Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

ANTHONY

“Don’t make this into something it isn’t, Anthony,” my mother says with a wave of her hand. “Will you stop pacing?” I pause, watching her. She’s perched on a tufted blue settee in the drawing room of my childhood home, which has the unspeakably dull name Smith House. A few other seating options are clustered around hers, and the fireplace is to the right. On the other side of it is a Christmas tree, the tinsel reflecting the light from the dying fire in the grate. I wonder if my mother put the tree up by herself, a depressing thought, or if she paid someone else to do it, a thought that is perhaps equally depressing.

It occurs to me that Christmas is in a week and a half, and I have no idea what she has planned. It’s like I’ve been doing the backstroke in my head, ignoring the world as I pass it by.

If Rosie’s parents were alive, she’d know what they were doing for Christmas. Hell, she’d probably buy a boozy advent calendar and organize a white elephant gift exchange.

“What are you doing for Christmas, Mother?”

“Why, do you think my stalker would like an invitation?” she asks wryly. “I’d be ecstatic to invite them, if only they’d show their face. Lord knows, my own children have no interest in what I have to offer them.”

Sighing, I take a seat in the leather armchair next to her. “I should have asked weeks ago. I’ve been distracted.”

“Yes,” she says, giving another wave of her hand. “You’ve been gallivanting about town with half a dozen women, so you haven’t had any time for the woman who gave you life.”

Sighing more deeply, I lean back in my chair. “You’re reminding me of why we’ve spent the last year at odds.”

“Her name was Nina.”

“Still is, I imagine, and I haven’t enjoyed any of this,” I say. “ I don’t want this. ”

Her expression softens. “I know you don’t.” She pauses for a moment before relenting. “We’re having Christmas dinner here at home at noon. Emma’s coming on Christmas Eve, and with any luck, she’ll agree to stay until New Year’s. I’ve asked Cook to make your favorite dishes.”

Of course she’d planned for my presence. One of the things I both love and hate about my mother is that she always plans for my presence. She may not always understand me, and I sure as hell don’t always understand her, but she’ll never stop trying.

She’s watching me, her expression impatient.

“Thank you,” I say, which is my best guess of what she’s looking for.

“How was your lunch date?” She sounds exasperated that I misinterpreted her silent question.

“Short. It didn’t seem right to sit there and eat after your life was threatened.”

She gives me a shrewd, knowing look. “You didn’t like the woman.”

Maybe she understands me better than I give her credit for.

Leigh is exactly what I’d told Jake I was looking for. Poised and polished. Professional. Completely disinterested in me as anything other than a business opportunity.

But thirty seconds after we placed our lunch order, my phone buzzed with a message from UNKNOWN containing a link to a website threatening my mother.

I’d excused myself and gone outside to call the police.

They’d made it clear they couldn’t do much of anything unless my mother found herself with a knife pressed to her throat on the stroke of midnight in two weeks.

So I’d called Jake. While I don’t know his private investigator friends personally, he’s told me a few stories about them.

Most of those stories were about their complete lack of professionalism, but desperate times and all that.

He’d agreed to bring them over to Smith House.

I’d told Leigh that I needed to leave to attend to a family emergency, so now here I am, attending to it. Leigh probably won’t expect to hear from me for at least several hours, maybe even several days if I’m lucky.

The question of why I want to buy myself time when I’ve found the perfect platonic fake wife is one I’d prefer not to answer. But I suspect it has something to do with Rosie.

I haven’t texted her back yet. I’ve felt the impulse to do so—I feel it now—but I’m in the uncomfortable and unenviable position of having no idea what to say.

My mother takes another gulp of her drink, and I’m struck by how pale she looks.

“Are you…okay, Mom?” I say, using the soft tone my HR manager has tried to coax out of me at work. While I never aim for harsh or critical, I live in the shadow of a dead man, and sometimes I have to be louder and blunter than I’d like in order to even be seen.

“I’m enjoying myself,” my mother says with a broad smile. “I find this rather amusing, honestly.”

“That’s my cue.” I walk over to the bar to pour myself a whiskey. When I step away with the glass in hand, my mother halts me in my tracks with nothing but a stare.

“Truly, did I teach you no manners?”

So I pour her a gin and tonic, her drink of choice, then bring it to the settee before settling back down in my armchair.

