Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Corvus…
Tonight, I learned… I don’t know why, but the phrase kept turning in my head.
Tonight, I learned… tonight, I learned, tonight, I learned… that Savannah Kittridge had one hell of a secret, and that she was damn good at keeping them.
A lot of pieces had suddenly fallen into place for me.
For one, how something about her had always screamed disingenuous and fake – but to be honest, while I’d clocked that, I never in a million years would clock that she wasn’t from money.
Oh, sure, her family farm was multi-generational, but there wasn’t a whole lot of money to be had in farming.
Most every farmer out there was one or two failed crops away from total fucking disaster and her grandfather’s handling of things was something I understood all too well.
How many foreclosures had I myself snapped up, paid to have flipped, and sold for a pretty profit over the years?
Shit, I bet there were foreign investors lined up around the block practically salivating over her family’s holdings, waiting with bated breath for them to fail and for the IRS to seize their shit and put it up for auction.
Likewise, I bet my last dollar that Savannah was killing herself when if she’d only hired a tax attorney, she likely would be paying peanuts on the dollar to clear the tax debt.
The IRS had a good way of scaring the shit out of people to get their money, and that was what a good tax attorney was for.
I sent an email to one I knew to get an idea of what could be done, loosely describing the situation, then I sat back with my drink and stared into space for I don’t know how long while the wheels turned in my brain on what to do with Savannah.
I wasn’t prepared to live with anyone. A night here or there was just about all I could stand, and while it was true that I admired her more, not less, for having come from modest means and literally self-making her money in the real estate market, her deceit in order to shortcut the line gave me some pause.
Not that I cared that it was unscrupulous. I could honestly give a fuck about that part. If you weren’t playing dirty, then you just plain weren’t playing to win – no what bothered me about it was simply that she had the capacity for that kind of deceit and had slid right by even my keen senses.
If she could lie so easily and readily about something like that… what else could and would she lie about?
Fucking Courtney, I thought to myself.
My mistrust really had more to do with her than with Savannah at all.
“Oh, the tangled webs we weave,” I muttered, and checked the time.
It was nearly three a.m.
I got up and shrugged out of my jacket and cut, hanging them in the nearby coat closet down here. I took off my chaps and hung them, too. I liked to keep an orderly house. I took off my boots and left them in the bottom of the closet before I padded upstairs in my socks.
She was angelic, her hands tucked beneath her cheek as she slept.
She’d left the bedside lamp on my side of the bet lit for me, and I didn’t know how to feel about that.
It was kind… and that was one of the things that I think had been one of her tells.
She was far too kind and selfless to come from money.
Like I said, pieces were starting to fit for me, and the image they created was vastly different from the image I had built up in my head of who Savannah actually was.
I undressed quietly and slipped nude between the sheets.
I just didn’t have it in me to dig out anything to wear, and besides that, she was too beautiful to pass up in the morning if our arrangement could hold – which if anything, tonight’s little revelation had supplied me with yet more leverage to keep it in place.
I just suddenly didn’t know if I had the guts or the heart to play the game as I had been all this time.
I lay down facing her and watched her sleep. She looked troubled, even in her slumber, a fine wrinkle developed between her eyebrows, just above the bridge of her perfect nose.
I’d had her all wrong, and I do mean all wrong… but then there was a part of me that wondered, had I?
She had to have lied somehow, some way, on her application to get under old man Beauregard… but everything after that? She struck me as a ‘by the book’ sort. I think the lesson had been learned by watching her family’s folly on that.
I smoothed some of her long hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear, and she reached for me in her sleep, cuddling into me as though desperate for my touch, and while it should have bothered me it didn’t. I was surprised, in fact, how desperate I was for hers.
I held her close, her body warm against mine, and closed my eyes.
Sleep caught up to me much too quickly, an indication that I was far more stressed out about her situation that I should have been.
Dawn was a glimmer on the horizon, just starting to lighten the room when I woke from a dream where Savannah and I walked in a cemetery at night. Hands had reached up from the graves and snatched her from me, screaming as she was pulled into the dirt.
