by Tara Brown
He winces. “I don’t live here.” He’s been acting funny too, and with him I know it’s not the case. He kisses back, smiling against my lips. “Stop being scared to meet my mother. She’s way less frightening than any of the files you’ve worked. She’s easy—bring her a drink and compliment her hair and jewelry, she’ll love you forever.”
I smile back, loving that he thinks his mom is scaring me, instead of my brain being stuck on a file that’s unsolved. He pulls back, stroking my cheek with his finger and staring into my eyes. For the first time I’m actually glad I didn’t take him with me to that place. I’m glad he completely screwed up and made Rory the bad guy. If I only see Rory a couple of times a year, no biggie. But seeing Dash every day might get hard if I imagine him doing those things to Ashley.
He leans in, kissing my forehead. “Thank you for doing this. You have no idea how excited she’ll be—they’ll be.” I smile wide, loving the funny look on his face. He’s as worried about his family as I am, but he’s lying to himself about it. Bringing home an orphan to Virginia is a bad idea; ’round here people need family to prove who they are. He’s lucky I love him. Who am I kidding? I’m lucky he loves me. Being with him smooths over the rough edges and plugs the holes and softens the gaps. I am an actual person with him.
My whole body fills with a warm glow until he winces as he pulls away from the stop sign finally and says, “But there are a couple of things we need to discuss, about my family.”
I cock an eyebrow. “We are almost there, aren’t we? You saved telling me stuff until we got here?”
He takes a deep breath, making a turn onto another street. “It’s not so bad, just little things like they are richer than I might have mentioned, and we have to sleep in separate rooms. Or she’ll think you’re easy.”
“I am easy,” I mutter through bared teeth.
He laughs like he doesn’t believe it, but I don’t have the same regard for sex many other girls do. I don’t see the rules and boundaries they do. His other words flit about my brain. “Richer than you might have mentioned?” I can’t believe this is happening.
“Right.” He laughs again, weakly and sort of like a girl might. A nervous girl. A nervous schoolgirl. “Just a bit. Like the top of the food chain in a country-club family.”
“So they are crazy rich and we have to sleep apart? But we’re engaged.” I lift the huge ring weighing my finger down. Of course it’s huge; he’s probably used a fucking trust fund to pay for the fucking thing. Fuck. I need to stop cussing so much! Shit!
“But we are not married. There would be a scandal for my poor mother if anyone ever knew that we shared a bed. There would be talk of the vengeful slut from the North who befouled my poor mother’s house. And of course she would have to let them slander you, out of respect for me. Trust me, this is not where you draw attention to the fact you’re a Yankee.”
“You just said befouled? You’re getting weird. And you Southerners do realize we’re all American, right?” Friggin’ Southerners with their War of Northern Aggression bullshit. I am suddenly terrified of this woman.
“You’re licking your nose again.” He smiles, nodding at me like this whole thing is nothing. “Stop being nervous. This is why I never warned you; you’d be half mad by now if I had. You’ll be fine, just try not to flash your Gene Simmons tongue at my parents. Licking one’s nose is a bit circus freak for them, especially with the eyes being different colored. All you need is to flutter them the way you do and lick your nose, and my mother will pass out.”
“I’ll remember that.” I sigh. I want to say he’s a circus freak, but I don’t. I know what I am and what he is. At least I thought I knew what he was.
He reaches for me, holding my hand. “We just can’t share a bed. It’s no big deal. And you should know they have some quirks, just not licking noses or different-colored eyes. I can’t even explain it, you just have to see it.”
Quirks? Licking my nose is a quirk? It’s a nervous habit. I sit back in my seat and send a quick text to one of the secretaries Rory and I use to ensure we have everything we need.
He turns out of the snooty-looking area, making my breathing easier as he heads along a long and winding road. I start to relax until I realize he has driven to an area with estates and houses so big I can’t breathe again. They look like the White House.
“Do they own a hotel?” I ask, actually scared of the answer. His laugh does nothing to soothe me.
