Maid for the Hitman: A Steamy Standalone Instalove Romance by Flora Ferrari (lightweight ebook reader txt) 📗

blink back wavering tears, trying to tell myself that this isn’t a lie, that this isn’t the same as when Dad walked out.

“How can I accept this?” I rage. “I started without enough money for a bottle of freaking lemonade. And then I found a man in a dumpster. And then a mafia boss threatened me… and now I’m here, in this castle, in this impossible place. With you, with a man I…”

“With a man, you what?” he growls. “Say it, Rosie.”

“I feel the same,” I snap. “Okay? The second I saw you – heck, the second I heard you through the door – I felt exactly how you’re describing.”

“So what’s the problem?” he asks.

“If I let myself believe it, I’m just setting myself up for heartbreak,” I snap. “Can’t you see that? This thing between us, this impossible thing, it’s… well, it’s impossible, Ryland. It doesn’t make sense. Surely you can understand that.”

“It’s not impossible,” he growls. “It happened to us. That proves it’s not impossible.”

“Are you saying its fate?” I say sharply.

He moves closer, his eyes biting into me, pinning me in place.

“I don’t like your tone, Rosie,” he growls.

“That’s not an answer,” I retort, clenching my fists and glaring up at him.

The corner of his lips twitch, his eyes flickering with something like admiration.

“Maybe it is fate,” he says. “I never believed in it before we met, but, fine, it could be that. I don’t give a damn what it’s called. All I care about is that we both feel the same.”

I bring my hands up toward his face. They tremble and a voice screams inside of me that he’s going to laugh at me, but I can’t stop myself.

I grab his face in my hands and I stare firmly at him.

“Tell me this isn’t a trick,” I say.

“I swear on the lives of our future children,” he snarls, “that this is as real for me as it is for you.”

I let him go and step away, returning to the balcony railing. Chopper stirs and moans, padding over to me, sitting at my feet, and staring up at me with his small kind eyes.

“What, that’s not good enough for you?” Ryland snarls.

When I don’t respond, he walks over to me, leaning on the balcony railing beside me and running his fingers up my neck, onto my face, cradling my cheek in his rough hand.

And yet even if it’s rough and powerful, I feel tenderness beneath it all that beckons to me, that tells me to sink into this moment and stop questioning it.

“What happened, Rosie?” he says.

“What do you mean?” I murmur.

“Why won’t you believe me when I tell you this isn’t a trick? Something happened. And, as the man who owns you, I deserve to know what.”

He adds irony to the words owns you, smirking, but I can tell he means it at the same time. It’s a confusing mixture of emotion and meaning that I shouldn’t be able to decipher after only knowing him for a day.

But I can.

Because we belong together.

Forever.

I sigh. “I never talk about this.”

“If you can’t talk to me,” he says, “who can you talk to?”

He takes my hand and leads me back to the couch, Chopper padding at our feet. I can’t help but giggle as Ryland drops down and pulls me into his lap, even if part of me still thinks this is all some twisted game, even if part of me is still living in a world of stabbing fear.

I slide from his lap onto the cushion, keeping my legs draped over his, my hand gripping his shoulder as though his presence can steady the past.

“Tell me,” he says.

I sigh, letting go of his shoulder and interlocking my fingers. I can feel the pressure building up inside of me, but not the same sort that built within me in the library. This is like steam rising inside a pot, knocking against the lid, and I’m afraid the explosion is going to send him running away from me as fast as he can.

“You probably noticed that my mom is pretty old,” I murmur. “She turned sixty-one this year. Anyway, when I was a kid, I never knew my dad. Mom always just said he didn’t want to be a father, and she’d never give me any more information when I asked.”

If he spoke, he might break the spell of this confession. But he just gazes at me patiently, waiting for me to speak, his expression calm and accepting.

“When I was older – maybe thirteen – she finally told me the truth. And it shattered me, Ryland. It made it so I could never trust anybody ever again. It made it so I had to question everybody I met, all the damn time. Because if I didn’t, then maybe they’d be doing the same to me.”

“What did he do?” Ryland asks, a growl forming beneath his voice.

I was wrong before.

I thought speaking would break the spell.

But when I hear the protective vibrations in the tone of his voice, I know that he’ll do anything to make me feel safe again.

I think that’s what I hear, anyway, but how can I ever be sure?

Can one person ever really know another?

The question should be absurd when I’ve known this man for less than twenty-four hours.

“Rosie,” he growls, pulling me from my thoughts.

“He tricked her,” I say. “She was forty-one when they met and he was twenty-three. They met at a club and they hit it off. Mom thought she was a little old for him, but, hey, he didn’t seem to mind. They went home and they—Well, there’s no need to go into that, is there? He left the morning after and that was the end of it.

“But when she found out she was pregnant, Mom found him through a mutual friend. And he laughed, Ryland. He laughed in her face. He’d only gotten with her for a bet. He wasn’t actually attracted to her. He’d made her fucking pregnant for a