Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
EMMA
“What have you done?” I ask Nicole in a seething whisper, because she’s obviously behind this. I think I’m pissed about that, but I also feel…good. Energized. I’ve spent the last month and a half trying to find something I can latch onto—something that will make me feel in control—and I haven’t found it. Now, something is happening , and even if I didn’t orchestrate or ask for it, I feel more myself than I have in weeks.
“What you should have done yourself,” Nicole tells me haughtily. “No offense, but you’re pretty shit at interior decorating. I sat in that chair for thirty seconds, and my ass instantly went numb.”
“It’s pretty.”
She gives me an unimpressed look. “You buy pictures to look at. You buy chairs to sit in. You’re bad at this. Don’t you want to do something you’re good at?”
Yes, dammit.
“You’re obnoxious,” I snap, my gaze following Seamus as he claps Chuck on the back. He goes to take off his jacket—the leather jacket that I know from experience smells like smoke and spice and man.
“Yes, that’s something I’m good at,” Nicole says. My gaze is on Seamus, though—hooked there. The first sleeve of the jacket comes off, revealing a close fitting sweater that hugs his defined arms.
Nope. Not happening. He may live in this apartment, but he’s not scooting in here like it’s no big deal that he up and moved to Asheville after running in the night on New Year’s. I need an explanation of why he’s here and how he fits into Nicole’s plans. Because he obviously does. I’ve been trained to identify causality, and there’s no way in hell this is some big, cosmic coincidence.
“Leave that on, Seamus,” I say loudly, grabbing Nicole’s arm and scooting her toward the entryway. “We’re going outside for a smoke break.”
He stops, coat half on, coat half off, and grins at me. “Hello to you too.”
I’d expected my mother would have something to say about me going on a smoke break, especially since she made Anthony do all the lawn maintenance on Smith House for weeks after she caught him smoking pot, but she smiles at us. “Have fun. We’ll see you in a half hour or so.”
“Mom, it doesn’t take half an hour to smoke a cigarette.”
She waves a dismissive hand, her oversized jeweled rings flashing at me. “Oh, I’m perfectly well aware of how long it takes most people to smoke a cigarette, but you don’t do anything by halves. I’m guessing you’ll go down there and smoke a whole pack. Maybe you should have two while you’re at it. God knows you could use something to take the edge off.”
It’s a bizarre attitude. I glance at my brother, who gives a You know our mother shrug, which also baffles me.
“Want to come?” Nicole asks Damien, who’s about to bite into one of the donuts.
He shakes his head and grins at her. “Surprisingly, I’d rather stay in here and eat donuts in the heat. This one’s all yours, Nic.”
I’m about to open the door, when Seamus presses his hand over mine, pushing it from the knob.
“Get your coat,” he says in a low rumble of command that affects me more than I’d admit to anyone.
“Maybe I want yours.”
“You’re not very good at borrowing things,” he says pointedly, lifting his eyebrows. “Giving them back is a key part.”
I could try to argue, but the longer we’re in here, the greater the possibility that we’ll get pulled into a game of Charades, or whatever people typically do at housewarming parties.
“I’m getting my coat because I want it,” I say.
“Can you get mine because you want it too?” Nicole asks, leaning on the wall next to the door.
I get the coats from the small closet by the door, my heart thumping warm blood through my veins—my mood not at all sluggish.
I’m filled again with that heady feeling of something is happening.
Five minutes later, I’m standing out on the pavement beneath the building, next to a dumpster that reminds me of the one next to the restaurant on the night of Anthony’s rehearsal dinner.
“You have us down here,” Seamus says, amusement curling his lips. “Now, what do you intend to do with us?”
“Aren’t you going to smoke?” I ask him.
“Nope.” He sticks his hands in his pockets and rocks on his heels. “I figured you had something to say.”
“I do,” I say, feeling a fizzing sensation inside of me. It’s as if I’m about to blow sky high. Not from anger, necessarily, but from all of the emotions and words I’d repressed for months begging to be released at the same time. “Why are you here? It obviously has something to do with Nicole. She’s shitty at keeping secrets.”
“I take offense to that,” she objects, her voice edged with sarcastic amusement. “I’m only shitty at keeping secrets when I don’t want to keep them. And I guess it’s time for me to let you in on what I’ve been working on for the past few weeks.”