My insides tighten, and I send a text to Angie demanding to know why she didn’t warn me of this.
How could you send me to the South and not tell me his parents are ESTATE RICH? You suck!
Her reply appears quickly.
You know I love you, but there was no warning you. It’s big, like hotel big. Expect a huge group of people to greet you too, like forty. Use your best manners and act like a demure orphan, the sweet and demure orphan I know is in there!
I choke. Demure? Shit!
“You okay?” He sounds worried.
I nod and shrug in a jerky movement and look out the side window until my phone buzzes again.
Forget them, remember you’re a killer with uncanny instincts and ex-military and exceptionally badass! Just keep looking around the room, figuring out ways to kill them.
That text makes me smile, so I look like an idiot when we drive up to a gate with boys peeping over the ledge. Not real boys, mind you, but cast-iron boys, naked cast-iron boys. The weird smile stays on my face, frozen, as I try to understand the naked peeping boys.
As the gates open, my heart starts to skip beats, like it’s seizing.
The long drive up to the house is ridiculous—old-movie-that-Angie-has-made-me-watch ridiculous. Hedges are carved like we are at a children’s zoo or some crap. They aren’t the weirdest part either. No, a hedge shaped like an animal is crazy, but the massive fountain is worse. It has three naked boys frolicking in the water, like they’re splashing, only they’re made of cast iron like the other boys.
The pool, oddly enough, is out front and long and thin; not what you’d expect for a house of such grandeur. At the very end of the long driveway is another cast-iron sculpture of two boys, naked boys, playing leapfrog. I cough a little to avoid the questions threatening to leave my lips about his parents’ obsession with naked boys. It’s something I have seen only in Europe and usually at overly fancy places with stodgy and annoying people who think too much of their own opinions and self-worth.
At the end of the weird and pervy driveway is a house that puts all houses, and most Italian castles, to shame. It’s Elizabethan in style if I’m not mistaken, which I know only because I have actually taken the tours, and it has turrets, real ones.
No, the house I cannot prepare for.
It looks like it might still have slaves and a cotton plantation out back, but it’s the castle edition of plantation house tours.
The front steps form a half oval with staircases on either side, in case you prefer to leave from the left instead of the right. The kind you would imagine a woman in one of those huge old-fashioned dresses going down, like Cinderella, the Disney cartoon.
I immediately start sweating. He reaches over. “See, I knew you’d like it.” The stupid smile is still plastered in shock to my face from the cheeky spy comment, so he thinks I love it.
When he parks, a man comes out to the car. Dash jumps out, offering the man a hug. He’s older, clearly Dash’s father, with gray hair and a white mustache. He’s in a suit, which makes me uncomfortable, but if I lived here I would wear a suit every day too. Why not?
“Jane, this is Nichols, our driver and valet.”
I don’t understand what that means. I have seen thirty-two countries and fought in a war, and I still don’t know what a valet does. I assume he means valet parking, as in he has a man who is paid a salary to park cars. How did I not know this was a job possibility?
The man bows to me, making me sweat more. “Miss Jane, it is lovely to finally meet you.”
He’s English, of course. Why wouldn’t he be?
“Jane.” Dash mutters my name. It means I’m not doing the right thing. He and Angie always say, Jane, the correct response is to blah blah blah, when I am not making the right choice or action or saying the right thing.
“It’s so nice to meet you, sir.” I step out as he gets the door and offer him my hand. He gives Dash a strange look and smiles wide like he knows a secret I don’t.
Dash blushes. Clearly I didn’t have the right response.
“Young Master Benjamin has spoken very highly of you, miss.”
He said master? Did he, or did I mishear because of the accent?
Dash slides an arm behind my back, leading me to the large front steps. “Oh, Nichols, you old charmer.” I notice there is a difference in Dash’s tone and accent. He speaks differently here. There’s an affect in his words he doesn’t have in the North.
