Your Heart Belongs to Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

were decades older than his years and part of some royal procession. This time, he exceeded speed limits with the rest of the traffic and crossed intersections on the yellow light.
    He seemed to know that his employer needed the comfort of home, refuge.

SEVEN
    E n route from Dr. Gupta’s office, Ryan called Kay Ting and placed an order for dinner that would require her to go to his favorite restaurant to get takeout.
    Later, using the elevator, the Tings brought a dining-service cart to the third-floor sitting room that was part of the master suite. They put up the leaves to expand the cart into a table and smoothed out the white tablecloth.
    Presented for Ryan’s pleasure were three dishes of homemade ice cream—dark chocolate, black cherry, and limoncello—each nestled in a larger bowl of cracked ice. There were also servings of flourless chocolate cake, a lemon tart, a peanut-butter tart, strawberries in sour cream with a pot of brown sugar, a selection of exotic cookies, and bottles of root beer in an ice bucket.
    Because Ryan allowed himself dessert only once or twice a week, the Tings were curious about this uncharacteristic indulgence.
    He pretended to be celebrating the conclusion of a particularly rewarding business deal, but he knew they did not believe him. The arrayed sweets suggested the last meal of a condemned man who, though thirty-four, had never finished growing up.
    Eating alone, sitting at the wheeled table, Ryan sampled a series of old movies on the big-screen plasma TV. He sought comedies, but none of them struck him as funny.
    Calories no longer mattered, or cholesterol, and at first this indulgence without guilt was so novel that he enjoyed himself. Soon, however, the adolescent smorgasbord grew cloying, too rich.
    To thumb his nose at Death, he ate more than he wanted. The root beer began to seem like syrup.
    He wheeled the cart out of the master suite, left it in the hall, and used the intercom to tell Kay that he had finished.
    Earlier, the Tings turned down the bed and plumped the pillows.
    When Ryan put on pajamas and slipped between the sheets, insomnia tormented him. If fear of death had not kept him awake, the tides of sugar in his blood would have made him restless.
    Barefoot, hoping to walk off his anxiety, he went roaming through the house.
    Beyond the large windows lay the luminous panorama of Orange County’s many cities on the vast flats below. The ambient glow was sufficient to allow him to navigate the house without switching on a lamp.
    Shortly before midnight, lights in a back hall led him to the large butler’s pantry, where china and glassware were stored in mahogany cabinets. He heard voices in the adjacent kitchen.
    Although additional members of the household staff were at work during the day, the Tings were the only live-ins. Yet Ryan could not at once identify the speakers as Lee and Kay, because they conversed quietly, almost whispering.
    Usually, the Tings would be in bed at this hour. Their workday began at eight o’clock in the morning.
    Although throughout his life Ryan had not once been troubled by superstition, he was now overcome by a sense of the uncanny. He felt suddenly that his house hid secrets, that within these rooms were realms unknown, and that for his well-being, he must learn all that was being concealed from him.
    Putting his left ear to the crack between the jamb and the swinging door, he strained to hear what was being said.
    The spacious kitchen had been designed to function for caterers when large parties required the preparation of elaborate buffets. The low voices softly reverberated off the extensive granite countertops and off the many stainless-steel appliances.
    Risking discovery, he eased the door open an inch. The voices did not become recognizable, nor did the murmurs and whispers resolve from sibilant sounds into words.
    Ryan did, however, additionally hear the quiet clink and ping of dishes, which seemed curious. Lee and Kay would have