“And you know about this?” I ask, turning to Seamus. White mist billows from his lips, slightly parted, as if he’s smoking out here after all. Memory is an awful thing, because I can practically feel his lips brushing over mine as he pushed me into the side of my mother’s house.
Most kisses are forgotten as soon as they’re over, other than whether they were pleasant or unpleasant. Our New Year’s kiss has infested my dreams for the last month and a half. The thought puts a scowl on my face.
“Yeah,” he says, his mouth hitching up at the corner. “Maybe you would too if you hadn’t blocked me. That’s on you.”
I scowl at him. “If you hadn’t made an annoyance of yourself, I wouldn’t have blocked you.”
He lifts one shoulder and tilts his head: silently saying touché. “I’m here because I find myself temporarily unemployed, like you, and Chuck offered me a place to stay. It didn’t hurt that Nicole paid me a visit and hired me for a temp job.”
“What job?” I ask.
He gives me a wicked grin that tells me it was the right question to ask—the only one that mattered.
“Driving Ellie Reed and her dipshit boyfriend around Asheville for a week. They ‘won’—” he makes finger quotes, glancing at Nicole, “—an all-expenses-paid early spring break vacation—”
“A contest she didn’t enter,” Nicole says with a grin as she reaches up to adjust her beanie, tucking all of the pink underneath it. “Some people have all the luck, am I right?”
Shock spirals through me and sends shivers down my spine. My body seems to lurch within my skin at the thought of them here, in this place that’s my home even if it doesn’t always feel like it. They’re supposed to be in Charlotte, a part of my other life. If I had my choice, I’d never see either of them again. Ever.
But I’ve spent weeks hiding, and it hasn’t helped, so when I speak, the word that comes out of my dry mouth is “When?”
Something like approval crosses Seamus’s eyes. “They’re getting here next Friday, Leap Day, and they’ll be staying at the Grove Park Inn. I’m playing their chauffeur so they can get drunk at all the breweries, and Nicole’s arranged for some other surprises. She’s going to pose as Ellie’s personal assistant. She and Damien have also been corresponding with her as the contest supervisors, Nicky and Dan.”
I breathe in and out slowly, trying to process this surprise. It makes me feel out of control again, because all of this has been done without my input. But if they’d told me, would I have agreed? I’ve been so lost, so broken. I’ve needed a push…
Another shiver runs down my spine as I turn toward Nicole. “What are you going to do?”
“Our goal is to get you access to his computer and phones.” The plural suggests she’s been watching him enough to know he has two—one for work, one for personal use. “We’ll plant a doctored safe in the room so we can easily open it.”
My pulse races, but I try to moderate my response. “If he’s smart, he’s covered his tracks by now. It wouldn’t make sense for him to bring something incriminating with him.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think he’s half as smart as he thinks he is,” Nicole says with a grin, her eyes gleaming. “I’ll bet he has all of his passwords saved to his computer like ninety percent of the old people I meet. Besides, if we lure them here, we have the home court advantage. And we can’t risk trying to sneak you into his office. If you break the court order here, it could be written off as an accident. You live here, they don’t. You can say you didn’t know about their little vacation. Having them in our space makes sense.”
Excitement tries to flare inside of me, but logic suggests Jeffrey would have deleted anything remotely incriminating. I say so and add, “He’d be a fool not to. So what would we even be looking for?”
She taps her forehead. “I’m counting on you to know it when you see it. That’s why we need you. Could Damien and I take care of this on our own? In our sleep. But you get the premium plus package, which includes having the satisfaction of personally taking part in his downfall. Plus, we want to have a little fun at their expense. Call it an asshole tax.”
More excitement flares through me, threatening to take over every other emotion. “Why would they stay if they’re having a shitty trip?”
She shrugs a shoulder carelessly. “I have a plan for that. It’s gonna be like the Hotel California. They can check in, but they won’t ever be able to leave.”
My first thought: ominous. My second thought: I like it.
“I figure we’ll break them up while we’re at it,” she says. “Leave him a shell of a man. Damien and I have already started sowing the seeds. Adding her favorite pop songs to his playlists. Sending her disgusting chocolates. Yesterday, we screwed up his calendar so he missed a business meeting. That doesn’t have anything to do with Ellie, I guess, but I’m pretty proud of our tech guy. Hopefully, it was an important meeting.”
“But why are you doing this?” I ask, truly blown away. My gaze moves to Seamus, who’s watching me with a dark gaze. “Why go to all this trouble?”