He leads me up the stairs, leaving our bags in the car. I glance back, and the poor old man is lifting them from the trunk. I pull from Dash’s arm but am whisked back in. “You will let the poor man do his job, Jane. He’ll think you think he can’t do it.”
I snarl under my breath and pull my cell phone from my pocket, sending the message I had typed out to Nancy, the secretary whom I consider my favorite. “Mr. Nichols, can you leave my bags, please? I’m staying at the inn in Middleton, actually.”
“You mean Middleburg, miss? Am I to understand you have made prior arrangements?” He asks like he might chuckle.
Dash’s hand tightens on my waist, making me nearly jump, but I breathe through it. I will not let him see me cry because he may or may not have lied about his entire fucking childhood. When he said country-club rich, he knew I thought he meant I might have to drink a martini and smile when they told weird stories about their trips abroad. I might have to wear argyle. He lied. When he said affluent he meant blue blood. When he said hoity-toity he meant something I don’t think I have a measurement for.
I am fuming, which is almost refreshing since my brain desperately wants to solve the murder and vicious torture of eleven women. But that’s cool, we can hang here and they can all laugh and wear sweaters and make me drinks I don’t like.
“Will the young lady be staying here, sir?” poor Nichols asks softly.
“Oh, you’ve arrived!” someone says from the top of the stairs.
My head snaps back from the driver to a blonde woman more intimidating than I have ever seen. “Staying here? Of course you both will be. Right, darling, please come in.” She’s also English, so I don’t know if she’s his mother or another form of modern-day slavery.
“She’ll be staying here,” Dash says calmly to the serf and then turns his head to the woman in front of us. “Mother!”
His mother is British? Does that make him British?
I feel like that’s something people in a relationship would have talked about by now. How could he not tell me he’s British? My brain whispers that it might be one of those I don’t share so he doesn’t share things. Not to mention, I don’t really ask. I wish I had now.
I wish she just carried a knife or a gun so I could treat her appropriately, like a threat. But she doesn’t. She has a slightly sharp canine like Dash and is so beautiful I don’t know whether to kiss her or ask for the person who does her makeup for my next spy assignment when I leave the mind running behind.
She grabs my shoulders, squeezing slightly, and pretends to kiss my cheek. I gulp, actually out loud, and freeze as she brushes our cheeks, acting like she’s kissing, but instead saying the word kiss as she does it. She’s so tall I feel like a dwarf next to her and Dash both.
It’s confusing and overwhelming, but she isn’t alone.
There’s a man who looks like he might be an actor. He’s tanned and golden like Dash, tall and broad like Dash, but he’s wearing a double-breasted suit. He smiles, and a dimple puckers in his right cheek. His eyes are dazzling blue, and his teeth are so white I press my lips together, looking like I have to pee instead of smiling. My coffee-stained teeth will make him wince; I feel like we both know that at this point. He grabs his son and shakes his hand, awkward also.
The mother has the very same green eyes as Dash—ones that reveal too much. Her disapproval or surprise in me is obvious. I didn’t expect his parents to be as old as I suspect they are. But even with her age, she is handsome. Pretty but older in a way that you would use the word handsome. And agile. She moves with such grace and manners, making everything I do feel robotic.
My phone vibrates, causing me to glance down at it. It’s another text from Angie. You are a superspy! It makes me smile, a real smile, and is followed by a nervous laugh. That lifts the lips of his parents when they look at me.
“You are so much more—well, more than we expected.” His mother gushes and looks at Dash. “You never told us she was Asian.” She leans in, speaking louder. “Is English your first language?” Her eyes narrow. “Oh, how charming. Your eyes are different colors. Is that a contact? Like a fad you young people are doing?”
I give him a look. He knows what it means but laughs it off a little nervously. “Jane’s family is Irish and Scottish. Not Asian, Mother. And her eyes are naturally that way.”
“Right, of course they are. It’s a birth defect. My cousin had it. Died early.” Dash’s father gives me an appraising stare. “You do look quite Asian for an Irish girl.” His father is English as well and possibly a bigger asshole than his mom. So that makes me excited. Not only do they hate the Irish, they loathe the Scottish, and they think I’m Asian. Adding to all of that the fact I have a birth defect, which may or may not kill me early on. I just smile, forcing silence.
