by Ivy Layne
He was everything good and honest, and when he smiled at me, my heart beamed. This was way too fast to fall in love. I didn’t seem to be able to stop myself. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
I tossed and turned for hours before I found sleep. When Aiden was beside me, I could bury my worries. His presence overwhelmed me, distracting me with the physical, giving me a rock to lean on while I sorted out everything else. Without him there, I was adrift.
I’d feel better once things were settled. Once I was talking to Chase again. Once I had a job and a place to live. Once we’d found the people who’d sold me to my parents.
I hadn’t called Chase. Hadn’t texted him. Hadn’t told him I’d stolen our files from our parents and handed them over to Sinclair Security. I knew from Aiden and Gage that Chase had taken a temporary position with Winters, Inc. working in the department they’d created from his company.
When Gage mentioned him, it was with admiration and even a hint of affection. They must have been getting along. I was happy for Chase. For both of them.
It wasn’t that I was upset about being adopted. I’d been estranged from my parents for so long this additional wedge of separation didn’t mean much. And Chase was my brother, blood or not.
But he’d lied to me. Lied about something fundamental to who I was, for years. He’d had chance after chance to come clean. Every time I thought about sending him a text or dialing his number I got angry all over again. I loved him, but I wasn’t ready to forgive him.
I’d sent out my résumé and applied for a few jobs that looked promising, even gone on a handful of interviews, but so far, I hadn’t found anything that felt like a good fit. I hadn’t had a job offer or a second interview. Even in a good market, finding the right job didn’t happen overnight.
I’d only been looking a week, but on top of everything else not having a steady paycheck left me anxious. I had money saved, but that was for school. Not money to burn while I lounged around Winters House, unemployed.
Ditto for the apartment. I’d looked at a few places, but everything I liked was over my budget. Until I found a job it didn’t make sense to sign a lease.
All the un-woven threads of my life kept me up, circling in my head, questions without answers, until I finally dropped off to sleep.
I woke in time for breakfast, still tired, but without circles under my eyes to show it. Perfect. Evidence of a sleepless night wasn’t part of my plan.
I had another interview later in the morning, and I dressed for it before breakfast in a pale gray sheath dress with matching jacket. My plum heels brought out the hint of lavender in the gray fabric and matched the filmy, patterned scarf I wound around my neck. I braided sections of my hair, smoothed other sections until they shone, and twisted all of it into a chignon at the nape of my neck.
I reached for a pair of pearl earrings, stopped, and let my hand fall to my side. They went with the dress—professional, appropriate, and pretty. And they reminded me of my mother. I had nothing against pearls. I loved pearls. But not today. I chose a pair of simple sterling knots and put them on. Dressed in my armor of choice, I was ready to face the enemy.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Violet
It took everything I had to keep my face smooth and distantly polite when I saw the bright, eager look in Aunt Amelia’s eyes as I strode into the dining room. If I’d had any doubt as to who was behind the rubber snake in my bed, they were razed as Amelia took in my composure and her face fell.
Her disappointment was palpable. It was hard not to laugh. Harder when Sophie smirked at Amelia and shot me a wink. I’d only been in Winters House a week, but I was learning that Sophie didn’t miss much. Like Mrs. W, she was quiet, well mannered, and sharp as a tack. She’d have to be to keep up with Amelia.
“Did you sleep well?” Amelia asked, probing for a reaction, her dark blue eyes avidly searching my face, deep wrinkles furrowed in the thin, papery skin of her forehead.
“Like a baby,” I said, “and you?”
“Amelia always sleeps like a baby. Or the dead,” Annalise said from behind me, entering the dining room and taking a seat beside me. Her fiancé Riley lived with her in Winters House, but he rarely joined us for breakfast. A vice president with Sinclair Security, he left early on workdays to ensure he’d be home every night for dinner.
“Good to know,” I said to Annalise, sliding a sly glance at Amelia. Her eyes flashed wide for a split-second. Good. Let her wonder what I might get up to while she slept.
Annalise spotted the byplay and to distract her I said, “How are the wedding plans going?”
“They’re going,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I don’t know why a small wedding involves so many details.”
“Told you so,” Sophie said.
“It doesn’t help that we’re only mostly sure the house will be done in time,” Annalise said, serving herself eggs and a biscuit from the platters on the table.
She and Riley were living in Winters House for the moment, only until the renovations on her parents’ home were complete. Anna and James Winters had lived in an arts and crafts style cottage on the grounds of Winters House, less than a quarter mile away through the woods.
I didn’t have the full story, and I wasn’t comfortable asking, but somehow the house had caught fire a few weeks earlier and needed to be repaired before Annalise and Riley could move in. They wanted the wedding to take place in the great room of the house she’d grown up in and apparently the renovations to the kitchen were holding up the project. For reasons I didn’t understand, it seemed vitally important to the family that the house in the woods be put to rights before Annalise and Riley’s wedding.
Everyone knew the basics of the Winters family legend—two double murders, grieving children inheriting enormous wealth and a multinational corporation that made them all billionaires when Aiden was still in college.
