She crooked her head to study its height. “How likely are we to get arrested for trespassing?”
The weed wafted to my nostrils. I reeled a joint out of the bag and tossed the rest through my open car window. “Considering it's the Fourth of July and Eastridge is about as corrupt as a North Korean election, not at all.”
I neglected to mention I was the unhappy owner of the sixty-one-acre property. Maintenance fees for groundskeeping and cleaning staff auto-paid from one of my personal bank accounts.
My efforts started and ended there.
Emery tipped her chin at the joint nestled between my thumb and forefinger. “Are you going to light it up?”
Half my damn face throbbed, but I ignored it. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Corrupting you sounds more fun than it actually is, Miss Winthrop,” I lied. Mostly because the opposite was true, and she tasted of bad decisions and something to fight for instead of just something to fight.
Her blue-grays glinted with the challenge. Two fingers drifted down her shirt and thumbed the rim of her jeans, dipping just inside. “Do you like it?”
I swallowed, following the path of her fingertips. “Yes.”
She tugged a fraction, flashing me a peek of smooth skin. “How much restraint does it take to not devour it?”
“Fucking all of it.” Tossing the unlit joint to the leaf-covered ground, I crushed my heel on it. “Are we breaking and entering or what? I’m beginning to think you’re too vanilla for this criminal lifestyle, Jailbait.”
Emery gifted me with her throaty laugh, so pure and fucking genuine, it traveled straight to my cock. Her teeth grazed her lower lip, chancing a final glance at me before she began climbing the gate.
If I pinned her to it and fucked her hard, she’d probably beg me to fuck her harder. She'd been giving me those eyes since I let Reed go to town on my face. Blue one darkening. Gray one lightening.
They spoke all the words she'd never say.
I need you inside me, they challenged. Give me everything you’ve got.
It took all my self-control not to slide her jeans down her legs and sink inside her.
She was still a walking, talking, breathing rift between me and my brother, and I needed Gideon’s location.
A conversation was long overdue.
Not to mention, Ma had pulled me aside at the house and told me Brandon stopped by a few times to talk to her, too. I realized I’d been so wrapped up in discussing Emery that I never asked Dick the PI who the second party to profit from the Winthrop Scandal was.
Now, Brandon was on my ass like a rash, stalking Ma and Emery. I'd burn myself with him, just to see him wither to ashes.
Emery whooped from the top of the gate, straddling it on either side. I edged forward in case she fell.
“How’s this for vanilla?”
I tilted my head. “The sun’s shining right on your tits. Are those hearts on your bra?”
“I’m not wearing a bra.”
Fuck.
She covered her palms with her hoodie, slid down one of the gate’s iron pillars, and landed with a Selena Kyle crouch. Her brow lifted as if to say, beat that.
I skated into my driver’s seat, inched to the gate box, typed the code, and pulled up beside Emery.
She swung the passenger door open. “What the hell? You know the code?”
“It’s the same one.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“Worked out just fine.” I parked in front of the mansion’s double doors. “I’m in the company of a criminal mastermind.”
“Do you think someone’s in there?”
“No, but we’ll knock in case.”
Emery followed me up the steps. She knocked while I retrieved the spare keys beneath a rock. “It doesn’t bother you that we're breaking in?”
“Word around town is no one lives here.” I swung the door open.
Her lips parted at the sight of the foyer. The ridiculous Dionysus statue welcomed us, pristine given the weekly cleaning service I paid for.
Emery’s fingertips trailed along the staircase’s railing, coming up without dust. “Isn’t this weird to you?”
“What?”
“Somebody bought this place, and it looks like they never touched it.” We walked past a few rooms and into the kitchen. “Even Virginia’s Swarovski dinner plates are set in the dining room. They’re not even dusty.”
“What I find weird is you calling your mom Virginia.”
Actually, I found it weirder she hadn’t called her that from the start. The woman made the evil step-mom from Hansel and Gretel seem like a peach.
“What I find weird is that I bothered to call her Mother for twenty-two years, and it took a text from her to get me to stop.” She flung open the refrigerator, which the staff kept stocked for themselves, and pulled out a bag of frozen peas. “This isn’t even expired.”
I said nothing, watching her as she approached me.
She pressed the bag to my eye, gentle at first but firm when I didn't react. “It was always you, wasn’t it?” she asked. I had no idea what she was talking about. She sucked in a breath. “Able was a dick, and I had revenge on my mind. If you hadn’t hurt him, I would have. Thank you.”
She was staring at me hard, looking at me like I might have a heart. I pulled at my collar, remembering after that I wore a Henley, not a button-down. Her breath fanned my cheeks, rushing to my neck. Mint and the strawberries she’d eaten at Ma’s.
If she didn’t move, I’d kiss her.
Fuck Reed.
Fuck Gideon.
Fuck Virginia.
Funny, how I never wanted to kiss anyone before, and now all I could think of was owning Emery's lips.
“Keep the ice on it.” She replaced her hand on the peas with mine, lingering, eyes jumping to my mouth. “I wonder if my room is the same.”
It was.
I didn't tell her.
Her eyes dropped to my lips once more. The sharp inhale confirmed she wanted them on hers, too. Three more seconds of staring, and I’d give it to her.
Two.
O—
She stepped back and strode to her bedroom. We passed the library, piano room, her parents’ room, and the game room without stopping in any of them. If I didn’t know better, I would think she hadn’t grown up here. That these walls, this roof, the fucking statuario beneath our feet meant nothing to her.
In fact, she acted like she had no claim to the place. It bothered me. Not in the fairy tale Emery-and-I-met-here kind of way, but something that had less to do with us and more to do with the fact that she thought she had to be strong by pushing the past away.
She didn’t.
I’d been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. It fit three-sizes too small, and every time I wore it, it damn near choked me to death.
Probably why I blurted, “I bought it.”
She squinted at me and kept walking. “You bought what?”
“The Winthrop Estate.”
Her feet stopped, but her back faced me. “Why?”
“I don’t know.” Always lying.
Because I thought it would lead to clues to take down your family. Turns out, I was wrong. You’re probably innocent. Your Dad is probably innocent. Two more victims of this mess. So much of that going around.