Dash grips my arm. His eyes are worried, intensely worried. Nichols strolls past us with my bags. I quickly skirt the parents as they turn their focus to their son and start the millions of questions. I walk with Nichols. “Sir, I need my bags.”
He turns, shaking his head so subtly I nearly miss it.
I nod, reaching for them. His eyes dart to the family, but I insist and snatch my bag. “I have a reservation.” He winces as I say it.
“Jane, dearest, you must stay here.” She tries to force the issue.
I suspect Dash’s mother is a special woman, and I will end up feeling a special fondness for her, but to avoid that specialness getting out of hand or becoming something negative, I turn and shake my head. “I am so sorry, but I was raised Catholic by some very stringent nuns, and they would never have heard of me staying in a gentleman’s home when we are unwed.” I feel like an idiot, but I don’t want to talk like the heathen I am while trying to convince them I have some fucking boundaries . . .
His mother’s jaw drops. “Catholic?” I can nearly hear her dying inside. It’s point one for Jane, and I am not giving it up. Not even when his green eyes turn to me, flashing disappointment. I could stab him in the eye for the lies he’s told to get me here.
I carry my bag back to the car. “I was just coming in to say hello and then getting Das—Benjamin to take me to my hotel—inn. It’s an inn.”
His mother nods her head in my direction. “We have a guesthouse for just these sorts of situations. Now surely nuns wouldn’t shun you, such a devout Catholic girl, for staying in a guesthouse? The rooms are quite sizable and you will find the general splendor of the guest house more to your liking, I believe.”
I open my mouth and snap my jaw shut. A point for Mrs. Dash.
Nichols snatches my bag back and hustles inside before I attempt to do his job again.
Dash grabs my hand and pulls me along, all the while still chatting with his father about something to do with golf.
His mother loops her arm in mine, placing a perfectly manicured hand on my arm. “Benjamin did mention that you were orphaned during a terrible car accident when you were a young girl. How tragic.”
The sweating starts again. I don’t understand why she’s touching me. I don’t touch people I don’t know, ever
. It’s weird to go sharing yourself so easily.
She leans in, her words turning to a full whisper: “We are grateful to be able to offer you our family as a replacement for your own. We only hope we are able to help you fit in.” She pats my arm and walks gracefully inside, floating as if steered by the giant carrot in her ass. “I have laid out some dresses for you, something more suitable for tonight.”
I want to stab Dash, but I remind myself repeatedly that he isn’t at fault. It doesn’t work because, in my mind, he is completely at fault. He lied. He lied and he knows it.
But meeting them confirms exactly why he lied.
I never would have come.
A girl in a maid’s uniform, and not the naughty Halloween kind, slinks up next to me and curtseys. Dash’s mother nods at the girl. “Evangeline will show you to your room.”
“Please, come with me.” The maid holds a soft hand out for me, guiding me in another direction. I sigh the moment we are out of range of their prying eyes.
“Tell me you aren’t as stuffy as they are.”
She gives me a coy grin. “I try not to be, but they prefer we all have the same set of manners, opinions, and habits.”
“Can you not curtsey and act stuffy when it’s just us?”
She nods. “If that is what you wish.” She winks animatedly, giving the exact opposite effect a wink is meant to. Instead of it feeling like she is joking, I feel like she is laughing at me. But she does seem to relax a bit when she speaks again. “They just stopped making the staff line up on the stairs in formation when they arrived home. Apparently they still have to do it in Europe, but here in Virginia everyone finds it antiquated, so they have told us we no longer have to.”
Good God. “Where are you from?” I ask, glancing around the vast hallways and huge rooms as my stomach balls into knots I am certain will never heal.
She pauses, giving me a look. “What do you mean? Here, of course.”
I roll my eyes as she leads me to a set of doors. “You were bred in captivity?”