~
Chapter 2
The cab dropped Eric and me in front of an enormous house on Beacon Street that directly faced the Commons. It was built in the nineteenth-century style common to so much of Boston, with a wide brick exterior punctuated by black bay windows running up its five or six stories. Unlike most of the buildings surrounding the park, the double-doored entrance didn’t have the telltale buzzer that usually marked multiple units in the building. Only one occupant lived here. I turned to Eric.
“A friend?” I joked. “Or sugar mama?”
“You’re fucking hilarious,” Eric said as he waved goodbye to Caleb. “She just works here.”
Handsome in an Alexander Skarsgård kind of way, Eric had a reputation as something of a player in our class. I had known him since starting law school almost three years ago, and thought of him more like an annoying brother-type. We shared the same dislike of group social gatherings, but for slightly different reasons. I didn’t like to mix business and pleasure, whereas Eric tended to do it a bit too much, and his exploits often crossed paths too often at group functions.
“Anyway, definitely no sugar,” he said. “She’s a housekeeper for some rich bastard. Place is freaking amazing, but she lives downstairs in the mother-in-law. She’s allowed to have guests, but no one after one or something like that.” He shrugged. “It’s nothing serious.”
I grimaced. “Gross, man. You didn’t have to invite me on your booty call.”
He laughed as he walked toward the house. “Don’t worry. I’m sure we can wait at least until your car comes.”
“Wanna bet?” I asked, but dutifully followed.
The snow was starting to come down harder, and already the pavement was covered with a thick blanket of the stuff. I cursed myself for forgetting my snow boots, which I normally toted with me to and from work in the winter. Boston sidewalks in the winter were no place for Manolos.
“Careful!” Eric called back as he turned past the gate at the steps and took the short flight down to a basement-level entrance, where he pressed a doorbell.
“She doesn’t answer the regular door?” I asked.
“Servants’ quarters,” he said with a smirk. “I guess most of the houses like this on the park have them converted into something different, like a garage, but this guy had them remodeled for the help. He is seriously loaded. He has a live-in cook and a driver too.”
Eric shook his head, feigning disgust, but the obvious longing in his voice was harder to hide. Who wouldn’t want that kind of money?
“Hey mister, come on in!”
The door was answered by a petite, pretty girl with wildly curly brown hair and a small, broad nose. The slight lilt in her voice informed me that she wasn’t originally from the United States, and as she smiled at me warmly, I couldn’t help thinking that was to her benefit. People in New England weren’t known for welcoming strangers into their homes, but she looked at me as though I were an old friend.
“Hi, I’ve been waiting for you! Come in, lindos, you look frozen!”
Eric and I followed her through a narrow hallway that ended in a large common room outfitted with two massive sectional sofas facing a flat screen TV and a small kitchenette at the far end. Across the room a doorway led to another hallway, where I could see several doors in the dim light and a large staircase leading up to the main part of the house.
“Thanks for letting me wait here for a car,” I said. “Walking around in this stuff is murder on shoes, you know?”
“No problem,” she said, her accent more apparent now. “I know exactly what you mean. I’m Ana, by the way.”
“Skylar,” I returned. I took her hand, but was surprised when she pulled me in for a quick peck to each cheek. “Where are you from?”
She smiled again. “Obviously not from here, huh? I’m moved from Brazil a few years ago. I like to see how people react when I kiss them on the cheek. New Englanders are so nervous about it, it’s so funny!”
“Well, I’m not from New England,” I said. “New Yorker, born and bred. We’re not quite so skittish.”
She laughed with a nod and pointed to a rack where I could hang my coat. Eric’s was already there, along with his shoes, pointed neatly out from the door.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he said, wrapping his arms around Ana’s impossibly tiny waist and nuzzling her neck. “David and Phoebe around?”
“No, David is on vacation this weekend. Went to Miami, lucky duck. Phoebe is off too,” she said as she leaned into his embrace. Their easy touch with each other made me chest squeeze a little with envy. Some people seemed to find that kind of rapport so easy.
