Page 5 of The Mood Board

Chapter 3

Liam

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THE HOUSE HAD NEVERlooked so inviting as it did, the windows glowing warmly against the storm whipping around it in the dark. More important, though, was what waited inside.

Who waited inside, and I could not wait another second to see her.

Far from the easy journey home, delays, sprints across airports, and more waiting in lounges and on the tarmac had plagued the day, and I was exhausted. It had been enough that I had actually considered chartering a plane the rest of the way home.

But I was here, the scent of home on the breeze coming in through the open car window, and I could not wait to have Bailey in my arms.

Her car was in the garage, as I had hoped. There had been a fifty-fifty chance she would still be at work, although the delays meant it was much later than I was supposed to have gotten back. I couldn’t get out of my car fast enough, and with the garage door closing behind me, I pushed into the laundry room, where I dropped my bags, and then into the kitchen.

But Bailey wasn’t in the kitchen. A takeout bag rested on the counter beside half-open takeout boxes, chopsticks scattered around the counter, but it was quiet. Nor was she in the dining or the living rooms.

“Bailey?” I called.

Was she sleeping? Or maybe she was waiting in bed to surprise me, as she had teased me that morning. It was an exciting thought, one my body was more than happy to wake up for, despite my exhaustion.

“Bailey?” I called again, this time up the stairs, my foot on the first step and my hand on the banister.

Finally, I heard footsteps, the sound of Bailey coming from our bedroom. Her steps were slow and measured, almost dragging from the shuffle of the soles of her slippers on the hardwood floors.

Maybe she had been asleep.

Taking the steps two at a time, I was on the landing halfway up when Bailey appeared at the top of the stairs, and my heart dropped.

She did not come down to me, only watched me, her eyes dark with a swirl of emotions that were difficult to name or tease out in the darkness of the unlit hallway behind her. Her mouth was a thin line, her shoulders drawn in like she was trying to curl in on herself.

I was up the stairs in another few steps, my long legs making short work of the space between us. “Bailey, what’s wrong?”

Had something happened while I was gone? She hadn’t left a message on my phone—were her parents okay? Her business? Had something happened with those idiot clients I kept telling her to drop?

Bailey met my eyes for a moment, then looked away, down to the hands I had circling her upper arms. And, after a moment, I let them go, taking a step back from the distrust, sadness, and doubt I saw in her expression, the clarity my proximity awarded me.

“Bailey?” I asked again, but now I wasn’t so sure I wanted to hear the answer. “What’s going on?”

What could have possibly happened between our conversation this morning and now?

My answer came in the form of a tri-folded piece of paper she handed over. I unfolded it slowly, carefully, as though it would reach out like some sci-fi alien there to suck the life from me. And from Bailey’s expression, that was entirely possible.

The first time I read the words, they didn’t make sense to my fuzzy, overtired mind. And then I reread them. They still didn’t make much more sense, but a growing sense of outrage came with them.

“What the hell is this?” I asked, clutching the paper so tightly it crumpled.

“It came this morning. Or sometime over the past couple of days. It was in the pile of mail. No return address,” Bailey finally spoke, her voice as dull as her eyes.

I read the letter a third time, still disbelieving the picture it—the writer—was trying to paint. To create out of thin air. To construct.

“Who wrote it?” I asked, the cold prickle of alarm rising with the heated outrage.

Bailey shook her head but didn’t say anything more, her gaze still on me. And suddenly, I understood the distrust.

“Bailey, no. No way. You know I would never, ever do anything like that. My team reviewed every dollar of funding that came in and vetted every source as far as possible. Whoever wrote this is just trying to cause trouble.”

Far from banishing her distrust, it seemed to deepen, and hurt blossomed where delight and desire had been. Lightning lit the stairwell, followed a moment later by thunder I could feel through the soles of my feet.