19. Cassidy
I get about halfway through cleaning the library before I surrender. These bookshelves are dusty as fuck. It didn’t help that the books kept distracting me. There’s some of everything on these shelves—science fiction, fantasy, romance, crime. Even encyclopedias.
This morning’s French toast is nothing more than a fond memory to my growling stomach. At this rate, I’m going to be ten pounds lighter by Friday. But I need some fuel if I’m going to finish this library before morning.
My plan was to throw together a quick sandwich, but when I step into the kitchen and the chef’s gas range catches my eye, I’m suddenly itching to use it. Everything in this kitchen is immaculate.
When Rebecca was disowned, she ran away from her own McMansion with a bunch of expensive jewelry from her personal collection. She sold some of it to pay for our first house, where we lived until I was ten.
This kitchen reminds me of that house. My mother would cook Sunday lunches and make the best key lime pie I’ve ever tasted in that kitchen.
Her lasagna was to die for. Saliva fills my mouth just at the thought.
Hmm. Lasagna. Now that’s fuel.
I grab some carrots, milk, a brick of butter from the fridge, and a pound of ground beef from the freezer. Checking the pantry, I luck out on a box of lasagna sheets.
Despite my aching muscles—vacuuming a mansion is murder on the lower back—I hum as I stir the béchamel sauce with a whisk, waiting impatiently for it to thicken. My feet feel worse than my back…but my ass trumps everything.
It’s been throbbing painfully the entire day.
Sometimes that would piss me off, but other times it made me want to go to Ethan and tell him to finish what he started.
I tried holding on to the anger, knowing it would serve me better than lust, but standing here at the stove, making supper like the epitome of a wealthy housewife…it just makes me wonder.
What if I wasn’t his maid?
What if I was…his wife?
I use a teaspoon to taste the sauce, my eyes drifting closed as I let out a delighted, “Mmm.”
He’s way too old for me, of course. Way too arrogant, stubborn, and full of himself. And way too unpredictable. I mean…it was like a switch flipped in his head last night.
But damn, he’s gorgeous. Dominant, fierce, proud.
Good traits, and bad. If the good outweighed the bad, surely he’d have a family already? But he’s all alone in this enormous house, and there must be a reason for that.
Like the fact that he’s involved in some kind of criminal activity, maybe?
You know, the shit I came here to find out about?
The spoon clatters down on the granite countertop.
Fuck this.
I don’t have time to stand here pretending that I’m a maid pretending to be Ethan Remington’s wife. I’m here to find evidence.
Question is, what is my next step? Trying to steal his laptop didn’t work. Dare I try again? My aching ass is a stern reminder of what will happen if I get caught in the act.
But can I honestly let a spanking impede my investigation?
Bruises heal.
My dignity… well, it’ll just have to take one for the team.
Taking up the whisk, I start stirring the sauce again. It’s finally thickening. All the other ingredients are ready, waiting for me to assemble them into my mother’s famous pie.
I need to figure out how to access his computer. There’s got to be something on there I can take back to Detective Lewis to prove that Remington is?—
“That smells delicious,” Ethan rumbles in my ear.
I gasp in fright as I whirl around, whisk in hand, ready to defend myself. He yanks the utensil from my fingers and studies it for a moment before licking it.
It’s possibly the most panty-melting thing I’ve ever witnessed in my entire life. He’s so serious, so grim, a stark contrast to how his tongue twines through the whisk with practiced ease. I can only imagine how it would feel if he buried his head between my legs and ate me out like that.
I snatch the whisk and turn my back on him, hiding my furious blush.
“Stalking me again?” I snap.
“The smell was driving me mad,” he says. “Is it ready yet?”
“I’m still busy with the sauce. Then it has to bake. So no.” I don’t turn back to him. I’m too scared to. I don’t trust myself right now… and I still don’t trust Ethan.
He makes an unhappy sound in the back of his throat, and I roll my eyes. “If you have time to come and lurk, then you might as well be useful and make a salad.”
Still with my back turned.
I expect him to leave, or to make a comment about my attitude—he seems to have a genuine issue with it—but he just huffs out a breath and goes over to the fridge to take out salad ingredients. He works in silence as I finish the béchamel sauce and spares me only a single glance as I bring the sauce over to the kitchen island to assemble the lasagna.
“I don’t eat olives,” I say when I see him crack open a jar.
“I do.”
“So add them to your plate when you’ve dished up.”
“Just fish them out of your salad.”