“What about the Lord?” Eric was asking. “Think he’d care if I stuck around tonight?”
“Well, he’s not home right now. Why do you want to know, you naughty boy?”
I took a seat on the couch and thumbed fixedly at my phone while Eric and Ana said their very intimate hellos. After a few more minutes, she turned to me.
“Skylar,” she asked. “Have you ever had a caipirinha?”
“No.” I looked up and shook my head. “Can’t say that I have. What is it?”
“It’s a Brazilian drink made with cachaça, which is kind of like a rum.”
“Oh, I’ve already had a few tonight. And it’s getting kind of late.” According to my phone, it was almost eleven-thirty.
“Come on, Crosby, have a few with us,” Eric wheedled from behind Ana. “It’s a Friday night, right? You gotta have some fun some time, and there’s nobody here gonna try to feel you up. Only Ana has to deal with that.” He mercilessly pinched Ana’s butt, causing her to shriek and scamper away from him.
“It’ll be the perfect thing to warm you up before you go out into the cold again,” she added, heading into the kitchenette. “I’ll make you one. You hate it, no problem. You like it, maybe you have another, eh?”
“Okay, okay,” I relented with a grin. She was so sweet and friendly, it was hard to say no. I could see why Eric wanted to come over, even for just an hour. Or, apparently, the entire night.
Unsurprisingly, the drink was delicious, a light blend of lime and sweetness without the cloying taste of rum. I had already knocked back two and was dancing samba with Ana in my stockinged feet before I thought to check the time on my phone again.
“Oh, shit!” I yelped. “It’s past midnight! I really have to call a car to get going if I’m going to catch the T home.”
“You do that,” said Eric, who had taken my place with Ana in a much, much more intimate way of dancing. I sank into the couch while he maneuvered her toward the hallway on the other side of the apartment.
“Eric!” she batted him helplessly on the shoulder but allowed herself to be steered away. “Skylar, make yourself at home,” she called in between bouts of giggles. “I just, ah, have to show Eric something in my room.”
With that lame excuse, they were gone, leaving me trying to find service in order to call a cab. I stood up and paced around the room, trying unsuccessfully to find a signal.
“Shit,” I muttered to myself as a throaty laugh floated down the hall. I glanced that way, becoming more and more uncomfortable with each giggle. I wasn’t overly eager to listen to Eric having his way with Ana, no matter how charming she was. Aside from the fact that it skeeved me out to listen to my pseudo-brother getting it on with his lay of the week, I didn’t care for the reminder of just how easy it was for some women to enjoy themselves.
Maybe I wouldn’t have been so frustrated if the lackluster reaction I’d had to Trevor were the exception and not the norm. Unfortunately, it always seemed to come back to that, whether it was during the first, crucial kiss, or later on, when I was supposed to be screaming with ecstasy and not overthinking the way the sheets were rumpled under my back.
It wasn’t that I was into the wrong gender either. No, I was definitely interested in men, but they just couldn’t seem to keep me focused long enough to enjoy myself. It didn’t take much for me to becom
e distracted by the lighting in the bedroom, the uncomfortable chafing between bodies, or the weird way the light caught on someone’s nose. It didn’t help that most guys couldn’t seem to distinguish my clit from my elbow, or if they could, didn’t have a damn clue what to do with it. Maybe some girls (like Ana) could get off from pure friction, but I sure as hell wasn’t one of them.
Another, much louder giggle escaped from the direction of Ana’s room, followed by an ominous thump. I grimaced and headed toward the stairs in search of a better signal, eager to escape the increasingly more provocative sounds echoing down the hall. Ana had said when I’d arrived that the owner wasn’t yet home, so I decided to take my chances with trespassing upstairs in order to escape what was starting to sound like an amateur porn flick.
