Thayer
Iunlock the door to the den with my key, one of only two keys that open this door, and luckily the other one’s on another continent now. With the devil himself.
I want to slam it open. The noises coming out into the hallway? Yeah, I recognize them from another time, a long time ago back when Ollie and I were playing games on the weekend out here. But I don’t let the door fly open wide. Letting someone else see what’s going on in the den isn’t an option.
“Well, are you having fun, wife?”
She’s reclining naked on the floor. Her head rests in the middle of Ollie’s chest. Anders yanks the blanket from under Ryder and throws it over Em. Her amazing body disappears before my eyes have taken in enough of her for my dreams.
I stand there for a minute, but I’m speechless. I shake it off. “Esmeralda’s got plates in the kitchen. I’m going to bed. Clean this up.” I focus on Oliver. We’re not twenty-two anymore. His glare back says he knows. I pivot and head to my bedroom hours earlier than normal.
My eyes dart up to her and back to my files on my lap when she comes to bed.
She’s not wearing the normal atrocious pajamas tonight, and it appears there’s only one item as well.
It’s a nightgown that’s a lovely shade of pale pink which makes her skin glow in the low light.
It comes only to her knees and has short sleeves instead of elastic at her wrists.
She flings herself onto the bed, tossing the new non-woolen blanket that I ordered over herself, diverting my eyes again from my files to her.
I clench my fist beneath the Jones file.
“You’ve been in a fight, Emily?” My eyes skim the parts of her ivory skin protruding from under the blanket. There’s a bruise on her neck from where someone hoovered above her collarbone. And there’s an area on her thigh that will have a fist-sized bruise.
She touches the side of her neck. “No fight.” She drops her hand, a faraway look on her face.
“You can’t do that again,” I growl at her, like when my grandfather was disappointed in some middle school stunt I’d performed.
“I certainly can and will. I told you this isn’t real, and not becoming real. You knew that. You knew that I have . . . boyfriends. That’s what you called them.” Her far-off look switches to mischievousness. Her eyes sparkle in the light of my bedside lamp.
I want to roll over and cage her in. Take her. Show her how a real man will treat her. Let her know whose she is—not mine, that’s whose. Not mine. I need to remember that. Holloway’s words come back to haunt me. Ending up like my father isn’t an option. Taking him down is.
“Whatever, Thayer. You knew the deal when I agreed to all this.” She rolls over, and there are long scratches down her back, or rather from her hairline to where it disappears at the nape of her neck.
Damn the files. Damn my resolution. I toss them onto the floor and throw the blanket across the bed on top of them. They land with a thud. I take my finger and carefully pull the fabric away from her neckline and peer down her back, where the scratches indeed continue. “What the hell happened?”
She rolls onto her back, and I can’t help but notice the wince that disappears in a flash. “What happened is none of your business.”
“Everything that happens at Havenwood Hall is my business, Emily Ann Rockwell. I thought you knew that doesn’t change with our agreement. Your boyfriends need to be more careful. No more trysts in the den. Holloway says—”
“I don’t give a damn what Holloway says.”
“Well, you should. Your little extracurricular activities are going to ruin everything. Your life is on the line, Emily; you need to be more careful. They need to be more careful, or I’m going to get rid of them.”
Her eyebrows rise and her lips twist. “Get rid of them, Thayer? You need to pick your words more carefully, or are you really your father’s son?” She’s picking her words carefully. Coming from anyone else’s mouth, I wouldn’t allow it.
“I’m not my father. If I were, there wouldn’t be any little boyfriends on my estate. And you wouldn’t be covered in marks.”
“What if I like them?”
“I should hope you like your boyfriends.”
“The marks, Thayer. The marks.” Emily’s blue eyes glow at me.
And I’m . . . I don’t know. Emily has short-circuited my brain.
Her smile twists to a smirk. “Thought you knew me, did you? Well, did you? I’m not the same little girl you knew back in Vermont.”
“People don’t change that much, Emily.” But then my eyes flick to the giant hickey on the side of her neck, and maybe I’m starting to doubt myself.
“Either way, it doesn’t matter; what matters is that no one finds out about your little escapades with your boyfriends.
Your life—all of our lives—count on it. If James finds out that we have .
