Chapter Nine

CHAPTER NINE

The next morning, my head pounding from my night of fury drinking, I walked the two miles over the ridge from my house to the giant Constantine compound on the very top of the hill. The 300-year-old mansion was known as The Queen of Bishop’s Landing. Originally an apple orchard and farm, the land got sold bit by bit, but the house never changed hands. Hundreds of years of Constantine matriarchs and patriarchs, adding wings and electricity. Bathrooms and theaters. Tennis courts. Guard houses. Swimming pools. Manicured gardens. Helicopter pad.

Since the last troubles with the Morellis, it had been heavily guarded with armed men on the various balconies and in guard houses along the long driveway. Winston had bought the houses closest to the compound, so for a mile in every direction it was Constantine land.

My parent’s old house was part of that. The willow tree and pond.

Rumor was that the Morellis used to have a house on this hill. I didn’t know if that was true or not.

It was damp in the early sunlight, and the fog clung to the hedgerows and the tall trees. Despite the compound and the bulldozing of houses, most of Bishop’s Landing was still forested.

I walked the overgrown path up the hill. The turret on the Constantine mansion was obscured by mist. I bypassed the driveway and used the old wooden gate built in the side of the fence set deeper in the woods. Mom showed us this fence when Zilla and I were girls, when we were in and out of this house like it was our own. I hadn’t used it in years. But this morning, in my muddy Wellingtons and bedraggled ponytail—it seemed right.

I knocked on the door and squeezed the water out of my hair, waiting for one of the maids to answer.

“Poppy!” It was Denise. My favorite. She’d been around the longest and remembered my mother. “Ms. Constantine didn’t tell me she was expecting you.”

“She told me to come by last night.”

“Did you make an appointment?”

“Nope,” I said, stepping inside the foyer. I wiped off my boots on the rug. I liked Denise, but I wasn’t going to be sent away. “Is she in her office?”

“Yes,” Denise said. “But why don’t you let me—”

“I know the way, Denise. It’s fine.” I gave her a blinding smile. The kind of smile I gave servers and photographers when they noticed a bruise on my wrist and their eyebrows went up. It was my no further questions smile.

Caroline’s office was up in the turret. And I took the wide sweeping center staircase up to the second floor and then the smaller staircase to the third, and in the corner by the old nursery and the maid’s quarters was the final staircase up to her throne.

Justin had a desk at the top of the stairs. “Poppy!” he cried as he stood. “You don’t have an appointment.” He looked down at his desk like this unexpected interruption was going to send the whole house of cards to the floor.

“You’re right,” I said and pushed my way into Caroline’s office anyway, right past him. The room was windowed on three sides, and the ceiling was gorgeous refurbished mahogany. All the décor cream, white, and gold with accents of pale pink.

In the middle of the room, standing opposite her desk was a man with his back to me in a black suit. I knew in a heartbeat who he was.

Ronan.

I had not anticipated him. And my body lurched with memory and shame. The urge to run was not small, but I stood there. I stood there, and I folded up those conflicting memories and I put them away. I wasn’t stupid. And I wasn’t a little girl. It was time for me to stop acting like I was.

And more importantly it was time to stop being distracted by what he did to me.

Who is he?I wondered. And how did he get so close to Caroline? So fast? That office in her building that I’d been sure was for family; it was clearly his. Which meant he was deeply inner circle.

“Poppy?” Caroline asked, looking around Ronan to see me in the doorway. Her eyes went wide at the way I was dressed. Jeans and wet hair, muddy boots. An old raincoat I found in the gardener’s closet. “Are you all right?”

At that, Ronan turned, his face registering nothing. Not surprise or happiness or anger or disdain. Not even the memory of my ass grinding against his cock as I came so hard I left my body.

Nope. Ronan stared at me like we were strangers. And that was just great with me.

He’d worked some magic on me last night. Not just my body, but in my head, too. Pushing me out of that trap I’d lived in, too terrified to ask for what I wanted in fear of it being taken away.

Too terrified to want anything.

I felt stronger for having asked for something, even if it was something as strange as that man’s hands on my body. Even if getting what I wanted sent me someplace dark and shameful.

Sex was so easy for some people. Why was it always a Greek tragedy for me?

“I’m fine,” I said. “I was hoping we could talk?” My gaze flicked to Ronan, and I took great pleasure in sniffing dismissively. “Alone.”

“Of course,” she said. As she stood, she nodded at Ronan who turned and walked for the door. Brushing so close to me I could see that scar under his neck. I watched him go, all but daring him to look at me.

Of course, he didn’t. Because in the end, I was a senator’s widow, the good friend of his boss, and he was the help.

Now who is the coward?I thought. But didn’t necessarily feel better for the thought.

The door closed behind him, and Caroline gestured to the ivory chairs in front of her desk.

“You’re mad at me,” she said.

“I am,” I said. “Those things you changed in the speech—”

“The new foundation was something your husband and I were working on. He signed the papers just a few nights before . . .” she trailed off.

