Seduced by Chaos by Stephanie Julian

obese twelve times over. Instead, he fought to maintain his weight.
    He didn’t want Lacey to think he was snooping but he did look into the rooms he passed on his way down the hall. He thought he’d passed the kitchen right as he’d come up the steps last night but he wanted to know more about the woman he’d fallen so hard for.
    Too bad there wasn’t one damn personal object in the entire place.
    The second floor held only one bedroom and he’d already seen how spare that was.
    The bathroom across the hall was pristine. And stark white.
    The large room in the front of the building had a TV, a couch and a traditional Etruscan dining table, dark walnut and low to the ground that any etera would think was a coffee table. A galley kitchen sat along the far wall.
    No pictures on the walls. No magazines lay on the table. The only light fixtures were the ones on the ceiling.
    If he didn’t know better, he’d think no one lived here.
    His jaw started to tense again and he made a conscious effort to loosen it.
    In the kitchen, he opened the fridge and freezer, almost surprised to find both fully stocked. Pulling out what he needed, he pushed everything out of his mind and let himself get lost in the familiar comfort of cooking.
    49

    Stephanie Julian
    He’d become a damn decent cook in the last fifty years and by the time Lacey padded into the kitchen, he had juice, omelets, bacon, and strawberries and yogurt spread out on the table.
    Her hair lay in a thick, wet braid over the shoulder of the oversized, white button-down oxford she wore, and her eyes refused to meet his.
    “This looks great, thanks.” She motioned toward the table. “A man of many talents.”
    He sat at one end of the couch, determined not to push her. “You live alone, you learn to cook or you starve. Or you go broke. I found I liked it and I had some aptitude for it.”
    She sat on the other end and picked up the plate closest to her. After a few bites of the omelet, she finally looked at him, her eyes wide.
    “Tinia’s teat, this is amazing. Do you really only cook for yourself? Are you sure you’re not a four-star chef for some fancy restaurant somewhere?”
    He gave her a haughty stare, eyebrows raised. “What? Are you trying to tell me guys can’t cook just for the hell of it? I’m offended by your narrow-mindedness.”
    Her sidelong glance assessed him for few seconds before her mouth twisted into a lopsided smile.
    “You’re a tease, Teodoro de Feo.”
    He let his own smile break. “Yeah, but you like that about me, don’t you?”
    Her smile tilted up just a little more. Good, they were making progress.
    They ate in silence after that, cleaning the table of every bit of food. She wasn’t shy about eating and he liked that about her.
    Hell, he liked everything about her. And nothing would change that.
    But would she still want him after she learned his story?
    50

    Seduced by Chaos
    With a sigh, he set his plate on the table and settled into the couch, turning so he could see her. Lacey followed his lead, scrunching herself back into her corner of the couch and wrapping her arms around her bent legs.
    After resting her chin on her knee, she stared at him for several seconds.
    “My twin sister and I were raised by our parents in Maine,” she started. “The nearest town was twenty miles away. My parents thought we would be safe there, I guess. When we were seventeen, our mom explained what we were, how we were different. What it would mean to our lives.” She stopped, took a deep breath and let her eyelids drift shut for several seconds.
    “A year later, two men came to the door, shot our father in the head then shot our mother in the back as she tried to protect us.”

    Lacey watched Teo so closely, she swore she could see a physical manifestation of his rage like a haze around him.
    He was furious on her behalf.
    And she felt nothing. She couldn’t. Or she’d never get through this.
    Now that she’d started, she didn’t want