“Thank you,” she says after she takes the first sip. She glances at the old-fashioned clock on the mantel over the fireplace, sitting under the portraits of Emma and me, but above the urns belonging to husbands one through three. “I find I’m rather eager for them to arrive.”

But she isn’t acting worried about the threat.

“Mother, this isn’t a game.”

“ Of course it’s a game,” she says with a prim smile. “Have you ever known a countdown to be anything else? I’m tickled by the whole thing. It’s about time something interesting happened in this house.”

“You didn’t happen to do this yourself, did you?” I ask, because it needs to be asked.

“How dare you,” she says, not very convincingly, then gives a slight shake of her head. “If I’d done it, the presentation would have been better.”

I don’t deny her point. She’s always been good at creating a spectacle. “Do you think Nina’s behind it?”

My ex-fiancée certainly didn’t like my mother, as she’d expressed to me on multiple occasions. The feeling was decidedly mutual. That being said, it’s hard to imagine her going to the effort of producing a website.

My mother makes a dismissive sound from the back of her throat. “Well, the execution is certainly lacking, but she doesn’t have the imagination to pull off such a thing. We’ll discuss all of that with the private investigators, though.”

I clear my throat. “We need to tell Emma.”

My mother clicks her nails against her glass. “Do you really think that’s necessary?”

“Yes. She’s coming to the New Year’s party, isn’t she? It would seem prudent to tell her that someone has threatened to murder you at it.”

She titters as if I’ve made an amusing joke, and I take a long slug of the whiskey, enjoying the fire it spreads through my stomach. This, too, is something that can make me feel, although I’ve always been careful not to drink too much. My father was a mean drunk, although my sister would likely point out that he’d been cruel whether drunk or sober. But when he was drunk, the mask would slide off, revealing what always lay beneath it, barely banked. A man who liked to punish—a man who always won, even when he lost, because if he was talented at anything it was finding the silver lining in any situation and stealing it.

He’s a man whose face I share, so even though he’s been gone for well over two decades, I’m haunted by him in the mirror every morning.

My mother shifts, her gaze finding and holding mine. “You seem different, Anthony.”

“Different how?”

The buzzer for the gate rings, and I’m relieved for the reprieve.

I press the buzzer, and Jake’s voice booms over it. “The cavalry has arrived.”

I buzz him in and then make my way to the front door. When I open it, I see four people I was expecting: Jake and Lainey, with a couple I haven’t met—the woman wiry with short pink hair and an amused twist to her mouth and the man dark-haired with light brown skin. Behind them is one person I most definitely wasn’t expecting….

I nearly drop the drink.

It’s Rosie, her blond and purple hair pulled back, wearing a purple coat over a black sweater dress shot through with silver. Seeing her is like getting that first jolt of energy from a strong cup of coffee, or stepping into a warm shower.

“Oh, shit, is that for me?” says the pink-haired woman, grabbing the whiskey glass from my hand. “Don’t mind if I do.” She winks at me and takes a slug from the glass.

“It wasn’t,” I reply, my gaze still on Rosie. I make myself look away. “But I suppose it is now.”

The man gives her a fond look, then extends his hand to me. “I’m Damien, and this is Nicole. We’re here to help your mother.”

“Anthony,” I say, shaking his hand. “My mother’s waiting in the drawing room with bated breath. Jake and Lainey know the way.”

I nod for them to come in, and they file past me in the appropriate direction. Rosie steps inside last, and she stands beside me as I close the door against the puff of cold.

“Well?” she whispers in a conspiratorial undertone. The word comes out husky and expectant, for my ears only. She’s not moving, but her whole being seems to hum—from the hair that’s tumbling from her ponytail as if it can’t be contained to her toes, tapping against the floor like they can’t bear to stay still.

It’s only been a few days since I last saw her, but I missed her. I’ve thought about her more than is logical, and for the first time in my life, I’ve been excited by the buzzing of my phone. In fact, I’ve made certain it has always been within view—in business meetings, at dinners, and in bed.

I lift my eyebrows. “I take it you heard about what happened?”

“Oh, yeah,” she says, tucking some of the escaped hair behind her ear. “I forced my company on them. I’m not sorry. But you’re in good hands with Nicole and Damien.”

