Chapter 9
THE HEIRESS AND THE NAKED MAN
Margot
I dislike when I only have two options, but I can only see two options right now.
The first is to just drop the bomb on the triplets—our father is the second-generation CEO of Aurora Gardens and I’d like your help to take the bastard down to avenge our sister—and the second is to negotiate with Rhys for his silence while I continue to get to know them so I can feel out their willingness to help me once they know me.
It took me two years to build up the kind of relationship I need with three-quarters of the board to trust they’d vote on my side when I propose forcibly removing my father from his position, if I can bring them enough proof that he’s a liability.
Building enough trust with the triplets to convince them to forgive me for my hesitation to be fully honest with them about my identity from the beginning, and then to also be the final nail in the coffin of my father’s career for Daphne’s sake?
I knew I wouldn’t have two years, but I thought I’d have more than five days.
Between Jonas spotting me and Rhys knowing who I am, though, the clock is ticking.
Rhys’s truck is already back at the cabin when I arrive, which is fine.
Let him think he has some power by being here first or whatever.
He clearly wants something, or he wouldn’t have told me he knows who I am before telling the triplets.
I texted with Lucky to let him know I’d had a long day at work and still hoped to make it to Silver Horn, the secret speakeasy hiding beneath House of Curry in downtown Snaggletooth Creek, but that I needed a nap first.
Nothing in Lucky’s response—totally get it, my days are like that too sometimes—suggested that he’s suspicious of me yet.
I park my van, which is running so much better now than it was when it was delivered to Cyril outside of Boulder last week so that he could be prepared for me here, and I check my phone.
Just a message from my lead security agent. I’m coming up through the woods. Open the window.
He’s not pleased that I’m having this conversation either.
I text back an ok emoji, click the button on the garage remote to shut the door, and heft myself out of the van.
Garage doesn’t smell much better than the van does, though the garage at least has more garage smells and fewer children-spilled-milk-in-this smells.
I would very much like the smell of my van to be the biggest problem in my life right now.
Since the garage is detached, there’s a short walk from the side door to the house, and I pause when I’m halfway between the two.
It feels like something’s watching me.
Something rustles in the forest behind the house, the opposite direction Cyril should be coming from, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
“Just the wind,” I whisper to myself as I hustle the rest of the way into the cabin, texting Cyril to watch for wildlife on my way.
When I step inside, Rhys isn’t immediately in sight.
He’s not in the kitchen, nor is he in the dining-slash-living room serving as his bedroom either.
Good news, though, is that there are no obvious booby traps.
If I were him, I’d absolutely be plotting the revenge of a lifetime against me right now.
Though it’s hardly like he’s personally damaged by me protecting my identity from relatives I didn’t know I had until I took a DNA test online a few months ago in a last-ditch effort to find something that I could use to prove that my father had illegitimate children who could one day cause problems for him, and therefore Aurora Gardens too.
“Hello?” I call.
No answer.
I study the room for anything out of place, then step carefully through.
He didn’t have time to plant anything here.
But then, I’m not sure how long he’s known who I am.
Was it a test, telling me that his bride ran away with his stepbrother? Cyril hasn’t gotten me the full dossier I asked for on that yet.
Apparently some things take more than a couple hours, which is annoying as hell. Though I do appreciate Cyril’s text back that he’s at the cabin and there’s no visible wildlife or other problems for me to worry about.
I know he’s only one man, and while he’s good, he can only work so fast solo.
But solo is necessary.
The more people who know where I am and what I’m doing, the more people who might slip.
“Is anyone home?” I call again.
I peek down the hallway to the two doors and find the hallway bathroom door closed, with the sound of running water behind it.
I knock. “I’m back. Don’t scream.”
“Are you coming in?” is the response I get.
Not exactly what I would’ve expected, but then, every day seems to be full of surprises.
“No,” I reply.
“Your loss.”
My brain betrays me and flashes images of a wet, naked Rhys, chest broad and soaped up, his large hands reaching down to—
Shut up, brain.
“Such a fucking man,” I mutter.
“Heard that.”