“He put a bullet in his own head?” The crassness was a surprise. It was shades of my sister coming out, and I understood how delicious it could be to be irreverent. To say what I wanted.

“I was going to say ended his life, but okay, we can go your way.”

“I’m not upset about the foundation.” I crossed my legs, my muddy boots dripping on the floor. That, too, felt good. “You know what he did to me. How he treated me.”

She nodded carefully.

“Then why make me lie about what a kind and decent man he was?”

“Because we wanted those people to donate money, and if you didn’t put an end to the rumors—”

“Rumors?”

Her level gaze met mine, and I saw the pity, and I could not sit there and bathe in it.

I stood up, and she grabbed my hand.

“You were so young and everyone knew the situation with Zilla and your father,” she said quickly, as if she were apologizing. But Caroline didn’t do that. “You put up a good front,” she said. “No one ever suspected how bad it was.”

“Is that supposed to comfort me?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s crappy comfort. People knew he hurt me. They just didn’t know how bad it was? So comforting.” Oh god, sarcasm. Who the hell was I?

I looked at her, hard in the eyes, remembering how she turned me away. How she told me I needed to make it work. And I owed her a lot, but not this. Not anymore.

“I’m not doing that again,” I said. “I’m done lying about him. About my marriage.”

Caroline put her hands up. “I understand, and I won’t ask that of you again. Okay?”

“Okay.” I nodded like we’d signed a deal, and Caroline sat back, eyeing me with a careful smile.

“It wasn’t kind of me to put you on the spot like that. But I knew if we’d run that by you—”

“I wouldn’t have done it?” I interrupted.

“No. You would have. But you would have spent two weeks thinking about it. Hurting yourself with it.”

That was undoubtedly true.

“Don’t be angry with me, Pops,” she said. “I was only trying to do what had to be done. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said because what else was I going to do? Hold a grudge? Against Caroline? Impossible. She smiled, sitting back in her seat.

“But you have to understand that it’s different now. I’m different.”

Caroline shook her head at me, a smile spreading across her face. “God, your mother would be so proud of you right now.”

The compliment stroked me like nothing else in the world could. “I suppose it’s about time,” I said.

“I’d say.”

“So?” I said. “Are you going to tell me about this foundation we’ve started?”

“Yes.” She checked her watch and stood up. “But I have to go into the city for a meeting. I’ll have Justin send over the details. Jim signed the paperwork before he died. You can step in as executive director as soon as you’re ready.”

“Executive director?” I said, stunned.

“Why not?”

“Because I have zero experience.”

“You worked for Jim’s foundation.” She shrugged.

“Yeah, as like a glorified fundraiser.”

“That’s not true,” Caroline said. “You had big plans.”

“Caroline,” I said and shook my head. They were hardly big plans. It was an idea that with enough money we could solve small problems. Make big changes in small ways. Micro-loans for single mothers. Breakfast programs for smaller school districts. Rural bus route improvements. Fidget toys for diagnostic kindergartens. Classroom wish lists for public school teachers. The kinds of programs that weren’t sexy and didn’t make the news, but that would really matter.

“They were creative, and you are capable. I’ll be right behind you making sure nothing goes wrong. But I have total faith in you.”

Total faith. Had anyone ever had total faith in me? Had I ever had total faith in me?

I got to my feet. “Monday?” I asked.

“Do you feel like you’re ready to go to work?”

“Past ready. But—” I was really feeling myself here.

“You want to negotiate salary?”

“No.” I didn’t need money. I had more money than I knew what to do with. “But you’re not lying to me anymore, Caroline. I’m not a pawn you can push around to get what you want. I owe you so much, but I don’t owe you my pride anymore.”

She looked at me for a long time, completely unreadable. And then she smiled, not the soft fuzzy one I usually got, but the one she saved for her bloodthirsty children.

“What’s gotten into you?” she asked.

“I don’t actually know,” I said. But Ronan was the answer. Ronan and burning my clothes.

“Well, I like it. When you’re ready, call me.”

On the tip of my tongue was a question about Ronan, about who he really was and why she trusted him, but she was all but pushing me out the door. And I didn’t know how to ask about Ronan without giving everything away. Every conflicted feeling I was wrestling with when it came to him.

Just thinking his name made me blush.

There were moments last night when I hated him as much as I ever hated Jim. But I never wanted a man the way I wanted Ronan.

No man had ever made me so curious. Or reckless.

And the way he seemed to know the power of asking for what I wanted? What was I supposed to do with that kind of man?

“The foundation’s offices are in the Halcyon building. When you’re ready, we will get you all set up.”

I wondered briefly why the offices weren’t in the brownstone, but in the end it didn’t matter. My future was happening.

There was a memory, dim and fragmented, of my two years at college. How I’d ridden my bike around Union, feeling that excited . . . possibility. This feeling in my chest didn’t feel like that, but I wasn’t a girl anymore.

