Chapter 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

ROSIE

No one invited me to Smith House, but if you wait until people ask you to do things, you’ll spend a lot of time alone and bored. So I’d invited myself.

And it would have been totally worth it just to see the look in Anthony’s gray eyes when he saw me—like he’d been waiting for me to decide to show up even though I totally sprang it on him. And I’d done plenty of looking in return. He’d made a fine picture, standing in the doorway in that fine button-down shirt, hugging his broad shoulders as if it had been made for his body.

Actually, it probably was made for his body.

Anthony is not for me. He can’t be.

It’s become a mantra of sorts. Sure, I may have watched Pride and Prejudice alone last night, and I may have been babysitting my phone since Wednesday, but I know better than to think anything can happen between us.

I can be his friend, though. At least I can do that.

Both of us need one right now.

Later that evening, the whole Smith House crew, minus Anthony and Mrs. Rosings, who are working on a list of possible suspects for Nicole and Damien, and Joy, who’s attending a crafting event at the teahouse she used to work at, crowd around the dining room table in my brother’s cabin for pizza and delicacies from Claire’s bakery.

Claire is sad she missed out on the “excitement”—and even more disappointed that she and Declan have already made plans to visit her father and my other brother, Seamus, in New York City over New Year’s.

Declan looks more worried than he did this afternoon, and the furrow between his eyebrows deepens after he hears about the bet I made with Jake.

“She did what?” he asks, nearly dropping his beer.

“She officially challenged me to a wife-off,” Jake says.

“I’m reasonably sure she didn’t say those words,” Lainey says, trying to look serious as she nudges his arm. “I don’t think anyone else has ever said those words before.”

“I’m going to trademark them.”

“And I’m going to win this wife-off,” I say with a grin.

Nicole points to me. “I’m betting on the blonde.”

“I think I have to do the same,” Claire says apologetically. “Blonde solidarity. Plus, she is my boyfriend’s sister.”

“Do we have to be on different teams?” Damien asks Nicole, his eyebrows arched, “Because I think you’ve got this one in the bag.”

Lainey sighs as Jake puts his arm around her and gives her a moony look. “Fine, I’ll lose supporting you.”

“Your faith in me is wind beneath my wings,” he tells her with a grin.

My brother just grunts and gives me a worried look. Of course, my gentle giant of a brother’s go-to look is worried. It has been ever since our parents died, leaving him as the head of the household. Declan’s a fix-it guy, and he thinks it’s his job to be a mother and father to Seamus and me, even though we’re both mostly functional adults.

I know him well enough to understand that he needs a private conversation, so at the first opportunity I head out to the back porch. It’s cold as a witch’s tit, but I stare into the night, lit by a nearly full moon and hundreds of pinprick stars hanging over the rolling slopes of the mountains in the distance. I’ve been here for months now, and they’re still beautiful enough to leave me breathless.

I’m not remotely surprised when he joins me two minutes later, holding my purple coat.

“I just don’t know why you have to get involved in this,” he says, as if we’re in the middle of a conversation rather than the start of one. “It would be better for you to come to New York City with Claire and me. Seamus misses you.”

“No offense,” I say, shrugging on the coat, “but my plans are much more interesting. Besides, Seamus said he was going to come visit for a few weeks in the new year. No need for me to go anywhere.”

“And there’s no need for you to help that Anthony guy. Jake’s already working with him, and now Damien and Nicole are looking into the threat. You should stay out of trouble.”

I turn and grin at him in the warm light from inside the house. Behind the door, I can see Lainey and Claire silently laughing at something Jake said, Nicole sitting on Damien’s lap on the living room couch as he beams at her. A Christmas tree chosen by Claire and chopped by Declan presides over all of it—the star slightly crooked because she put it on after drinking too much peppermint schnapps. It’s a warm scene, one that makes my heart glow, but I’m not really a part of it. It’s my world, and it’s not. “My dear brother, you know trouble has a way of finding me. I…need this.”

“Why?” he asks, his brow furrowed.

He doesn’t know about Roman. No one does, other than Anthony Rosings Smith. It seems odd that I’d unzip myself for a stranger, not to mention a stranger whose situation in life is so completely unlike my own, but it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

“I just do,” I say.

“Are you… interested in him? Or do you just want to show Jake up?”

“I don’t know,” I say, not a lie, not strictly the truth.

I am interested in Anthony, but I don’t understand what it means yet. All I know is that we have an undeniable connection—deep and strange.

