“He’s worried about a man who’s hanging around the coffee shop,” she says as though she hasn’t heard me. “That’s Kennedy’s business. The coffee shop.” She drops a pile of underwear into the case. “She runs our grandmother’s old place.”
Oh, look. Another penny the information miser parts with.
“I mean, it sounds kind of worrying,” she says, hurrying on. Words. Packing. “But I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that. I think it might have something to do with Wilder.”
Back at the armoire, she flings open the doors and begins tugging at the hangers.
“Okay. I’ll get on and book a couple of flights.” I pull out my phone. “Into Portland?”
“What?” She swings around.
“You have family trouble, yes?” Holland nods. “Your family will be my family soon. Besides, I really should introduce myself to your sister, don’t you think?”
Holland blinks. A hanger clinks to the floor. Then she shakes her head as though this is the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard.
“Nana also left Kennedy her shotgun.” She begins to move again, dropping her pile of clothes to the case before swinging back to the armoire again. My eyes remain on the case where shirt arms dangle like wraiths trying to escape.
How to play this? Explain this?
I lift my head when I sense her eyes on me.
Holland Harper is beautiful when she’s frustrated.
Sublime when she’s laughing.
When she’s hiding her thoughts, she looks like someone else.
“You’re not coming with me,” she says decisively. “You have enough to take care of here. You don’t need to involve yourself in my little life.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” I push up from the windowsill. “There is nowhere I’d rather be in this world than by your side.”
“You already have a wife.”
She looks so pale. Barely hanging on to her hurt. To see her hurt will hurt me—crush me—but it has to be better than this façade of feigned indifference.
“No, actually, I don’t.” I pause at the foot of her bed and hook my arm around one of the bottom posts.
She shimmers with agitation, her hands jerky as she pulls at the hem of her shirt. “Have I had a stroke? Or is this some kind of lucid dream? Because I swear, I just met the duchess downstairs.”
“Hardly what I’d call an introduction,” I say, running my finger along my cheek as though to satisfy an itch. “And she’s certainly not a duchess. The sometime girlfriend of a Russian mobster, perhaps. She just said so herself.”
“Girlfriend or not, she’s still your wife first.”
“I beg to differ. Pseudocide.”
“What?” Holland’s hands find her hips, anger causing some cracks in her mask.
“I’d never heard the word before myself. Griffin just taught it to me. He’d taken a leave of absence from work and had a private investigator examine the blackmail attempt. They asked him to consider the possibility of Leonie committing pseudocide. Apparently, it’s increasingly common, but he told them that couldn’t be the case.”
“That she couldn’t fake her death,” she deadpans. “You mean like she has.”
“Whether she faked her death or not, she’s no longer my problem.”
“Oh, I’d say otherwise. And I guess she would, too.” Changing her stance, Holland wraps her arms around herself.
“According to Scottish law, our marriage was legally dissolved the year she committed pseudocide. As far as I was concerned, and as far as the courts are concerned, she was lost at sea, presumed dead under the Presumption of Death Act. To say otherwise would mean she faces a spell in prison. Meanwhile, I face remaining as I am. In love with you.”
“Alexander, what are you doing?”
“Well.” I glance down at my now dark phone. “I was about to book us flights. To Portland. Do you want to get married there, in Mookatill?”
With a noise that isn’t quite a cry and isn’t quite a yell, she takes a step to her left and whips up some of the clothing from her case. Then she yells. Swears, actually. Really quite profusely, though it’s mostly muffled by her clothes.
As she lifts her head, I discover that Holland Harper is magnificent when she’s steaming angry. Her eyes take on a coppery edge, her chin, which she holds high anyway, holds the hauteur of queen.
“Stop torturing me. Just fucking stop!”
“Then unpack your clothes,” I say, my own temper rising as I lean over and begin plucking sweaters and jeans from the case. “Hang them up! Put them away!”
“Stop that! You fucking stop that!”
“I will not!” I bellow. It doesn’t have the desired effect. Because the desired effect was not a sneaker to my head. “Ow!”
“Get fucked!” I catch the next one. Feign and avoid the third. The fourth, a heel, glances off my shoulder.
“You nearly had my eye out with that one!”
“Boo-hoo!” She eyes the lamp on the nightstand to her right but seems to think better of it. It’s interesting how she’s only weaponizing the things she owns.
A bottle of perfume. That one I catch.
A book. I look down at the title. “One Dirty Scot?” I can’t help but smirk.
“I thought you might pick up a couple of pointers!”
“Oh, you think you’re being clever, now?” I consider throwing the book onto the bed, but I don’t want to increase her ammunition, so I drop it to the floor.
“No, I think this is my life falling apart!”
She swings around, looking for something heavier than her Prada purse, so I lunge for her before she can grab something else. I tighten my arms over her shoulders and chest when she swings the purse upwards, catching me on the jaw as I swing away just in time.
“Were you just looking for a couple of bricks to put inside?”
“No one puts bricks in a Prada handbag, philistine!”
I can’t help but chuckle as I hug her tighter. This woman. There isn’t another in the world like her. And she’s all mine.
“Your life is not falling apart,” I murmur, bringing my mouth to her ear. But dear God. Where do I go on from here? Do I tell her how I want her there, by my side? How I need her? How I can’t imagine a life without her? How I was already half in love with her before either of us had set foot in the castle?
I might not have my riding boots and jodhpurs on, but I can still be the arsehole duke.
“When I thought I couldn’t offer you long-term devotion, I was fooling myself. I might be selfish in my motivations, perhaps even a little morally corrupt because
I no longer care whether you deserve to be embroiled in the clusterfuck that is my life because I can only think how I can keep you here. If that makes me selfish or even morally corrupt, I really don’t give a fuck.
Now, downstairs is a woman who means nothing to me. A woman who has no hold over me.”
“You’re fooling yourself,” she whispers with a sad shake of her head.
“And I’m here with you because Griffin assures me he can handle this.” By legal means or Russian led otherwise, I really no longer care.