Chapter 12
MAGGIE
With Ryan gone, the whir of the chainsaw silent, and the storm passed, it hadn’t taken long for the silence in the cottage to become deafening.
It’d pressed against my ears and made my chest feel tight, so I’d finally set the letters aside, grabbed a shower, and gotten dressed into my last change of clean clothes.
My taxi driver back in California had kindly stopped on the way to the airport and run into a store for me to buy an outfit I could change into before the flight.
I’d picked up a few more things just after I’d arrived in Deerfield, but later today, I was going to have to figure out if the old washer in the scullery still worked.
For now, however, I’d turned off my phone and I swept a rake through the grass, gathering yet another pile of leaves. After the storm, the property was blanketed in those, fallen branches, sticks, and a few other odds and ends that must’ve gotten blown in.
I wouldn’t pretend to know much about yard work, but so far, I was enjoying it. Morning sunshine warmed the back of my neck and the lightest breeze kept me from overheating, but mercifully, it wasn’t strong enough to undo my hard work.
Over the next few hours, I cleaned up the garden and the porch, but my mind kept drifting back to that photograph Ryan had found.
For a while, I’d thought maybe my grandfather had simply been attending the wedding and that the bride had merely been a friend he’d gotten a picture with, but the way his hand was curled around her hip while she leaned into him didn’t exactly seem friendly.
Also, even after all these years, the way they’d looked at each other the moment that picture had been taken still spoke volumes. Unless the word friends had had a different definition back then, I doubted that was all they’d been.
Sighing as I bent over, I wrapped my fingers around the rough bark of a fallen branch and dragged it to the edge of the property.
It was heavier than it’d looked, the muscles in my arms burning by the time I got it to the fence, but I still grinned when I finally got it to the others I’d already piled there.
Hell, yes. Who says I’m just a weak heiress who can’t do anything for herself?
I straightened up, flexing my fingers a few times to get the feeling back into the parts that were numb.
As I looked out at the wide, agricultural valley beyond the fence and the river in the distance with the backdrop of a bright blue sky, I suddenly understood why my grandfather would’ve bought a place out here.
It was beautiful. Peaceful. Quiet.
Maybe a little too quiet for someone like me who’d grown up in the city, but I was sure I could get used to it. Unfortunately, a moment later, the sound of an engine cut through that quiet and I sighed, knowing before I even turned that Ryan had come back.
Without looking at his car, I crunched back to the house over the leaves remaining on the grass and picked up the rake again, holding it in my hand as his car rolled to a stop. As soon as I heard the door open, I propped my free hand on my hip and looked over at him.
“Get off my property or I’m calling the state troopers.”
Ryan emerged from the car as gracefully as if he’d never once accidentally stepped in a hole.
It was like he simply expected the dirt to scramble to create the perfect surface for him to stand on.
Wayfarer sunglasses covered his eyes, but the rest of his face suggested he hadn’t even winced at my threat as he slammed the driver’s door.
“Great. Do it.” He started walking toward the house, obviously having taken the morning to refresh his own wardrobe since he was now in jeans and a fresh, sky-blue button-down shirt.
“It’s likely the police are already looking for you, so if you call them, you’d be saving some detective an unnecessary search. ”
I narrowed my eyes and slowly lowered the rake. “What are you talking about? Why would they be looking for me?”
“Your family is this close,” he held two fingers a fraction of an inch apart, “to reporting you as a missing person.”
“They wouldn’t.” I leaned the rake against the wall and folded my arms. “They know I’m safe. I told my father I was fine.”
“And yet, his patience is running out.”
My teeth ground, but I knew he probably had a point. My dad would stop at nothing to get me back so I could play my part just like I always had. If that meant launching a nation-wide womanhunt, I was suddenly sure he’d do it.
“What do you want?” I asked as Ryan stepped onto the porch, then turned to survey the yard.
“That’s easy.” He pulled off his sunglasses and held them loosely in one hand as he glanced at me. “I want you to come back to New York. I’m sure we could find you a garden to clean there, too. You’re not doing a bad job of it, by the way.”
I snorted. “Thanks, but it’s still a hard no from me.”
He sighed, moving a step closer to the railing before hooking his sunglasses into the collar of his shirt and then bracing both palms against the wood.
