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“I have no idea what she wants aside from wanting me out of Dad’s life.” Mia was too tired for this. “The house is an asset. If Dad’s selling it, he’ll buy her something better.” Mia pushed at her heavy hair. Why couldn’t this have gone down during cooler weather instead of this presummer heat wave? She wanted to change her clothes and freshen up, but she couldn’t do any of that with an audience.
“Tell me what I’m missing,” Jarvis prompted.
She reached for her bottle of water and drank deeply while she debated how much to share. She wanted to believe the sincere concern in his gaze, but in her experience, voicing anything negative about Regina blew up in her face. “Yesterday I learned Regina has been using the country house for an affair. Probably not her first,” she added. Her father was several years older than her stepmother, but not by so much that he couldn’t claim they were happily married. It made her stomach pitch. “My marriage wasn’t perfect, but we were loyal to each other,” she muttered more to herself than the cowboy waiting for the rest of the story. “Long story short, I inadvertently caught her and her boyfriend in the act when I was there taking video for the online listing.”
“Let me guess—you told your dad and now they’re both mad at you.”
“I wish it was that simple. I will tell him,” she said. As soon as she figured out how. “As it stands, I can’t tell anyone. Yet.” She was so ashamed at how poorly she’d handled the moment. “If there was a chance to press an advantage, I missed it,” she confessed.
In his car seat, Silas gurgled and kicked his feet. She’d let him down and now she was backed into a corner. “The man she was with saw me first. He thought I was there at her request.”
She caught the wince on Jarvis’s face, assumed her expression at the time had mirrored his. “Agreed.” The ew factor had been off the charts. “So there I am, video rolling while my stepmother and a much younger hottie are all over each other. Naked, in case there was any doubt about their intentions.”
Her son yawned, and love, protective and fierce, surged through her. She would find a way to get past this nonsense and give him the stable life she’d planned so carefully. “I ran out of the house and headed straight for Dad’s office. Then the first call came through. Regina offered me money.”
“Which you don’t need,” Jarvis said.
The quip made her smile. “Correct, but Regina goes for the easy out first. Every single time. I stopped answering her calls, determined to reach my father before she did. Then he called. Naturally, I picked up. Before I could say a word, he asked if I’d meet him and Regina for lunch to celebrate my first day. He said it was her idea and I knew I’d been outmaneuvered.”
“How so?”
She stared at him. It was such a challenge to admit that the mistakes she’d made as a heartbroken teenager were still impacting her life today. “If I told him what I saw without any proof, he’d only be disappointed and lecture me about being too old for games.”
“You’re serious.”
The way Jarvis studied her, she felt more exposed than she had on lingerie shoots, and more regret and shame than she’d ever felt as a kid when communication had completely broken down. “I did try to break them up. After they married, I put zero effort toward a smooth transition.”
“What ki
nd of effort did your stepmother make?”
No one, not even her husband, had ever asked that. To be fair, she’d been out on her own for years before she’d met and married Roderick Hodges. From the start, her ex had more important things on his agenda than delving deep into the rocky parts of her childhood. She’d happily left the house and those years behind. Until she’d accepted her father’s invitation to move back in.
“That’s all water under the bridge these days. Things are civil now. Or they were. I asked for a rain check on lunch, disappointing my father in the process, but I wasn’t sitting through a meal in a public place while she gloated about getting away with it.”
“What changed?”
“She threatened Silas,” Mia said. Just thinking about that phone call and the text messages that followed brought angry tears to her eyes.
“What?” He frowned as if he’d misunderstood.
“You heard me. She told me that if I tattled on her to Dad or the police, my baby wouldn’t wake up from his nap. Her words.” It was too fresh, the fear too close to the surface. She swiped at the tear that spilled down her cheek, then hugged herself because she was too distraught to hug her baby. “I wanted to call the police, but what could I say? It would be her word against mine and my father sides with her.” Every time. She brushed away another tear. “So I ran,” she said in a whisper.
Jarvis swore.
Silas turned toward his voice and Mia bit back a request for him to watch his language. Her son was way too new and still far too young for it to make any difference.
“Of course you ran,” he said, “But here?”
“Regina has always seen me as prissy and spoiled. Entitled, because Dad and I were so close. As if that was abnormal after Mom died.” Mia deliberately unclenched her jaw at the memory of those old insults spoken when her father was out of earshot. “Despite everything I’ve done on my own in my career, she’d never expect me to hide out alone, definitely not in anything less than a five-star hotel.”
Mia would love to hide with Tamara, where her son would have the best backup. But her mother’s friend would be one more pressure point Regina could use against Mia. And while a resort vacation sounded perfect, she didn’t have enough cash for that and using a credit card made it too easy for Regina to track her down.
“What about a guest room down at the house?” Jarvis suggested. “The place is massive, and almost no one would know. Everyone’s distracted with Payne’s recovery.”
She shook her head. “I’ve been to the main house,” she said. “As Mrs. Norton Graves, Regina runs in the same circles as the Coltons. She might be there right now, pretending to comfort Genevieve. She and Selina Barnes, Payne’s second wife, are friendly competitors in all things of wealth and privilege.” She smiled down at her son. “You’ve heard him cry. If we’re within earshot of anyone, we’ll be discovered within a day.”
“But you’d be safe.” He moved closer, filling the small cabin even more. “There’s a chef and housekeeping. Hotel amenities without a credit card trail. You’d be able to care for him and yourself properly.”
