Chapter 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

ANTHONY

“You are different today. There’s more of a spark in you, but I know you haven’t been happy for quite some time,” my mother tells me, making it more of a pronouncement than a question.

It’s late evening, and we’re sitting by the fireplace in the drawing room of Smith House. Damien sent over a guard earlier to keep watch at the gate. The man hasn’t told me a single story about his kidneys or any of his other organs, so he’s a decided upgrade.

I’ve tried to leave Smith House at least a dozen times by now, but my mother keeps coming up with reasons for me to stay, each more ridiculous than the last.

It’s rush hour.

Approximately two hundred people live in Marshall according to the last census, but I agreed to stay until the “mad rush” cleared.

There’s too much food for one person.

The personal chef she uses drops off individual portions for her three times a week, but I concurred that the single steak and potato left for her were indeed too much for one person and agreed to eat half.

The books on the top shelf in the library need dusting.

Who gives a shit? If anyone liked them, we would have kept them where they could easily be reached and read. Still, I went in there with a damn feather duster and rose up so much dust it probably made my ancestors sneeze.

I need help building a fire in the fireplace.

Since when? If there’s one thing my mother’s talented at, it’s starting fires. But I saw to that too.

We need to call your sister.

We did. Emma did not answer, surprise, surprise.

I’m used to my mother’s manipulations, and usually immune to them, but there’s a vulnerability in her tonight that’s harder to resist.

She sighs, giving her martini a swirl. She’s had several drinks this evening, which must be what’s brought on this talk of emotions. We normally dance around important discussions in this family.

“Are you happy?” I ask pointedly, setting my elbows on my knees and putting my hands together. There’s a creak behind me, and I resist the urge to glance over my shoulder.

I dislike being in this house. It’s much nicer than mine, but it’s always been cold in a way that can’t be cured by a fire in the grate, as if there’s ice buried at the core. When Emma and I were children, we were convinced Smith House was haunted by the ancestors my father always went on about. Each creak of the floor or door that shut itself was proof of the ghosts who were watching us and finding us wanting.

Years later, I read Anna Karenina , and the opening line was a revelation— “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

That’s what those ghosts were, I decided—our collective unhappiness dogging our footsteps, ready to smother us. And the artist of that unhappiness was my father, Adrien Smith, who always led the town parade. Adrien Smith, whose donations had made and ended careers. Adrien Smith, who was killed by an apple tree.

My gaze finds his bulbous wooden urn on the fireplace.

My mother watches me watch it. “You know it’s empty.”

Because we’d shed his ashes beneath that very apple tree. It was a hot day, and I can still feel the sun burning the back of my neck, wrapping its stinging arms around my flesh.

I clear my throat. “You’re changing the subject. I asked if you were happy.”

“Happy enough.” Her lips lift in a mischievous smirk. “I’ve enjoyed planning your wedding.”

I smother a laugh, because I know perfectly well why she enjoyed it—she’d sabotaged every aspect of it to goad my ex-fiancée.

She lifts one shoulder. “Laugh if you will, but I am looking forward to it. Whether it’s a wedding or just a New Year’s Party.”

Sighing, I say, “You’ve already made a dozen calls telling people it’s a wedding again.”

She’d been busily at it while I took care of my manufactured chores. Oh, you wouldn’t believe it, but Anthony fell in love fast. Thunderstruck. Yup, uh-huh. And we figured, we have the wedding already scheduled, why not take advantage of it and make it a party to remember? It was meant to be. Truly.

There’d been questions about who I was marrying of course, and she’d hedged about my “secret” bride.

She gives me an expectant look, her lips raised slightly as if she’s preparing for a counter-argument. “Oh, pish. They’re used to me by now, or they should be. They’ll think nothing of it if I turn right back around and cancel it tomorrow. You don’t need the trust fund, Anthony. You know I’ll always give you anything you need.”

I do.

But she’s not the only one in this family who cares about coming out ahead. I want to be the man my father told me I’d never be, if only to definitively prove him wrong.

I shift my weight in the chair. “I’m not going to take your money.”

“Our money,” she says, pausing before she adds, “I want you to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you and Emma.”

“You can’t force a person to be happy, Mother.”

“What if those investigators are right?” she asks, her gaze shrewd. “What if this whole mess is about your trust fund?”

I sit up straighter, surprised. All evening, I’d assumed she was keeping me at the house because she was concerned about her own safety, but I should have known better. My mother has always had an outsized confidence in her ability to protect herself. She’s worried about me .

“I can take care of myself.”

“We all need help sometimes. You needed help with Nina. You were looking at the big picture and ignored what was going on in front of your face.”

“I know,” I say, acknowledging this as one of my failings.

I don’t point out that she did the same with my father. That she stayed even though he made every day a living hell for all of us. She did it because of the bigger picture. Because of this house and all the money and prestige that went with it. Because she knew I would be granted a job I hated once I came of age.

Sometimes I resent her for that, but on my better days I understand. She did what she thought was best, which is all any of us can do.

There’s a pause, the fire crackling and the floor groaning, and then my mother says, “I want you to stay at Smith House until this is all over.”

“For three weeks?” I cringe at the thought.

“There’s plenty of room and a capable guard. You’ll be safe here.” She pauses. “ I’ll be able to sleep.

I rub my forehead. “Mother…I…”

“ Please ,” she says, and it’s so perilously close to begging, I find myself nodding.

“Okay.”

“Good,” she says with a beatific smile. “You can sleep in your old room, of course.”

“Fantastic,” I mutter, because every grown man wants to sleep in the same bed where he used to jerk off as a teenager. And, I’ll be perfectly honest, I might be doing the same thing tonight, with my “big, capable” hands…while I think about a woman tracing the collar of my shirt.

Leave it to Rosie James to make me lose myself with a swipe of her fingers.