “It’s — yes. Hi.”
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Three years of higher education, and the best I can produce is “yes, hi.”
He doesn’t respond. He stands there, impossibly tall, impossibly composed, watching me. His expression gives away nothing. It’s like facing a wall. A very attractive, extremely well-built wall, but a wall, nonetheless.
And then his gaze drops over me.
Down from my face to my shoulders to the Hello Kitty shorts to my bare legs and to my socked feet on the cold marble floor. And back up.
A single, unhurried sweep that takes approximately two seconds and covers my entire body, leaving me feeling disoriented.
He says nothing.
I want to die.
If I’m being specific, I want the marble floor to open up and swallow me into the earth’s core, where I can live out the rest of my days as magma, which is a preferable state of existence to standing in front of my boss in Hello Kitty pajamas.
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” I say and extend my hand, because that’s what you do when you meet your employer, even if you’re holding a milk bottle and your face is producing enough heat to power a small city.
My hand hangs in the air.
One second.
Two.
Long enough for me to wonder if he’s going to leave it there. If he’s the kind of man who doesn’t shake hands with employees, or maybe with people who seem to have lost a pillow fight at a slumber party.
Then he reaches out, and his hand engulfs mine.
His fingers are long, his palm wide and warm and calloused in places that suggest he does more with his hands than sign documents.
The grip is firm. Not aggressive, not trying to prove anything, but revealing a man who has no concept of his own strength.
Or has a precise concept of it and is choosing to restrain it.
The size difference is almost comical. My hand vanishes into his. I’m suddenly, intensely aware of how small I am.
An electrical current runs through me at the contact. A warm, startling pulse that travels from my palm up through my wrist, along my spine, and settles behind my sternum.
It’s involuntary and immediate.
“Anya’s wonderful,” I say, pulling my hand back. “She’s incredibly bright. I’m really enjoying working with her.”
He says nothing. His gaze moves to the milk bottle in my other hand. One eyebrow shifts, not quite a raise, but a micro-movement, barely perceptible. The question is implied so clearly that he might as well have said it out loud.
“Oh, this.” I hold up the bottle, presenting the evidence.
“Anya had a nightmare. She was upset, so I offered to make her hot chocolate. It’s — it was — my dad’s specialty when I was little.
He had this recipe. Well, it’s not really a recipe.
It’s more of a technique. You heat the milk slowly and add the chocolate in stages, so it doesn’t?—”
I stop myself.
“It’s very good,” I finish weakly. “I promise.”
Rolan Belov studies me one more time. I can’t tell if he thinks I’m charming or insane or beneath his notice entirely.
And my stomach tightens at a horrible realization. I’ve been reading Anya all week, so I can tell when she’s interested, when she’s guarded, when she’s half a breath from smiling.
I can’t read him at all.
“I’ll just,” I pause and gesture vaguely toward the stove. “I’ll get out of your way. Sorry for?—”
“Continue.”
One word. Low, direct, spoken without inflection, and it stops me mid-retreat.
“What? ”
“Continue what you were doing.”
He moves. Not toward the door, which is what I expected and hoped for, but toward the other side of the island.
Toward the glass-fronted cabinet. He opens it and selects a bottle with clear liquid, no label. Vodka, almost certainly. He pours two fingers into a crystal glass with the ease of someone who does this often and the steadiness of someone who does everything with absolute intention.
He’s staying.
He’s going to stand there, three feet away, drinking vodka, while I make hot chocolate in my pajamas.
Okay. Fine. Great. This is fine.
I notice how he moves. It’s similar to the guards — with an economy of motion, the absence of wasted movement. But with him it’s more pronounced.
He moves the way large predators move in nature documentaries, slowly, precisely, with fluid control. He stalked from the doorway to the cabinet without making a sound. No footsteps. No scrape of shoes.
My father was a loud man. He filled rooms with his voice, his laughter, his mistakes. Landon was the opposite. Quiet and controlled. A man who used stillness as a weapon.
Rolan Belov is a different creature altogether.
I turn to the counter, set down the milk, and open the refrigerator again to check for — what do I need?
My mind goes blank.
I know this recipe by heart. Dad taught it to me when I was eight, standing on a step stool in our kitchen in Boston while he narrated each step. The secret, Ellie-belly, is patience. You don’t rush the milk. You treat the chocolate like a lady — introduce it slowly, let it melt on its own terms.
I need chocolate. Cocoa powder, ideally, but a good dark chocolate bar will do. Sugar. A pinch of salt. Vanilla, if they have it .
I open the nearest cabinet. Plates. The next one. Glasses. The one after that. Spices, but not the ones I need.
“Are you looking for something?”
I turn. He’s leaning against the island, glass in hand, watching me with what might be curiosity. I can’t tell. This man’s face is a locked safe.
“Chocolate,” I say. “I haven’t quite learned where everything is yet.”
He lifts his chin. A single, minimal gesture toward the upper cabinets, mounted high on the wall. The ones designed for people who are taller than five foot three.
“Top shelf,” he says. “Right side.”
I scan the cabinet, and my gaze travels all the way up to the top shelf. I calculate the distance between my extended fingertips and the shelf in question, factor in the height of the countertop, subtract my total vertical reach, and arrive at a number that can be summarized as: absolutely not.
On a normal day, in a normal kitchen, without an audience, I would solve this problem the way I’ve solved it my entire life and climb the counter. I’m an excellent counter-climber. I’ve been doing it since childhood.
But I am not climbing a counter in front of Rolan Belov. I am not scrambling up his marble countertops in my Hello Kitty shorts with my braid unraveling and my dignity already in critical condition.
So, I open the cabinet, rise onto my toes, and stretch.
My fingers brush the shelf. Not the chocolate. The shelf. The chocolate is behind it, pushed back, unreachable by at least four inches that might as well be four miles.
I stretch further, gripping the edge of the counter with my other hand for balance, and rise higher on my toes until my calves burn.
My sweatshirt rides up. I’m aware of this.
I’m aware that a strip of skin is now visible between the hem of the sweatshirt and the waistband of my shorts.
I’m aware that he’s behind me. I’m aware of all of it.
I make a small jump. A tiny, pathetic hop that gains me approximately one inch of altitude and zero chocolate.
And then I feel him.
Not touching, but there behind me, close enough that the air between us changes composition. It becomes warmer, thicker, carrying a scent that reminds me of cold weather and woodsmoke.