15. Sawyer
SAWYER
I ’m up early as usual, lying in my bed and staring out at what has become my favorite view. I love the gray-blue color of the early morning sky over the black water before the sun blazes through any of it. It feels like, when I get up this early, I’m the only one who gets to see it in this state. Untouched but still beautiful in its own right without the glow of the sun.
I make myself some breakfast, putz around the apartment, then start to frantically get myself ready as time ticks closer to ten. As I’m sifting through my closet, though, I realize I don’t know how to dress. I grab my phone and dial him, not bothering to send a text first.
“Are you bailing on me?” he asks, and I can hear the smirk in his voice. I bite my lip to keep from smiling back.
“You never told me what to wear,” I say, ignoring him.
“Hmm,” he says. “How about you wear what you were wearing last night when we were texting?”
I think for a minute, confused.
“But I wasn’t—oh,” I say. He chuckles on the other end of the line as that same white-hot heat rushes between my legs.
“Wear whatever you want. It’s just you and me,” he says. “See you soon.”
Fuckkkk. Why does he do this?
And why does my body react this way?
As much as I probably should have said no to this excursion, I also am telling myself that I need to be with him again to get a temperature on things. If he was serious about never fucking me, then I need to take this “relationship” for what it is: a much older man who happens to be in the top one percent of the entire fucking world, who saved me from a mass shooting and occasionally checks in with my mom. Totally normal.
I decide on an old Carrington hoodie, my old Nikes, and a pair of jeans. And before I know it, there’s a knock on my door. I take a breath as I grab my bag and walk to the door. When I open it, the breath rushes from my lungs at the sight of him, his dark hair waving just right, his ripped arm muscles bulging out of the long-sleeved tee he has on. He doesn’t look like a billionaire. He looks like…I don’t know…someone I want to fuck.
Fuck.
“Morning, sunshine,” he says with a killer smile. I flash a quick one back and brush by him.
“Morning,” I say, slamming the door shut behind him.
“Whoa,” he says with a little giggle, but when I don’t turn around, he snags my arm. “What’s going on?”
I sigh. He called me. He arranged this. He’s taking me somewhere, and he gave me a fucking home. I force a smile.
“Nothing,” I say. “Just…missing my mom. Sorry.” He smiles and pulls me in for a hug. Then he takes my hand and leads me down the stairs and to the Escalade. Russ lets us in, then we’re off.
“So, are you gonna tell me yet?” I ask as we pull out of my neighborhood.
He smiles.
“Mighty impatient, aren’t we?” he asks. I smile and shrug. You have no idea. “Have you ever heard of Bedell House?”
I look up at him.
“Like the mansion?” I ask. He smirks. “Oh, yeah! I totally forgot you guys owned that. Is that where we’re going?”
He nods.
“They start putting up all the Christmas decorations today before they open to the public for holiday tours tomorrow. I thought you’d like a sneak peek. And maybe a personal tour.”
I smile and nod.
“I’d love that,” I say. “I’ve never been.”
Thirty or so minutes later, we pull up to a huge iron gate with a screen and buttons. Russ types in a code then places his hand on some sort of scanner that then opens the gate. He drives through, and I see nothing but sprawling, grassy hills and the tree-lined driveway in front of us.
As we get farther up the road, I see a huge parking lot on either side of the drive and signs that read Public and Tour Parking . Then farther up, we come to the crest of a hill, and you can see everything: the whole manor, the rocks, the ocean, the private beaches.
My jaw drops as Russ pulls us farther down the drive to the huge circle at the front. As he opens my door, I’m still in awe, staring up at the old-school architecture.
Let’s call Bedell House what it is: a palace. It has wing after wing, story after story of brick and stone with ivy climbing up its walls as if to lead my eyes where to look next. There are towers that perk up above the rest of the house with balconies that face the water and massive floor-to-ceiling windows that seem to cover the entire first level.
“Think my great-grandfather was overcompensating for something?” Julian says from next to me, snapping me out of my daydream. I laugh and shake my head.
“This is amazing,” I say. He nods then takes a few steps up, reaching his hand out to me.
“Wait till you see the inside,” he says, and I smile and take his hand. I follow him up the rest of the massive stone staircase, and huge doors open up as we approach them. I jump back, and he laughs.
“We had the sensors installed a few years ago,” he says. We walk into the huge entryway, and I realize we’re still holding hands. I am conscious of it, but I don’t make a move to pull away, and I’m hoping he doesn’t either. In the center of the foyer is what looks to be a thirty- or forty-foot Christmas tree. There are people all around it on ladders, decorating it.
There are also people in every corner of this level, setting up other decorations, lights, and gifts. A woman in heels, a tight pencil skirt, and an even tighter sweater walks through one of the doorways, carrying a clipboard and a radio. She’s making commands through it, but when she sees us, she freezes.
