“They’re all last names,” I said cautiously. I paused and then decidedwhy the hell not.“Your fathers’?”
“Skye doesn’t talk about our fathers,” Jameson replied, his voice a little hoarse. “As far as she’s concerned, it’s an Athena-Zeus type of situation. We’re hers and hers alone.”
I bit my lip. “She told me that she had four lovely conversations…”
“With four lovely men,” Jameson finished. “But lovely enough for her to ever see them again? To tell us the first thing about them?” His voice was harder now. “She’s never so much as answered a question about our damned middle names, andthat”—he picked the bourbon up off the ground and took a swig—“is why I’m drinking.” He set the bottle back down, then closed his eyes, standing in the sun a moment longer, his arms spread wide. For the second time, I noticed the scar that ran the length of his torso.
Noticed each breath he took.
“Shall we go?” His eyes opened. His arms dropped.
“Go where?” I asked, so physically aware of his presence it almost hurt.
“Come now, Heiress,” Jameson said, stepping toward me. “You’re better than that.”
I swallowed and answered my own question. “We’re going to see your mother.”
He took me through the coat closet in the foyer. This time, I paid close attention to the sequence of panels on the wall that released the door. Following Jameson to the back of the closet, pushing past the coats that hung there, I willed my eyes to adjust to the dark so that I could see what he did next.
He touched something.Pulled it?I couldn’t make out what. The next thing I knew, I heard the sound of gears turning, and the back wall of the closet slid sideways. If the closet was dark, what lay beyond was even darker.
“Step where I step, Mystery Girl. And watch your head.”
Jameson used his cell phone to light the way. I got the distinct feeling that was for my benefit. He knew the twists and turns of these hidden hallways. We walked in silence for five minutes before he stopped and peeked through what I could only assume was a peephole.
“Coast is clear.” Jameson didn’t specify what it was clear of. “Do you trust me?”
I was standing in a phone-lit passageway, close enough to feel his body’s heat on mine. “Absolutely not.”
“Good.” He reached out, grabbed my hand, and pulled me close. “Hold on.”
My arms curved around him, and the ground beneath our feet began to move. The wall beside us was rotating, and we were rotating with it, my body pressed flat against his.Jameson Winchester Hawthorne’s.The motion stopped, and I stepped back.
We were here for a reason—and that reason had exactly nothing to do with the way my body fit against his.
They were a twisted, broken mess before you got here, and they’ll be a twisted, broken mess once you’re gone.The reminder echoed in my head as we stepped out into a long hallway with plush red carpet and gold moldings on the walls. Jameson strode toward a door at the end of the hall. He lifted his hand to knock.
I stopped him. “You don’t need me for this,” I said. “You didn’t need me for the will, either. Alisa had instructions to let you see it if you asked.”
“I need you.” Jameson knew exactly what he was doing—the way he was looking at me, the tilt of his lips. “I don’t know why yet, but I do.”
Nash’s warning rang in my head. “I’m the knife.” I swallowed. “The fishing hook, the glass ballerina, whatever.”
Thatalmosttook Jameson by surprise. “You’ve been talking to one of my brothers.” He paused. “Not Grayson.” His eyes roved over mine. “Xander?” His gaze flicked down to my lips and up again. “Nash,” he said, certain of it.
“Is he wrong?” I asked. I thought about Tobias Hawthorne’s grandsons going to see him on their birthdays. They’d been expected to be extraordinary. They’d been expected to win. “Am I just a means to an end, worth keeping around until you know how I fit into the puzzle?”
“Youarethe puzzle, Mystery Girl.” Jameson believed that. “You could tap out,” he told me, “decide you can live without answers, or you could get them—with me.”
An invitation. A challenge. I told myself that I was doing this because I needed to know—not because of him. “Let’s get some answers,” I said.
When Jameson knocked on the door, it swung inward. “Mom?” he called, and then he amended the salutation. “Skye?”
The answer came, like the tinkling of bells. “In here, darling.”
Here, it became quickly apparent, was the bathroom in Skye’s suite.
“Got a second?” Jameson stopped right outside the double doors to the bathroom.
