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Victor dropped his thumb from my lips. He smiled, closed his eyes, tilting his head away. “I offer anything you want, and the only thing you can think of is you want to spend time with me, doing what I want.”
“Please?”
He turned back to me. The fire in his eyes unleashed into an inferno that could have swallowed me where I stood. His thumb returned to my mouth, this time touching both lips and at dead center, as if encouraging me to kiss his finger. “All you have to do is ask.” He tucked his head toward mine.
My heart raced. I’d seen this same look on Kota and North and some of the others. My instincts had told me before they had wanted to kiss me and I’d been wrong. I felt that same instinct again, more powerful than before.
His eyes half closed as he hovered over me. “I’d do anything for you, Princess.”
“Victor?” A woman’s voice called from within the office.
I jerked back from him, startled by the unfamiliar voice. Victor’s eyes widened with shock. He released me, swiveled around and stood protectively in front of me, blocking my view of whoever it was.
“What are you doing in here?” he called to her, his voice sharper than I’d heard it before. It was enough to make me flinch again.
“Don’t be so suspicious. I saw your car and you didn’t come to see me, so I came to check on you.” The voice was raspy, with an attempt at a dainty Southern accent, although it sounded forced. “Will you please show some manners and introduce me to your friend? We haven’t been properly introduced.”
Victor sighed loudly, as if breathing in the patience to deal with this. He stepped aside, revealing me behind him. “Mother, this is Sang Sorenson.”
With being out on the balcony, the natural sunlight made looking back into Victor’s office seem dark and foreboding. Even from my position, Victor’s mother was absolutely gorgeous. She had dark hair, twisted high on her head in a fashionable style that I’d seen in Gabriel’s magazines. Her lips were thick, and she held them in a seemingly constant pucker, revealing just a hint of her white teeth, as if ready for a photograph at any moment.
It was her eyes that struck me. Like Victor’s, they were fierce with a fire lit from within.
“Sorenson?” she asked, lifting a dark eyebrow. She crossed the room, her chunky high heels barely making a sound and she floated gracefully toward us. She held out a hand in offering. “I’m Mrs. Morgan. Are you and your parents new to town?”
I flicked a glance to Victor, who looked perturbed. I wasn’t sure how to respond. “My family and I moved in during the summer.” I offered my hand.
She squeezed it briefly, but sharply enough that it would have hurt if she’d done it a second longer. “Mr. Sanders usually keeps me informed when a Charleston house sells. Is your family the one renovating the home across the street? Or are you off the peninsula?”
“She doesn’t live in Charleston, Mother,” Victor said. He moved again, shifting so he was half blocking me this time. “You’ve been introduced. I’d invite you to stay, but we’re really busy.”
“Don’t be so impolite, Victor. I’ve taught you better than that.” She turned her attention back to me. “Are you attending the Academy?”
“She does not,” Victor said.
My eyes drifted between Victor and his mother, feeling the strange intensity between them. Their eyes challenged each other, hers with unspoken questions, his with demanding for her to leave. What was wrong with Victor? Was he unhappy I’d met her? Was he ashamed of me?
“How did you meet her? What do you know about her?”
“We just met,” Victor said. “I’m giving her a ride. I wanted to show her the view before we left.”
“Why don’t you invite her downstairs? You haven’t given her the tour.”
“I’m sorry. We’re very busy. We’ve got plans.”
“Oh,” she said. The question was in her eyes before she spoke. “So you are dating.”
“No. We just met. It’s a ... project for school. She doesn't attend but she’s helping me.”
I clamped my lips shut, shrinking behind Victor’s shoulder. Suddenly, I was ashamed to be standing there. Was this the same Victor who I’d felt was about to kiss me? Had I been wrong? It was like he wanted to shrug me off as an acquaintance to be forgotten.
“There’s no need to be so brisk,” Mrs. Morgan said. “You should invite her to dinner. I see Silas is here. Would he like to join us? Have you told anyone?”
My heart thundered. Told who? His father? Who else would care to know?
“I’d rather keep her out of circles, if you don’t mind.”
