Kane (BBW Billionaire Romance) (4 page)

E
ntering
the stainless steel and marble kitchen the following morning to rinse out a bottle, Daniella found Kane standing in front of the stove, a muscle hugging sports shirt clinging to his torso and tucked into running pants. She’d had no trouble imagining the powerful body beneath his clothes in Friday’s expensive suit, but seeing him like this reminded her of a sleek panther waiting to pounce.

Thighs tensing, she tried to glue her attention to the bottle in her hand. Failing miserably, she caught the cold flick of his gaze in her direction.

“I cooked you some eggs.”

His tone, like the black ice of his eyes, sent a shiver down her spine.

He was still pissed, it seemed, that Reed had dropped her at the penthouse.

Kane turned, the spatula in his hand moving like an extension of his body. The overall effect gave the utensil a weapon-like appearance. He really did look like coiled menace most of the time, a fact that should have comforted her since he wanted to keep Christine safe. But Daniella felt like the energy of that menace was directed at her.

“You haven’t eaten yet,” he chided, his voice warming to a low growl that reminded her of how he had ordered Reed into the office last night.

“You must be hungry.”

Her lips pulled into a tight pinch.

Kane glanced at the bottle in her hand then turned back to the stove as he pointed out the obvious.

“You have to look after yourself if you intend to continue looking after Christine.”

Her mouth narrowed another inch. Yesterday he had called Christine “the kid” a number of times. Now she felt like he was using the baby’s name to manipulate her.

Without responding, she turned off the water and grabbed a paper towel to dry the bottle and its nipple. He was right that she needed to eat, but the last two months had taught her to keep a few energy bars in the diaper bag. Caring for such a young baby made the days longer and busier. And the hoops that children’s services made her jump through often stretched what should have been minutes into hours. At least, with the stash of energy bars, she didn’t need to take a meal with a man whose body language constantly communicated his disapproval of her.

Daniella had already lived that life as a child.

“Sit,” Kane ordered, nodding at one of the stools that lined her side of the island. He placed a plate loaded with eggs and fried tomatoes on the marble surface then slid it across. An equally large volume of food remained in the skillet.

With her stomach threatening to complain loudly and so much food potentially going to waste, she obeyed. She waited quietly while Kane filled two glasses with orange juice then grabbed eating utensils and his own plate of food. He sat down across from Daniella, handing her a fork and knife and nodding at the glass of juice.

Cutting the tomato slice into smaller pieces, she eyed Kane. He kept his attention focused exclusively on his plate, his fork and knife methodically attacking the heaping pile of eggs and tomato then feeding them into his stern mouth.

His closed expression turned her stomach oily. So did the fact that he wouldn’t look up from his food. She realized that, in preparing breakfast for her, Kane was merely attending to the social graces the situation called for, the same social graces that had sent her in search of Christine’s savior. Only Daniella had genuinely wanted to thank him for his role in Christine’s birth.

Forcing the fork up to her mouth, she took her first bite of the scrambled eggs. Kane was halfway through his plate and continuing to ignore that she was in the room.

“I don’t need you…” she hesitated, backed up and tried to rephrase her words more politely. “I don’t need your company or that federal contract you mentioned to shelter me and Christine. I’m putting the house up for sell and I can use my pension to give myself a loan.”

For a second, the only sign Kane had heard her was a light knitting of his brows as he shoveled another forkful of eggs into his mouth. Then he pointed the tines of the fork in her direction, his focus remaining on the plate.

“You won’t be able to sell the house if Merl’s buddies don’t want you to,” he countered. “They’ll park out front, litter the lawn, crap on the porch and generally harass the realtor at more than just your place. Your listing will get tossed like a hot grenade.”

“I understand it will take time,” Daniella answered, attempting to swallow a second small bite of the eggs despite her stomach’s sudden revolt. “That’s why I’m loaning myself enough for Christine and I to start someplace new.”

“No.” A scowl lit his face and he finally looked up to meet her gaze. Not a single line of his expression softened as he gestured at the room and the hall beyond.

“I know the furnishings are a little severe, but it’s temporary. Lindsey’s working on something more suitable and I can have her bring in some stuff to brighten the place up in the meantime—and get you a proper chair to use while giving Christine her bottle.”

Daniella shook her head.

“It’s not the decor that’s severe,” she bluntly stated. “It’s the company.”

His mouth opened, like maybe he was going to protest. She shook her head again.

“I grew up in a house where I wasn’t wanted. I know the signs even when someone’s trying to hide it,” she went on. “Not that you are trying to hide it.”

She pushed the plate away, its contents intact except for the two small bites.

“I’m sorry. I’m sure it tastes marvelous.” Standing, she moved toward the hallway. “I’ll contact Reed so I can retrieve my car.”

* * *

D
aniella’s leaving
wasn’t acceptable. It was foolish, dangerous, and ridiculous, Kane obsessed as he texted Reed and told the man to stall or find a way to convince the woman that she needed to remain under the company’s protection. When he was finished with the text, he cleaned up the kitchen then went to his office, closed the door and called Lindsey at home to make sure she was working on an acceptable safe house.

Yes, of course, no worries, just rounding up the leasing agents who actually get weekends off, any minute now…

Certain he heard a smirk in Lindsey’s voice as she offered him any number of assurances, Kane hung up and opened the office door. He tried working at his desk but his attention strained for any sound of movement down the hall. He didn’t think she had started packing yet. Not that she had a lot to pack based on his understanding.

She had left work Thursday with no overnight bag, just some dry cleaning she had picked up that morning. For the night at the hotel and the afternoon at the sitter’s, she had purchased essentials for the baby. Reed had seen to securing some additional items, but it didn’t amount to much more than a single suitcase and the diaper bag.

