“I’d love that.”
“Wonderful. Now, Liam said you needed help to get settled in?”
We spend the next few hours unpacking my life. Alice is chatty but not intrusive, helping me hang clothes in the closet and find new homes for my personal items. As we work, she sings the praises of Blue Crescent Harbor, telling me about the adorable shops and people and assuring me I’ll love it here.
The bakery on Main Street has the most amazing sourdough, but I’m not supposed to tell the folks at the general store. The local gym, Gym and Tonic, has been completely renovated, and I should get a membership. A Slice of Heaven serves the best pizza in the state. And if I want live music and a bit of fun, I need to go to the Moonshine, the town’s dive bar. She also mentions about a thousand festivals and events I’ll have to patronize as a member of one of the five founding families. She gives me a list of names and titles, but I recognize and remember only Lila’s.
Alice leaves around one, after we pre-cooked a chicken roulade for dinner and sorted through about a third of my stuff. I have the scraps of the roulade for lunch, not caring that I’ll eat it again tonight. It’s delicious.
After eating, I unpack a few more boxes on my own, but my energy is gone. My skin is coated in sweat, and I need a hot bath. I trudge upstairs, strip off my dusty clothes, and soak in the water until it gets cold twice over.
I step into the “hers” side of the closet to search for leggings. I don’t remember unpacking any this morning, but maybe Alice did. The closet is the size of a second bedroom—I’m going to need a map to find anything in here—but despite all this squarefootage, my sweats are nowhere to be found. My comfortable house clothes must still be downstairs in one of the sealed boxes.
It’s early, just after four. Liam won’t be home for hours. I pull on a pair of panties but don’t bother with a bra. I’ll run down, grab what I need, and come back up before anyone sees me.
I pad down the stairs, the cool air raising goosebumps across my bare skin. The house is silent and empty. I’m sorting through boxes in the living room, searching for the one with my yoga pants and oversized sweats, when a key turns in the front door lock.
Crap. I’m on the opposite side to the stairs. I bolt for the hallway and crash past the first door I find—Liam’s study. I pull it closed with agonizing slowness, the latch catching just as Liam calls out, “Babe? You home?”
Babe? Who the heck does he think he’s talking to?
“I’m home early,” he yells.
Yeah, no shit. I’m about to hoot back for him to close his eyes so I can scurry upstairs when a deeper voice responds, “Isn’t your wife home?”
“I don’t know, Dad,” Liam replies, sounding irritated. “I’m not her keeper.”
Oh, gosh, he’s with his father.
I glance down at myself in horror. No way I’m shouting for both Rockwoods to please close their eyes while I move past practically naked. I’d die of shame.
“What was so important that you had to talk to both of us and couldn’t do it at the office?” Liam asks.
Charles’s voice is muffled but clear enough. “Delicate matters are better discussed in the privacy of the home, and it’s about both of you. But since your wife isn’t here, we’ll start without her.”
“Okay,” Liam says after a pause. “Let’s go into the study.”
Of course they’d come into the one room where I’m playing naked hide and seek.
Fuck my life.
18
PEYTON
I scan the study in a wild-eyed frenzy. The desk is too exposed—a massive, sculptural slab of ivory wood with a hollowed-out, curvy base that offers nowhere to hide. No closet. No conveniently placed armoire or decorative screen. Just expensive furniture, conceptual art, and a set of giant windows overlooking the lake, flanked by thick, white blackout drapes that pool on the floor.
It’s the only logical hiding place.
Footsteps approach the door.
I bolt for the window and wedge myself behind the fabric, pressing my spine against the cold pane. I close my eyes and pray that Liam doesn’t have a gardener who works afternoons. If someone were to walk past outside right now, they’d get an unobstructed view of my semi-bare ass smashed to the glass.
The study door swings open.
“Something to drink?” Liam asks. His voice is tight, stripped of the playful lilt he uses with me.
I hold myself rigid, lungs frozen mid-inhale. Through the gap where the curtain meets the window frame, I glimpse slivers ofthe room. I spy Liam’s silhouette as it moves toward the built-in bar in his bookshelves.