3.
REDEK
Redek hid in his room for the rest of the day, hating that he felt guilty. She obviously wanted to talk to him, and he had to hold his tongue to stop himself from replying. Normally he was employed by the same person he was guarding. They either wanted to talk to him or they didn't, and he could follow their lead. Here he had to follow Damien's rules.
He would have loosened up a little bit, but the cameras put him on edge. It really was a prison. A prison where if he slipped up just a little his entire career would be gone. Damien might put himself across as a slightly ditzy, well-meaning guy, but Redek hadn't bought it.
He judged him as the kind of man who would be more than happy to ruin someone's career at the drop of a hat just because someone had offended him.
Redek didn't want to be put in that position.
So he didn't reemerge from his room until the next morning when he'd eaten all the food he had left from his trip to the compound—he liked Maddie's word for his new home far more than Damien's label of an estate—and his stomach was rumbling. The smell of cooking invaded his room, and he couldn't resist any longer.
Maddie was standing at the stove when he entered the kitchen, wearing the same pajamas and frying something. It looked suspiciously like bacon, and his stomach growled appreciatively. "Good morning," he said.
She jumped, but grinned at him. The disappointment in her from last night had disappeared and she looked energized again. "Good morning. I take it you're hungry."
"Starving."
"Good. Then you can see whether I'm going to be good enough for you, or if you want to start sending up to the house for rations."
He gave her a tiny smile, and took a seat at the table, very aware of the camera in the top right-hand corner of the room. He kept his gaze squarely away from her ass.
He’d had to resist glaring at the camera the night before when images of that ass plagued his mind and he couldn’t even take his hand to his cock from the comfort of his bed to get rid of them.
"It smells good," he offered.
She poured him a glass of juice and he took it gratefully. He wasn't used to this. It felt strange being looked after by his host. It was supposed to be the other way around.
"Sleep well?" she asked, looking over her shoulder, then swearing when a splatter of grease hit her on the arm.
It was on his lips to lie, but he said honestly, "Not great. It's always strange getting used to a new bed."
"I've never really had to get used to a new bed. I’ve had a few new mattresses over the years, I suppose. I don't remember anything before the attack and my move here. Damien thinks the accident must have caused amnesia. I was six, so I should have memories. But, yeah, I've always lived here. Even when I first moved here I lived in this house, I just had a full-time nanny back then. Now you're my full-time nanny, I suppose."
"Only you're the one feeding me."
She laughed. "True. Maybe I've come full circle."
She plated up the kind-of bacon and some bread that was more yellow than he'd ever seen before. "Thanks."
"Wait, wait," she said, batting his knife and fork away from where he was about to dig in. "Sauces? It'll be dry otherwise."
She placed three bottles on the table, and he picked the red one at random, dousing his plate in it. "I hope that wasn't chile."
She chuckled. "You're safe. It's tomato."
She sat opposite and watched him eat. He wanted to squirm in his chair like a teenager under scrutiny. "Did you have plans today?" he asked.
"Not really. I have some work to do. I thought I might go for a walk around the grounds. I can show you around. It gets stuffy being stuck in the house for hours, and the grounds go on forever."
"Sure." He had no choice. If she left the house then he had an obligation to go with her, but he liked the idea of getting to see more of the grounds.
Redek finished his meal first, and took his plate to the sink to wash it, grabbing the frying pan from the stove, too.
"You don't have to do that," she said hurriedly. "I don't mind. I have a dishwasher, too."
"I assume you mean the device, not a person," he joked, scrubbing the frying pan in the sink regardless.
"Really, you don't need to."
"I don't mind. You don't have enough pans to start the dishwasher for."
"Oh. Well. Thank you." Her smile was endearing and shy. He didn't think washing the dishes was that much of a big deal, but Maddie looked like he’d just offered to take a mortal wound on her behalf. "Okay, well, I'm going to go and get dressed. Then we can go for a walk?"
"I'll be down here."
After fetching his knife belt to sling over his shoulder and holstering a pistol, he sat on the couch and waited, surprised at how excited he was to get out of the house. To get away from the cameras.
He told himself it was the principle of being watched all the time, not because it would mean he could talk to Maddie more naturally.
She came downstairs in a floor-length sundress and sandals, hair still tucked behind her ears. He kept his gaze firmly averted from the dangerously low V-neck. "Ready?"
"Let's go."
