Chapter 12
Terrible, Wonderful Ideas
WINONA
“Here, uh…” Mitchell cleared his throat as he held the door open. “I’ll show you to a room where you can change.”
I walked in, thinking I’d very obviously gone off the deep end, so to speak. I should be back at home right now, in a hot shower. Tucked into bed with a book. Texting Cher about what happened tonight.
What even did happen out there?
I was still processing it. I was still upset about it.
“I’d apologize for dripping all over your floor,” I said. “But it’s your fault I’m wet.”
Mitchell nodded, looking chagrinned. “Thanks for saving me, though.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You would have been okay, wouldn’t you?”
Those lips turned up, and there—that was the thing that was making me stay.
A man of his wealth should have been a stone-cold asshole.
Profits. Shareholders. Servants in every corner.
But that wasn’t him. That shift in his expression, the emotions dancing in those sea-glass eyes—there was more there than what he showed the world. A damaged soul. An ass.
A little boy, shocked that someone would care.
I cared the way I would about a wounded animal, I told myself.
But that didn’t ring entirely true.
“This way,” Mitchell said. We’d been standing there assessing each other. Staring, and up so close.
I was glad for his back being to me as I followed him up the stairs. I was blushing furiously.
As it turned out, it was his bedroom he took me to. “I have something you can wear in there while you wait,” he’d assured me on the stairs.
His room was dark when we got there, but I could see in the shadows that it was massive; well-appointed, of course, with a platform bed and matching low dresser.
The cream wool carpet was soft as butter under my bare feet.
But besides the walls, which were adorned like the downstairs with massive abstract oil paintings, this room was stark, the surfaces bare.
You could bounce a quarter off the pale gray bedspread, and there wasn’t so much as a paperback novel on his nightstand.
“Anita,” Mitchell said, “low lights, please.”
The room lit with a soft glow, though rather than visible lights, everything was backlit. Was this a rich person thing?
And he said ‘please’ to his house robot. I found that strangely endearing.
Mitchell disappeared into his closet. A moment later, light spilled out onto the floor. I hovered by the door, feeling suddenly awkward.
“Your cleaner does a bang-up job,” I said.
Mitchell appeared in the closet door. All I could see was the shape of him.
The curl of his hair right at the spot where his shoulders sloped.
The cut of muscle on his arms where his still-soaked shirt clung to him.
Without being able to see the unkempt beard and wild hair, he looked almost like a statue.
A marble statue shaped with a chisel over decades.
“Did you say something?”
Jaysus, Winona. He may have shown some vulnerability, but he was still an asshole. You just need dry clothes so you don’t freeze to death. That was the only reason I was staying.
It wasn’t that cold outside. It was only September.
“It looks like no one sleeps in here,” I said to drown out the rational part of my brain.
Mitchell inspected the room for a minute, as if this news surprised him too. Then he disappeared again without a word.
Irritation flashed in my chest, my previous thought validated. “Asshole,” I muttered under my breath. “And you’re an idiot, Winona.” As had happened all night, since the moment I left O’Malley’s, I wanted to kick myself.
You could still leave.
That smart voice inside of me was correct. I should. But each time I listened to that voice, something happened that made me ignore it. There was something about this man that messed with my logical mind.
“The thought of you leaving feels like something scraping out my insides.”
I turned around, unable to even look in the direction he was in.
That was just some flowery line; something a writer made up.
Just until my clothes dried, that was all. Then I never needed to see him—and grapple with this weird way his presence seemed to rewire my brain.
I stared at the painting over the bed, a swirl of confusing colors and patterns. It felt like my insides.
“These have a tie thing.” His voice made me jump.
I spun around. Mitchell was there, thrusting something at me. “You should be able to make them fit for an hour.”
Clothing, I think. But I was too alarmed to register what they were. Because Mitchell Harrington was naked.
Okay, not fully in his birthday suit. A shadow down low told me he was wearing pants.