. .” I don’t even like to say it, but I know my bedroom is a safe place.
There’s no one who would plant a listening device in here, and Holloway sweeps the entire house twice a day.
It doesn’t matter, though. I was raised by a monster, a cautious monster, one that knows how to cover his tracks.
One that knows how to keep his secrets his own.
That’s why I’m the only one who’s going to be able to take him down.
And to do that, I’m going to need him to fully believe in me.
Believe in Emily, in this series of lies we’re weaving.
“Perception is everything, Emily. Our reality here has to be believable, and the thumping and fucking coming from my den when I’m not in it needs to stop. ”
“I’m not inviting you to the party, Thayer.”
“I’m not asking for an invitation.” Though the thought of having one, of knowing exactly what happened to her in my den, has my dick hardening.
She clearly likes it rough. It sends my imagination into a dark realm.
How will I ever cleanse the image from my brain?
The image of Emily as a little masochist. I’m not sure I want to.
“We’re going to have to do some damage control. ”
“Damage control? Did someone overhear?”
“Holloway saw the lot of you go in and kept the crew out of the hallway. But we need to cement our relationship in the eyes of the crew, and that’s more than a little ring ceremony in the garden. I’ve been invited to the Joneses’ garden party at the Bennington Estate.”
“A garden party for you? Thayer Zambrano is going to wear something besides a suit and sip cocktails on a grass lawn? Are you going to play cornhole too? No, they wouldn’t play that here.
What would it be? I don’t know—badminton?
No, you’re going to dress all in white and play croquet. It’ll be so quaint.”
“Emily,” I growl. “This is serious. I don’t normally go to those sorts of things.” And I’m not going to tell her, but yes, they played croquet at the last one I went to. “But in time-tested Zambrano fashion, I need to show off my fiancée. It’s time we put on a show.”
She nods. “You’re right. I’m not looking forward to it. What exactly is the Joneses’ summer party like?”
“It’s horrendous—200 people all trying to impress each other.
It’s only worse now that a good portion of them are trying to go viral on social media while their very prim and proper British ancestors roll over in their graves.
But my father still hasn’t called, and none of the men who we thought might leak it to him have done so. ”
“Men being too loyal—who would’ve thought that would be a problem?”
I nod. “After Nolan Mitchell secured a place on my staff, we tripled our vetting process, so yeah, it was something both Holloway and I were worried about.”
“So we go to the garden party. What’s the worst that could happen?”
I bite the inside of my lip because there are many things that could go wrong.
“Good night, Thayer. Can I have my blanket back, please?”
I pass it to her, and Emily rolls away from me, facing the window.
I can’t help but stare at her and wonder if her life could have been so much better if I’d never kissed her in the moonlight one fall a long time ago. With different parents.
Ishould have gone to the London office today.
But I keep telling myself staying here is good optics: I’m the happy newly engaged man with a baby on the way.
Of course I’d want to be here. I’d want to be close to Emily.
But it’s my inner asshole alpha rising to the occasion.
The more I’m at Havenwood Hall, the less the group of them can wander off and have another little party—like last night’s.
There’s a curt knock at my door before it swings open.
My lunch sits cold on the side table next to me when Oliver strides in, the door slamming shut behind him.
He slaps a piece of paper against his palm with the same cadence as his steps, his mischievous blue eyes sparkling, that damn smile on his face.
“Why so glum, my old friend? I hear it’s going to be a beautiful weekend.” He tosses the envelope onto my desk. The intertwined J’s in loopy calligraphy on the front give the source of the spring in his step away.
I toss the envelope back at him. I don’t need to open it to know what’s inside. “An invitation to the Joneses’ soiree.” It’s a statement, not a question.
Oliver laughs. “Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. On top of that, Sutton received one as well, and she has a plus one and I have a plus one.”
“Princess Sutton is not going to come to the Joneses’ summer party. She’s pregnant.”
“Don’t you let Emily hear you say that. She went off on Holloway the other day.
‘Pregnant does not mean ill’ was her thesis, and I would rather agree that my sister feels the same, but you’re probably right.
Sutton has no interest in coming. Though if I were to ask her to, she would. I’m her favorite brother after all.”