That excitement was behind me. But maybe I had a chance at being useful again. At doing something good. And if I wasn’t excited, I was challenged. Interested. Ready.

From Caroline’s office I went down all the stairways and out the side door. I passed a dozen servants as I went, each of them smiling and following me with their eyes like I’d done something suspicious. Outside the sun was burning off the fog, and I walked across the lawn to the treeline and the small gate that I’d used to get here.

At the sight of a man standing there, I stopped, apprehensive. What was the deal with all this security? I wondered. But then I realized it was Ronan, and my apprehension morphed into something far more complicated. Fear and anger and a desire so strong I felt drunk.

“This is how you got through all the security?” he asked, pushing the wooden gate open and closed. The squeal of its rusty hinges startled birds from the forest behind him.

“How’d you find it?”

He gestured behind me, my dark tracks in the dew spangled grass. “Well, congratulations,” I said. “You caught me infiltrating the compound. Whatever will you do with me?”

He licked his upper lip in a move that was so outrageously sexy, so . . . dirty, I felt my nipples harden under the baggy coat I wore.

“You got a mouth on you,” he said.

The better to bite you with, I thought but definitely didn’t have the balls to say. “What do you want?”

He lifted his eyes.

“You forgot something at the gala,” he said.

My pride?

He held out my clutch. The dark indigo silk beautiful against his skin and the white of his shirt. I took it, careful not to touch him, but he held onto it for a second.

“Poppy,” he said.

“What?”

All that deadly stillness, that careful practiced impenetrable mask he wore every time I saw him since that first meeting here, two years and a lifetime ago, it dropped, and I recognized the beaten, slightly baffled man I’d met in the shadows. The man who wasn’t sure why he was here, or who he was supposed to be inside this house.

You, I thought. I recognize you.

“You need to be careful, Princess,” he said.

“Of you? Lesson learned.”

He tugged on the purse, and I fell off balance towards him. My body collided with his, and I gasped, affronted and unimpressed by his little tricks.

But also stupidly turned on.

“I’m not what’s coming through your door.”

“You’re not coming through anything of mine,” I snapped back at him, and his lips curled, heat settling between us.

“Sweetheart,” he whispered, his breath against my mouth. “If I came through your door, we both know you’d spread your legs for me so fast—”

I grabbed the purse and shoved away from him.

“I survived the monster under my bed,” I said. “And I’m rich now, or haven’t you heard?”

“Your money won’t keep you safe,” he said. “And there is more than one monster in Bishop’s Landing.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I’m no one, Princess. I’ve told you that.”

“I’m not a fool, Ronan. You were at my house. You talked to the senator. You’re living in Caroline’s pocket. Who. Are. You?”

He stepped closer, and I stood my ground, not about to cower. Those days were over.

“Try it, asshole. See what happens,” I growled at him, and his eyes opened wide for a second as if surprised. As if impressed.

“I’m no one,” he said again. “You need to concentrate on your own life.”

“You need to fuck off.”

He was repeating himself, and if he wasn’t going to bring something new to our conversation I was done. Done with him. Done with who he’d turned me into. The gate was cockeyed and open, and I pushed past him and slipped between it and the fence heading into the forest, down the trail back to my house.

I didn’t turn around despite the fact I could feel the burn of his gaze on the bare skin of my neck. That had to win me some points, right?

One thing was clear—he was the danger. Ronan was the unknown. The new monster in my life. And I’d learned some valuable lessons from my last one. Information was key. I wouldn’t be walking into anything blindly. Not again.

Once I was out of sight of the compound, I opened my purse and pulled out my phone.

Four texts from Zilla. A missed call. I had enough battery left to call her back.

“Hey!” She answered halfway through the first ring, and it did not escape me that our roles for the moment were reversed. “You had me worried.”

“Sorry, I left my phone at a gala. I just got it back.”

“A gala,” she said. “Sounds awful.”

“It was. It really . . . was.”

“What’s wrong, Poppy?”

I bit my lip and stared up at the sky. This was a big dangerous step. “If you needed to find out something about a Constantine, how would you find it?”

“None of this sounds like a good idea.”

“There’s a guy working for Caroline, and I just need to know his story.”

“Have you tried asking him?”

“You’re hilarious.” This was crossing a line; I was well aware of that. But I couldn’t live like this anymore. The girl left in the dark. And I couldn’t wait for people to decide to tell me what I needed to know.

I had to get my own answers.

“Well, you won’t like my answer,” Zilla said.

“What would you do?”

“Call a Morelli.”

“I don’t know any,” I said.

“I do. But, Poppy, are you sure you want to do this? You might start another Morelli and Constantine war, and you’ll be right in the middle of it.”

“Zilla,” I said, stepping through the tall grass. I hit the top of the hill. The senator’s house . . . my house, down below. “I don’t have that kind of power.”

“Well, you’ve never been a good judge of how much power you have, Poppy. But stay by your phone. I’ll be in touch.”