But he was bare from the very lowest part of his waist up.
I tried to fix my eyes on his, but they roved of their own volition, drifting down to the dark hair dusting across only the very top of his sharply defined chest. To his exposed nipples, flat and brown.
A man’s nipples were not something I’d ever considered. But seeing his was just so… intimate.
“Thank you,” I said, taking the clothes. Our fingers brushed, making me jump once again.
Mitchell took a step back. “You okay?”
I wanted to snap that yes, I was, and please get out so I can change.
But I was very much not okay. Because now that he wasn’t holding anything, and now that he wasn’t standing so close, I could see so much more.
Too much. That dark hair narrowed into a T down the center of his trunk, ending in the place where a waistband of some sort should have been.
But there was no underwear. Just a thickening of hair behind the open button of his jeans.
“I—” There were rocks in my mouth.
Mitchell looked down.
“Shit,” he quickly did up the button. “I’m sorry. Not used to company.”
Somehow, his not meaning to nearly expose himself made things so much worse. If he’d done it on purpose, I could have slapped him and stormed off. Instead, the image was seared into my brain. “Can I have some privacy, please?” My tone was a bit too tight to pull off appearing unaffected.
“Yeah. Of course. Winona, I—”
“Just go,” I snapped. Every moment he stayed inflated my humiliation. I hugged the dry clothes tight to my still-soaked chest, likely getting them wet too. But I didn’t know what I’d do if he didn’t leave right at this moment. I felt weak. Out of control.
And I didn’t like it.
“You can shower if you want. I think there’s everything you need there.”
Luckily, Mitchell slipped out without another word, the door clicking shut behind him.
I let out a breath, wanting badly to slump onto the floor or the bed. But I couldn’t. I was still wet from saving his stupid, unhinged ass. A flicker of anger came back, burning away the edges of the confusing jumble of feelings and sensations behind my ribcage.
“Asshole!” I said out loud.
I just needed to get through this as quickly as possible. But I was still freezing. I set the pile of clean clothing Mitchell had handed me down, and stripped off my soaked, chlorine-scented shirt. A five-second shower.
Of course, the shower was the fanciest thing I’d seen in my life. The gaudy bathroom at the house Mama and I had moved into with Adam had nothing on the river-pebbled, spa jet unit here.
I tried to be quick, but the jets hit me from everywhere, and the shampoo and soap smelled of eucalyptus and cedar.
I relaxed for the first time all night, allowing myself the luxury of enjoying the scented bubbles gliding down my skin for a good few minutes before remembering whose bathroom this was.
I quickly rinsed off, and when I stepped out, pulled an obscenely large and fluffy towel off the prewarmed heated shower rack.
I’d need to apologize to Cassandra, who’d put these in the plans for all the bathrooms in the Rolling Hills.
It was a pain fitting them into the spaces, but as I wrapped the soft bath sheet around my body and sighed contentedly, I absolutely got their appeal.
The bedroom was still glowing with lights as I stepped out of the bathroom.
“Anita,” I said, eyes darting to the wall of dark windows. “Lights off.”
The lights vanished, and I was plunged into comforting darkness. “Thank you,” I mumbled. I felt deeply silly when, of course, she didn’t respond.
I walked toward the clothes on the bed, but paused before removing my towel. “Anita?”
“Yes?”
“Are there cameras in this room?”
“There are no cameras in the bedrooms,” Anita said. “However, there is ample security coverage outdoors.”
I still hesitated. “Can… you see me?” I immediately felt stupid. Then I felt stupid for feeling stupid since she was a robot with no feelings.
“Not in the traditional sense, Winona.”
My stomach twisted. I was about to ask how she knew my name, but remembered she’d been programmed somehow when I had that official job here at the beginning of the week.
“Just get on with it, Winona,” I whispered to myself. I dropped the towel and quickly stepped into the sweats and t-shirt Mitchell had provided me. Then I gathered up my wet clothes and headed back downstairs.
