Chapter 10
Carly
The front of Grayson Sparkks’s house looks less like a house and more like the kind of place that would have its own page in a glossy architecture magazine.
The clean stone exterior looks like it was built into the side of the mountains, black beams framing the sides, huge windows that reflect the pale winter sky back at me like the whole place is too cool to care that I exist.
I stand in the driveway with my purse over one shoulder, my laptop bag digging into the other, and stare.
Then I look down at the sad little cluster of my belongings being unloaded from the moving van.
A few boxes. A couple of suitcases. A cheap standing lamp with a wobble in the neck.
A duffel bag of clothes. Two tote bags full of books and random bathroom things.
My life, apparently, fitting neatly into one humiliating little pile again, but this time in front of a house big enough to be crowned a small country.
Grayson comes out through the front door in a charcoal sweater and grey joggers, his hair loose around his temples, phone in one hand, and I swallow and force myself to look natural.
He looks unfairly good standing there, broad shoulders filling out expensive knitwear like he was personally engineered in a lab to make women sign over their souls.
Mine almost leaves my body.
He slips his phone into his pocket and walks toward me. “Penelope’s with her mother, Halsey, until later on tonight,” he says, glancing briefly toward the moving van before looking back at me. “She actually showed up for once.”
The words are dry, flat, and utterly casual for the weight they carry.
There’s something clearly underneath them, something I’m definitely not qualified to poke at on day one, so I just nod like a sane person instead of asking intrusive questions about his ex-wife and whatever mess is clearly lurking there.
I make a mental note that her mom is probably flaky in case I ever need to interact with her.
“Got it,” I say.
His gaze flicks over my boxes, my bag, the entire embarrassingly tiny inventory of mine, and I have to fight the urge to explain myself. I almost blurt out that there’s more stuff at Zoe’s, except there isn’t really. Not enough to matter.
“This all?” he asks.
I force out a light laugh. “Yeah. I like to keep things minimalist,” I lie.
One side of his mouth twitches like he knows that’s bullshit but is nice enough not to call me on it. “Come on,” he says. “I’ll show you around while they bring everything in.”
I follow him toward the front door, trying not to look like a country mouse who’s wandered into a cat’s castle by mistake.
The foyer alone is about the size of Zoe’s entire downstairs.
My boots hit pale wood floors that gleam softly under warm recessed lighting.
There’s an enormous staircase with black railing curving up to the second floor, a light fixture that looks like floating gold branches, and somewhere in the distance, I hear the hollow echo of movers’ footsteps disappearing into a house so big it has acoustics like a cathedral.
I stop dead just inside the doorway.
Grayson glances back at me. “You okay?”
“Think so.” I tip my head back, taking in the ceiling that feels roughly nine miles above me. “Just trying not to pass out from the absurdity of this place.”
A quiet laugh leaves him before he seems to remember he’s trying to be a good host. That professional mask slides right back into place so fast I almost think I imagined it.
“This way,” he says.
He leads me into the kitchen first, and of course it’s obscene.
Not in a gaudy way. In a sleek, manly, I-have-too-much-money way.
There are two islands, two, and a walk-in refrigerator the size of my college dorm room.
Glass-front cabinets hang above matte black counters, and a built-in espresso machine calls my name from across the expanse.
My eyes snag on the second sink. “Why does one kitchen need this many sinks?”
His mouth twitches again. “I honestly have no idea. It came with the house.”
I hum like that is somehow normal. He’s rich enough to own an unnecessary copper sink and not even feel strongly about it.
He gestures around the room. “Help yourself to anything you want. If there are foods you like, brands you prefer, snacks, coffee, whatever, let me know and I’ll send for them.”
Send for them. Like he’s a duke in the eighteen hundreds dispatching someone on horseback for my preferred granola bars. “That’s not necessary,” I say automatically.
“It is if you live here.”
There’s no edge in the words. No flirtation either. Just that maddeningly steady, CEO-calm tone of his, like this is an onboarding process and I’m a new executive being briefed on the facilities.
I nod, because I don’t know what else to do when an astoundingly hot former NFL player tells me he’ll send for my groceries.
He shows me the pantry, the office, a laundry room bigger than any bedroom I had growing up. Then he walks me through the living room, where a massive sectional faces a stone fireplace, the biggest TV I’ve ever seen in a home, and a wall of windows overlooking the backyard.
