Chapter 2
LILA
Wearing a towel around my chest, with my hair damp from the shower, I step out of the bathroom when a noise catches my attention.
Cars roll onto the gravel driveway.
Nudged by curiosity, I slip out of the room and tiptoe my way to the staircase swirling around the heart of the house.
There, I set my hands onto the handrail and bend over to take a peek at the black cars pulling up in front of the entrance.
A man climbs out of the first vehicle. It’s an SUV with tinted windows.
He is massive, wears a suit despite the warm weather, and is bald like my father.
Is that him? Damon West?
He looks more like a bouncer than a boss, and something tells me it’s not him.
A little earlier, I spent a minute or two looking up this man online and got nothing. I mean, my search rendered a ton of results, just not anyone who could be him.
Lawyers, doctors, business owners, a slew of random people. They were either too old, too young, or simply not him.
The burly man turns his back to the house and walks toward the second car. A couple of men step out, both wearing suits and sunglasses. They look so much alike that I find it hard to believe that either of them can be the man of the house.
I almost lose hope that I’ll ever see him when they all straighten at once and peer in the same direction as a man who so easily stands out and looks so different from what I expected, strides confidently toward the entrance.
This is absolutely the owner of the house and Henrietta’s new husband.
The sight of him makes me snap upright and swiftly pull back. A few feverish steps take me to the closest corner where I hide behind a bushy plant.
Such an uninspired move, yet it’s so effective.
I got a glimpse of him, didn’t I?
Why else would my pulse race like that?
The way he moved, the secret glint in his eyes, the signet ring on his finger.
How in the world could I notice all that so quickly?
He wears a sleek suit… Oh, oh. I see him. I see him.
His steps echo against the marble floor, his husky voice dispensing orders to his men.
Does he even know I’m in the house?
The better question is, am I allowed to be in the house?
He must’ve brought these people to his place for a reason, and here I am, spying on them.
Color me inexperienced, but this doesn’t look like a casual gathering, a group of friends watching sports, or having pizza dinner with his buddies.
Are these his employees?
They must be.
What kind of nightclub does he run?
All these questions are buzzing in my head while his men head to the pool, following his directions.
Oblivious to his surroundings, he checks his phone.
Henrietta is not here. I don’t think so.
I would’ve seen her. She’s hard to miss with her wavy dark hair, plump red lips, and skintight dresses.
I wonder if he’s calling her.
My eyes glide over his face as he fiddles with his phone. His chin is tilted down, so I can hardly see his features.
When I said he stood out, I wasn’t joking.
The sleek suit he’s wearing fits him to perfection. Snug over his bulging biceps and stretched across his broad shoulders.
Dark pants hug his muscular thighs and ass.
No sartorial ingenuity can conceal those hard sculpted muscles. He has the body of a man trained to settle by force what he can’t buy with money.
Maybe he’s into sports.
The tattoos covering one side of his neck and his knuckles loudly disagree.
Maybe he’s into artistic endeavors, too.
The way he flicks his eyes to the second floor as he casually brings his phone to his ear, waiting for the line to ring, makes me stumble backward, paw at the plant, and kick the pot to the side. It slides away it a screech.
I’m probably wrong.
He’s not into arts.
He has the instincts of a tiger, his eyes harboring feral fierceness.
He knew that I looked.
His steps ring up the stairs as his raspy voice floats toward me like a cloud of madness.
Oh, fuck.
I spin around as quickly as I can, unsettling the potted plant, almost making it fall over, and dash to my room.
Once inside, I lock the door, press my ear to it, and listen.
No sound wafts this way, his voice and steps moving steadily toward the other end of the corridor.
A sigh peels off my lips.
I lower my shoulders and relax against the door, my face tilted down, my hand pressed to my brow, the other fanned over my stomach as I shake my head slowly, quietly laughing to myself.
Boom, boom, boom.
The pounding on the door makes me scream.
I jerk upright and pull back, tripping over myself and catching myself at the last moment.
“Open the door,” a voice thunders.
I freeze in the middle of the room, not knowing what to do.
My first thought takes me to my now deceased father.
I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for his genius idea to make me live with that woman.
What was he thinking putting me into her house? What made him think she wouldn’t move on in a breath if something happened to him?
What a lack of foresight on his part.
A key shifts in the lock and the door slides open under my horrified eyes.
A tall, handsome man––he looks nothing like my father––pierces me with his smoldering dark green eyes.
