Chapter 160Katie's POVI couldn’t even manage to get out of Cephus’s car in those stupid heels, not without potentially exposing myself to the wider audience of the area in which we had parked. Cephus had to step in front of me and draw me out holding onto both of my hands. Then I took one step and teetered until he tucked my arm around his and led me off like a walking doll. I felt ridiculous, and seeing other suited men, sometimes also maneuvering women, glancing at us as we drew close to the entrance and trying to meet Cephus’s eye with their knowing smirks made me feel horrendously conspicuous.I fell over in the elevator on the way up to the restaurant. One elderly woman was riding up with us, who clutched her handbag closer to her chest and squinted down at me with this look of I know you’re drunk right now.I would have let her know I was currently kidnapped so the disapproval could be redirected to where it rightfully belonged, but a woman like that seemed liable to blame m
Chapter 161Katie's POVIt was lucky for me that my hands were already occupied with holding up his jacket, or I might have made some embarrassing concession to my sudden desire to get closer to the action.And what did it matter if he knew? He probably did know that women fell over themselves the instant he took his clothes off. And the whole point of our encounter was that he intended to convince me to marry him… or to play along with intending to marry him, which was more or less the same thing these days, at least physically. On some level, he was making an offer of intimacy. Surely he’d be happy to hear that I wanted to be intimate with him, considering how offended he got about any notions of sexual assault.Well maybe it wouldn’t matter to him, but it mattered to me. I didn’t want to end up overwhelmed by sexual feelings for a man, it was much more comfortable when it worked in the other direction. I just didn’t know if I had any way to escape it.Cephus slid the shirt off, f
Chapter 162Cephus’ POV“I…” Cephus stepped away immediately to follow him so I was left completely alone at the desk and had to stagger after the two of them until I was back in earshot. “Um, did you not hear what I just said? I’ve been kidnapped, I need you to call the police for me.”The guy’s laugh was nervous. “Now, we are well-known here for our seafood experiences, serving locally caught produce…”He was too scared to go against Cephus… no, that didn’t make sense, because he seemed perfectly relaxed telling Cephus about the new cheese menu they’d just launched. He was too scared to talk to me.I’d had this sort of interaction with men before too, though usually I’d been engineering it. He thought I was joking, and he didn’t understand the joke.It was because I was too calm about the whole situation, wasn’t it? I didn’t fit the bill of a woman who looked kidnapped. Was I going to have to turn into a blubbering mess just to get someone to take me seriously? Because that sounde
Chapter 163Cephus’ POVThey had no idea that I kept seeing Steven on and off after the order was in place, but the order itself was something spearheaded by me, on the public record.”Cephus was nodding. “They would have had a lot of pride in you after that.”“Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far. I think it amused them while they were thinking about it, that’s it.”I shifted my feet under the table to ease the strain on my knees, bunched up in an awkward position thanks to those stupid shoes. I was about to change the subject, because my parents’ utter disinterest in me was not something I ever wanted to discuss with anyone, but Cephus was already moving forward with his next question. “You handled the situation well yourself, but it still must have been a frightening experience for you. Were you more wary about leaving the house after that?”Oh, I saw exactly what he was trying to do there. “I’m still not talking to you about—”“Cephus!”We both turned as someone stopped by our tab
Chapter 164Cephus’ POVWhen we stopped trying to dig into one another’s heads and spent our time commenting on the quality of the food and wine, we got along quite well. That was a trick I’d learned with my parents, actually: you didn’t have to have any fondness for a person so long as you could lean on your shared interest in food. Eating good food produces endorphins, and if incidental conversation makes any polite response impossible, it is completely appropriate to just make noises.I also had a little more wine than I intended, which put me in a pretty good mood.“I’d like to go back to my house to sleep tonight,” I told Cephus as we reached his car. He’d been holding my arm since we got up to leave our seats at the restaurant and when I wobbled so severely I nearly made myself dizzy enough to throw up, I felt his fingers tighten on me. I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean. “Even if that means you’re going to come in and creepily watch me when I sleep. I just want to
Chapter 165Katie's POVI needed to get it together before he saw me like this. I put in a tremendous effort and got myself to a more appropriate level of uprightness, but I could tell when I turned to face him coming in that he had a pretty clear idea of my mental state. It figured he would have some experience with fractured women.He steered me into the kitchen, sat me down on one of the stools at the island bench, and prepared another tea for me, selecting something herbal from my mother’s wooden tea bag box. It was unsettling watching him move with such ease around our kitchen at first like he’d been there enough times to know where everything was, but after I’d seen enough I was certain that wasn’t the case. Cephus was just very good at feeling his way around a situation, working out where everything was quickly enough that it just seemed natural.I shouldn’t… but there I was again wondering how he would be working his hands around a woman. If it would feel different to the ki
Chapter 166Cephus’ POVOne further, pitiful detail occurred to me. “She didn’t even like those parties! It was so obvious she was hating every second of being there… but she was there, for him.”“It’s rare to have anyone so willing to fight for you,” said Cephus. “Of course he loved her.”I tried to fix him with the shrewdness of my look but I wasn’t sure I could have managed that even when not tipsy. “Are you trying to sell me the line that I’ll love you, once you show me you can protect me in the same way?”That question made him serious again… in that distant way, that was everything I hadn’t wanted. “There are complications as far as that’s concerned. I’m not some straightforward little schoolboy, actually seeking to love and be loved. My requirements are profoundly different.”“You make it sound like you’re some kind of serious sexual deviant, buttering me up for your dungeon.”“If I had a dungeon I wouldn’t have needed to call in a favor to house you somewhere that would prove
Chapter 167Katie's POVI woke to shout, which wasn’t unusual around my house… but there was an extra male voice in the mix, and that dragged me through the dozing state to the other side.I was hearing my parents’ voices. That couldn’t be possible, they should have still been in Europe. Even if that man at the restaurant had called them directly, there was no way they could have…It turned out I didn't do what my parents were capable of. But as more memories of the past twenty-seven hours or so came back to mind completely out of order, I realized the really important detail was that I couldn’t leave Cephus out there to deal with them unless I wanted more trouble to brew.I pulled on my more modest dressing gown, stepped into my slippers and kept going from there straight out the door… and stopped fast as I almost collided with my parents in full professional attire, plus Cephus looking like he’d managed to put on a fresh suit and easily outclass them.When all of them turned to star