“It’s like I told you,” Nicole says, “I really enjoy bringing down assholes. It’s my favorite hobby to make men like Jeffrey squirm. Can you honestly tell me you don’t want to see that happen?”
“No,” I admit, pulling gloves out of my pocket because I need something to do with my hands. “I want him to go down in flames.”
But I’m also terrified I’ll swing and miss.
Again.
I don’t like failing. No Rosings or Smith ever has.
“So do I,” she says. “Also, your mother hired me.”
“She did what?” I ask, dropping the gloves. Seamus immediately bends over to grab them. “How did she even know about Jeffrey?”
“She knew you’d had an affair with your boss, and he’d canned you after he started sleeping with a client. That, plus your obsession with interior decorating was enough to worry her. She asked me to look into it and take care of it, whatever it took. Lucky me, I already knew the whole story, so half of my work was done for me.”
I feel something quake inside of me. All this time, I thought I was doing a good job of keeping my problems to myself, and my mother already knew everything. Probably for weeks, maybe longer. I’m guessing my brother did too.
It’s quite possible every person up in that apartment knows.
It feels like another sign that I’ve completely lost control of my life, which doesn’t feel great, and yet…
Being intrusive and overbearing is my mother’s love language—her way of solving problems. I can’t altogether blame her. I would be the same way if someone I loved was suffering.
It probably drove my mom crazy, watching me bustle around the house when she knew I was turning my back on the ruins of my old life. Letting it fester. She wanted to fix things for me, and she’d gone to a lot of effort to do so.
The truth is that I'm relieved .
I’ve needed a push. Wanted one.
I clear my throat. “So she knows about the restraining order?”
“No,” Nicole says.
“ When did she hire you?” I press.
Her smirk looks almost pitying. I hate pity. I want to murder it and bury it an unmarked grave.
“The day of your brother’s wedding. Efficient, right? She got one kid sorted and moved on to the next. We couldn’t get started right away, but we did some early brainstorming.”
Which must be why Nicole had talked to me that night.
Was Seamus involved from the beginning, too?
I turn to look at him, and he holds a big hand out to me. I’m caught off guard enough to present my hand to him, and he takes it in his cold, callused grip and starts gently pulling on the glove as if I’m a doll to be dressed. Different shivers course through me as his skin glances over mine, the combination of his touch and the soft fabric of the glove almost overwhelming.
I feel almost choked up as I watch him, but I clear my throat of the sensation and say, “I don’t need help putting on outdoor wear.”
“Evidence suggests otherwise,” he says as he finishes with the first and starts with the second. His fingers don’t linger on my cold skin, but they radiate heat and pressure nonetheless, warming something inside of me. He doesn’t seem like the kind of man who’d bother to take care of anyone, himself included, but here he is putting on my gloves for me.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask, studying him. “What’s in it for you?”
He lifts his eyebrows. “Money, of course.”
I expected as much, but it disappoints me for reasons I don’t care to dissect. He’s not my type, and I’m guessing I’m not his, but there’s still an attraction. A buzzing, snapping, annoying-as-hell attraction that makes me five times more aware of my body whenever he’s around it.
Maybe my mother was right about the women-in-their-thirties thing and this is totally hormonal. Or driven by my obvious self-destructive streak when it comes to men. The powerful lawyer didn’t work out? Fine. Why not go for a ride on the self-admitted former criminal? Let’s see how many ways I can get myself disbarred.
Nicole releases a sound that’s part snort, part laugh, and all obnoxious. “Come on, leather jacket. You’re doing it for the thrill. I can see you.”
He shrugs, his gaze falling on my face and then settling on my lips. “Yeah, maybe.”
“You’re probably also hoping to get laid,” she adds.
He raises his eyebrows, very pointedly not looking at me. “Sure. Ellie’s hot. I’d take one for the team.”
He glances at me then, when there are probably steam lines of rage rippling from me.
I want to stomp on his boots. Knee him in the balls. Back him into a wall and…
His smirk confirms he’s poking at me on purpose. I shake my head at him. “You’ll do anything to get a rise out of me.”
“I’ll just bet he would,” Nicole says, her voice full of insinuation. She waves a hand at us and then the trash can. “But it smells like someone’s holiday dinner is rotting in there. I’m going inside.”
He starts to follow her, but I touch the sleeve of his coat with my mittened hand. His halt is immediate; his gaze is hot. “Aren’t you going to have a cigarette?”