“Ew.” I wrinkle my nose when he sends me a long-suffering stare. “Then I get that gross olive sauce all over my lettuce.”
“You’re very picky for someone who…”
I frown when he trails off. “For someone who what?” I cock my eyebrow. “Who doesn’t own a McMansion?”
“I didn’t mean?—”
“Oh, like hell you didn’t,” I mutter, slapping a spoon of béchamel into the casserole dish.
“Do you have something to say, Cassidy?” Ethan stops cubing a ring of feta, hand fisted with the point of his chef’s knife pointing at the ceiling.
I glance at the knife, then up at him. You’d swear I have a death wish, the way I’m challenging him the whole time. After last night, I know this man is capable of violence. Do I really want to make him angry enough to use that knife on me?
“No,” I relent, if grudgingly.
He finishes making the salad while I’m layering the lasagna. All in silence. Then I pop the casserole dish into the preheated oven and set the timer for forty minutes.
As I stare through the oven door to the magnificent creation inside, my necklace slips out of the top of my uniform. The heavy pendant swings on its gold chain, but I’m too busy fantasizing about the pie in the oven to care.
“I saw you’ve finished up with the first floor.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Thank you.”
When I spin to look at Ethan, his eyes come slowly back to me from the oven. Then they drop to the pendant dangling from my neck. I grab it and hastily shove it back behind my uniform.
He frowns as if he’s wondering whether I stole it, but when our eyes meet, his expression quickly clears.
That’s right, Remington. None of your fucking business.
As if hearing my thoughts, Ethan leaves the kitchen.
I sag back against the stove, closing my eyes for a moment as the heat warms my butt. It makes the bruises sting, but it’s not an unpleasant sensation.
“Red or white?”
I blink up at him in surprise. He’s holding a bottle of wine in each hand. “Um…”
“It’s not a trick question,” he says, putting down the bottles and going over to a cabinet nearby.
“Red, I guess. Goes better with pasta.”
“Debatable.” He picks up two large wineglasses and sets them down, grabbing a corkscrew from the drawer to open the wine.
When I reach for one of the glasses he filled, he grunts under his breath. “Let it breathe.”
“Lucky wine,” I mutter to myself.
“What did you say?” He narrows his eyes, darkening the gray irises to the color of wet concrete.
“I said, what a lucky girl I am.” I give him a deadpan stare that turns up one corner of his mouth.
He pulls out a barstool for me near the corner of the island. “Sit.”
I don’t argue. My legs are happy for the break, even while my ass complains mightily at the hard surface. As I slide into the chair, I throw the wine a longing glance. I’m not a big drinker, but I love to have a glass in the evenings to unwind. And sure, sometimes one glass leads to two, then three… but I’ve never had more than one bottle by myself.
I’ve always been very careful about how much, and how often, I drink. I have my father to thank for that.
“A toast,” Ethan says as he pulls out the stool beside mine, on the other side of the corner. He sits, lifts his glass. I mimic him, but with a wary slit to my eyes. “Out with the old, in with the new.”
I keep my glass where it is, but he clinks it anyway.
“Is that why you want to sell? You need something new and shiny in your life?” I glance around the state-of-the-art kitchen. “High-end appliances not doing it for you anymore?”
He chuckles darkly into his glass, his eyes boring into mine. “Pity you have to work for a rich jerk like me, isn’t it?”
My jaw flinches.
His words are eerily similar to what I said to my father over the phone earlier. Was he eavesdropping? I wouldn’t put it past him. He seems obsessed with me. All those times I felt someone watching… Was it because he was nearby, staring at me while I worked?
It should creep me the fuck out… but I shift in my seat as a faint tingle starts up between my legs.
Big mistake.
It’s one thing to warm my ass by the oven, it’s another to shift around while I’m sitting on it. I can’t stop a wince, and Remington doesn’t miss the gesture.
He drags his fingers so hard against his slacks, his nails scrape over the fabric.
God, Cassidy, say something.
“You were listening to my calls, weren’t you?” I set my glass down and toss my hair out of my face with a flick of my neck. “Do you not understand the concept of privacy? Or didn’t they teach you that at One-Percent Preparatory?”
“I was passing by,” he says, and without a fucking trace of contrition. “The next time you have a private conversation, consider speaking more quietly.”
I bite the inside of my lip so hard I taste copper in my mouth. But I wash it down with a sip of the cabernet. The smell of cooking lasagna is permeating the air, and my stomach lets out a muted rumble of appreciation.