But this was a harder task than I’d anticipated.
The sweatpants, though staying on okay, hung well below my feet.
I had to hitch them up with one hand while holding my laundry with the other.
I wasn’t looking where I was going, since I had to keep my eyes trained on my bare feet to make sure I didn’t go ass over teakettle down the concrete stairs.
I was pretty sure I’d almost made it. I glanced up to check.
And found Mitchell standing right in front of me.
I shrieked, unable to contain my alarm at his proximity.
As I tried to back up though, my heel slipped on the step behind me.
I was going to fall. I was going to crack my head open right here, while Mitchell Harrington watched, perhaps impartially.
But even as gravity betrayed me, I thought vaguely that wasn’t fair.
It was still my judgment of wealthy men. I was going to die bitter.
Of course, he didn’t let me fall. Not even close. Mitchell’s hands caught me, wrapping around my hips in a firm and steady grasp.
“Shit,” I breathed, suspended over him. Our faces were only inches apart.
Time seemed to stop. All I could see was Mitchell—his eyes, a storm before me. His expression a struggle. I was heavy, obviously. A full-grown woman, and not willowy, either. Except his arms didn’t tremble one bit. His hands were perfectly still, even though he was holding nearly all of my weight.
“I’m okay,” I whispered.
He blinked, as if coming to himself. His nostrils flared, the only sign of something happening inside.
Then he gently eased me back onto the step.
And as gravity sank me back down onto my feet, I felt almost…
disappointed. He was incredibly strong to hold me like that.
And my body must have known that too, because I didn’t have those jittery aftershocks of fear that come with nearly falling.
Instead, I felt the warm glow of comfort and safety.
For that brief moment, I’d inadvertently put my life in his hands, and he’d caught me.
I was shaken. Rattled. Like I still might fall if he moved.
That’s how I knew his hands were still on me, like he could sense I was still unsteady.
But it was the acute awareness of him touching me that had my throat clicking as I swallowed.
I had the absurd urge to look; to see the way I fit in his grip.
But I couldn’t look away from his eyes. I was locked in place, the warmth of being caught transmuting into the syrupy heat flowing between his two palms. But I guess he had the same desire, because his eyes dropped with a slow blink to where he held me.
He watched, almost as if mesmerized, as his thumbs inched inward from the edge of my hipbones into the dips beside them.
This touch couldn’t be rationalized. It had nothing to do with keeping me steady, and everything to do with…
what, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that heat ripped through everywhere Mitchell was connected to me.
From his thumbs notched into the soft hook of my hips, to his palms, firm and broad against my sides.
As I stood there, not daring to breathe, both sets of his fingers curled around my backside, sending electricity rocketing through my pelvis.
My brain screamed. This was wrong. He needed to let go.
But the other, louder part of me was trying to pry my mouth open.
To let out the strangled plea burning in my throat: Press harder.
Dig deeper. Show me how strong. And the briefest fraction of a second, as if I'd spoken out loud, his hands complied.
They pressed harder; wider, more completely. I inched forward.
Mitchell let out the faintest guttural groan, his eyes fluttering shut before opening wide again.
It was then reality crashed in. Because if Mitchell shifted his hands just slightly more, he’d be cupping my ass. I’d let go of the clothes so they rained around us, and tell him to carry me upstairs. To have his way with me.
To eat me alive.
I found only the very tip of my reserve of power, buried deep in wanton need.
“Let me go, Mitchell,” I croaked.
Please. Please let me go, or I’ll beg you to stay. Please let me go, or I’ll want you to do all kinds of terrible, wonderful things to me.
Mitchell let me go. A word punched out of him, something low and not for me. I think it was Fuck.
“I’m sorry.” He took the wet clothes from me. “Laundry’s over here.”
I hardly recognized the sound of his voice; it was so thick with gravel.