He gives me a look I can’t interpret before his lips curl up. “I quit. Someone told me it’s a nasty habit.”
For a second my mouth gapes open—did he really quit because I told him he should?—but I quickly get control of myself. He’s working me. Playing me like a fiddle—and here I am, falling for it, like dozens of other women. “Well, she certainly sounds like the most sensible person you know. I’m surprised you listened to her.”
He laughs, the sound vibrating through me. “Let’s go upstairs so they can hold their intervention.”
“This is an intervention?” I ask, flabbergasted. “I figured I’d at least get to go on a bender before I got one of those. All I did was fix up my mother’s house.”
He grins at me, his expression wolfish. “She mustn’t like what you did.”
“You saw it before. There was no making it worse.”
He just lifts his eyebrows. His coat is open, I notice, and he’s got to be cold, but he makes no move to close it.
“I’m not that bad at interior decorating,” I say, stalling. If we go upstairs, I’ll need to face everyone. To appear grateful or pissed or…something. I’m both of those things, but I’m also confused, caught in this weird space of feeling too much and not knowing how to categorize any of it. Including my feelings about the man who’s standing beside me and is so tall I have to crane my neck to meet his gaze even though I’ve never been short.
“That’s not what I’ve heard,” he says, his lips inching up further.
“Oh, fuck you.” I nudge his arm, feeling the lean muscle under my fingertips.
“We’ve already decided that’s a bad idea,” he tells me, glancing up at the second floor windows of the building. He runs his fingers over his lips as if he’s still imagining he has a cigarette there. As if he’s craving something he knows he can’t or shouldn’t have. I understand that better than I’d like.
“A horrible idea.”
His gaze finds me as a shit-eating grin stretches across his face. “Doesn’t that kind of make you want to give it a try?”
I’m suddenly fighting the urge to laugh. But I put up the good fight and say, “The last time you were in the same town as Nicole you took off in the middle of the night to get away from her. When did you become best buddies?”
“When she offered me money,” he says casually.
“Bullshit.”
He hooks his hands into his pants pockets. “Okay, Little Rich Girl. Tell me the best things in life are free. I’m all ears.”
He still has a teasing lilt to his voice, but there’s a hard truth behind it—and I feel myself blushing.
“Look I know money’s important. That’s a big part of my job. My old job. Making sure people get their due.” I find myself telling him about helping a stay-at-home mom whose wealthy husband left her for an eighteen-year-old after fifteen years of marriage. He tried to hide the majority of his income, but I tracked down every last penny with the help of a forensic accountant.
“Are there a lot of cases like that?” he asks, instead of making the quip I was expecting.
“Too many,” I say with a sigh, feeling the weight of it. “So yeah, I get it.”
He lets me stew for a few seconds, then nudges my arm. “Didn’t hurt that Nicole said she’d drop the whole thing about my past if I helped out.”
I shake my head. “Ah, the truth comes out.”
I take a step toward the apartment building, but he stops me by wrapping his hand around my forearm, easily engulfing it. I look back at him, my lips parting at the intensity in his eyes.
“I also want to help you with this,” he insists, his voice a low rumble.
“Sure you do.”
His lips hitch up at the side. “I mean it. There’s something deeply satisfying about messing with assholes who deserve it. It checks all the boxes for me.”
“ All the boxes?” I ask, tilting my head.
He shakes his head, his mouth still quirked in that half-smile. Then he gets out his silver lighter and flicks it open, the fire flickering into being.
“So much for quitting,” I comment, annoyed even though I have no right to be. He made me no promises, and if he had, I would have been a fool to believe them.
“I thought you liked playing with fire, Emma,” he says, waggling his brows as he pulls a box of cigarettes out of his back pocket—still holding the flame steady.
I act on instinct, the way I always seem to around him—and reach directly for the lighter. He flicks it shut the second before I grab it from his hand, the metal heated against my skin.
“You gonna steal that too?” he asks, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he studies me with what looks like amusement. The line of his throat is sexier than a throat should be.
I wink at him. “Fuck around and find out.” Then I pocket the lighter and turn back toward the building—and my intervention, I guess.
This time Seamus doesn’t stop me.
My heart is beating hard, my skin so sensitized that when I brush it against the brick siding before opening the door, I feel it everywhere.
I hear him laughing behind me before it shuts.
A smile stretches across my face.