“Take off the mask, Sienna,” Lucas orders in a strange voice. A moment later, after I’ve slid the blindfold down so that it hangs around my neck like a supple cloth necklace, I raise my blue eyes up. He’s touching the base of his neck and his eyebrows are drawn together. When I stare into his hazel eyes, there’s something there that makes my belly twist into an even tighter knot:
Hunger.
†
The entire mood of the conversation with Lucas seems to shift after I realize he wants me at this very moment. “Sienna?” he whispers.
My eyes close and my back arches. “Yes . . . sir.”
“You have a license, right?”
“Why do you—”
“One word,” he says. “It’s a single word answer.”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now you won’t have to spend the rest of your day at the DMV. They’re a pain in the a.s.s.”
“Oh,” I say, opening my eyes. I push my hair back from my face with damp hands. I know there’s more that he wants to say to me. With my body still humming from the experience with the blindfold, now would probably be the best time for him to get it off his chest.
Instead, a few seconds later, Lucas sends me away.
I’ve done a lot of work—all through high school and college and my job with Tomas—and this is the first time my boss has actually uttered the words “You’re dismissed.”
“Dismissed?”
“Do I need to have you pull the blindfold back over your eyes? Leave.”
I’m shaken and suddenly a little lightheaded at the way his tone has hardened. Gone is the almost teasing voice he’d taken on while he was admonishing me over my lack of listening skills and drilling his schedule into my head. Now, he just sounds . . . like I’m the biggest nuisance he’s ever met.
“No sir, no blindfold,” I say, a sarcastic edge creeping its way into my voice as I stand up stiffly, and walk past him toward the French doors. When he shuffles his feet, clears his throat just slightly, I know he’s watching me leave.
He stops me before I step over the threshold, and into the sitting room outside the office. “Kylie’s left a list of her own for you in the smaller office on the bottom floor.”
I nod this time because there’s a ma.s.sive lump in my throat and I don’t think I could possibly call him sir again without my voice breaking apart and giving away my disappointment. Gripping the Best Buy bag, I clench my teeth and do as he’s asked. I don’t even know why I’m upset to begin with.
Grabbing my laptop from my bedroom, I take it along with the new phone and tablet Lucas has given me. I find the stairs that lead to the lower section of the house in the kitchen and head down there. It’s cooler in this part of the house, like purposely colder, and my ni**les harden under my thin cardigan.
This whole floor was probably a bas.e.m.e.nt at some point, but the contractor who did the conversion managed to make it look as elegant as the rest of the house. When I pa.s.s by a piano room, my letdown from the Lucas debacle momentarily disappears and I creep inside.
I was never the pianist my mom was—she had wanted to perform before she met and married my dad—but I had taken years of lessons. One of my few incredible memories of her was sitting at the Steinway my grandfather had bought for her when she was a kid. She had guided my fingers to the correct keys, teaching me to play some cheesy eighties song. Of course, twenty minutes later she was yelling at me for tapping a flat instead of a sharp, and my dad was forbidding she ever try to teach me anything ever again, but it was fun while it lasted.
I’m suddenly aware that I’m quietly playing that eighties song, and I drag my fingers from the keys. Rub my hands down the front of my black pants.
Leaving the piano room behind, I find the office Kylie’s been using. She’s left me a long list of things I should be aware of such as the email address and pa.s.sword for answering Lucas’s fan mail along with a credit card paper-clipped to a note that reads: Spend to your heart’s content!
But after I’ve collected Kylie’s folder, I find myself standing in the doorway to the piano room, staring inside. That Steinway piano that had belonged to my mom—it was one of the many things Gram sold to help pay for her legal fees.
CHAPTER TEN
Usually, driving is a therapeutic experience for me. I’ve never taken the Metro in Los Angeles because despite how long my daily commute is, it gives me time to gather my thoughts, flush out any anger from the day. Sometimes, it’s the one chance I have where I feel like I’m in complete control of my life.
Driving Lucas from point A to point B, though, is almost painful.
“Stop grinding your teeth, Sienna,” he says, his voice weaving from the third row—where he insisted on riding so that he could write music in “peace”—up to the driver’s seat to irritate me.
“It’s stop and go traffic. It’s nerve-wracking,” I hiss. Then, reluctantly, I add, “Mr. Wolfe.” I won’t mention that Kylie’s notes explicitly said that a car would be sent to take him to the photo shoot this afternoon. That I heard him cancelling said vehicle this morning while I was making myself a cup of coffee. Or that the only reason I personally think he’s having me escort him around is so that he can screw with my head.
Make me fail.
Tempt me.
I glance into the rearview mirror. My gaze locks with frustrated hazel eyes. “Just stop with the teeth,” he growls.
Before what? You discipline me? I take a breath, ready to verbalize the taunts, but then I decide better on it. Lucas is holding something important over my head. Plus, despite his promise not to touch me unless I ask, I know he doesn’t have to lay a hand on my body to punish me. He’s proven that to me more times than I’d like to remember. Wetting my lips, I tighten my grip on the steering wheel to stop my hands from shaking.