Facing the view, he looked out at the same valley and river I’d been admiring when he’d so rudely interrupted me, but I didn’t think it made him feel the same way I had.
Even in jeans, Ryan still looked too polished to be here, his sharp jaw clean shaven and his fancy watch, shirt, and sunglasses way out of place on a porch still mostly covered in leaves and debris.
He might’ve complimented me on doing a good job, but I was slowly realizing there was still a long way to go.
Who knew cleaning up after a storm could take that long?
“If you don’t want to go home, you can stay at my apartment?”
My eyebrows shot up, my thoughts about the clean-up stopped on a dime. “You want me to come stay with you? I don’t even know where you live.”
“I have in apartment in New York, and no, I don’t want you to come stay with me, but I’m compromising. You can’t stay here and you obviously need a place to lie low while everyone figures this out. I’m willing to give you that.”
“Gee, how generous of you, but I’m fine where I am.”
Ryan drew in a breath so deep that I saw his chest rise with it, but he was still staring out at the view.
“This cottage has a lot of potential. I’ll give you that, but it’s falling to pieces, Maggie.
It’s not safe as things stand, and that’s not even to mention that it’s full of weapons. Replicas or not.”
I watched him for a second, seeing the effort it was taking him to keep calm in the way his jaw twitched and his grip tightened on the railing. When he’d left this morning, he’d said he would give me a day to change my mind and if I didn’t, he was leaving, yet here he was.
“Why is it so important to you that I go back to New York?” I asked quietly, lowering my arms back to my sides and leaning against the pillar across the entryway from him. “I’m not trying to be funny, or bratty, or stubborn here. I just don’t get why you’re so invested in bringing me home.”
When he finally turned his head toward me, he looked exhausted.
I hadn’t seen it before because of the sunglasses, but now, it just looked like he was too tired to keep fighting.
“Basically, I can’t leave without you. That’s why I’m so invested.
There’s nothing even in this for me. I just want to go home, but I can’t do that if you’re not with me.
Hell, I don’t even just want to go home.
I need to. Before Holden makes a mess of everything in my office. ”
I frowned. “So go. I’m not keeping you here.”
“No, but my mother is and so is yours. They’re using me as a last-ditch effort to get you under control and I want them off my back.”
As understanding dawned, I dragged in a deep breath and tried to ignore the slight flicker of disappointment deep down inside. “Right. You’re still doing this for your mother.”
“I am, but I also can’t leave you here, Maggie.” He glanced at the front facade of the cottage. “It’s not safe, and if something happens to you out here, I’ll have to live with it for the rest of my life.”
For a moment, I considered taking him up on his offer. No reporter would think to look for me at Ryan Thayer’s address and he seemed desperate enough to bring me home with him that I was sure he’d promise not to tell my family where I was either.
Finally, I let my shoulders drop and nodded. “Fine.”
Those dark eyebrows swept up. “Fine, as in you’ll come with me?”
“I’ll get my things.”
He blew out a heavy breath. “Thank God.”
I turned toward the house, but before I’d even reached the threshold, he called out to me. “Stop! I’m not falling for that again.”
Shit.
A second later, his footsteps rang out right behind me, his hand grabbing the door to hold it firmly open before I’d even been able to reach for it. “You were going to lock me out again, weren’t you?”
“Yeah,” I muttered, my head shaking as I turned back to him. “How did you know?”
“I’m a fast learner.” Ryan let go of the door and lifted both of his hands with his palms out. I almost made a lunge for it, but then he started talking. “Look, I get it, okay? You’re not like the other rich girls you grew up with. In fact, you’re feral in comparison.”
I felt my features drop into a tight scowl, but he quickly corrected himself.
“What I mean is that the world you grew up in is too small for someone like you. It’s too controlling.
Too suffocating. Trust me, I get that. I understand exactly what it feels like seeing a great big world of opportunities out there and feeling like it’s completely out of your reach. ”
I blinked hard, but as much as I wanted to tell him that he didn’t understand as well as he thought he did, the fact was that if anyone understood it, it was probably a Thayer. “If you know why I’m so desperate to just live my own life, why are you still doing their bidding?”
“Because you’re going to get cut off completely if you don’t at least try to fix this,” he said bluntly.
