Chapter 11
ELEVEN
On Thursday morning, Leo made sure he was up and dressed before Amelia emerged. He’d messed up the night before. The thought of her being jealous of another woman—of feeling possessive over him—had turned him on so much he’d pinned her to the wall before he could think about what he was doing.
Kissing her was an addiction—one he’d have to cure. It was clear that Amelia was keeping their arrangement exactly where she wanted it. He was her seduction coach, and nothing more.
And, really, that was all he deserved.
By the time they headed downstairs and partook in the delicious breakfast Fred’s staff had on offer, it was time for the first event of the retreat.
The scavenger hunt.
“I’ve heard about this,” Leo told Robert, who had wandered over to stand beside him where they’d gathered in the backyard. “Annual tradition, right?”
Amelia peered curiously over from his other side as Robert nodded. “Spans the whole property. One year it went into Stirling proper as well, but we’ll see about this year. You have to take pictures at every location on the list and post them on the company’s social media. When the time runs out, the team with the most pictures up wins.”
“A prize?” Amelia’s eyes brightened.
Leo couldn’t resist the urge to curl his arm around her shoulders. She was so cute when her face lit up like that. Mischievous and tempting. It was almost as good as her scowling irritation.
A whistle sounded, and all the guests gathered on the back patio overlooking the pool. A vast lawn stretched out as far as half a football field, surrounded by old forest. Garden beds lined the house, with a well-maintained flower garden to the right of the patio taking up a big chunk of the lawn space.
Percival appeared near the French doors leading inside, followed by Fred and Nadia. Two more staff members trailed, carrying trays full of envelopes.
“Welcome to the Goodhew Scavenger Hunt,” Fred proclaimed, all traces of his suspicion from last night gone. Leo craned his head to try to catch a glimpse of Nadia’s finger and saw she wasn’t wearing her ring. It was still gone. Or maybe they’d found it and she decided not to wear it? His gaze lifted to Nadia’s face; the woman’s nose was red, and it looked like she’d been crying. Her dog came trotting out, and she leaned over to pick him up one-handed, nuzzling into his fur, looking for comfort.
No ring. He was sure of it.
“This morning’s event is designed to show you the best of the Goodhew Estate,” Fred said. “You’ll work in pairs to check all the items on the list. When the siren sounds, the team who has uploaded the most pictures to their social media profile and tagged Goodhew will win the hunt’s prize. You’ll find a list of locations in your envelope.”
Amelia vibrated beside him. So she liked prizes and had a competitive spirit. Good to know.
The envelopes were handed out. Most people were paired up with their partners, with Ari ending up with another single guy, and Cora pairing up with a young woman out of the Midwest office. When everyone was ready, Fred gave the signal to tear open the envelopes. Teams immediately started sprinting in all directions.
Breathless, Amelia laughed and hopped beside him. “Hurry! Why are you opening it so slowly?”
He finally pulled out a thick sheet of paper, on which a long list of locations and items was written.
“That vase is in the Blue Room,” Amelia whispered, pointing. “And that painting is in the powder room near the foyer.”
“It’s as good a place to start as any,” Leo said, taking her hand to lead her inside. They hurried down the hallways, nodding to passing staff members and glancing around for other teams. About two-thirds of the people had started with items on the grounds outside the house, so the mansion was mostly empty.
Down a hallway and around a corner they found the Blue Room. Ducking inside, Leo closed the door.
“There.” Amelia pointed, and sure enough, a large vase, striped blue-and-white, was bursting with pink roses, just as indicated on the list.
Caught up in the moment, Leo pulled out his phone, put his arm around Amelia, and snapped a picture. He uploaded it to his Signal profile while Amelia crossed the item off with a swipe of her pen. Then Leo’s gaze drifted to the little dais at the end of the room.
“This is where it happened,” he said. “Nadia’s ring went missing somewhere in here.”
Amelia looked up from her paper and bit her lip. Her eyes narrowed as she scanned the space. “Do you really think someone took it?”
“Doesn’t matter what I think. Fred and Nadia obviously believe it.”
“How could you steal a ring right off someone’s finger? It doesn’t make sense.”
Leo wandered over to the dais and poked around the bookcase behind it, not really thinking he’d find anything but feeling compelled to look. Then he glanced over his shoulder and said, “No one is in their room right now.”
Amelia froze. “You want to go snoop?”
Leo shrugged. “The longer this goes on, the more chance there is of someone figuring us out.”
Amelia’s eyes darted back and forth, and she finally nodded. “Okay. Who do you think did it?”
Leo hummed. “I remember seeing Ari move toward the door when the screaming started. But I also think he’s a raging asshole on a good day, so I might be biased.”
“He and Vanessa exchanged a weird look,” Amelia said, nodding. “Let’s start there. What room is Ari in?”
“Two doors down from us. I saw him leave his room this morning.”
“This is such a bad idea,” Amelia said, but she was grinning. Then it faded into worry. “Fred kept looking at me weird anytime someone asked a question about my band or our history.”
