Page 10 of Ice Cold Christmas

This wasn’t what she’d anticipated, not at all. His rage was a palpable force in the bedroom. Rage and something more. So much more.

“I was ready to kill for you,” he told her.

What? Terror crashed through her body, driving away the strange warmth that had filled her with the brush of his fingers against her skin. Now those fingers—now his strength—frightened her to the marrow of her bones.

“And you threw me away? Threw us away?” A hard, negative shake of his head. “It doesn’t work that way, Melody. You have to give me more than that. You will give me more than that or by God?—”

Her hands flew between them. “I need you to back up, right now.” Fear made her words quiver.

His dark brows snapped together. He looked down, between their bodies. Blinked. “Melody.” Softer. “Is that a knife in your hand?”

It was. Her fingers clenched tightly around the handle. She’d snagged the knife from the pocket of her coat. She wasn’t stabbing him, she was not. But the blade pressed roughly over his heart. “I didn’t give you permission to touch me.”

“I didn’t give you permission to pull a knife on me.” No emotion at all in his voice now.

“You broke into my room.”

“I opened a door.”

“A door I’d locked.” As if she would have left any doors unlocked in this house.

“I had the key.” A pause. “Fine. That’s a lie. I picked the lock.”

Her mouth was desert dry. So much about Victor Alexander’s life had been a mystery. Too many blank spaces when she tried to dig deeper past the faint details she’d unearthed. Details that had seemed too perfect. “You picked the lock,” she whispered. “Just where would a fancy lawyer-slash-MBA type like yourself learn such a skill?”

If possible, his eyes narrowed even more. “Just where would a pampered princess like yourself—born with a silver spoon in her mouth and a staff at her beck and call—have learned to hide a knife and to pull it so easily on a…friend?”

She did not lower her knife. “Are you my friend?”

His lashes, oddly thick and so dark, flickered. “What else could I possibly be?”

“My enemy.” An immediate reply. “Everyone knows we hate each other. Common knowledge. You stole my father’s company from me.”

He took a step back. Shook his head. A faint furrow remained between his brows. “Common…knowledge,” he muttered.

Why were they just repeating each other?

“I’m not your friend. I’m your enemy. Nothing more.” Victor nodded. A steely mask had covered his face. No emotion showed at all. “Strawberries.”

She was utterly and completely lost. She was also just holding a knife in the air because he’d moved so far back that the blade no longer touched him. She should lower the weapon. “Why on earth are you talking to me about strawberries?”

“Why, indeed?” Hard. No, brittle.

Melody lowered the knife. “I was just defending myself.”

“From your enemy. Right. Heard it the first time.” He turned away from her.

She thought that he’d stalk from the room. He didn’t. Victor began to prowl around. Very much like an angry lion. Meanwhile, Melody just stood there, still gripping her knife, uncertain what to do or say.

He eyed the bag near the door. A slightly battered, black, luggage bag that she’d picked up at the same thrift store where she’d gotten her coat. His shoulders tensed as he stared at the bag. Then, slowly, he glanced over his shoulder to peer at her. “Your hair is different.”

Should she put the knife down on the bed? She was afraid to let go of her weapon. Trusting anyone in this house would be a major mistake.

They don’t care about me. None of them do.

“It’s so much shorter than it was before,” he noted.

Not like she’d had much choice on that.