Given the look on her face when she had marched stiffly away from the kitchen island, she would probably insist on leaving behind anything she hadn’t purchased with her own money.

Sighing, he opened up the folder on Frank and Emily Marquardt, Daniella’s adoptive parents. The birth certificate was not a forgery, but a fraud by any definition. With the birth listed as a home delivery, the Marquardts must have gotten some local doctor to agree that it was in Daniella’s best interest not to know who her birth mother was or that she had been adopted.

Thinking back on what Daniella had said in the kitchen, Kane felt his balls draw tight.

…a house where I wasn’t wanted. I know the signs…

She was reading him wrong, but he couldn’t tell her that. He wanted her safe and would continue to personally oversee all operations to ensure her protection and that of the baby. He just didn’t want to be in the same building with her, not when he couldn’t figure out why being around her threw his brain and body into such a turmoil he had to shut down.

Hell, she wasn’t his type, not really. He paid for slimmer women. Bendy women he could mold into whatever position he wanted. If the response to Daniella were purely physical, he could put in a special request, get an agent to line up a curvier female. He could lock the office door and open up any number of websites that would show him pictures of women shaped like her, their pussies splayed open, fucking themselves or letting someone else fuck them. He could watch two Daniella-clones teasing one another, their plus-size bodies scissoring and sliding, skin shiny with sweat as they moaned their way toward climax.

But none of that was going to get the real Daniella out of his head, especially if she was still in his home.

Looking at the time on his laptop, he cursed softly. It was a little past two and Daniella hadn’t come out of the guest room since their failed breakfast together. She had formula in her bag for the baby and clean tap water from the bathroom, but she had to be ravenous.

Closing the folder on the Marquardts, he left the office and headed for the kitchen, where he made another attempt at feeding Daniella, stacking two tall sandwiches and cutting up some fresh fruit. Giving her no option of retreating, he loaded everything onto a rolling cart and knocked on the door of the guest room.

“Lunch,” he announced when she cracked the door open an inch.

She frowned at him, the expression tickling the back of his skull. He knew what he’d do to a sub in a playroom who looked at him like that. The lesson would slowly unfold. After the first hour of hovering on the precipice of a climax, Daniella would finally realize she was being disciplined.

The sub would realize, he mentally corrected. Not Daniella. He only worked with professionals and never the same one twice. He wasn’t going anywhere near the juncture of Daniella’s soft, plump thighs, not even if she wanted him to.

And she clearly didn’t want him to. The attraction was one way.

“Open the door,” he said, fighting to keep his tone neutral. Why was she even hesitating? It was just a damn sandwich and some fruit, not a snake or a dead rat.

She stepped back, drawing the door open. Kane rolled the cart over to the bed and sat down. There was space for her to sit on the bed a few feet away from him on the other end of the cart or she could us the office chair, directly opposite him with the cart between them. She chose the chair, her selection and its implicit rejection of him causing a new level of tightness in Kane’s chest.

Reminding himself he didn’t want Daniella sitting any closer, he moved a plate and one of the fruit cups toward her, refraining from touching his own food as he waited for her to take a bite. She did, her movements wooden, her gaze darting between the cart and the sleeping Christine, never at him.

He looked at the crib and realized he hadn’t seen the baby since the ambulance crew took her away. She had been squalling, covered in blood and some kind of placental or amniotic goo, and wrapped in his thousand dollar silk jacket.

Ignoring his sandwich, he walked over to the crib. Pushing away the sensation of Daniella’s gaze boring into him, he bent over the sleeping baby. Lynn and Daniella shared the same hair coloring, only the half-sister had bleached her long strands to a gaudy platinum. He brushed a thumb softly against the baby’s cheek, not wanting to wake her but hoping, at the same time, to see the color of her eyes. They had been that odd dark blue some infants are born with that darkens to brown over time. Not always, but for some babies.

Either way, he doubted they’d be gray. According to driving records, Lynn and Ronelle had hazel eyes. Daniella must have taken after her father in that respect, whoever the man was.

Turning back to the cart, Kane froze as a knock landed at the door. Christine woke. Daniella dropped her sandwich onto the plate and moved toward the crib, her gaze startled.

“I thought no one could reach this floor?”

“Reed has the code,” he explained. Overcoming the urge to reach out and give her arm a reassuring squeeze, he shoved his hands in his pocket. “And the people you’re worried about aren’t in the habit of knocking.”

Fishing his phone from his pocket, he turned the display on, navigated to the camera feed for the front door then showed her Reed mugging it up. She smiled and released an amused snort before bending down to lull the baby back to sleep.

“Be right back,” he assured her, wincing at the eager tone he could hear in his voice.

Not eager—necessary, he scolded as he headed down the hall. Lindsey hadn’t secured a safe house and Reed was here to break the news. In the meantime, if Kane didn’t want Daniella heading out on her own, he needed to make nice, try to socialize with her a little bit so she didn’t feel like she was imposing.

Opening the door, Kane felt his plans crash to the floor as he saw Reed holding a vase full of flowers.

“Hey, boss,” he said, wearing a broad grin as he swept inside the penthouse. “Where’s Dani?”

“Where you left her,” Kane answered, his lips almost sealed from the tight clamp of his jaws.

What was Reed doing calling her “Dani”? Had she told him to? Reed didn’t get chummy with females. Half the staff thought he had a boyfriend hidden away somewhere, the rest thought he was a monk on loan from the Vatican.

Hands bunching into fists, Kane shoved them in his pockets and followed his subordinate and friend of more than a decade down the hall to where Daniella waited with a genuine smile on her face. Seeing the flowers, her expression brightened a little more.