“That’s what Jake said. There’s not much the police can do in this kind of situation.”

She makes a puckered face. “Yeah, the limitations of law and order. Luckily, Nicole and Damien don’t care about that sort of thing.”

“Yes, lucky us.” Still, she makes no move to follow the others, and it occurs to me that she joined her friends for a very specific reason. “You came because you wanted to know if you won your bet,” I say, smiling now. The thought pleases me, even if she only wants to be assured she was right.

Her mouth lifts into a sly return smile. “I was going to wait an appropriate amount of time to ask.”

“Of course you were,” I murmur, my mind whirring. I should admit that Leigh is probably the perfect fake wife for me—a woman whom I’ll easily be able to keep at a distance. A woman who wants a business deal, not a marriage.

To buy myself time, I say, “Let me help you with your coat.”

She gives me the wry look of a woman who knows how to remove her own coat, thank you very much, but she slowly unzips it—my senses hooked on watching each track of the zipper go down, revealing the dress underneath. Then she turns, giving me her back. “Thank you,” she says. “I can never manage this part all by myself. I need help from someone with very nice hands.”

“I live to serve.” I cup my hands around her shoulders, feeling the warmth of her nestled inside. We stand there like that for several seconds before I can bring myself to lift the cloth. She slips her arms out, and I’m left holding a shell, and for some reason that’s when I know what to say.

I hang the coat up in the closet closest to the door, and when I return, she’s watching me with wide eyes. A little unnerved, maybe. Hopefully for the same reasons I am and not because she thinks I’m a psychopath with a thing for coats.

I clear my throat as I come to a stop in front of her, tucking my hands into my pockets. “You win. It’s not going to work with her.”

It’s not a lie, precisely, because now that Rosie’s here, standing in front of me, it feels true. I’m not willing to give up the possibility of finding something real, even though my father’s timeline is breathing down my neck and the countdown on that website is literally ticking away my last moments of freedom.

Her eyes glimmering, Rosie reaches up for the collar of my shirt—a simple blue button down. Her fingers trace it, the contact sending a wash of hot awareness through me.

“I was right about the shirts too,” she says, her fingertips rubbing. Her eyes are a crystalline blue, like the ocean in a sunny place. “I knew it as soon as I saw your selfie. This shirt looks like it was made for you. I’ll bet she couldn’t help herself.”

She holds my gaze, her pupils slightly dilated—and all I can do is stare back.

I’m confused.

I’m turned on.

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

There’s something freeing in that, though, so I don’t question myself too hard when I say, “Who are you going to set me up with, Rosie? Who’s going to be immune to my charm ?”

My voice sounds rough and ragged, not at all cool and collected like I was in my meeting with Leigh earlier. I both hope and don’t hope that Rosie will answer my question with her own name.

She drops her hand, her mouth lifting. “It turns out I don’t actually have that many single female friends unless you’re into marrying Joy. She is a very good baker. That being said, she had some complimentary things to say about you and those hands of yours. I’m not entirely convinced she wouldn’t jump you.”

Laughter shakes my chest. “That’s a shame. I guess she’s out, then.”

“Suit yourself. If you refuse to marry my perfectly acceptable candidate, then we should go out to a bar together. I’ll be your wing woman.”

There’s part of that sentence I like a lot— we should go out together.

I’m less fond of the second part, but based on what she told me about her dating history last week, she’s probably not eager to jump into another messy situation. My situation is indubitably messy. I don’t know where any of this will—or even can—lead, but I’m not willing to step away.

I clear my throat. “Where to?”

“The peanut bar, of course,” she says. “We couldn’t possibly miss Dom’s first-ever Women-Drink-For-Half-Off-Wednesday.”

“Bit of a mouthful, don’t you think?” I ask with a grin. I like that she wants to go back there. I like that she’s been helping Dom pursue his dream—even if his dream is simply to get more people drunk.

“I didn’t want to crush Dom’s spirit. He’s been losing sleep over this.” Her mouth quirking up, she adds, “Who would you have set me up with?”

“I guess you’ll have to wait to find out until you lose our next bargain.”

Her smile pulses with life, and it feels as if it wraps around me and squeezes. “Oh, Mr. Darcy, I never lose a bargain. I’m not afraid to fight dirty.”

I believe her.