These Damn Suspicions Read Online Free

wouldn’t like it, Sir?”
    He gave my ass a quick, light spank. “You might regret saying that one of these days.”
    Damn. Looked like that had backfired. “Can I put everything involving food on my hard limits list now?”
    “No. Because I know they’re not hard limits, Little Miss Badass.” He tugged on a lock of my hair. “Now are you done being a brat for the night? I’m hungry and I’m guessing you’d rather have the taste of pizza in your mouth than fig.”
    “One more question, Sir.” I batted my eyelashes at him. “When do we get to the make-up sex?”
    Callum nipped my earlobe lightly. “We’ll get to that.”
     
    * * * *
     
    The following evening…
     
    I blinked through the car windshield at a suburban house that looked totally normal. “Where are we?”
    “Doesn’t matter.” Callum popped open his door and got out of the car. “Come on.”
    A little bewildered, I followed him up the drive and onto the front porch. For some reason, Callum had a key to this place. “Is this place yours?”
    “Nope. Elena’s parents own it.”
    I digested that for a moment. It might explain why Callum had brought Elena into his trailer that day I’d met her…
    “I’m just using it for my purposes today.” Callum took my hand. “Come on.”
    A little nervously, I followed him inside. The house looked like a rental property—nondescript décor and sparse furnishings, as far as I could tell from looking through open doorways. Callum didn’t stop, towing me towards the back of the house.
    “Why am I getting a weird ‘surprise birthday party’ feeling about this?” I asked, censoring myself before I could call him ‘Sir’. If there were other people here, I didn’t want to give them any cause to ask awkward questions.
    “Nope. I promise, there’s no one but us here.”
    The door to the back room of the house, adjacent to the kitchen, was closed. I glanced from it to Callum and back. “Are we going in there?”
    He nodded. “Go ahead.”
    I took a breath, pushed open the door…and stepped into a totally normal room, though this one had more furnishings than the others.
    As Callum shut the door behind us, I turned and waited for him to explain what we were doing here.
    He leaned against the door instead of coming into the room, his eyes on me. “There’s a gift somewhere here in this room for you, little miss. When I start the countdown on my phone app, you’ll have three minutes to find it.”
    I stared at him, uncomprehending for a moment. Then it slowly began to dawn on me. “You didn’t, Sir…”
    He grinned, and I knew I was right. He’d remembered a conversation we’d had over a year ago, when I was still living in New York, and he’d decided to make my dream come true.
     
    “My favourite project so far was a kids’ TV show based on one they made in England in the early nineties. The set guys built a cross-section of an entire house—four floors, from basement to attic. The challenge for the two teams of kids was to find one hidden object in each room, so they’d basically have to trash everything to find what they were looking for. Pull cushions off couches, bedding off beds, items out of drawers, off shelves…the whole thing. It was like decorating an entire house, only with a totally different theme for each room. And most of the drawers and cupboards were filled with these multi-coloured polystyrene packing chips.”
    “And these kids just got to trash the rooms without putting everything back afterwards? Sounds like something I’d have loved when I was a kid.”
    “Me too, and not just if I were a kid. First thing I’d do if I ever got to be megastar famous is buy a place, fill it with cheapo furniture and items, then completely wreck the interior. Then I’d hire a clean-up crew to get it all cleared up before I redecorated it the way I wanted it.”
     
    I eyed the cabinets and couch cushions with a new appreciation. It all looked neat and tidy at the moment, but