He looks like he’s slept by the pool and woke up with the most beautiful tan. Whichever the reason for his olive skin, it makes his eyes and raven hair pop.
It also makes me lose my breath.
I’ve never seen anything more beautifully dangerous in my life.
He rests a hand on the doorframe, his tailored white dress shirt highlighting his flat abdomen and trimmed waist.
“You must be Lila Skye,” he says, his nasal voice curling around me like a snake.
“Yes. That would me. I arrived this afternoon. Henrietta must’ve told you about me. This is about my father’s will. Her late husband.”
He grunts.
“Hmm… Yeah. Henrietta.”
He sounds like he just remembered he had a wife.
“I haven’t seen her since yesterday morning,” he goes on. “She mentioned something about you coming here. You’re spending the summer here?” he asks, sort of, in the voice of someone who’s found an old mop in the storage room and doesn’t know where to put it.
“That’s the plan,” I say, not breathing.
I’m not sure whether he is seriously aware that my presence here is entirely dictated by a legal document.
So far, I can’t say I’m getting good vibes about these two people being together.
Although knowing her, this man seems more her type than my father was.
It could also be a matter of odds.
She picks men randomly.
He got a mousy math teacher. And then he went of for the, um… king of underground criminals?
The man looks like a villain. I could pick him out of a lineup.
Whether he goes for that look out of boredom, or the way he looks accurately reflects who he is, is something I can only reflect on later.
I don’t have the time to delve into this right now.
“All right,” he says, and since I’m experiencing unexpected short memory loss, I can’t tell whether he’s looked me up and down all this time, or whether he’s kept his eyes on me at all times.
The man is having me under hypnosis with his hooded haunting eyes. I bet they make women lose their heads over him.
I can’t look away. I can’t think straight. I can’t even figure out how ridiculous I look, barefoot, with my hair in disarray, my towel crooked, my hand nervously grabbing at it as I try to make it stay in place.
“Make yourself at home,” he says glacially before he peels his hand off the doorframe and starts to turn around. “The housekeeper brought you up to date,” he says, not looking at me, moving away.
“Yes, she did,” I say, inching closer to the door, waiting for him to be far enough from me so I can close it.
Forget about locking it.
He has the key.
“You’ll be okay. Just stick with the rules,” he says, again without glancing at me.
I stare at his broad shoulders as he takes the stairs down––he never intended to go to his room, or wherever I thought he was going––and soon after he steps out of my line of sight.
Finally, I can take a long breath and exhale.
“That went well,” I say quietly before I close the door and return to my room.
I should go to the closet and put some clothes on.
Instead, I spend the next hour trying to get a glimpse of him and his men as they have drinks by the pool and unsettle the otherwise quiet afternoon with their careless, loud voices.
LILA
Come dinner time, I realize I’m not hungry, but I decide to head downstairs anyway so I can familiarize myself with the space, meet the other staff members, and see what we have for dinner.
Or I should say, what I have for dinner.
Damon West and his men––his employees most likely––are long gone when I step into the kitchen.
There’s food on the kitchen island, and it’s still warm.
Blackened shrimp, collard greens, warm biscuits, and pecan pie.
My favorite type of dinner.
I grab a biscuit, store everything else in containers, put them in the refrigerator, and head upstairs.
Minutes later, I’m asleep, and the next time I’m awake, the house looks like nothing I can remember.
A soft breeze rolls over my cheeks like a tickle. As if someone is gently dragging a feather across my skin.
Groaning, I swat away the imaginary feather and open my eyes, my lips dry.
“Shit,” I mutter as if I just swallowed a bug.
I run the back of my hand over my mouth, push up onto an elbow, and look around the room, dazed, trying to figure out my new life.
The place looks like a sky full of stars as the lit pool water moves slowly, the motion reflected onto the ceiling.
The breeze rolls in through the open doors. I don’t remember leaving them open.
To be fair, I’m a little confused. I fell asleep so quickly that I didn’t even change my clothes. I’m still wearing shorts and a T-shirt.
It's too late to swap that out for my pajamas.
My stomach growls, and I remember all that delicious food stored in the refrigerator.
And then another thought pops into my head.
I might be home alone.
There’s no one in the house.
That thought sets me in motion faster than fire.
I climb out of bed and walk to the terrace.
A sweet aroma of flowers drifts through the air as strings of colorful lights flicker around the pool.