The ceiling was high and she wasn’t quite tall enough to touch it, but on closer inspection, the dark circle did indeed, look very much like a camera.
Shock pulsed through her and, hard on its heels, anger.
What the hell was a camera doing in her room? And who had put it there and why?
You know who.
Her jaw hardened and she turned, jumping off the coffee table and striding into the bedroom. A quick search of the ceiling there revealed another fire alarm and another tell-tale black circle of a camera lens.
So he was watching her here as well.
Anger tightened inside her, red hot and intense.
She whirled around and stormed into the bathroom, not knowing what she’d do if she found one in there but knowing she had to search for one anyway. Luckily, the fire alarm there seemed to be a normal one, but, really, how would she know? Perhaps he had a camera put there somewhere else?
Phoebe strode out of her suite, heading toward the stairs that led to Nero’s office, anger burning hot inside her. First of all, there was the sheer invasion of her privacy factor, and second, that they’d shared some intimate moments together and yet he hadn’t seen fit to mention that he’d had cameras installed in her rooms made her furious.
God, did he watch her through those cameras? How often? And why? Was he watching her right now?
As she stormed down the stairs, she glanced up at the ceiling, spotting another suspicious-looking fire alarm. Then another as she went down the hallway toward his office. Bloody hell, did he have them everywhere? Through the entire house? Had he been watching her this entire time?
Her entire face went hot at the thought, not that she’d done anything incriminating or extremely embarrassing, but at the indignity of not knowing she’d been watched by someone. By him.
Her palm itched. She’d hit him once before, down in the gym, and right now, she’d love to take another swing.
His office door was closed, but this time she didn’t bother to knock. She threw it open with enough force that it bounced off the wall, and strode through, only to find that the office was empty.
Damn. Where was the bloody man?
In no mood to go searching for him, she reached into her jacket pocket for her phone, intending to text him, and then frowned, her attention catching on the door behind the great monolith of a desk. She’d never paid much attention to that door. She’d seen him come out of it more than a few times and had always assumed it led to a private bathroom or something. Maybe it actually did. In which case, to hell with it. If he was in there, she was going to find him.
She headed straight toward the desk, skirting around it, and reaching out to put her hand on the door handle. Only to have it turn beneath her palm and the door start to open right in front of her, Nero stepping out from behind it.
Startled, she glanced up at him, meeting his dark eyes.
And in that moment the doubt she’d had that perhaps the cameras hadn’t been his doing after all, died. He didn’t look at all surprised to see her. Which meant he was expecting her. He’d known she was coming, because he’d been watching her through those cameras.
Anger flared inside her.
“You put a camera in my room,” she said flatly, not making it a question.
His big body filled the doorway, very obviously trying to block whatever was in that room from her, a strange expression in his eyes. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“Oh yes, you bloody do!” She angled her head, trying to see past his shoulders into the room behind him. It appeared to be bigger than the bathroom she’d assumed it was. “Why, Nero? You’ve got cameras all over the house! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
He shifted in front of her, scowling, that sharp-edged look glittering in his eyes. “Go back upstairs. I’ll talk to you about it then.”
“No.” She craned to see over his shoulder. “We’ll talk about it now.”
“Phoebe—”
But she could see something, a flash on the wall, like a flicker from a TV screen. What was he doing in there?
“Are you filming me?” she demanded.
One massive shoulder blocked her view again. “It’s nothing,” he growled, glaring at her.
But she ignored him. “It’s something.” She raised one hand and shoved so that he was pushed to one side. Then she slipped right past him and into the room.
And froze.
Right in front of her, above a huge black desk, was a wall of computer monitors. They were displaying different things, CNN, a news website, a camera feed from Times Square and one from Central Park. A stock ticker moved across the bottom of one screen, while some kind of space movie was playing on another. A third screen displayed the face of an oddly familiar woman.
The middle three screens showed scenes from inside the house. Her sitting room. Her bedroom. And the last one was displaying his office, with Nero’s powerful back to the camera.
Against one wall was a couch with a blanket thrown haphazardly over it, the cushions dented as if a massive body had lain on them many, many times.
She blinked at the wall of screens, at the couch, her anger gradually being replaced by shock. And also, unexpectedly, a kind of pity. Because she got it. Despite the egregious invasion of privacy, she understood.
This was his window onto the world.
A world that for some reason, he chose not to be part of.
She took a breath. This was something she couldn’t ignore and she couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened. The moment she’d been trying to avoid was here.
She was going to have to talk to him.
Slowly, Phoebe turned around.
Nero was standing in the doorway watching her, fury in his dark eyes. His massive, muscled body braced as if he was expecting a blow.
So she gave it to him. “Nero. Explain.”
* * *
Nero met that steady, golden-brown gaze, every muscle in his body drawn tight with rage. He felt like she’d kicked aside his ribs, baring his insides, and was now looking at them, studying them.
He didn’t want to tell her. He didn’t want to tell her anything. And he was pissed that she was here, that she’d just elbowed past him and now she was in the one place no one else but him had ever been in.
His safe room.
A part of him—the small, frightened boy he’d once been—hated her for that. For the invasion of his privacy, because he couldn’t bear to examine the reasons why she might be pissed with him. Or the fact that he was being a fucking hypocrite.
–He knew she had a right to be angry with him. He also knew that her feelings were important and that he couldn’t dismiss them. That they mattered, because she mattered.
He didn’t want her to matter, but she did. And he found he couldn’t do what he normally did, which was to lash out in defensive rage, even though every instinct in him was desperate to protect himself in any way he could.
She was always going to find out. She’s not stupid.
That thought didn’t help, even though he knew it for truth. In fact, he’d watched her in her sitting room just now—watching her had become an addiction he couldn’t seem to break—and had seen her frown and zero in on the camera. He had sat there, staring at the screen, unable to move as she’d dragged the coffee table over just beneath the fire alarm he’d had the cameras installed into. As she, got onto the table, and stared up at the camera, frowning.
He’d seen the moment she’d realized what it was, the bright flare of golden anger. Then, the realization of who had done it, too.
He could have gotten up then, and rushed to meet her, tell her some kind of lie, deny it. But all he’d done was sit there watching her, flicking from camera to camera as she’d come down the hallway and down the stairs, racing toward him, fury in her eyes.
You wanted her to find out.
Fuck, maybe he did. Maybe that’s why he’d done nothing to stop her. And maybe she was even owed an explanation. After all, she’d given up all her secrets to him as if he was more than just a scared animal hiding in its den.
Except he didn’t want to give her an explanation. He really didn’t want to.
All the anger had drained out of her expression, and he didn’t know why, because surely seeing the screens should have made her even angrier. But she wasn’t looking at him with fury now; it was something else. Something that made him turn away from her, heading over to the desk and the bank of screens, hitting a button that made them all go dead. Hiding them.
“Nero.” Her voice was soft, and there was a gentleness to it that felt sharper than anger. Sharper than a scalpel cut and a thousand times more painful. “What is all of this?”
He put his palms flat to the desk in front of him and leaned on them, staring down at the black wood. There was a beast inside of him, a beast that wanted to snarl at her, to swipe at her with its paws. Not to harm her, but maybe take her down on the floor, distract her from cutting into him. Use pleasure to take away that terrible look on her face, the one that made him want to howl. The one that reminded him of pity.
You can’t do that. You’re going to have to tell her.
Nero shut his eyes. He was making this into too big of a deal. “This is my control room,” he forced out. “I come here when I want news, stocks, weather, or any other information I might need. And yes, including security-camera feeds.”
There was a silence behind him.