My eyes snapped open, and I looked down.
I had somehow wound up on my back, my sleepy bright-eyed kitten practically draped over me, her head on my shoulder and chest, her leg over both of mine, one arm tucked against my body and the other draped over my waist, just above – dangerously close to where my boner tented the sheet.
She wore a cute little satin shorts and tankini sleep set in a peach edged with cream lace that left little if nothing at all to my imagination. I took a deep, deep, breath and my nose was tickled by her peachy scent and I closed my eyes as a sort of peace I hadn’t felt in some time washed over me.
I swallowed hard, and shifted slightly, trying not to wake her, but no dice. She clutched onto me harder and whimpered her wordless complaint and I had to chuckle.
“Time to wake up then, Bright Eyes.” I murmured the words into her hair and kissed the top of her head.
She dragged in a shuddering breath and stretched beside me, popping her neck and groaning.
“What time is it?” she whispered without even opening her eyes.
“Early,” I murmured and she looked up at me, sleepily.
“I need my clothes,” she muttered unhappily. “I need to go to work.”
“We need to talk first,” I chided.
“I know…” she sounded so dejected.
“You can’t go back to that place,” I said and she sighed.
“I know that, too…”
“Oh, I made sure of it,” I said. “You asked who I called last night? It was to leave a message at the county inspector’s office about the place. Pretty sure it’ll be condemned.”
She pushed up off me and reoriented herself, crossing her arms over my chest and leaning on me pinning me down, as if it would stop me from throwing her off me if need be.
“Why would you do that?” she demanded.
“It was a slum living condition, and I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t already have a plan,” he said.
“Enlighten me, oh wise master,” she said, tone laden with sarcasm. “Where am I going to find anything in this city even close to that low that isn’t some kind of slum?”
“Easy. I have a whole apartment above my carriage house – you can have it, and what’s more you can stay as long as you’d like for nothing.”
She stared at me, stunned, and asked, “You want me to be your live-in – what? Hooker? Escort? What would you even call that? In the apartment you keep to trick women into thinking that’s where you actually live so they don’t bother you at home?”
I grimaced and said, “Remembered that part, did you?”
“How in the Hell did you expect me to forget it, Corvus?” she demanded.
“Look, I know that I’m just supposed to be here for a good time and not for a long time or whatever, but that would change things for me, in a big way, can’t you see that?”
She closed her eyes as I buried my hand in her thick luxurious hair and tucked it behind her ear, teasing behind it with my fingertips in a light little scratch or tickle as though she really were a kitten and not a very beautiful woman lying semi-irate across my chest.
She batted my hand away with a faint smile on her lips and snapped, “Stop that!” rather unconvincingly which brought a smile to my lips.
“As for the other thing, consider it my gesture of good will that I contacted one of the best tax attorneys that I know on your family’s behalf.
He’ll be looking into things hopefully sometime today to see if he can’t ease the payment burden.
You shouldn’t be paying that much monthly; their expectations are more than a little high. ”
She made a small sound of protest; “They actually aren’t expecting what I’ve been sending them – I’ve been doing that all on my own to clear the board as soon as possible. It’s worth it to me, a little pain in the short run in order to clear the debt faster.”
“Well, hopefully we can get the overall amount reduced, spare you some of the drama.”
“I don’t get it,” she said. “Why are you..?”
I pulled her face to mine and kissed her, turning her onto her back, and showing just how easy it was for me to overtake her. She made a blurted sound of something that was halfway between surprise and protest, but I’d done enough talking, and I wanted her.
She put her hands against my chest, and stopped me with her eyes. I stayed above her, holding myself up effortlessly, but that wouldn’t last forever.
“This is really huge,” she said. “Can’t you see that?”
I cocked my head and said, “I see the pros and cons, Savannah. Don’t think I don’t.”
“Give me a pro,” she said raising her eyebrows and I dropped my hips and ground my erection into her.
“Pro: with you just steps away, I can have you whenever I want, and likewise you can have me whenever you’d like. It certainly makes the sex easier.”