"Wow. That's a lot of weapons," she said, eying the dozen or so knives he had resting against his chest. "Do you go everywhere armed?"
"It's my job."
"It's really unlikely anything will happen here."
"You can never be too sure."
"You'll loosen up after a few weeks."
When they'd walked for fifteen minutes into the woods, he finally asked, "What's with the cameras?"
Maddie wrinkled her nose. "It's Damien, he's paranoid. He's always worried that someone is going to break into my house and steal me away."
"Couldn't he just have cameras on the outside of the house for that?"
"Yeah. I suppose he could."
He wanted to tell her how wrong it was, that he thought it was incredibly creepy that Damien had cameras pointed on his attractive young ward all day, but he worried he'd revealed his opinion too much already through his tone. It wasn't his place to say it. "I don't know how you can get used to it," he said eventually. "Being watched. It puts me on edge. It's going to make me paranoid."
She chuckled. "You get used to it. And you learn the blind spots. And... I have other tricks up my sleeve."
"Other tricks?"
She looked at him and assessed his face for a few long moments, as though deciding his intentions. "I'm a tech whiz," she said simply. "I can hack into the feed and manipulate the images it sends him. Rerun old footage. I could do it all the time if I wanted to, but it's not worth the risk.”
He couldn’t believe she was telling him this. He was employed by the man she was tricking and she was telling him something this important to her. A pit settled in his stomach as he listened. He didn’t think he’d ever been told something this valuable. It was like she was sharing one of her most intimate secrets, trusting that he wouldn’t spill it even though ethically, it should have been the first thing he did.
“Sometimes I just do it at night, though, and do stupid stuff like play karaoke in my bedroom or try on all the pretty clothes I buy and never have anywhere to wear them. Just things I'd be embarrassed to do if someone was watching. It's liberating having a few hours to do whatever you want when you feel under a microscope all the time."
He watched her with a lump in his throat. "I don't know how you cope," he said, turning his head away. It was more emotion than he could handle, just watching her eyes dance and water at the same time. She was overwhelming.
"Damien saved my life. I'd be dead right now if he hadn't taken care of me. If this makes him feel better, then I can live with it."
"Why did he save your life?" He scratched the back of his neck. "Sorry, that sounds appalling. I just mean, how did he know you to take you in?"
"He was friends with my parents. It was just a stroke of luck that he had the resources to keep me safe."
Redek nodded, shutting himself back off a bit. He was being too opinionated, sucked in because he'd never been around someone like Maddie before; sucked in because it was such a strange situation and it was impossible not to both be curious and opinionated.
He was surprised at how vehemently he was on her side, though. He was already considering how hard it would be to get her out of there—even just for a day, even just to see the planet she lived on from the stars. It was madness. She was his charge, and he wasn’t working for her, but the thoughts still raced through his mind. He wondered if she’d done something to his food. She shouldn’t be having this much of an effect on him.
Maddie perked up, increasing her pace. "Hey, we're nearly there," she said. "There's a wall up ahead. It's the original wall that was surrounding the compound. There was an attack and that's why Damien had the big electrified fence put in."
Redek followed close behind her, impressed by the stone wall that she’d brought him to. It wasn't that high—six foot or thereabouts—and he could see over it. What impressed him was the craftsmanship. It was made from uneven blocks of stone, and yet it stayed together with no cement or joining agent. And it was long enough to run the perimeter of the compound.
"This is impressive," he agreed, running his finger along the top of it.
Maddie was standing on her tiptoes, trying to look over. "I like it here. It's like some hidden treasure compared to the manor. Damien's family flattened the original manor and rebuilt it over a hundred years ago."
"That's a shame." He imagined it would have been beautiful. He pushed himself up so he was sitting on the wall, and looked down at a pouting Maddie.
"I've never been able see over it for more than a few seconds when I jump," she complained. "Or from my window."
Redek slid back down and hesitated. "I can give you a boost," he offered.
She beamed. "Yes, please."
For a second he almost went to her hips to lift her up. He caught himself, though, and bent down, lacing his fingers together so she could stand on them and lift herself up.
She looked slightly disappointed, but that quickly disappeared as she stood on his hands and he lifted her up so she could scramble onto the top of the thick wall. "Thanks."
He jumped back up, too, and sat beside her. They looked out through the trees together. "So if this was the old perimeter, how come the fence is so much further out?" he asked.
