Chapter 11
Mila
I wake up the next morning and my mind is buzzing.
Actually, after the night Lainey and I had at the ring, I hardly slept at all.
I can’t stop thinking about the way Dom looked in the ring.
Like I said, it’s not the first time I’ve watched the man fight.
But in a way it is. Last time, I was dealing with Rafe.
This time I was able to sit, undistracted, my full attention on his full…
everything. The way he moves, the way he calculates.
You would never guess he’s got ten to twenty years on the other guys.
Not from his skill and certainly not from his body.
Don’t get me started on his body. Fuck me.
As my Jeep comes to a rumbling stop in his driveway and I kill the engine, I make my way up the sidewalk barely noticing the guy trimming the shrubbery or the other guy on the lawn mower or even the window washers on the scaffolding in front of the house next door.
My mind is still at the ring, but not just on the fight itself.
Not that that part wasn’t glorious. I’ll tuck that version of Dominic away like a mental Polaroid so I can look at it whenever I want, which might be often.
No, I am hung up on what happened before the fight.
When I ran into him in the hallway. Once again, he didn’t recognize me (or did he?).
And once again we played a guessing game.
And once again before twenty questions could lead him too close to the bullseye, I disappeared into the night. Or the bathroom.
I punch the number on the door lock and make my way inside.
Then I head into the kitchen to start coffee.
I have seven minutes before he comes walking down the hallway.
My hair is down today, something I don’t normally do at work.
But as usual, I have nothing on my face except for some moisturizer.
With all the make-up they expect me to wear at the Cockpit, it’s nice to let my skin breathe a little.
I start the coffee and turn around to grab a couple of mugs out of the cupboard. But when my eyes skim over the living room I stop.
“Is that glass?” I ask out loud, rounding the counter to have a look. Sure enough, there is a shattered highball glass on the floor and the wall mirror is also broken into smithereens.
What in the world?
I turn to see if anything else is awry and find a picture frame face down, the glass cracked. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say foul play was involved. Then I see the broken whiskey bottle behind the couch.
I let out an angry sigh just as I hear footsteps coming down the hallway.
“Coffee ready?” Dominic asks and I spin around to face him, the neck of the broken bottle in my hand.
“What is this?” I ask, holding it up.
He blinks, everything from his expression to stance unchanging. “I might have gotten upset last night,” he says casually.
“I thought you got vandalized!” I let out.
“Are you kidding? I run a security company for a living. Who would be stupid enough to break into my house? Or try to break into my house?”
My head shakes slowly. “I was actually afraid for a moment.”
“Well, you don’t need to be. But I would appreciate it if you could clean it up. I have to hop on a work call,” he says as he pivots to walk back to his office. Then he stops, looking into the kitchen.
“Is the coffee ready?” he asks and I swear I am seeing red.
“Two minutes,” I answer. Dominic looks at his watch and I know what he’s thinking– two minutes past. I could give him something else in two minutes, but it might not be as pleasant.
Suddenly, I find myself tucking that mental Polaroid further back into the archives of my admiration because right now, I need to focus my energy on not throwing this cup of coffee straight into his beat-up face.
Obviously, I don’t do that. He could have me arrested for third degree burns. I’m about to give him a different kind of third degree.
Despite the fact his door is all the way closed, I barge in. His eyes dart up to mine and I can almost hear the warning signals he’s shooting at me. But I ignore every one of them and slam his mug down on his desk, sending a geyser of hot black coffee into the air and all over the desk.
“I’m going to have to call you back, Preston. A more pressing just landed on my desk,” he says with his eyes hard on me. “Yes, Andrew will take it from here.”
Dominic hangs up the phone and his eyes narrow in on me. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Going on strike,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he growls. But I’m not backing down, not this time.
“Exactly what it sounds like it means! I might work for you but you can’t order me around, throwing tantrums and expecting me to pick up after you,” I snap.
“I hired you as a maid. I’m pretty sure that’s exactly your job description,” he combats.
“My job is to clean and help you with your laundry and meal prep and sometimes even errands. Not to follow you around with a mop and broom every time you get your shorts in a knot all because you lost a fi–” I stop myself.
Fuck.
Luckily, Dominic doesn’t seem to catch what I almost said.
“What I’m losing is money. Because I should be on a work call right now with a very important client in Manhattan who happens to be the head of security for the Superbowl.
As in the NFL. Not arguing with my maid about whether or not cleaning up a broken mirror is part of her job! ”
“You broke the mirror!” I shout.
“Even if I did, I hired you to clean!” he booms.
“Well I didn’t know that when I took the job that my boss was going to be a hot-headed jerk!”
With that, Dominic bolts to his feet, knocking his chair over backwards in the process. Before I can even unfold my arms, he is around the desk and standing over me like an angry statue, a Greek god ready to unleash his divine wrath.
“Say that again,” he breathes over me. “I dare you.”
I should be scared. My nerves feel like a million pinpricks all over my body. But some of those nerves are only growing warmer and I find myself aroused by the possibility of the danger I could be in.
“You are impatient, ungrateful and impersonal,” I tell him.
“You working for me in my own home doesn’t require me to be personable, Miss Rojas,” he says slowly.
“Mila,” I tell him. “My name is Mila. I cook your meals for you. Not based on recipe cards that you have provided, because you didn’t.
Based on research I did based on knowing nothing more than your food preferences, something I had to figure out on the job.
I use specific cleaners in specific rooms, wash your whites on cold and your colors on warm and I’ve even switched your detergent to an environmentally friendly one after noticing that your skin looked a little irritated around the collar.
Not only that but I set the temperature in the house and I’ve cleaned the patio window daily since noticing that sometimes before you go into your office, you stop there to drink your coffee and you like to overlook the beach.
Today I will have to scrub whiskey off the glass and yet you are judging me based on whether or not your nasty ass coffee is ready on time. ”
By the time I am finished talking, my chest is rising and falling jaggedly with each breath. But I have no regrets. Dominic stares down at me, his dark gray eyes locked on mine like storm clouds hovering over an unprotected city just before a tornado.
“You are walking on very thin ice, Mila. Thin enough that if you looked down, you could see the sharks swarming under your feet,” he says in a low voice.
Then I tip my chin up and match his gaze. “I’d rather swim with those sharks than spend another day taking orders from someone who doesn’t even notice that I exist unless his coffee is ready.”
With that, I turn and walk out. I half expect him to yell. To call after me. Hell, I wouldn’t put it past him to march after me. But he does none of that. I reach the kitchen and a moment later, I heard the door close. Not slam. Just close.
I swallow hard and head to the broom closet.
The adrenaline is wearing off and I feel like I need to sit down.
Not because I am afraid, I’m not. Not because I regret saying what I said, I don’t.
But because out of all the things that just happened in that room, all the words that were said between us, the one and only thing that seems to be sitting at the forefront of my mind, searing itself into my memory, is the way he said my name.
Mila.
It’s a word I hear every day, obviously. Yet coming from that mouth, formed by those lips, in that voice…it’s enough to bring me to my knees. And I find myself needing to sit down for a minute.