“He knows something’s up.” Leo moved toward her and put his hands on her shoulders. “I’m going to go up there, but you don’t have to come if you aren’t comfortable. I know this isn’t what you signed up for.”
Amelia rolled her shoulders and gave him a sharp nod. “I’m not letting you snoop on your own. We’re in this together, Leo. Let’s go.”
Amelia was almost certain they wouldn’t win the scavenger hunt prize, which was a shame, but she knew she needed to prioritize. If they could find Nadia’s ring today, it would stop suspicion from falling on them. Not only was that more convenient for her, but she felt that it was important for Leo. He seemed to stand up straighter when he spoke to Fred. She hadn’t seen him do that silly, flirty smile he sometimes affected when he was surrounded by his coworkers. This job was important to him. Important enough to lie about having a fiancée to try to fix his image as the guy who started a chlamydia outbreak in college. Important enough to go snooping in a coworker’s room.
The way he’d kissed her last night had made her feel like there was more to Leo than met the eye. And, for better or worse, Amelia wanted to help him.
So that’s how they ended up creeping back into the hallway on the third floor of the guest wing, testing the doorknob to Ari’s room. Locked. A Do Not Disturb sign hung from his doorknob.
“He doesn’t want the staff snooping around his room,” Amelia noted, touching the edge of the dangling sign.
Leo’s eyes narrowed. He said, “We can’t jump to conclusions. Lots of people don’t want staff in their rooms.”
“Lots of people don’t steal a twelve-million-dollar ring and then run for the exit when the loss is noticed.”
“We don’t know he did it. If we convince ourselves he’s guilty, we might miss an important clue.”
Amelia tilted her head to the side, relenting. Leo was right.
“You got a couple of bobby pins?” he asked, glancing up and down the hallway again.
She pulled two out of her hair, and a hank fell down across her face. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she kept one eye on the hallway and the other on Leo’s hands. He bent the bobby pins open and knelt in front of the door.
“You know how to pick a lock?” Amelia hissed, half impressed, half horrified.
“My brother taught me,” Leo said, and a second later, the latch clicked. His smile was brilliant, and it sent a little lightning bolt burning through her middle.
“We have to be fast. If we only put one picture up on Signal, people will get suspicious.”
They entered the room and paused. It looked like a bomb went off. A suitcase had disgorged its contents onto the armchair and floor around it. The coffee bar was a mess of sugar and creamer pots. The bed wasn’t made, and the desk was covered in various papers and electronics. The bathroom was equally untidy, with a toiletry bag open, its items spread all over the vanity.
“Crap,” Amelia said. “We’ll never be able to put everything back the way it was if we move anything.”
Leo moved to the suitcase and unzipped one of the front pockets, running his hand inside. “It could be anywhere,” he said.
“We shouldn’t be here.”
They’d made a mistake. Snooping had sounded great in theory, but she’d let herself get carried away by the desire to help Leo and the burning curiosity about the missing ring. She hadn’t liked the suspicious gleam in Fred’s eyes last night. She was, at her core, an honest person. That’s why she liked numbers, and that’s what made this whole scheme so uncomfortable.
She could convince herself that pretending to be Leo’s fiancée was reasonable, but she couldn’t stand the thought of being accused of being a thief. If they could find the ring right now, it would solve a lot of problems. She went to the bathroom and looked through the bag of toiletries, unzipping every little pocket to check if a large pink diamond ring had been stashed there. Then she checked the vanity drawers, and even the toilet’s tank. Nothing.
“Needle in a haystack comes to mind,” she said when she reentered the main space.
Leo was at the bed, lifting one corner of it to check under the mattress. “Yeah. Let’s get out of here and post another picture. It’s taking too long.”
Amelia nodded and headed for the door. She turned to wait for Leo, who frowned on his way past the desk. He pushed aside the laptop and grabbed a stack of crinkled papers.
“What is it?” Amelia asked, heart thumping. They needed to get out of there.
“Names, contact details, and dollar amounts.”
“Well, put it back. We need to leave.”
Leo shook his head. “This is weird.”
Amelia wanted to scream. “Leo, we need to go.”
Nodding, Leo folded the papers and stuffed them in his back pocket. He followed her out of the room, his hand on her lower back. But before they had time to disappear, they heard voices down the hall. One male, one female.
“Shit!” Amelia hissed, eyes wide. She glanced down the hall, then at Leo, who was fumbling with the lock on the doorknob. “Shit, shit, shit!”
There was no time to hide. No time to do anything. She hauled Leo to his feet, slammed Ari’s door, and ran for their room. If they could just unlock it and slip inside?—
“You are such an idiot, Ari,” Vanessa’s voice spat, coming around the corner. “I’m not getting involved with this. I like my job, and I’m not messing it up for you.” Her heels clacked on the wooden floors, and Amelia knew they were caught. They had mere seconds.
Ari’s voice was a low rumble, and she could barely make out the words. “There’s no risk, Vanessa. I’ve got the clients all lined up already.”
