CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Rule No. 5: Never underestimate me. And I promise I’ll never underestimate you.
Someone once told me that a habit is formed after repeating the same activity every day for twenty-one days. I’d often questioned that small amount of time, often believed that a habit takes much longer to acquire. The body and the mind can’t possibly be so malleable that twenty-one days can change a person, that twenty-one days are all that’s needed to alter a behavior or mindset that may have been normal for years or an entire lifetime.
However, while standing at the glass doors on the first floor of a building I’d learned today is owned by Donovan Stone, I found myself pausing with my fingers gripping the handle, my lungs drawing in air in preparation for flight, my legs and feet set in such a position that when I found the strength to push the door wide open, I would be ready to run, to sprint, to move as quickly as I could possibly manage in low heeled shoes between the building and my car.
It didn’t matter that I hadn’t heard from my stalker since going to the police, I still ran as if being chased every day while coming to work or going home. I still ignored the people on the sidewalk who watched me with confused interest as I navigated the crowds to keep from being easily followed.
Twenty-one days. That’s all it took for me to conform to a life of being stalked. Twenty-one days and I had slipped into a habit of running when nobody was actually chasing me.
I knew that now, and so on this day I opened the door that led to a misty, rain soaked sidewalk. I grit my teeth and clenched the straps of my purse to walk calmly from the building to my car. As soon as I was free of the building, panic settled within my stomach. A heavy weight, it whispered up my nerves to convince my brain that there was a reason to run. But this time, my brain whispered back and told that panic to step aside. It reminded every tense muscle inside me that I had been played by an enigmatic man that had never spoken a word to me since the moment I met him.
Maybe twenty-one days isn’t the magical number after all, because when my anger blossomed again, the heat of it drove off the panic, smothering it and squelching it until I could roll my shoulders back with pride and not give a damn about the man watching me from the shadows.
I knew his name now. I knew his face. And I refused to let him toy with me any longer.
What I didn’t know was why.
Why would a man like Donovan Stone take the time, expend the energy, or even have an interest in running a woman he hardly knew through a twisted and aggravating game?
The walk to my car took little time, my heels clicking over the concrete with a rhythmic beat, unhurried, without fear, but with fortitude I’d not known before meeting Donovan. Perhaps in the twenty-one days it had taken me to become the target Donovan had made me, I’d also become something more.
I was a woman who was no longer afraid to stand up against a bully. I was a woman who could reveal her secrets without shame for having carried them. I was a woman who no longer feared the criticism of those around her, the people who watched with sardonic smirks in hopes that she would fail.
In twenty-one days, I’d changed in ways that stripped me of the self-imposed cage, and freed me to become a force of nature.
Arriving home, I didn’t bother to lock up behind me, trapping myself inside while cutting myself off from the world. I was tired of peeking out windows and covering mirrors, tired of always fearing who would be staring back at me from the shadows. Perhaps the anger is what helped alleviate the fear, and maybe if I’d allowed myself to be angry at my father so many years ago, I wouldn’t have grown into a woman who sheltered herself from the world. But whereas my father had been open and honest about his abuse and criticism, Donovan had been sly and quiet, a man holding the puppet strings of a woman who had no clue they’d been tied to her the entire time. I had every intention to cut those strings, and in doing so, I planned to attach strings of my own, to teach the puppet master what happens when the puppet learns she’s just a toy.
A smile stretched my lips, the corners curling with the fury bubbling to the surface of my thoughts. No longer concerned with losing my job or getting dragged off by a stranger, I stepped away from my unlocked door, set my keys, purse and phone on the counter and leisurely strolled down the hall to grab a shower and wrap myself in the comfort of my warm, ratty robe.
After making a hot cup of tea, I sat at the stools next to the kitchen counter and toyed with my phone, scrolling through the nefarious messages left by who I once thought was a stranger.
In truth, Donovan was still a stranger. I didn’t know more about him other than the business he owned and the tragedy of his past, but he was no longer a faceless stranger, which made him less of a threat and more of a beguiling nuisance.
For as much as I wanted to hate him for this, I couldn’t get past the way the thought of him tugged at my heart. I couldn’t let go of the feelings I’d carried for him - another habit, another way of life that had developed so easily in a little over twenty-one days.
Frustrated by how easily love and hate blended together, I battled yet again to override common sense. A smart woman would have turned off her phone, spent her time watching television or reading a book, or gone to the local library to use their computers to apply for a new job. But as was typical of me when it came to Donovan, I wasn’t a smart woman; I was still a woman very much infatuated with a man whose touch radiated heat over a love starved body and whose complications and restrictions mirrored her own.
