Daddy ignores him, waiting on an answer from me.
For a moment, I’m tempted. He’s not wrong about my lack of real-world experience, though that’s also his doing. Best way to keep someone at your disposal is to ensure they depend on you for everything.
Once upon a time, I wouldn’t have even minded. If you’d asked the eleven-year-old hunched over her dying father in the kitchen if one day she’d be disgusted by his very presence, she would’ve laughed in your face.
Then again, that eleven-year-old didn’t know better. Didn’t know what he was capable of.
And I owe it to her to stop letting him win.
When I don’t reply, Daddy growls and releases me with a shove, and I go tumbling outside. My arms flail, prepared to catch myself on the ground, but I hit a different kind of hard surface instead.
One that’s somehow smoldering and ice cold at the same time.
“We’re done here,” Daddy announces. The hatred lacing his words makes me feel about ten feet tall, but I ignore it, pulling away from Jonas.
“On the contrary, we’ve only just begun,” Jonas says, smoothing a hand over my back. It hovers at the nape of my neck, as if checking for damage, and I can’t stop the little shiver that skates down my spine at the contact.
Our kiss lives rent-free in my mind, and right now I wouldn’t care to recreate it, if only to thank him for showing up tonight.
Daddy slams the door in our faces, even as Mama tries to facilitate some sort of common ground between the three of us. The last thing I see before it closes is a pained expression on her face, and then we’re shut out from the house entirely.
Clasping my hands together, I force a smile and turn to Jonas. “Well, I think it’s safe to say we don’t have to worry about holidays at my house. Hopefully your parents are more welcoming.”
“My parents are dead.”
Nodding, I reach for the rolling suitcases Preston upturned earlier. Part of me regrets telling Cash to stay in Boston, but the other part is glad to have gotten all of that over.
It went a bit better than expected, at least.
Assuming Jonas is parked outside the gate, I start in that direction, not waiting to see if he follows. The crunch of his boots on the driveway closes in on me, and he appears at my side, taking the suitcases by the handles from me.
“You don’t have to do that,” I say.
He doesn’t look over. “What kind of fiancé would I be if I didn’t carry your luggage?”
My face heats and the inside of my mouth feels like cotton. “Yeah, about that...”
A black Range Rover sits just beyond the security building at the gate, and I search the window for Matt, the guard Daddy hired about a year ago to replace one who retired.
I slow to a stop, my eyes glued to the glass. Jonas continues around me, popping the trunk of his vehicle and lifting my suitcases, tucking them into the hatch.
“What about it?” he asks, his voice slightly muffled.
Streaks of red decorate the windowpane, and my stomach twists into a giant, concrete knot. There doesn’t appear to be a single sign of life inside the brick room, and I inch closer, anxiety igniting at the base of my spine and spreading outward.
The trunk slams closed, and I jump as a presence materializes at my back. Dread slithers down my limbs, immobilizing me as I see the top of Matt’s head, pressed against the interior corner of the floor.
Jonas’s breaths are heavy as they brush against my scalp. I swallow, trying to even mine out so he doesn’t notice how labored they’ve become.
A cramp seizes my stomach. He brushes some hair off my shoulder, and I feel his lips on my ear.
“What did you do?” I whisper. Afraid to do more than that.
“I won’t be kept from you,” Jonas murmurs, his words hot and damp as they send a flurry of goose bumps across my skin.
Even as my terror spikes, flaring like an infection in my veins, there’s something else, too. Something that keeps me from fleeing.
Excitement.
13
“So… this is it.”
Lenny glances up at the beach house, nodding as if she can see beyond the flickering porch light. She extends one suitcase handle, tilting her head as she inspects the immediate surrounding area.
Unfortunately, there’s not much to see. An abandoned townhome complex sits a little ways down the shoreline, but other than that and a farmers’ market about a mile away, we’re the only structure on this one-lane road until you get back to town.
“How’d you get an oceanfront on such short notice? I thought they were usually booked for the season by now.” She starts up the front walk, pausing on the first porch step. “Oh, god, did you kill the owner?”
“Why? Afraid of ghosts?”
“Not afraid. I just happen to think they shouldn’t be disturbed.”
She stands behind me as I unlock the door, letting the scanner beside the knob analyze my fingerprint before it unlatches. As I push it open, Lenny steps inside, dragging both suitcases along the ceramic tile floor.
“Was the person who lived here before also completely paranoid, or did you install stuff especially for me?”
Flipping on lights as I go, I try not to think about how much smaller this space is in comparison to the mansion she’s just left. Turning, I study the slope of her narrow shoulders and the tightness of her cheek muscles, trying to gauge her impression of the home.
For some odd reason, I want her to approve.
“It belonged to my mum a lifetime ago,” I tell her as she moves through the hall to the office, then onward to the kitchen. The downstairs just loops around the carpeted steps, which sit across from the back sliding glass door. “She inherited it from her Armenian immigrant parents, and even after she met my dad and moved in with him, she kept the place.”
Lenny drags a finger over the black-and-white granite kitchen island, not responding.
“Don’t worry, though,” I rush out, needing to fill the silence all of a sudden. “She didn’t die here, or anything.”
Glancing at me, Lenny lifts a shoulder, letting the neckline of her oversized T-shirt expose some of the smooth skin of her collarbone. “Doesn’t need a ghost to be haunted.”
I suppose she has a point, though I’m positive the only one my mum’s haunting is me.
Grabbing her luggage, I take it upstairs and into the master suite. Lenny follows, pausing with raised eyebrows as she enters the room.
“Was your mom a psychiatric patient at any point?” she asks, walking to the canopy bed.
“Bloody well should’ve been.” I’ve already told her too much about the woman, but I can’t seem to stop.
Her fingers wrap around one of the metal posts, twisting the sheer fabric draped over the frame, and I consider Alistair’s comment about bedding her.
Frankly, it was tempting before this, and now that she’s standing inches away from a mattress and we’re all alone, the idea of pressing her into the surface until the springs squeal from our weight is becoming vastly more appealing.
Sure, it might complicate things, but what about our situation isn’t already?
My footsteps are slow. They carry me to her in an almost deliberate fashion, stopping just behind her as she looks at the covered windows.