Loving The Temperamental Adonis
Chapter 130: The lady of the house

Chapter 130: The lady of the house

"I lied." He said so causally as he waited for her to climb down the car.

"You_you bastard, I believed you!" Mia cried, but she was lying, too. All day long she had been trying desperately to ignore what her common sense had warned her. She had a feeling that he had kept her with him this long to prevent her from telling the authorities where he was; if he released her now, there was absolutely nothing to prevent her from doing exactly that. She would gladly give his hideout away to the military.

"Mia," he said with strained patience, "don’t make this any harder on yourself than it needs to be. You’re stuck here for some days, and it’s not that bad of a place to spend some time, just think of it like a vacation. Besides, It’s the holidays and the place is beautiful."

Saying that he reached across her, snatched the keys out of the ignition, and walked off toward the house without waiting for her. He knew she had no place to run to unless she planned to freeze to death while trying to escape him.

For a split second Mia was too furious and too miserable to move, then she blinked back the tears of helplessness stinging her eyes and got out of the car. Shivering uncontrollably in the freezing blasts of wind, she followed in his wake, carefully placing her feet in the pit his feet made in the snow pile surrounding the lone mansion. She didn’t know for how long she would be suck here with him, but at this point, she was helpless and in the disadvantage.

She hoped Owen would be looking for her by now...

Wrapping her arms around herself, she watched Neil try to turn the doorknob of the house. But it was locked. He rattled it hard. It was locked tight. He let go of the door handle and stood there, his hands on his hips, looking around him, momentarily lost in thought.

Mia’s teeth began to chatter with her body shivering uncontrollably from the intense cold. "N-n-now wh-what?" she asked. "H-h-how do you in-intend to g-get in w-w-without a key?"

He gave her an ironic glance. "How do you think?" Without waiting for her to reply, he turned and headed toward the side of the building.

Like a little child, Mia trotted carefully at his heels, freezing and furious that he brought them here when he had no keys to open the mansion main entrance. "Don’t tell me you plan to break a glass?" She asked, then she looked up at the giant panes of glasses that soared up to the peak of the building’s roof and added, "If you break one glass, the rest will fall down and cut you to pieces and to your death."

"Don’t sound so hopeful, Ms." he said, his gaze looking around to several large mounds of snow that had obviously gathered over something beneath them. He began digging in one of the mounds and soon enough, he uncovered a large flowerpot, which he picked up and carried toward the back door.

"Now what on earth are you doing?" Mia asked, following on his heels again.

"Guess." He replied with a smile in his tone.

"How should I know?" Mia snapped. "You’re the criminal, not me. You are the one who’s well versed in breaking into people’s houses. And you are obviously trying to break into this one."

"You are right, but I was sent up for murder, not breaking and entering."

In disbelief, Mia watched him trying to dig into the frozen soil of the flower pot, then he slammed the pot against the side of the house and broke it, dumping the soil onto the snow beside the door.

Wordlessly, he crouched down and began hammering his bare fist on the solid soil while Mia watched in shocked amazement. "Are you having a temper tantrum?" she asked cautiously, as what he was doing at this moment made no sense to her. Why on earth would he be hammering the soil with his fist unless he wanted to release his uncontrollable temper?

"No, Miss Harrison," he replied with a tight tone, as he plucked up a piece of dirt from the soil and brushed at it with his finger. "I am looking for a key."

"No one who can afford a beautiful house like this and pay to put a road up an entire mountain in order to get to it is going to be naive enough to hide a key in a flowerpot! You’re wasting your time."

"Have you always been such a shrew?" he said with an irritated shake of his dark head.

"A shrew!" Mia said, her voice strangled with frustration. "You steal my car along with me, threaten my life, lie to me, and now you have the...the guts to criticize my manners?" Her outburst was interrupted as he held up a dirt-covered golden object that Mia realized was a key, which he then inserted in the door.

With a smooth flourish movement he swung open the door and gestured her inside with a sweep of his arm. "We’ve already agreed that I am a cold blooded murderer, a heartless beast and a kidnapper who took an innocent young woman against her will. Now, I suggest you go inside and look around while I get our things out of the car. Why don’t you try to relax," he added. "Get some rest. Enjoy the mountain view. I know you are tired from having to always worry about your work in the city, here you don’t have to worry about that. Take it as a free vacation."

Mia glared at him openmouthed, then snapped her jaws together and said irately, "I’m not on a vacation! I’m a hostage being kept against my will, and don’t expect me to forget that!"

In answer to her words, he gave her a long-suffering look, as if she were being impossibly difficult, so she jerked her gaze from his and huffed at his face before she walked into the house. Inside, the house was a huge luxurious two story building, with a brown cozy theme. Soaring wood ceilings with a gigantic chandelier. The staircase had red carpet spread on them from the top to the bottom.