How is it possible to be so infuriated by someone? I wish I had the strength to choke him. Going around eavesdropping. What the hell did he hear?
I spoke about Mom.
Did he hear that too?
I shift in my seat, biting back a wince of pain. Day two, and I’m nowhere closer to discovering how this man knew my mother.
It’s now or never.
“How much did you hear?” I mumble, dropping my head and staring at him through my lashes.
“Enough to know that I’m not the only one you disrespect.”
Annoyance bristles inside me, but I smother it. “He’s a penniless wino with a gambling addiction. Why the hell should I respect him when he only ever calls me to ask for money?”
Remington tips his chin down, creating a dark shadow over his eyes. “He’s your father. He brought you into this world.”
“And that gives him the right to treat me like an ATM?”
His eyes narrow. “He doesn’t have a job?”
“He’s had quite a few. But he has a tendency to arrive drunk to work, if he arrives at all.”
“Maybe if you took the time to figure out what’s gone wrong in his life, to see things from his perspective, you wouldn’t be so judgmental.”
“I know what’s gone wrong,” I snap, glaring at Ethan as I take a long swallow from my wine. “My mother divorced him.”
“Because of the drinking?”
“And the gambling. Oh, did I forget to mention he emptied my college fund to pay back his debts?”
Ethan is silent.
I’m fucking furious. I look away, take another sip of wine, and put the glass back on the island, swiveling it on its base as I pick my next words.
“It got worse when Mom disappeared.”
Ethan takes a sip of his wine. I’m watching him out of the corner of my eye, trying to read his face, but he’s a blank slate. “Disappeared?”
“Yeah.” I sigh, and force myself to stare him in the eyes, despite how my heart begins to hammer inside my chest. “Happened a couple of months ago. She just…vanished one night. Her name was Rebecca Monroe.”
I study him intently, but he’s keeping a straight face like a seasoned poker player.
“You reported it to the police?”
I give him a grim smile. “Of course.”
His eyebrows lift. “And…?”
My heart is beating double time, my palms sweaty. He seems so calm, almost as if this doesn’t involve him in the slightest. But there’s no way my mother had an appointment with him and he didn’t know about it. Rich jerks like him have to be good at record keeping, don’t they?
“Looked like she ran away, so they opened a missing person case.” I shake my head. “But that’s not what happened. She would never abandon me like that. Even the note she left sounded nothing like her.”
“She left a note?” His frown is back, the furrows on his brow deeper than before.
“The detective working the case knows there’s foul play involved. He just has to prove it.” The detective being me. I’m the detective. Lewis be damned.
Remington leans back, sipping at his wine as he studies me above the rim.
Why does he suddenly look so defensive?
So…guarded?
I sit forward on my stool, failing to hide my wince this time. “They found a new lead. She had an appointment with someone the day of her disappearance. They’re investigating it.”
“I’m sure they’ll find her.”
I’m struggling to think of something to say, of some way I can lure him into making some kind of incriminating statement, but he speaks again before my mind catches up.
“If she wants to be found, of course.”
Indignation flares hot inside me. “I beg your motherfucking pardon?”
He cocks an eyebrow at my tone. “You said disappeared. So I assume the police don’t suspect a kidnapping.”
“What they do or don’t suspect is none of your fucking business.” I slide off the stool, but Ethan is so close that my legs bump into his.
His hand darts out like a snake, grabbing my hip. “Have you forgotten who you’re addressing?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, wholesome as goddamn apple pie. “That’s none of your fucking business, Sir.”
I knew it was a stupid thing to say the moment it left my lips, but I become unhinged whenever I’m close to this man. He makes every nerve ending in my body feel raw. And I’m not just talking about the ones on my throbbing ass.
The hand holding my hip tightens, sending a jolt of pain through my flesh. I bend into it, trying to pull out of his grip, but he just grabs my other hip and twirls me around like I’m his little ballerina.
My arms fly out, catching both our wineglasses and sending them crashing to the floor.
“Look at the mess you’ve made,” he growls.
“What?” Anger fizzles deep inside me—along with something else entirely. “You made me do it! Let go!”
But Ethan obviously doesn’t let just anyone go around telling him what to do. Instead of releasing me, he drags me across the kitchen floor. My heart climbs into my throat as we get closer to the counter that runs along one wall, where a chef’s block bristles with knives.
This is it.
This is how it ends, Cassidy.
You pushed, and you pushed, and now he knows you’re onto him. Now he has to get rid of you. There’s a lot of room in his hundred-acre backyard for him to bury you.
Are you happy now?