"Their family has been purchasing more and more land since they first bought the manor. Whenever some has come up for sale, they've snatched it up. It's the same across the planet. It doesn't all join up, but they own nearly eighty percent of the land on this planet, now. They're far more powerful than the government. He's taken over."
For the first time, he struggled to read her tone. He couldn't figure out whether she was proud, angry or frightened by the idea. Maybe a bit of all three.
"I see," he said, trying to keep some semblance of professionalism going. He'd been talking to her all day without thinking first.
It was because she was so different, he decided. He’d been doing this for fifteen years now, and he’d gotten used to a certain type of client. Businessmen who wanted someone to be seen and not heard. Maddie didn’t feel like a client, and it was throwing him for a loop.
He kept staring through the trees, watching birds hop from branch to branch, and trying desperately to ignore her intent gaze on his face.
"I can't read you," she said eventually. "I mean, admittedly, I don't get a lot of interaction to practice reading people's faces and voices, but I've watched a lot of movies, and I just, I have no idea what you're thinking."
He met her gaze, his face a mask, and was glad he'd managed to hide the barrage of thoughts he'd been facing since first laying eyes on Maddie. "I've had a lot of training to hide my emotions. When I work on other jobs, I'm supposed to fade into the background. I'm like a shadow. Say I'm guarding a politician and I sit in on a meeting, if I was showing what I was thinking and it contradicted the person I was guarding, it would be humiliating to them. It's something I had to spend a lot of time learning."
Maddie considered this. "And now you do it all the time?"
He opened his mouth and then closed it again. "I suppose I do. I'm working most of the time."
"You have some days off on this job. What will you do with them?"
"I haven't really thought about it."
"What did you do on your last day off?"
His eyebrows furrowed. It had been a long time since his last day off. He'd been working high-octane job after high-octane job, hopping from one severely at-risk charge to another, never stopping to take time for himself. What was the point when you had no one to spend your day off with? If he was working, he had purpose.
"It depends where I am," he said eventually. "I know a lot of people on a lot of planets. If I'm nearby then I'll go and get a drink with someone. Or I just relax, I guess. Go for a walk. Explore somewhere new. Read a book."
"But you don't have anyone, I mean, romantically?"
He finally looked away, disconcerted at how long he'd just been gazing at her. It was too intimate. "No. I don't."
"I bet I'm like an open book, huh?" she said after a beat of silence.
He raised a brow. "How do you mean?"
"With my face, and my voice. I don't speak to people in person very often, I must be so obvious."
"It's not a bad thing."
"How?"
"Because you're honest."
"You really think so?"
"I think it's refreshing."
"Thank you." She smiled sweetly at him, and he looked away, face falling. He was doing it again, being sucked in.
When she rested a small, hot hand on his arm, he almost flinched. "Why do you keep doing that?" she asked. "You keep shutting down completely."
"I'm here to do my job. Not be your friend," he said eventually.
Her face fell completely. "Oh. I see."
"It was Damien's rule." It was completely unprofessional to tell her that, but the thought of her losing the respect she clearly felt toward him was a punch to the gut. "There are cameras everywhere, and he has the power to ruin my life."
Her shoulders sagged, and she still didn’t remove her hand from his forearm. It was burning a hole there, and yet he didn’t move away, either. "I don't understand why he'd do that."
"I don't know, either. I shouldn't have told you."
"No, I'm glad you did."
"That doesn't mean I should. I'm sorry it has to be that way, but I can't risk my job. I hope you understand."
"I don't understand why," she spat, knuckles turning white as though she was trying to dig her fingers into the stone. "Why can I not have one friend? Why would that be so bad?"
Redek wanted to tell her that he thought Damien was just worried about her getting hurt, but he didn't, because he didn't believe that. He was suspicious of Damien. He didn't understand anything the man had done, and he hadn't been fooled by the man's persona, either.
He didn't trust Damien at all, and as much as he hoped he was wrong, he didn't understand his motives toward Maddie, either.
"We should head back, or keep walking," he said, hoping to move the conversation on. He was worried she was going to scrape her fingertips raw if she didn't calm down.
"Fine. You're right. I'd stay out here forever if I could, away from those cameras. It's almost like you can trick yourself that you're not on the grounds when you can't see the fence or the manor house."
"You've never left at all?"
"Not once."
Redek frowned. Surely it wasn't that much of a risk. Surely Damien could have found the people who killed her parents and put an end to the threats with all the resources he had. He could have hired an entire army for a day to protect her just so she could see some of what the universe had to offer.