“Your father isn’t messing around, Maggie.
He’s not just going to block your account for a week or two and then get over it.
If you don’t go back, you will lose not only your inheritance, but access to every dollar of Pembroke money in all of your accounts.
Fuck, he’ll close out the accounts themselves. ”
I swallowed hard. “I don’t care about the money.”
Ryan scoffed. Loudly. “That’s only because you don’t know what it feels like not to have any. This isn’t a game you want to play, Maggie. Take it from me. It’s not easy, or fun, or noble, or whatever else you’re thinking.”
“I’ll get a job.”
“With what experience?” He threw a hand out toward the town.
“Do you honestly think you can just walk into any business out there, tell them you need a job, and they’ll give you one?
Even if, by some miracle, there is a position open somewhere and they’re willing to give you a chance, you won’t get paid immediately, and when you do, you’ll realize it’s not nearly enough to start completely fresh. ”
“It’s not a race.”
“No, but do you have any clothes to go to work in? Do you have any detergent to wash the clothes you do have? Once you’ve eaten the little food that’s left in there, do you have any cash left to buy more?”
I chewed the inside of my lower lip, tears stinging the backs of my eyes. “Did my father put you up to this?”
“No,” he snapped, the word dripping with exasperation. “I’ve lived it, Maggie. I know what all those things are like. I don’t want to drag you out of here, but I can’t leave you here alone in good conscience either.”
He was breathing hard by the time he was done, his eyes a little wilder now, and it occurred to me then that saying all that stuff out loud must’ve reopened some old wounds for him.
Ryan would probably never admit it out loud, or maybe he didn’t even know it himself, but he was carrying a lot of trauma and a healthy amount of bitterness over what’d happened to them.
Not that I could blame him. The picture he’d just painted hadn’t been pretty. In fact, it’d been downright grim. Scary as hell. While I was sure it’d also been entirely realistic, it’d sounded like something out of nightmare.
Because I didn’t have any detergent. I didn’t have clothes to wear to work.
I had one more box of mac and cheese and some noodles, and maybe half a bottle of milk, but that was it.
The shower I’d taken this morning had been ice cold and the water pressure hadn’t promised that there’d be any water at all by the evening.
The power was still out and being here alone in the dark with only that raccoon for company wouldn’t be fun.
“Okay,” I whispered after a beat, not above admitting defeat in this situation. “I’ll come back to the city with you, but only if you promise to help me figure out what my grandfather was hiding.”
He groaned. “Is that seriously the most pressing issue right now?”
“Yes.” I spun back toward the door. “I’ll only need five minutes.”
“I’ll wait inside.”
When I walked in, he was less than half a step behind me, planting himself in the open doorway and waiting there until I returned with one small bag. Ryan’s blue eyes widened a little when he looked at it.
“Is that all?”
“Yes.”
He frowned. “Fuck, Maggie. You really wanted to stay here with only enough stuff to fill a duffel the size of a toiletry bag?”
I shrugged. “I would’ve made it work.”
“Where’s your wedding dress?”
I smiled as I brushed past him. “I left it in a bathroom at LAX.”
Marching straight to his car, I tossed my tiny bag into the passenger footwell and climbed in, slamming the door behind me. As I twisted to buckle up, I saw him disappear inside for a moment before he came back out and shut the front door.
He climbed in behind the steering wheel. “Did you even think to check that the stove was off?”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.” He sighed, started the engine, and backed out of the driveway. “Also, for future reference, a dress like that is worth a lot of money. You might not have gotten full value from a pawn shop, but you would’ve gotten something.”
With that, he fell silent, leaving me to think about what he’d said. I hadn’t even considered selling the dress, but I probably should’ve. Crap, I’m really not very good at this.
Ryan didn’t say another word as we drove through Massachusetts, then Connecticut, and eventually, when the familiar sprawl of New York began to appear, he finally glanced at me again. “Where to?”
“Do you have a girlfriend?” I asked.
He scoffed like it was the most ridiculous question he’d ever heard. “No.”
“Roommates?”
“No.” His features scrunched like I’d just asked him whether he shared his underwear. “Of course not.”
I leaned back in the seat and turned to face the window. “Your place, then. Since you offered.”