Snow dusts the edges of the patio furniture outside. Beyond it, the pool cuts through the yard like something from a resort.
I stop again.
“That’s your backyard?”
His shoulder brushes mine as he steps up beside me at the glass, and the contact is brief, accidental, harmless.
It feels like a lightning strike.
“Yes,” he says.
I clear my throat. “Right. Of course. Silly me. Why have a normal backyard when you could have a luxury wellness retreat?”
This time his laugh is fuller, lower, and a little less guarded. I hate that it makes my cheeks heat.
“The living room, game room, and patio are always open to you,” he says, slipping back into that same maddeningly careful tone. “I use the pool in the mornings for laps before work, but otherwise it’s available.”
“Mornings?” I ponder before I can stop the stupid word from coming out of my mouth.
His eyes cut to me.
I feel heat creep up my neck. “I just meant — I don’t know. That’s disciplined,” I say, trying not to come across as flustered as I feel, like I definitely wasn’t picturing him wet and half-dressed at dawn.
“Routine helps,” he says.
“Of course.”
He takes me through the game room. There’s a pool table, a wall-mounted TV, a bar area, shelves lined with footballs and framed jerseys and photos.
Some are from his playing days. Some are of him with Penelope.
One is of him holding her when she was tiny, his expression soft in a way that hits me right in the sternum.
I look away before he catches me staring too long.
“Let me show you upstairs,” he says.
The staircase is wide enough to host a wedding procession. I trail behind him, trying very hard not to notice the way his sweater pulls across his back when he moves. The man has the shoulders of a Greek god and the emotional availability of a bank vault.
At the landing, he turns left, and I nearly walk straight into him.
My hand catches his forearm to stop myself from falling backward down the stairs. He catches my waist at the same time.
Everything in me goes still.
His fingers span my side so easily it feels obscene. Heat bleeds through the thin fabric of my top where he’s touching me. My pulse goes from a cool sixty-something to a number that would make a doctor panic.
“Shit, sorry,” I blurt.
“I’m sorry.”
But he doesn’t sound sorry. He sounds rough. Distracted.
For one suspended second, neither of us moves. But then I step back, and his hand drops away.
He clears his throat. “Your room’s down here.”
He opens a door at the end of the hall, and I step into what he refers to as a secondary master suite like those are normal words people say.
The bedroom is bigger than the open-plan living room and kitchen that Aaron and I used to share. There’s a canopy king-size bed with a wooden headboard, dark walls, tall windows, a dresser, a reading chair in the corner, and a soft rug in the center.
A bathroom sits through an open archway with a soaking tub, glass shower, double vanity, and enough counter space to host a small conference.
I just stand there with my mouth slightly open.
Grayson leans one shoulder against the doorframe, hands crossed over his chest, expression unreadable. “It’s nearly as big as mine, so you should be comfortable.”
“This is…” I laugh because there are no words left in my brain and I don’t know how to process this. “This is really nice. I was on a couch until this morning, so this is... an upgrade, to say the least.”
He pauses for a moment and I don’t let myself turn to see the probable hint of pity on his face. “It’s yours as long as you want it.”
The words carry the hint of a lack of finality, and it shouldn’t sting.
It still does, though.
He steps back from the doorway. “There’s closet space in there. Bathroom’s stocked, but if there’s anything specific you need, tell me. I had the basics put in.”
“You had the basics ’put in’,” I echo, turning toward him.
His brow lifts.
I shake my head. “No, it’s just— every time you say things like that, I feel like I’ve been hired by a supervillain.”
That gets me another almost-smile.
He shows me the guest room next, then the room Penelope uses when she’s with him — all pinks and books and stick-on glow-in-the-dark stars and stuffed animals and tiny sneakers lined in military-straight rows by the wall.
The tenderness in his face when he opens that door makes something warm bloom in my chest.
He loves her so much. It’s there in every detail.
I don’t realize I’m smiling until he looks at me and catches it. For a second, neither of us says anything. The air goes strange again, heavy and quiet, before he looks away first and keeps walking.
By the time we head back downstairs and out toward the patio, I am so aware of him that I’m basically one giant exposed nerve ending in boots.