What You Decided for Me

On Sunday, Adrian arrived with Titan in the back seat and a bakery box on his lap.

“He refused breakfast,” he explained.

Clara opened the car door and received an enormous head against her stomach.

“So you solved that by buying me croissants?”

“I was hungry.”

They spent the afternoon at the house. She helped him make a sauce he refused to call a recipe, although he had very strict opinions about when each ingredient should be added.

She tasted it from the spoon he held.

“It's good.”

“Just good?”

“If I praise you too much, you'll become impossible.”

He caught her around the waist when she tried to reach another piece of bread. The kiss began with the taste of tomato and ended with Clara against the counter, laughing because Titan had shoved his nose between them.

Over the next two weeks, there were other afternoons. A trip to the movies interrupted by Adrian's phone before they even bought popcorn. A dinner he arrived late for, followed by her complaint, which he managed to hear without arguing. Messages she read in patients' elevators and answered while smiling at her screen.

There was also a night she chose to stay.

Adrian paused outside his bedroom, still holding her hand.

“I can call a car if you'd rather go home.”

She kissed him before answering.

“I'd rather go in.”

Later, lying against his chest, she learned the sound of his laughter when Titan scratched at the door at two in the morning. Adrian let him in, and the dog settled on the rug with a scandalized sigh.

She began leaving a charger in a drawer. He learned that she liked her coffee strong but never after four. Small things found their places without either of them announcing every change.

Perhaps that was why the call from the agency was so difficult to understand.

Clara was leaving a patient's apartment when her supervisor told her the next two weeks of her schedule had been suspended.

“What do you mean, suspended? I have confirmed visits.”

“The Castellano account requested temporary exclusivity and covered the hours. Administration understood that you'd already agreed.”

Clara stopped in the hallway, her bag slipping from her shoulder.

“I haven't agreed to anything. My contract there ended.”

Silence on the other end.

“I'll find out what happened.”

“Find out who authorized reassigning my patients without speaking to me, too.”

In the car to the estate, Clara tried calling Adrian. He answered on her third attempt.

“I want to talk to you,” she said.

“Marcus is sending someone to pick you up.”

“I'm already on my way.”

“Clara, where are you?”

She gave the driver the address and told Adrian she'd be there in twenty minutes.

She found him in his office. He came toward her, but the kiss he intended to greet her with stopped when he saw her expression.

“My agency says you bought two weeks of my time.”

His face closed.

“That isn't how it was presented.”

“But is that what happened?”

“I asked them to reserve your schedule. Your income is covered.”

She dropped her bag on a chair.

“I didn't ask about my income. Why did you do it?”

He ran his tongue along his teeth, a gesture she'd begun to recognize when he was containing his irritation.

“We received information concerning your safety. I want you here until it's handled.”

“What information?”

“Someone was looking into your hours.”

The chill that went through her didn't lessen her anger.

“And you decided I didn't need to know?”

“I was going to tell you today.”

“After everything had already been decided.”

He opened a folder and took out a photograph. Clara saw herself leaving the building where she'd worked on Tuesday, her hair tied back and a bag of groceries for her patient in her hand.

The picture had been taken from across the street.

She pulled out the chair and sat because the floor seemed to move away.

Adrian came closer.

“That's why I needed to get you off the street.”

She studied the image again. Then she noticed the page still inside the folder: her full name, her address, places she'd worked.

“What's that?”

He glanced at it.

“A background check. It was done before your contract started.”

“And you kept it.”

“We keep records on the professionals who come into the house.”

She drew the page out far enough to see her mother's name.

“Was this necessary for me to take your blood pressure?”

He didn't answer immediately.

The photograph and the report lay side by side. Clara couldn't stop looking at both, although they'd come from different people for different reasons.

“I knew there'd be a professional screening,” she said. “I didn't know you had a summary of my life in a drawer.”

“I haven't used it against you.”

“You're deciding what I can do based on information you don't even share with me.”

His voice hardened.

“I won't apologize for wanting you alive.”

Heat rushed into her face.

“Then apologize for the rest of it.”

Titan rose at the change in their voices. He approached her, and she rested a hand on his neck without realizing it.

Adrian looked at the gesture. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, but no softer.

“You saw what they did to my house. You know what they tried to do in that room. Do you think I'm going to receive that photograph and simply wait?”

“I think you should have called me. I would have listened.”

She stood, still holding the picture.

“I trusted you enough to go into your room. To sleep with you. Not to let you call my employer and rearrange my life.”

The words hit him. She saw it in the way he withdrew the hand he'd been about to offer.

Clara picked up her bag.

“I'm going to speak to my agency. Then I want Marcus to explain the actual risk without leaving anything out. But I'm not staying here tonight.”

Adrian stood between the desk and the door, motionless.

For a moment, she was afraid he'd give another order. She didn't know what she would do if he did.

He stepped aside.

“Let Marcus take you home. Please.”

The request, late and difficult, almost undid her. It didn't erase what had happened.

“All right.”

At the entrance, Titan tried to follow. His nails clicked on the marble. Clara stopped, her throat tight.

Adrian called him once. The dog hesitated before going back.

She left without looking around again. If she saw them standing there, she might mistake wanting to stay for a reason to accept everything.