Chapter Seventeen Reese
Seventeen
Reese
Reese lay in the dark, listening to the creak of the old timbers and the wind pressing at the windows, trying to push away thoughts of Grace, sleeping just a few meters away. He focused instead on Abe’s words from earlier about runs carved beneath the tower.
If there was another way under the inn, it would be through the tower. Discreet. Out of sight. Exactly the type of entrance you wouldn’t share with just anyone.
Reese swung his legs out of bed. Midnight or not, he wasn’t built to wait. The tower would tell him more than any set of plans ever could. He padded barefoot and bare-chested through the dark hallways, using his phone’s flashlight to navigate him.
The tower sat at the northeastern corner of the inn. Stone base, round, solid. The entrance was tucked at the end of a narrow corridor past the kitchen. Easy to miss. Maybe that was the point?
Reese pushed the door to the tower open. Hinges screamed. Inside, the circular ground floor room was maybe fifteen feet across. Stone walls. Exposed beams overhead disappearing into shadow. Original oak flooring, worn smooth, gaps between the planks wide enough to lose a quarter in.
He swept his phone’s flashlight across the floor looking for seams, irregularities. The telltale sign of a hatch.
His father’s scrawled journal note always came back to the same thing: something hidden. Something important enough his dad wrote about it in his journal under the day he died.
The light caught something near the center: a slight depression in the wood. Pattern didn’t quite match the rest. Reese crouched, running his fingers along the grain.
Then he heard a noise.
His head snapped up, phone beam swinging toward the spiral staircase. The light caught movement. Something pale.
Grace.
She was halfway down the stairs, frozen mid-step. Hair loose, falling past her shoulders. And that nightgown—
Fuck.
Thin enough that his flashlight made it practically see-through. He could see everything. The curve of her waist. Her hips. Her breasts. Long legs. She looked unreal. Like something his brain had conjured up.
Heat shot through him and his mouth went dry.
His cock hardened instantly, straining against his sweats.
Grace stared back, eyes wide, lips parted. The thin fabric of her nightdress shifted as she took a breath in, and Reese’s mind went straight to what she looked like underneath that fabric—
He should look away. Should say something. Should do literally anything except stand there picturing what she’d look like with that nightgown pooled at her feet.
But he didn’t move. Didn’t want to.
His body was making a decision that his brain would catch up with later.
He headed for the stairs.