“Julian!” she says, tucking the clipboard under her arm and click-clacking faster across the porcelain in our direction. She has long, curly blonde hair that hangs around her breasts, and I can smell her perfume from a mile away. She swiftly drapes her arms around his neck, holding him tight for an awkwardly long hug, and it’s the first time he’s let go of me since we stepped inside.
“Ella,” he says, “how are you?”
They come apart, and I feel her eyes dart to me again and again as they catch up. I can’t tell if she wants him to introduce us or if she wants him to pretend I don’t exist.
“How are things coming?” he asks her.
“Great!” she says, holding her arms out. “We’re ahead of schedule. Should be done in plenty of time for the holiday tours to start.”
“Wonderful. Looking great as always,” he says. She smiles as she looks back at me one more time.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” Ella asks, looking back to him.
“No, thanks,” he says, reaching an arm back and wrapping it around me, scooting me up closer to him. Without any further explanation, we nod goodbye and walk through the main doorway.
I’m not sure how to feel about the interaction. It shouldn’t be shocking that other women want him—he’s an insanely gorgeous man who comes from American royalty.
But it doesn’t mean I have to like it.
And I’m not sure how to feel about him not introducing me. Does that mean something? Nothing? Anything?
I shake it off as he leads me to a long hall.
“Aren’t you supposed to be, like, telling me about the place?” I ask after a few more minutes of silence. I decide to stop myself from asking about Ella. He smiles.
“Sorry, I’m slacking,” he says. “What do you want to know?”
I look up at him.
“Everything.”
We turn down another corridor that’s lined with massive windows that face a perfectly manicured courtyard.
“Well, my great-grandfather started construction on this place in 1886, after the oil boom. It took twenty-six years to actually finish the first phase. The west wing wasn’t added until my grandfather had it built after World War II,” he says. We walk farther, and I feel him get closer to me, his hand brushing against my back as he leads me farther down. “These rooms here were originally guest suites for diplomats, business partners, other rich assholes my great-grandfather was trying to impress. They were later converted into event rooms for weddings and mitzvahs, things like that.”
I smile as I watch him. I stop moving and tug at his hand.
“This is all really cool,” I say, “but tell me the things I can’t find on Google.” He raises an eyebrow at me. “Give me your tour, Julian.”
The corners of his lips turn up as he narrows his brown eyes at me. Then he nods and reaches for my hand again.
“Alright,” he says, “this way.” He leads me to the end of the hallway and opens up a huge door that spills us out into some other corridor. We walk a few yards down before a staircase appears to our left. It’s chained off with a sign that reads, No visitors beyond this point . He steps over it and holds his hand out for me to do the same.
We walk up the huge staircase and to another set of huge doors. There’s another one of those keypad things, and he types in a code and puts his hand on it like Russ did outside. It scans his palm then unlocks, and he opens it.
“You won’t find this on Google,” he says with a smile.
“Where are we?” I ask him.
“This is the east wing,” he says. “After we opened the house to the public in the seventies, my grandfather kept this portion untouched. It was reserved for the family. It has a private entrance from outside, so we could come and go as we pleased without interrupting the tours or being seen by anyone. Now, hardly anyone uses it—just my brothers and I occasionally.” We walk through another long corridor that opens up to a huge sitting room with a large stone fireplace and four big couches. There’s a huge wooden dining room table at the far end of the room, which must have at least thirty chairs around it, with a massive antler chandelier hanging above it. “There’s a full chef’s kitchen back there, and then all of our suites are down this hall.”
“You each have your own suite?” I ask. He nods.
“My parents, my aunt and uncle, and then each of us six grandkids had our own: me, my two brothers, and our three cousins. Then on the other side”—he points down the other end of the hall—“are five guest suites. We’d do every holiday here when we were kids.”
“I bet that was like magic,” I say, spinning around as I take everything in. I want to keep my composure, but this is really fucking cool. “Where’s your suite?”
He looks up at me, raising an eyebrow again. He draws in a sharp breath then pushes off the couch and walks past me, leading me down to the third door on the wall. He turns the knob, and we walk down another shorter hallway that leads to another door. He opens that one, and we walk into a sitting room that leads into a huge bedroom. A king-sized four-post bed sits against the far wall, the big windows on the other, facing the ocean, and huge French doors that lead out to a balcony sit at the back corner of the wall. There’s another fireplace in here, another couch, and an open doorway to a huge bathroom.
“Damn,” I say, walking toward the bed. I drag my fingers across the comforter slowly, staring down at it. “I bet it didn’t hurt to have this place to bring women back to.”
I don’t know why I say it, and I immediately regret it when I do.
I turn around to face him, and his eyes are narrowed on me again from across the room. Slowly, he paces toward me, and I swallow as he gets nearer and nearer.
“And what is it that you think I’ve done with these women here?” he asks, so close to me now that he has backed me up against the side of the bed. I swallow as I look up at him.
“Why don’t you tell me?” I ask.