I flip the door off, more out of agitation with myself for fantasizing about someone who’s undoubtedly about to blackmail me than irritation with his comment, which was absolutely made just to bait me.
“Saw that too,” he announces.
Does he have the hallway bugged?
I leave him to his after-work shower and head into my bedroom, where I drop the knock-off Louis Vuitton bag that Margie carries on my bed and check that nothing in the room has been disturbed.
Computer and my real ID are still locked in their case beneath my bed.
Bed’s still made meticulously the way I left it this morning with the moose quilt.
The sliding closet door is exactly as I left it too, hanging halfway off of its hinges, which Lucky told me was something they’d all been waiting on each other to fix, but none of them had yet.
They’ve had the cabin for about a year, and according to Lucky, they’re still debating if they want to expand it into something the three of them can fully enjoy together, if they want to turn it into a vacation rental, or if they want to keep it as is.
Apparently Decker likes to use it for a nearby writing retreat when he needs a change in scenery. Jack likes it as a spot close enough to his favorite trails that he doesn’t need to find parking to use them. And Lucky likes it because Lucky seems to like everyone and everything.
There’s a rustic wooden dresser that I found empty when I got here, where I hid a stash of cash inside a box of tampons beneath some clothes in the third drawer down, and that’s undisturbed too.
If Rhys searched in here, he left no trace.
Not that he’d find much unless he picked the lock on the safe holding my computer.
A presence looms in the bedroom doorway.
I turn and find my housemate half-naked, still wet, wearing just a gray towel around his waist. “Forgot to grab my clothes,” he mutters.
You’d think being stripped of nearly every stitch of clothing would make the man seem smaller.
Instead, his broad chest, thick abdomen with the subtle outline of a round bruise, and wide, muscled shoulders, bare except for his skin and the hair on his chest, seem to have expanded in the shower, which has my brain giving a very large, very loud even better than we imagined.
How does he even fit in the doorway?
Is he this big everywhere?
And yes, I mean everywhere.
I’m back in the closet at the retreat center, my hands on his chest, trying desperately not to notice how solid the wall of muscle was beneath my palms and fingers, and even more desperately not to like it.
Seriously. Brutes have never been my thing.
But Rhys O’Malley—the man is getting to me.
I force a swallow and a no-nonsense glare at him. “Are you going to get dressed for this conversation?”
He rubs his beard and puckers his brows together like he’s contemplating the question. Then—“No.”
I occasionally visit Daphne in her adopted hometown of Athena’s Rest in upstate New York. It’s a couple hours’ drive from the city, and she swears bad things happen whenever she comes back near where we grew up, plus she hates our parents and reminders of them, which—legit.
But something she always says to me when I go see her and remark on basically anything charming in her small town is drifting in the back of my mind now.
Margot, you need to get out more.
She doesn’t mean to shows and dinners and drinks with friends.
She means to see more of the world. To get out in nature like she does regularly.
To have a broader variety of experiences beyond work and city life, and according to her, it doesn’t count as getting out more when I hide away in any number of various mansions that I’ve bought or that our family has owned for decades in another city where I don’t often leave the property and instead treat myself to gorgeous views while sipping wine or coffee or occasionally hiking close to my property, most often solo, because the solo life fits me these days.
Being interrogated by a nearly naked bear of a man in a remote cabin in the Rockies qualifies to me as getting out more.
And honestly?
I don’t hate it.
The view for this interrogation isn’t bad.
Could definitely be worse, in fact.
Shut it down, Margot. You’re not here for a romp in the sheets.
I step aside and gesture to my bed, since my brain so kindly suggested it. “Did you want to sit?”
He studies me for another minute, intense blue eyes searching my face, the purple streaks fully gone from the whites of his eyes now, even if it’s lingering the barest amount on his face, then takes three steps into the room, turns, and plants his wet-toweled ass on my quilt.
His thighs spread, and the towel gapes.
I keep my eyes trained on his face like the professional I am, absolutely certain that if I looked down at that gaping towel, he’d have it positioned just right for me to see nothing, and also absolutely certain that he’d smirk at catching me looking.
This game is so obvious.