~
I opened the door at the top of the stairs into one of the largest and most beautiful kitchens I had ever seen. The entire thing was easily as large as my apartment on campus, with dark wood cabinetry and white marbled countertops bordering the periphery. Two huge farmhouse sinks faced each other on each side of the kitchen, bookending a double oven and a six-burner Viking stove. An enormous refrigerator was set into the walls between large picture windows that looked out onto a small courtyard garden planted over the servants’ quarters. In the middle of the kitchen was a large, marble-topped island, surrounded by several stools and topped by a hanging rack of copper pots and pans. Another large room containing a tufted, cream chaise lounge and a farmhouse table led directly off the kitchen, creating a sense of space and luxury in a common area that still managed to be comfortable. I wasn’t much of a cook, but if I were, this would undoubtedly be my dream kitchen.
I checked my phone, but still found myself in an obvious dead zone, so I pushed through the kitchen door into a hallway that passed a bathroom and led into another massive, open room. A huge, white stone fireplace lorded over one wall, and gaping bay windows looked out on the snowy Commons. The dark wood floors that continued from the kitchen were covered with several plush sheepskin rugs, the kind that begged a person to fall asleep right on them in front of a crackling fire. The walls looked like they had the original dark wood wainscoting, above which the walls were painted a warm cream color and were covered with a number of gorgeous modern art pieces.
Whoever had decorated the place knew their business, or paid someone who did. The aesthetic was both warm yet posh, traditional yet modern, inviting yet imperious. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that every furnishing in the room was likely worth more than everything I owned put together, but I felt oddly comfortable there, wishing for nothing more than to sink into one of the overstuffed sofas for a long nap.
I walked over to one of the windows and looked out at the park, which was nearly deserted in the weather. Beacon Street was also quiet as the occasional car made its way very, very slowly down the road, careful on the not-yet salted concrete. The snow was quickly morphing into a blizzard; snowflakes were coming down in sideways droves. The T-Stop was only a half-mile away, but it might as well have been thirty.
I sat down on the wide sill of one of the bay windows, which was trimmed with a few pillows for such moments. Nights like these made me yearn for the comforts of my family’s cozy old house in Brooklyn, with its wide front porch and my room carved into the attic. There I would snuggle up in the armchair next to the window and watch the winter snow gather on the oak tree outside while my father and grandmother chattered downstairs about the news and politics.
Bubbe and my grandfather had owned the house for almost thirty-five years before he had passed away when I was a baby. Suddenly my father, a city sanitation employee who never in a million years thought he’d own property in New York, much less in one of the few areas of the Brooklyn where you could still live in a single-family house on a tree-lined street, was the co-owner of a million-dollar piece of real estate. Since I had left for law school, it was just the two of them in the drafty old place. But they refused to sell it, and kept my bedroom door open for me whenever I was able to come home for a visit.
That was happening less and less these days. I had lived in the house with Dad and Bubbe while in and during my year on Wall Street, but went running to Boston when I was offered a partial scholarship at Harvard. So far, I felt certain I had made the right choice, but the demanding schedule of classes, studying, and interning had reduced my bimonthly visits to holiday weekends and breaks.
I pressed my nose up to the cold glass. My dad would love being stuck at home on a snow day like this, when he wouldn’t have to collect garbage at the crack of dawn, but could sit in his armchair all day if he wanted to. Before college, I’d join him, playing Risk and watching old movies until we crashed on the faded plaid couch in the living room. A snow day in Flatbush was magical; in Boston, it often felt cold and unfriendly. Except maybe in a house like this.
The front doors suddenly swept open with a loud bang. I jumped up from the windowsill, sending my phone sliding onto the floor with a clatter. I scrambled around trying to find it, and when I stood up, I found four pairs of eyes staring at me curiously.
There were three men, all of whom looked to be in their thirties or early forties, and who were dressed impeccably in tailored suits and the kind of cashmere overcoats that cost as much as my food budget for a year. One had brown hair and a pair of smudged glasses. Another had a mustache framing very thin lips. The third was probably the handsomest man I had ever seen, towering over the other two with height and a generally imposing presence. Clean shaven but for a bit of stubble, he had a ruddy, tanned complexion that betrayed a life that couldn’t be lived entirely in an office, and ear-length, sandy blonde hair brushed back from his face. The wind had forced a few stray locks to topple forward in that sexy, carefree way only certain men can pull off. He looked edible.
