“Is that in the cards?” A wicked smile. “Because I would absolutely love to see you topless.”
“W-what?”
Heat from his chest scalded her back when he leaned forward and said, “You heard me,” against the shell of her ear.
Okay . . . well that wasn’t going to happen. She was not going to take off her top, no matter how good it would feel to have his hands moving on her bare skin—
Nope. Nope. Not happening.
He resumed working the knots from her shoulder blades. She felt him shift, then something soft pressed against the skin behind her ear. Moved lower.
Wait . . . was that his mouth?
Holy CRAP.
He was kissing his way down her neck and—
Heat pooled in her stomach and she leaned into him because there was no way she was going to lean away. His hands slipped around her waist to her hips, and if something didn’t happen, she was going to spontaneously combust.
“You and I should get into trouble together,” he said against her shoulder
“Deacon…” his name was a sigh on her lips.
She felt his smile against her skin. “Let’s go to your room.”
Yes. Yes. Wait. No.
He thought he could come in here after not talking to her for weeks and put his beautiful mouth on her and then she’d invite him to her room? She wasn’t sure what kind of girls he usually hung out with, but that wasn’t something she did.
“I…I…um…I have to go to genealogy.” It wasn’t a lie. She had to be there in an hour.
He released his grip on her waist.
Pulled away.
Cursed under his breath. “I didn’t realize that was today. Do you need me to come with you?”
“Why would you do that?”
“Some find it helpful to have a friend join them for their first meeting.”
Friend. Deacon thought they were just friends? She didn’t know exactly what she felt for him, but it was a good deal more than friendship. He was probably one of those guys who wanted to “keep it casual.” “Friends with benefits” and all that crap.
“I’ll be fine on my own.” She pushed away from him and stumbled to her feet.
His dark brows came together; he seemed to be breathing as heavily as she was. “Did I say something wrong?”
“Nope.” She ripped her sweatshirt off the couch. “I need to go.”
“Right now?” he groaned, dropping his head into his hands.
“Yep.” Because if she didn’t, she’d be tempted to make some very bad decisions.
“All right.” He got up, raked his hand through his hair, and went to the glass door. Before he left, he twisted back to her. His eyes were wide and worried. “If I said or did something to offend you,” he said, shaking his head, “I’m sorry, all right?”
She could only nod and watch him fly away.
“Vivienne?” the slender young woman in a gray dress asked after a quick glance at the stack of papers on her desk. The pendulum on the cuckoo clock on the wall swung back and forth behind the woman’s head.
Vivienne stepped closer to the desk. “That’s me.”
“I’m Martina.” She checked her watch. “You’re very early.”
“Sorry. I had some time to kill, so I thought I would go ahead and make my way over.” She fiddled with the hair tie on her wrist. “If you want, I can come back.”
“There’s no need.” Martina donned a long white lab coat that had been draped over the back of her chair and told Vivienne to follow her. There was a smaller door concealed in dark paneling at the back of the office. Inside was a closet-like room with a single white desk squeezed into the space along with two padded chairs.
“Do you have anyone coming to meet you?” Martina looked over the rim of her glasses toward the door. She tugged a pair of soft white gloves out of her pocket and pulled them over her fingers.
“Not that I know of.”
“Very well. Have a seat and put these on.” She held out an identical pair of gloves to Vivienne and said she’d be right back. When she returned a few minutes later, she was carrying a remote control and a stack of books. She placed everything on the desk and topped off the pile with an unsteady box of tissues.
Without another word of direction, the woman clipped out of the room and shut the door.
What appeared to be a loose piece of paper forgotten between the books caught Vivienne’s attention. She adjusted her gloves, drew the yellowed edges free, and unfolded it. Printed on the aged poster was a faded tree with names scrolled on the branches.
At the top of the page was the name MAIMIE WARD. Below Maimie’s name, written in smaller letters, was the name Howard Jones.
The twenty or so names on the family tree were unfamiliar, but when Vivienne reached the last three entries, her mind began to race, and her skin began to itch.
WILLIAM DUNN ——— ANNE JONES DUNN
Beneath their names, on the final branch, was her own name.
That couldn’t be right . . . William and Anne weren’t her—
The pieces of a puzzle she had been collecting since childhood shifted.
Anne, Vivienne’s beautiful, vibrant sister, was really her mother.
And her absent, faceless father hadn’t been absent or faceless; William, her handsome, silly brother, was really her father.
The revelations that followed could have taken five minutes or five hundred minutes. At some point, Vivienne resurfaced from drowning in her memories to grasp for an explanation. Her fingers closed around the silver remote.
Darkness surrounded her when she clicked play. A mechanical whir hummed above her head, and a single beam of light shot from a projector that had lowered from a cavity within the ceiling. There was shuffling from the machine, and then a familiar voice she hadn’t heard in twelve years asked a simple question.
“Is it working?” her sister Anne asked from off screen.
Not my sister, she reminded herself. My mother.
The videographer panned to the left, and there sat Anne Dunn, wearing a faded black T-shirt beneath a pair of denim coveralls dotted with paint. She was exquisite in her simplicity and bearing a smile that could banish even the scariest nightmares.
Anne Dunn had always been smiling.
“Hello, Vivienne,” she said, her brown eyes full of secrets.
Then her father sat on the chair next to Anne. “Hi, Viv.”
Tears filled Vivienne’s eyes, blurring the images. She cursed and grabbed for the tissues. She wasn’t going to miss even a second with her family.
“We’re so happy you made it to Neverland,” Anne said. “Our only regret is that…”
William accepted Anne’s shaking hand and rubbed his thumb across her knuckles. “That we aren’t there to show it to you,” he finished, his voice catching.
After Anne composed herself, she said, “I know you must be confused by our choices, but please give us the chance to explain before you pass judgement. Neverland is a place of dreams, but living there without having any other choice is not something we ever wanted for you. Your father grew up at Kensington and struggled with keeping all the secrets. Like many PAN before us, when we found out about you, we decided to press pause on our lives in Neverland and move somewhere new.