Page 10 of Stolen By the Billionaire
Carefully, Sarah opened the door a crack.
Muffintop stalked in with her tail up, indignant at being shut out of a room and not rattled even though a stranger had broken into her house.
Sarah scooped Muffy into her arms, squeezing the cat until she squeaked. A terrible man like that, the kind of guy who broke into people’s homes and held knives at people’s throats, might have hurt a cat, but he hadn’t.
Her cat was okay, too.
She cried into her cat’s fur because she was alive, and Muffy was alive, and the world was a terrible place and she didn’t have anyone else to cry with.
Muffintop tolerated the emotion for a while but must have realized she was getting wet because she strained to escape, paws windmilling in the air.
Sarah set her cat on the floor, wiping the tears off her face.
Okay, being held at knifepoint had been terrible and she hadn’t gotten the thirty bucks for doing a tarot card reading, but she should check on Remi and the chickens in the garden. Her vegetables still needed watering from the ever-declining water level in the well.
The farm wouldn’t wait for her to recover from being emotional.
Sarah crept down the stairs, crouching to peek under the second-story floor at the empty living room.
Her maternal grandmother’s braided rag rug needed cleaning, and crumbs littered the coffee table in front of the couch where Sarah watched television while she’d eaten supper the night before. The homey scent of browned butter and the nose-tingling sulfur of the egg lingered in the air.
But everything was quiet.
Muffy walked in front of Sarah into the kitchen, her tail straight up and gently waving at the tip, a sign that nothing was wrong.
Sarah followed.
Her throat was dry.
She took a glass from the cabinet and ran water into it, drinking as she turned around.
The man with the knife was sitting at her kitchen table, looking at her.
Pale blue eyes interrupted the green grease paint smudged on his face. His gun and enormous knife weren’t anywhere to be seen.
He held both his hands up and open, palms facing her. “Sorry about that.”
5
Fifteen Grand
Sarah
Sarah’s fingers tightened on the chilly glass of water in her hand.
She should have gone straight to the gun safe before coming into the kitchen.
Now, even if she ran and managed to beat the man to it and then spun the dial in the three numbers of the combination before he caught up with her, the guns in the gun safe were unloaded.
An unloaded gun was just a funny-looking club.
The man stayed in his chair, but his eyes roamed her body with a calculated perusal, not anything hot. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
He had very dark hair, maybe even black, cut short in a military manner. Her friends who’d gone into the service after high school had called it high and tight. She hadn’t noticed that earlier.
She slammed the glass down on the tiled countertop with more authority than she’d meant to and yelled at him, “You said you were going to kill me! Get out of my kitchen!”
His broad shoulders rose, and he glanced down at her kitchen table, almost a sheepish shrug. “I wouldn’t have hurt you.”