What?
The tip of his glossy black shoe appeared from around the corner. Amelia shoved Leo against the wall next to their door, wrapped an arm around his neck, and pulled him down for a kiss. He froze in shock for a long, long moment, and Amelia wanted to scream at him to put his arms around her. She couldn’t scream, because her mouth was otherwise occupied, so she thought very hard in his direction.
At the very last second, when two bodies appeared in her peripheral vision, Leo wrapped his arms around Amelia, slid them down to her bum, and hauled her up against his chest. Then he spun around and slammed her against the wall, shoving his groin into the cradle of her hips.
At the contact of his body against hers, the noise that came out of her was totally unplanned, and she didn’t know if it was due to the physical impact or the sheer eroticism of Leo’s movements. Having no other choice, she wrapped her arms and legs around Leo’s body, which brought her crotch into direct contact with his. She wore a fluttery, calf-length skirt that trapped her legs tight to his body, and also meant that the only thing between Leo’s jeans and Amelia’s core was the thin scrap of her underwear.
Apparently, thinking very hard at someone worked really, really well.
A wolf whistle split the air. Leo tore his lips away from hers, breathing heavily, and shot a glare down the hall. Slightly dazed, Amelia blinked and followed his gaze.
Ari and Vanessa were at the mouth of the hallway, watching them.
“Couldn’t even make it to the room, huh,” Ari called out, a grin painted on his lips. “Didn’t take you for an exhibitionist, St. James.”
Vanessa’s expression was pinched. She said nothing.
“Do you mind?” Leo asked, like he had every right to be making out with Amelia in the hallway, in the open, where anyone could (and did) walk by.
Ari laughed, but there was something odd about his expression. It seemed a bit forced. “Come on, Neale,” he said to Vanessa. “Let’s leave the lovebirds to it.”
They turned away and headed back the way they came. Leo let Amelia slide down the wall until she was on her feet before creeping to Ari’s room to re-lock the door. He opened it, turned the lock on the knob, then closed it again, eyes on the far end of the hallway. Then he met Amelia’s gaze and tilted his head to indicate they should leave.
On shaking legs, Amelia joined him. Somewhere along the way, she’d gotten incredibly turned on. That hadn’t been part of the plan.
“Are you okay?” Leo said in a low voice that made Amelia’s nipples tingle.
She nodded vigorously. “Uh-huh.”
“Did I hurt you?”
“No,” she said. It wasn’t pain she had felt when he’d pinned her against the wall. It was something else entirely.
He seemed to relax then. “Good.”
There was a pause. All the stress and adrenaline of the last hour crashed into them as they stared into each other’s eyes until Amelia’s lips began to twitch. She covered them with a hand, but it wasn’t enough. A little giggle slipped through, and when she lifted her gaze to his, she caught Leo’s shoulder’s shaking.
Then, like a dam breaking, they burst out laughing, stumbling to their own room. Leo opened the door, and they crashed inside, leaning on walls and furniture as they cackled.
“Worst sleuths ever,” Amelia said, wiping her eyes. “What did you even take?”
Leo pulled the papers out of his pocket and took a look. “A list of clients. I don’t recognize any names.”
“So, basically, we’re no closer to finding the ring or even knowing if it’s actually been stolen.”
Leo met her gaze, a wry grin teasing his lips. “Yep.” He stuffed the papers under a couch cushion and spun around to look at Amelia. “We’ll look at those later. We need to start participating in the scavenger hunt or people will ask questions.”
Taking her hand, Leo led her back down the stairs and into the foyer. They took a picture in front of the correct painting in the powder room, and Amelia hoped she didn’t look as dazed as she felt.
They took two more pictures inside and moved outside, the cool air a balm on Amelia’s skin. She took a deep breath, and finally, her brain came back online. “What do you think they were doing up there? It sounded like they were arguing about something. Ari said something about clients being lined up?”
Leo was still holding her hand. She wondered if he liked doing it, but she wasn’t going to ask in case he stopped. Glancing down at her, Leo shrugged. “Not sure.”
“Vanessa called Ari an idiot. You think he took the ring, and she was calling him an idiot for doing it? And the clients were buyers?”
“Maybe,” Leo said, following another team into the trees. They found a treehouse, took a picture, and crossed it off the list, painting bright smiles on their faces when they came upon the other team there.
“Heard you two took a detour,” the middle-aged woman said, eyes glimmering. Amelia’s cheeks smarted, which made the couple laugh. “I remember when we got engaged,” the other woman said, glancing at her husband. “He was insatiable.”
“It wasn’t all me, darling,” the man replied, and the couple took off toward the next item on their list.
When they were out of earshot, Leo met Amelia’s gaze. “At least our cover story is still working.”
A little too well , Amelia thought. At least on her end.
If she was going to survive all the way to Sunday, she’d have to remember that Leo didn’t actually have feelings for her. I was just the deal they’d struck. Once the retreat was over—and they made sure their names were never sullied by accusations of theft—they’d go their separate ways.