I didn’t know the details, and I wasn’t about to ask. What Aiden and I had was too new to weigh down with memories of his past, and my family had provided more than enough drama for the last few weeks. If I’d known Annalise better I might have probed, but I didn’t, and I hadn’t.
“Do you need help?” I asked. “I have an interview this morning, and there are some jobs I want to look into when I get back, but otherwise I’m available if you need an extra set of hands.”
“You don’t mind?” Annalise asked.
“You’d better watch out,” Sophie warned, “she’s a demon with her lists.”
“I’m not afraid of lists. I like lists. And she can’t be as bad as Aiden.”
“I forgot you worked as his assistant for a while,” Annalise said.
“One of them,” I agreed.
“I thought you were just there spying on him,” Amelia said, still trying to get a rise out of me. I wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted. For me to lose my temper? She’d have a long wait if that was her goal.
“In part, I was.”
“Find anything interesting?” Amelia asked.
“Sadly, no. He told me he works too much to have any compromising stories hidden away.”
Amelia snorted. “That’s for damn sure. It’s a waste of a healthy young man if you ask me.”
“Agreed,” I said. “But when I wasn’t spying on him, I actually was working as his assistant. I wouldn’t have lasted more than a day if I was afraid of lists.”
“Well, if you really don’t mind helping, there are some things I could use a hand with. This afternoon?”
“This afternoon is perfect,” I said.
Something settled inside me at Annalise’s acceptance of my offer to help. I didn’t like feeling like a freeloader, moving into Aiden’s house, however temporarily, and acting like I belonged here. There wasn’t much I could do to contribute.
Aiden didn’t need my help covering the bills or the groceries, and Mrs. W and her day staff kept the house neat as a pin and running like clockwork. Abel fed everyone, and Mr. Henried and his gardening staff
kept the grounds landscaped to perfection. None of them needed me, but Annalise did, and I needed something to do aside from stewing over my brother, my still-unknown biological parents, and my lack of a job or a home.
I finished my breakfast and excused myself, going back to Aiden’s room to review my notes for the interview. I wasn’t sure how interested I was in the job—bookkeeping for a medical supply parts company didn’t sound terribly interesting—but I wasn’t in a position to be picky.
The interview went well enough, but I wasn’t hoping to be asked back. There wasn’t much opportunity for promotion and the company was a long commute from the north side of Atlanta where I thought I’d prefer to live. Close to Aiden.
Was it stupid to assume we’d be together long enough that his location should factor into my job search? Maybe. I wanted to hope we’d be together, hope we had something real. If we did, I didn’t want to take a job that would leave me sitting on I-85 for two hours a day getting to and from the office.
I got home, changed out of my suit and hunted up Annalise. She invited me out to lunch, and we ate cheeseburgers and fries surrounded by notebooks and a binder filled with clippings of things she’d already chosen for the wedding.
Annalise never mentioned Chase, and I tried not to think about it, but now that I knew she was his half-sister, I couldn’t stop seeing the similarities. Their eyes were the same blue, their mother’s blue, their hair the same shade of golden blond. Something in the curve of her lips, the rise of her cheekbone, mirrored my brother’s face. It made me both ill at ease and weirdly comfortable with her, as if we were already friends.
Finally, in the middle of lunch, I blurted out, “Have you and Vance met Chase yet? Has your younger brother?”
Guilt crossed her face. “Yeah. Aiden said you were still angry with him. He asked us not to bring it up.”
So like Aiden to look after me, and so selfish of me not to think about what Annalise and her siblings might be going through. Her eyes, so like Chase’s, studied me with concerned apprehension, and I rushed to set her at ease.
“It’s okay,” I reassured her. “I’ll get over it. I’m just mad, that’s all. Do you mind talking about it? Meeting him?”
“No. I don’t mind. We all went by the office the other day, had lunch together.”
“Was it weird?”
Annalise hovered on the edge of uncertainty before she appeared to make a decision and shook her head, laughing a little under her breath. “It was hella weird. Vance is my twin brother, but when you put him side-by-side with Chase—” She shook her head again. “It’s eerie.”
“You should have seen Aiden’s face the first time he saw my brother. Chase was ready to beat the shit out of him for daring to touch his baby sister and Aiden just stared. I didn’t get it until I saw a picture of Vance. It is eerie. If Chase grew his hair out and got a few more tattoos, they could really mess with people.”
Annalise burst out laughing. When she got herself under control she said, “Yeah, you’re going to fit in just fine.”
My chest warmed at her easy acceptance, and I asked the thing I most wanted to know. “Is he doing okay? Could you tell?”
“He was a little stiff. Kind of standoffish at first. But he warmed up by the end of lunch. We’re going to do it again in a day or two. Vance invited him over for dinner.”
“That’s good. That’s good. I was worried.”
“We’re a lot to have dumped in your lap all at once,” Annalise said, and I was reminded exactly why I hadn’t spoken to my brother in over a week.
“Except it’s not all at once,” I said, bitterness sharpening my tone. “He’s known about you for almost twenty years.”
“And you still don’t know where you came from, do you?” Annalise asked, gently.
I picked up a French fry, swiping it back and forth through a mound of ketchup. “Aiden said the Sinclairs are still trying to track down the attorney who brokered the adoption.”
