Thinking…
Dante
I went home.
I went straight on back to the kitchen area and sat at the table I eat breakfast at every morning.
It’s the same kitchen table from our old home in Westchester—the only thing I didn’t leave there.
I was so encapsulated in my thoughts I hadn’t realized Marjory, Mrs. Roark, wasn’t there, planning out everything needed to be done for the next day. It was her usual.
Lucy kept flashing through my mind.
I had so many memories of her. Indelible, vivid and endlessly entertaining. The things that she said, all the things she didn’t say but you could practically read from her expressions.
The way she bit her lip when she was thinking or aggravated… or excited.
How did I know more about Lucy than any of the companies I’d taken over in the last few years?
How did I know that she wrote her stories on her lunch breaks—and never realized they were about me?
How did I not know she was in love with me?
It was right there the whole time.
She was right there…
I sat at that old wooden table, my elbows planted on its surface, my hands locked in a fist.
Yes, it had been obvious to everyone else that Lucy was in love with me.
I was the only idiot that didn’t—that wouldn’t see it.
So now what?
So now I needed to decide how I felt about her.
And I had to decide before I saw her again.
Just then I heard Marjory’s footsteps as she entered the kitchen.
I blinked as I realized she’d come in the front entrance, and not from her rooms.
And she was wearing a coat.
“You went out?” She hadn’t left the penthouse in a few years.
She came in and took off her coat, settling it on the back of one of the kitchen chairs.
“Your sister is living in the house in Westchester,” she said, and then went over and poured herself a cup of hot water and retrieved one of her packets of peppermint tea. She looked at me and asked, “Want some?”
“No, thank you.” My hands tightened their hold on each other. “Who told you?”
She set her hand on my shoulder and gave it a little squeeze, something I can remember her doing from my first memories.
“I have my ways.”
As she always knew when I was having trouble at school, or when Tessa was hiding something.
“Always a mystery, aren’t you?”
She set her steaming cup of tea on the table and took the seat next to me. Even if she’d already eaten, she always sat with me when I ate breakfast. Sometimes we’d talk, sometimes she’d wait my silence out until I couldn’t take it any longer and told her everything.
Since my parents’ death, she’d been my rock.
“I didn’t know how Tessa was doing. So I didn’t want you going out there to an unknown situation.”
Tessa was disturbed. She’d been riddled with anxiety to the point she was schooled by private tutors and rarely left the house in Westchester. But after… after our parents were murdered—and she’d witnessed it… well, her mental health changed so drastically and so often she evaded a meaningful diagnosis.
Marjory took a drink of her tea. “I know everything I’ll ever have to know about your sister. You should have told me.”
I know. “I’m sorry.”
She patted my hand and said, “She’s doing well, though.”
“She is?” This was news.
Marjory nodded. “The Whitmore boy told me a bunch of mumbo jumbo and three dollar words, but I could tell just looking at her.”
Of course she could. “You can read minds, can’t you?”
She smiled. “Stop that.”
“Really, you have magic powers—that would explain so much.”
“She really likes that guard you fired.”
Oh, that. “I paid him to perform a job for me, and he not only failed to do that, but started sleeping with my mentally ill sister.” I felt every muscle in my body tighten. “He’s lucky I didn’t press charges.”
“They didn’t have sex.”
“What?” I could feel my face heat up. No matter what I did in my own sex life, I could never talk about my sister’s…
Oh hell!
“They were discovered sleeping together, yes…” Marjory went on to my utter mortification. “But they have not had sex… yet.”
I rounded on her. “They’re still seeing each other?”
Marjory smiled. “You didn’t bother having the secret entrance guarded. He’s been sneaking in all this time, right under your nose.”
That wasn’t the only thing that was right under my nose.
“He’s studying to be an actuary.”
I blinked at that. “Kind of a soulless profession.”
“One could say the same about all businessmen.”
I pushed down the anger I was feeling, took in a big breath and tried to think about what Tessa would want.
Not what she needed, but what she would want.
“I need to stay out of their way, don’t I?”
“I’ve met him and they get along better than anyone I’ve ever seen her with. So, yes… keep your overprotective nose out of their business.”
I laughed—Marjory could always make me laugh, then I rubbed hands over my face.
Jesus…
“You have your hands full with your own love life now, don’t you?”
I shook my head. “I handle my sex life well enough.”
“So crass… but I wasn’t talking about sex. I’m talking about that Lucy you have working for you.”
I couldn’t hide my surprise. I was suddenly really nervous too.
“You read the article?”
“No,” she said and gave me a hard look, “I went down to your office and met her—finally—and she set up the car for me to go see your sister.” She took another sip of her tea. “She’s a real catch, if you ask me… and she’s head over heels for you.”
I had to laugh. “Even you can see it, and you just met her.”
“Don’t feel bad,” she said, shrugging her dainty shoulders. “We seldom see what’s right in front of us. Makes us human.”
I ran my fingers over the grain of the table. I knew it like the back of my hand. “I don’t know what to do.”
Marjory scoffed and gave my arm a gentle bat of her hand. “You… not knowing what to do?” She leaned in and skewered me with her gaze. “Of course you do. The only question is where is your Lucy, and how fast can you get to her?”