FORTY-NINE
GETTING SETTLED IN was an excuse. She thought organizing her space would give her a chance to get her head straight, not just about Darroch, but about the whole mess. Except when she got into her room, the closet was full. There were things from her apartment, things she didn’t recognize, things from Darroch’s closet at Breckenridge House.
Her toiletries were on the vanity or in the shower. There was even a charging dock on her night table and a landline phone next to it, the link Astrid referenced that connected her with everything she could possibly want. A palace of pleasure.
Rather than walk out of the closet and return to Darroch to admit she actually had nothing to do, she curled up in the chair next to the bathroom and downloaded some fiction to get her through the day.
The windows were tempting and the view beyond beautiful, but she didn’t think it was smart for someone possibly being watched by a nefarious stalker to showcase herself and pinpoint to him exactly where she was. Maybe she should highlight that to Darroch too… except she didn’t want to go out there again.
At some point after the sky was dark in Empire City, voices carried from the other room. No big deal. Darroch was allowed visitors and had plenty of contacts, it was no surprise he’d be sociable.
Another voice joined. A feminine laugh raised her head. Would he…?
A second later, the door burst open. Roxie swung herself inside, still holding the handle, anchoring herself with a grasp on the static door.
“It’s dinnertime!”
“It’s—”
Roxie had already disappeared. She put her phone aside; she hadn’t thought about eating and couldn’t claim to be particularly hungry.
“They can come upstairs for Christmas,” Roxie’s voice floated above the others.
She crept toward the door.
The room was alive with people up, moving, being joyous. Uniformed people set the table and laid out food from lines and lines of carts. Roxie was there with her fiancé and Tripp, Darroch, both Breckenridge parents, other Breckenridge boys.
“What do you think?” Roxie asked, popping something into Zairn’s mouth. “Savvy?”
“Think about what?” she asked.
She hadn’t so much as brushed her hair and everyone else looked so glamorous.
“Christmas! If this is still going on at Christmastime, we’re having Christmas upstairs. Just us, family only, no hangers-on, guests or outsiders.”
“You’ve never met an outsider in your life,” Tripp said. “As soon as you meet them, you make friends with them.”
“Yeah, like you’re the Grinch,” Roxie retorted. “You know what I mean, people we trust. People we know aren’t crazy, psychotic stalkers. I’ll make a list.”
“Check it twice,” Tripp said, laughing at his own joke.
Some of his brothers joined in.
“What a terrible job,” Roxie said, “being the one who writes the lists.”
“You’d give presents to the naughty ones and corrupt the nice,” Zairn said, pulling out a chair that, with a brow twitch, he got Roxie to sit in.
“Nice is overrated. No,” Roxie said, reaching for the wine glass Zairn was still filling. “Jane is nice. She’s been on the nice list her whole life. She’s nice with merit, with honors, top of her class. I wonder what people have to do to be on the naughty list. No one’s good all the time.”
“Except Jane,” Tripp said.
Roxie nodded, gesturing with her wine glass as it approached her lips. “Except Jane.”
Tripp frowned. “Where’s Toria? She going to jump out on us?”
“She and Sway are doing some spa immersion thing that takes like six hours or something, I don’t know.”
“Toria’s your co-defendant when it comes to corrupting the innocent,” Zairn said, sitting next to his woman.
“Uh, liar, we lived with Jane for a million years and she’s still good.”
“She also, at your request, broke into her boyfriend’s place of work.”
“For Lilya.”
“And used sex to distract him so you and Lilya could go sleuthing.”
“You men don’t care if we use sex. You get sex out the deal, what’s the problem?”
“I should warn Knox to keep you away from their kids.”
Roxie swooped her glass up to rest on her lower lip. “Something you can’t do for yourself, Skippy.”
“No, unfortunately, you know all my secrets and our genetic material has already been fused.”
“Oh,” Roxie said, lowering the glass an inch. “That’s a hot word.”
Zairn leaned right up close to her ear. “Fused?”
Roxie shivered and laughed. “Turn me on all you want, Casanova, I live in this building.”
“You two are all sex, all the time,” Brandt whined, sinking into his own seat.
Her blonde friend checked herself out. “Uh, I am not having sex this second.”
Zairn licked his fingertips, which then quickly disappeared under the table. “Give me a second to change that.”
On another laugh, Roxie swatted at his hand. “You want me to drag you through to Tripp’s place and force you to finish it like a man?”
“My place? What about right here? There are two beds in this suite.”
“Yeah, but they’re being chased by an evil madman, honey,” Roxie said, leaning over the table to pout at the man currently taking Savvy’s hand to lead her to a seat. “Your bed’s probably already soiled.”
“Live in the building but you don’t have clean sheets?” Zairn dished food onto Roxie’s plate. It was sweet, watching him care for her despite them antagonizing each other. “I’d talk to management.”
“I would, but he’d want sex out the deal and for that, I’d want more than sheets.”
When the spoon was back in the bowl, Zairn took Roxie’s hand, pushing up her ring finger as he raised it for them both to admire.
“How about a rock the size of Gibraltar?”
“Hmm…” Roxie sighed and put down her glass. “Okay then.”
On her way to the chair, the couple’s mouths met and she, like everyone else, averted her eyes… Did hers have to land on Darroch’s staring right back?
The banter, the flirting, it spoke to her romantic side. Few wouldn’t swoon over how the couple interacted. They exuded love. With a loose arm on the back of his fiancée’s chair, Zairn owned the woman next to him while giving her complete freedom to fly.
Once upon a time, she’d wanted love like that, wondered if it existed. In the past, if she’d witnessed a similar show, she’d daydream about love like that, certain there was a chance it existed up ahead.
Except it didn’t for her. Not anymore. That love, her great love, was in her rearview even as he stared right back across the room. Forever, gone in a flash. Nothing lasted forever.