Damn him and the horse he rode in on. My fingers flew over the screen of my phone while I made a decision that a game wasn’t played well unless there were two equal players.
Did it make me equal now that I knew who I was playing against? I wasn’t sure, but I was determined to find out.
Where have you been for the past few weeks? It can’t be very entertaining for the audience if you’ve given up already.
I’m not sure what I expected. Okay, that’s not true, I fully expected the gorgeous bastard to message me back immediately with some snarky comment that was semi-threatening, but not enough to be a true threat. Instead, I got nothing. An empty screen, a series of messages that had died off with my one lonely message flashing up at me from my screen. I sat in wait while drinking my tea, and I hate to admit it, but the lack of response withered my shoulders.
Had that been excitement I felt now that I had a good idea of who was stalking me? Excitement. For a man that was playing games. For a man that had walked away from me twice now after showing me that I affected him as much as he affected me.
Something had to be wrong with me to want him despite what I now knew. But it was undeniable. The want. The longing. The thoughts that were constantly spinning inside my head, begging for an outlet.
My tea cup ran dry as I waited, as dry as the excitement that had slowly leached out of me with every sip, as dry as the apprehension I felt for finally deciding to play this bullshit game.
Sliding from my seat, I padded barefoot into the living room and flopped down on the couch. It was too early to go to bed, and I wasn’t hungry enough to run out and grab food. Setting the phone down on the table, I pondered whether I should tell Rachel what I’d discovered, but then decided against it because she would not only demand I return to her place to spend the night, but she would also demand I take the information to the police as well as quit my job.
Wanting to understand more about the game and the man who was running it, I hurried to the kitchen and pulled the record from my purse. Carrying it back to the couch, I carefully unfolded it, smoothed out the wrinkles and studied the payments made to predators and prey. Not recognizing any of the names of the players, I looked over the types of games that had been played. None of them were dark room fantasies.
Without more information it was impossible to understand what could be gleaned from this one piece of paper, but the frustration didn’t last long. After an hour of studying names, audience counts, game types and amounts paid, my phone beeped from the surface of the table, a message flashing up at me from a man I was desperate to figure out.
You broke the rules, Mia. You’ve broken all of them. Regardless of my warnings.
Rules Schmules...I wasn’t too concerned about the ridiculous limitations he was using to corner me. I’d make my own rules, and he could choose to play by them.
You broke the rules, too, I answered, and I’m tired of rules, so I refuse to keep playing this game the way you want to play it. You want to scare me? Good luck. I’m not frightened of a man who’s too afraid to show his own face.
Nodding my head once in emphasis of my taunt, I wished he could see the determination in my expression. But if this had to be played out over phone messages and behind closed doors, then I would figure out how to drag him from those shadows into the light. Maybe this was what he meant when he told me we couldn’t be together in a normal way. Maybe Donovan was more screwed up than a man who refused to speak. Maybe he was a man plagued by tragedy so thoroughly that he couldn’t bear to move on in a way that could be openly seen.
I couldn’t reach him as a normal woman does a man, so I was willing to try another way, regardless of how abnormal it was.
As I waited for his response, a thought occurred to me: I hadn’t been assigned to some random predator in this game. Donovan Stone had kept me for himself. And given the timing of when I’d signed up and when we’d first met, it was safe to assume that he’d wanted me since the interview in his office, since the day he’d sent me off and then dragged me back in with two emails that had arrived at the same time.
I had to be stupid to have not noticed the coincidence, to have not questioned the timing of everything that had occurred.
I wouldn’t be stupid any longer.
You act like you know who I am. And yet, knowing that, and knowing what you’ve done to me, you act like you’re safe. I’m not done playing with you just yet, little girl. I haven’t even begun to show you what I’m capable of.
Oh, I knew very well what Donovan was capable of. I’d felt it the night we danced. I’d understood it when he’d offered me revenge against Clayton on a silver platter. I fell victim to it when he settled me on the edge of his desk and showed me what his tongue and hands could make me feel. I’d become addicted when my body responded to his scent, his stare, his touch...to him.
Little girl. Ha! I’d show him little girl. I hadn’t been little since the day I was forced to grow up by the cutting words and angry, bruising hands of my father. And now that I’d learned to step out of my shell and make my demands, I was dead set in my focus to pull Donovan from his.
Then come and get me. I’m not scared. The question is: Are you?
He didn’t respond. Not that I expected him to. I’d just smacked the ball directly into his court, and I was ready for whatever he wanted to do with it.