Alarm lit her eyes to a roar. “Why?” she asked with a tone suggesting she knew the answer, but was afraid to utter it.
“I’d rather not deliver a media kit to the press when she’ll only be here once or twice.”
“If you don’t, it rings of scandal.” She frowned. “Why don’t you let me talk to the publicist for you?”
“Please, don’t.”
His mother tilted her head, turning partially away. “Well, if it isn’t that serious, I guess I shouldn’t worry about it.”
Victor grunted under his breath. “I’ll give her the tour another day,” he said, sounding as if he wanted to give his mother something to satisfy her for now, since he didn’t want the publicist to talk to me. “Just not right now. We’ve got other things to do.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. She turned away, her eyes falling on the single clock on top of the desk. Her head tilted toward it, as if at first she wasn’t able to figure out what was wrong. “Victor? Did your clock break?” She picked it up, checking the face.
“It’s fine,” Victor said.
“I can have it fixed,” she said. She shook the clock. “I’ll call Muriel.”
“No,” Victor said sharply. He crossed the room, plucking the desk clock from her hands. “It’s fine how it is. I like it this way.”
“But it’s going backwards.”
“I want to keep it this way, Mother.” His hands cupped the clock as he held it against his chest. “I’m sorry. We are busy.”
She drifted to the door, opening it. “Of course. You were discussing her birthday.”
Apprehension seized through me. How long had she been listening?
“It was lovely to meet you, Miss Sorenson.”
I stepped beside Victor, peeling my lips apart to find my voice, soft and almost squeak free. “Thank you. It was nice to meet you, too, Mrs. Morgan.” I bowed my head slightly. I wasn’t sure what else to say. Should I compliment her clothes? Should I offer to talk to her publicist? If that’s all she wanted, I didn’t mind. It was Victor’s mother. He’d said his father told him horrible things, but I hadn’t heard anything about his mother. I wasn’t sure what to do.
Mrs. Morgan swept her eyes to her son, a sharp flame, before closing the door behind herself.
Victor let out a long breath, finding my hand and squeezing. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“About what?” I whispered. My mind had blanked out. I kept trying to recall the last few minutes and figure out at what possible time she could have walked into the of
fice and listened to us talking.
Victor turned his eyes on me. “I didn’t mean to make you sound unimportant. I’d rather her not know about how close we are yet.”
How close? Exactly how close were we? “Why not?” The wrong question slipped out first and I was stuck with it.
“I have to share you with the guys,” he said. “I don’t want to share you with the world.”
NEW PLANS
We joined Silas in the entertainment room. He was in one of the leather armchairs, watching a baseball game on the screen. He sat up in expectation as we entered.
“Are we friends now?” he asked. “Can we play again?”
“Yes, you big oaf,” Victor said. He nudged me ahead of him, directing me to sit in one of the chairs next to Silas and then took the one on the other side of me. “Now turn the game off. We’ve got work to do.”
“What are we doing?” Silas asked. He fished the remote from his lap and clicked the television off.
“I don’t know yet,” Victor said. He sat back in the chair. “But we can’t go back until we’ve got a lead on who it is.”
Silas huffed. “Are we sure it isn’t Greg?”
Victor frowned. “I doubt it. He’s not that smart.”
“I think we should turn the phones back on again,” I said.
Silas arched a thick, dark eyebrow. “What?”
“Well,” I said, unsure of how to ask this. They’d rejected my other idea. It made me nervous to suggest something else. “Maybe we can’t lure him out by walking around school, but we might be able to get more of those messages. Then we can possibly learn more about what he wants and what’s going on if we just see what he sends. And if we can reply back somehow and provoke him, maybe it’ll reveal more about who he is if he responds. Or he’ll slip up or something.”
Victor and Silas stared at me, mouths hanging open. They turned to look at each other. Since they had to do it over my head, I started twisting my head back and forth to try to catch their speechless communication.
“She’s got a point,” Silas said. “We turned it off because of the GPS. Can we turn those off but leave the reception signal?”