“Maybe if you knew, you wouldn’t be so mad at Chase.”
“Maybe,” I said. “I’m curious. I want to know who they are, but they’ll never be my parents. We may not be on good terms, but my parents are the ones who raised me, not whoever cashed that big check they wrote. I’m not mad at Chase because I don’t know where I came from. I mad because he lied.”
“I get that,” Annalise said, munching on her own fries. “Believe me, I get that. Riley…” She trailed off.
“Riley what?” I probed, curious. I’d only seen them together over the last week, but the two of them were tight. Reading each other’s minds, finishing each other’s sentences tight. Like they’d been together for decades.
“It’s a crazy story, but—”
It was a crazy story. Totally insane, involving a stalker, first love, lies, betrayals, attempted murder, and an eleven-year separation that finally ended in Annalise almost dying, and then getting engaged to Riley.
Wilder than any nighttime soap opera, I would have been entertained if the person telling the story had been a stranger and not a woman I hoped would become a friend. When she finished with her happy ending Annalise looked away, suddenly hesitant.
“What? What is it?”
“I don’t think anyone’s told him yet,” Annalise said slowly, not meeting my eyes, “but William Davis, the man who was stalking me, the man who killed my aunt and uncle and almost killed me—he’s Chase’s father. He dated my mother in college before she met my father.”
I stared at her, utterly speechless. “And no one’s told Chase?”
“Not as far as I know. We’ve only met the one time, and it didn’t feel like the kind of thing you throw in a conversation. Hey, it’s great to meet you, so glad you’re part of the family, and by the way, your sperm donor was a psychopath who died a few weeks ago while he was trying to kill me.”
“I could see how that would be awkward,” I said, dryly. I thought about the mess we were all in—the tangled past and the lies to cover it up. “Gage works with him every day now, right? Will you ask him to tell Chase? He needs to know, and the longer he doesn’t the worse it will be when he finds out. And if he thinks all of you know and you’re not telling him, making a fool of him—”
“Shit, I hadn’t thought of it that way. I’ll talk to Gage tonight.”
“Thanks.” I was angry at Chase, but that didn’t mean I wanted to see him hurt. The sooner he knew the truth about William Davis, the better for everyone.
“You’re in pretty good shape for someone who almost got burned to death a few weeks ago,” I said.
“True love heals all wounds.” A private, secret smile spread across Annalise’s lips. I could only hope she was right.
After lunch we drove around town taking care of errands on the wedding list—checking on the cake, the flowers, stopping by the caterer. I almost didn’t make it home in time to set my plan in motion.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Violet
Annalise and I parted ways outside the kitchen, her to work on prepping more of her photographs for an upcoming gallery show and me to find out exactly where Sophie and Aunt Amelia were.
It didn’t take me long to locate Sophie hiding from the heat of the afternoon in the cool, dark library, reading a book. Amelia lay stretched out on the sofa napping. I didn’t interrupt, just eased back out of the room and jogged up the stairs to Aiden’s suite as silently as I could.
Grabbing the rubber snake from the dressing room, I tucked it under my arm and made my way back down to the first level just as quietly, ducking into the dining room and shutting the door behind me.
Out of nowhere, I heard, “Do you need something?”
I jerked, startled, and almost dropped the snake. Mrs. W stood across the room in the doorway leading to the butler’s pantry and the kitchen. Knowing she would understand, I held up the rubber snake and said, “I found this under my pillow last night.”
Mrs. W nodded, knowingly. “I was wondering what her mood was about th
is morning. She should have known you wouldn’t scare that easily.”
I was absurdly pleased at the compliment. “Does she always sit in that chair?” I asked, gesturing, snake in hand, at the seat Amelia had occupied since I’d been at Winters House.
“Always,” Mrs. W confirmed, a sly smile ghosting across her lips.
“I’m just going to leave her a gift,” I said, rounding the table and pulling out Amelia’s chair.
Mrs. W made a show of not looking at me. “I’ve forgotten the napkins. I’ll be back in a few minutes to set the table.”
I grinned to myself and carefully positioned the snake where Amelia wouldn’t see it until she pulled out her chair. Payback was a bitch. If this didn’t do the trick, I’d figure out something else.
I was early to dinner. I had no intention of missing the show. Amelia must have gotten used to easy prey, or the indulgence of her family, because she was not at all prepared for the fat rat snake curled up on her chair when she drew it back from the table.
Her piercing scream brought feet pounding down the hallways. She raised one arm and pointed at me shrieking, “You! You did this!”
I stood with my hand on the back of my chair, serene, and said, “I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about. Did what?”
“This! This thing in my chair!”
Aiden and Gage entered the dining room at the same time, Aiden still carrying his briefcase, his jacket over his arm. I hadn’t seen him in twenty-four hours. My heart eased to have him so close. I was in deep if I missed him that much after barely a day apart. I didn’t have time to dwell on that thought.
Amelia threw her arm out, pointing it to me and accused, “She put a snake in my chair!”
“Excuse me? Where would I get a snake?”
Amelia crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes at me. “You know exactly where you got the snake,” she snapped.