The living room walls were made entirely of glass, offering the view of the mountains that Mia knew would be breathtaking on a clear summer day. She stood there, mesmerized by the sight of the house. At one side of the room was an enormous fireplace carved in the center of a native stone.

Facing the fireplace was a long L-shaped black sofa with fluffy pillows. Opposite the sofa and facing the windows were two overstuffed chairs and cushions made in black and silver stripes that blended with the thick carpet that covered part of the gleaming wooden floor in front of the fireplace.

At any other time, Mia would have been awed and intrigued by what was the most unique and beautiful place she’d ever seen, but she was too upset and too hungry to give it more than a passing notice.

Turning, she wandered into the kitchen area, and was stunned at the dark theme she was greeted with. As she stood at the entrance, a memory from five years ago flashed to her mind; a memory of the day she went to cook in his condo after they returned from a local market. Then, another memory of them kissing in his kitchen popped into her mind. She shook the memory away as quickly as it came to her, as anything that has to do with him in the past, had become a taboo to her.

Her stomach suddenly growled as she looked at the black cabinets and the built-in refrigerator, but her appetite was already losing the battle with her exhaustion. Feeling like a sneak thief, she opened a cabinet that contained dishes and glassware, then another that contained_luckily_a wide variety of canned goods.

Deciding to make a quick sandwich and then go to bed, she was reaching timidly for a can of albacore tuna fish when Neil opened the back door of the kitchen and saw her reaching for it like a sneak thief. Jerking her gaze to him, she looked like a little thief who had been caught stealing.

"I hope," he said, suppressing the urge to laugh at her reaction while kicking snow off his boots, "that this means you’re taking charge of the kitchen and the house?"

"Do you mean, if I’m taking charge of cooking?" She frowned.

"Yes."

"Not for you." Mia put the can of tuna back and closed the cabinet door just as her stomach let out an audible growl of protest, and she flushed in embarrassment. But she stubbornly ignored it, she would rather starve to death than cook for him or take charge of anything.

"God, you are as stubborn as I remembered." He said rubbing his hands together, he walked over to the thermostat on the wall and turned up the heat, then he headed for the refrigerator and opened the freezer door. Though Neil had once hated the thought of cooking himself or washing any dishes, he had learned the hard way in prison.

Mia peeked from behind him to see what was in the refrigerator and was amazed to see dozens of thick steaks and pork chops, huge roasts, some packages wrapped in white freezer paper, and boxes of vegetables, some raw and others prepared. It was a display that would do justice to any food market. Her mouth began to water as he reached for a steak that was an inch and a half thick, but exhaustion was already overwhelming her.

Her relief for being in a warm house instead of the car and at having arrived at a destination after an endless, nerve-wracking drive was suddenly making her feel limp, and she realized she wanted a hot shower and a long nap rather than food at this moment.

"I think I need to get some sleep," she said after a tired yawn escaped her mouth. "Which room will I be staying please?"

Something in her pale face and heavy eyes made Neil respond without argument. "The bedroom is this way," he said, already turning on his heel and heading for a staircase and walking towards a room.

When he flipped on the light switch of the room, Mia found herself in an enormous bedroom suite with a fireplace and an adjoining bathroom of black marble with mirrored walls. She spotted her smartphone on the nightstand beside the king-size bed at the same moment he did.

"You can use the bath," he told her unnecessarily as he walked over to the nightstand and briskly took the phone, which he had absentmindedly dropped on the nightstand when he came in earlier to check the room, and tucked it inside his pocket.

"But no phone, I see," she added with a bitter note as she headed back into the living room to get her suitcase.

Behind her, he checked the doors to the bathroom and bedroom to make sure Mia wouldn’t do anything stupid later on, then he followed her to the living room and caught her arm as she bent over to pick up her suitcase.

"Let’s establish the rules here," he began. "There are no other houses on this mountain except this one. I have your car keys, so your only means of leaving would be on foot, but you’d freeze to death long before reaching the highway. And don’t bother locking yourself in a room; it’d be futile and unnecessary. Do you understand?"

Mia tried to pull her arm away, finding his grip surprisingly strong yet not painful. "I’m not stupid."

"Good. Then you should know you have free rein in the house—"

"Free rein? Like your servant?"

"Not exactly," Neil said, his mouth quirking in a smile as he let his admiring glance rove over her thick, wavy brown hair and slim, restless figure. "More like the lady of the house."

Mia opened her mouth to give him the biting retort he deserved, but she couldn’t get words out before she yawned again.