The other person was a very pretty woman, also dressed in a suit and overcoat, albeit much more fitted ones. With black hair tied back from her face, very pale skin, and bright red lips that shined in the dimmed light, she was beautiful in that severe way only a few very powerful women can pull off. All four people stared at me as though I were a stray animal that had managed to find its way inside the house. Come to think of it, that wasn’t an entirely erroneous characterization.
“Sterling,” said the mustached man with a mischievous grin. “You didn’t tell us you had company waiting for you.”
“No,” said the woman in a tone that implied she was not at all happy with my presence. “He didn’t.”
“I didn’t know I had,” said the blond man, who, even as his companions turned toward him, continued to stare at me in a way that made me feel as if my limbs were frozen in place. Our eyes locked, and even in the dim light across the room, I could see that his were a brilliant blue, the color of an Alpine lake. I felt my mouth drop slightly, but couldn’t do anything about it. Inwardly I chided myself as I stood like a damn statue, completely transfixed by this man’s stare. He was, quite simply, mesmerizing, but I couldn’t have explained to anyone why.
“Sterling? You all right, man?”
The brown-haired man’s voice broke the spell, and my cell phone clattered again to the floor as I lost my grip on it. I blinked, able to move at last.
“God, I’m so sorry,” I said, scrambling down to grasp at my phone. “I’m a friend of…ah…Ana’s…shit, I’m on my way out.”
I practically tripped over my feet as I ducked around Sterling and his friends, running down the hallway toward the stairs. I thundered down to the servant’s quarters, dug my coat and shoes out of the front closet, and opened the door while I was still pushing my arms into my coat. I escaped back into the intensifying blizzard while the clear sounds of her and Eric’s ecstasy rang in my ears, reminding me yet again of what I couldn’t quite attain. As I started the long walk across the park to the nearest T station, I recalled the blazing blue of Sterling’s eyes. Somehow, I doubted the women he knew ever had that problem.
~
Chapter 3
>
It wasn’t until I was about halfway through the park that I heard a voice echoing behind me.
“Wait! Miss! I don’t know your name, but will you just stop!”
I turned around to find Sterling bounding doggedly through the snow after me. He stumbled and nearly fell on a crack in the sidewalk, but rebounded with the reflexes of a trained athlete and caught up with me in a few more steps. A few more errant locks fell across his forehead, and I was faced with a smile that made my legs feel as if they were immersed in a hot tub, not the frigid New England air blowing up my skirt.
“Do you always go wandering through the Commons after midnight?” he asked as he regained his breath. “It’s not exactly safe. Especially for someone like you.”
I didn’t have to ask what he meant by that, considering my size and gender. Instead, I flushed, suddenly embarrassed by my idiocy. I wasn’t some hayseed from the hills. In my desperation to escape that house and the very disturbing effect that, well, this man seemed to have on me, I had done what every city dweller knows not to do: wander a public park at night.
“You left without saying good bye,” he said with a sardonic lift of an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name. Or what you were doing in my house.”
“God,” I said, finally finding my voice, but only able to look everywhere but directly at him. Like the sun, he exuded energy so bright I couldn’t look. So instead, I rambled.
“I’m so sorry about that. I’m a friend of Ana’s, your housekeeper. She just let me in for a minute, but had to go, uh, deal with something in her room. I didn’t have any cell reception down there, so I came upstairs to find a signal. She had no idea, really, so please don’t blame her. I didn’t mean to intrude in your, space, truly.” I couldn’t stop babbling until Sterling placed his hands on my shoulder and squatted down so his chiseled features were at the same level as mine.
Legally Yours (Spitfire Book 1) Page 2