My brother opens his mouth to object, and I shake my head. “I’m an adult, and you’re going to need to trust me on this one. You can’t kidnap me to New York.”

He cocks his head as if to challenge that statement, and I add, “It would totally mess up your proposal.”

My brother’s eyes widen. “How’d you know?”

I grin at him. “I had a suspicion, so I told Claire I thought I’d left something in your house the other day. It only took me five minutes to find the ring. You’re usually better at hiding things.”

“I don’t want to be good at keeping secrets anymore,” he says, his eyes seeking something in mine.

I smile, genuinely happy for him and wanting him to know it. “I’m glad, but I guess that’s something we all have to learn at our own pace.” Then I play-punch him in his steel arm. “And what the hell, by the way… Why’d you make me go searching instead of telling me directly?”

“I know you better than you think.” He gives me one of his Mona Lisa smiles. “You’ve always liked following breadcrumb trails, so I threw some. I’ll tell Seamus about it after I ask.”

“Does Nicole know?”

Nicole takes being Claire’s half-sister very seriously, which means she makes Claire’s business her business

He gives me a flat look. “What do you think? She’s already bought a shirt that says, ‘If you think I’m a bitch, you should meet my brother-in-law.’ I think it’s her way of giving me a compliment. She thinks Claire will say yes.”

Laughing, I throw my arms around him. “Are you doing it on New Year’s Eve?” I ask as he hugs me back.

“That was the plan before I knew there was a stalker on the loose,” he says, his voice gruff. “Although I’m presuming a lot by even asking. Claire could do better.”

An affronted sound escapes me, and I shove his arm again even as I hold onto him. “Don’t you dare talk about my brother that way.”

He releases me and looks down at me, his lips lifting slightly. “I won’t even be able to give Claire my real last name.”

True. James is not our real last name, but…

“James is cooler than O’Malley.”

“Dad wouldn’t like to hear you say it.”

“He’d be pleased that I’m pleased. Besides, Claire’s a modern woman, dude, and her last name is Rainey. No way does she want our boring-ass real last name. If anything, you should take her name.”

“I’ll give that some consideration,” he says with a partial smile, then feels the need to add, “We still need to be careful, Rosie.”

I wave this warning aside. “You’ve always wanted us to be careful about everything.”

“Because I wasn’t careful when it counted.”

Our uncle was a crime boss in Pennsylvania. Declan worked for him, but he wanted out. So after our uncle died, we changed our last name and acquired some very expensive and airtight false identities. All the better to hide from his predecessors or the leeches who used to work for him.

Our uncle has been dead for years now, but Declan still worries that someone might come looking for us.

But he’s starting to embrace the idea of having a life—a real life, and not just an existence of waiting around for the other shoe to drop.

I’m grateful as hell for that.

I’m also aware that my background is problematic. It’s the reason I probably can’t solve Anthony’s problem by marrying him myself.

People won’t poke at Declan’s marriage to Claire. They won’t worry at it like a dog worries at a bone. But when a multi-million dollar trust fund is at stake, they’re far more likely to do a deep dive. They might even ask for fingerprints as part of the background check, which would be a complete and total no-go for me. Better to avoid the possibility altogether.

“I’m happy for you,” I tell him through a tight throat. “You deserve to be happy.”

“She hasn’t said yes yet.” When he glances through the door at Claire, his whole face lights up. It’s the same way he looks when he walks into his greenhouse or sees a plant he’s been tending come into bloom.

“She will, though.” I’m surprised by the tinge of sadness I feel when I say it. My brother’s going to get the happy ending he deserves, and his bad luck will be a thing of the past. I’d like my bad luck to burn to ash too, but I feel it still writhing inside of me, waiting to pull me down.

Maybe if you’ve lost at love enough times, you’re a love loser. Someone who can’t get it together even if it’s presented to you as a ten-piece children’s puzzle—or an attractive, wealthy bachelor in want of a wife.

“You’re up to something,” my brother says, snapping me out of my head.

I smile at him. “Always.”

Declan sighs. “Do me a favor and be careful.”

“Of course I will,” I lie.

Because, truthfully, I have no idea what I’m doing…but that’s the way I prefer it. All I know is that I feel the beginning of something—a plant, lifting its green shoots above soil.

But I’m not like my brother, who can grow anything. My plants are usually crushed.

That’s what I’m thinking about when I glance back at the glass door and see Nicole staring at me.

She winks.