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Chapter Four
***Autumn***
Iwasdreamingabout mermaids. The sounds of the beach coming in through the window I’d left open the night before were spurring beautiful images of Ariel and Flounder. It’d been years since I’d watched The Little Mermaid but sleeping so close to the ocean was filling my head with thoughts of dinglehoppers and handsome princes. I rolled over in my new bed and sighed happily as I was lulled awake by the call of seagulls.
The bed was a cloud, and it held me better than any lover ever had. I wasn’t sure I would be able to get up when my alarm went off. It was hard not to notice the differences between the homes I’d lived in and the mega beach house I was pretending to live in for the summer. I’d never heard the beach from an open window at my parents’ house growing up, or my apartment. I’d also never slept in a bed that probably cost more than my college degree. Some things the Phoenix family could provide with their billions of dollars were pretty nice; I’d give them that. Too bad the bullshit that came with the money wasn’t nearly worth it.
I curled up even tighter and sighed. The gentle crashing of the waves couldn’t distract me from the household I’d signed up to be a part of. The brothers weren’t great. Con was the biggest asshole from my past, putting it nicely. Zeke hadn’t bothered to speak to me, and Griffin was rude and so out of touch, it was sad. Not to mention how terrible his kids acted. Kids were just little products of their raising, so I couldn’t hold it against them, but they really were pains.
I rolled back over and opened my eyes to see a cherub of a little girl staring down at me with the biggest blue eyes I’d ever seen. I gasped and yanked my blanket up even higher.
“Hi! I’m Grace.”
I sat up and scooted up until my bare back was against the headboard. “Hi, Grace. I’m Autumn. How long have you been there?”
She crawled into my lap and pulled a strand of my hair through her fingers. “I don’t know. I like your hair. It’s dark like Mommy’s.”
I forced a smile and held my blanket tighter. “How’d you get in here, Grace?”
She scooted even closer to me, her sticky hands coming up to touch my cheeks. “You’re pretty.”
“And you’re super sweet, but can you answer my question, honey?” A genuine smile stretched my mouth when she stuck her tongue out to focus as she gathered my hair in her hands. “How’d you get in?”
“The door was unlocked.”
I frowned then. I’d locked the door after closing myself in the night before.
“The little door. Daddy says I’m not s’posed to use it, but I wanted to see you.” She looked down at my blanket and suddenly laughed. “Are you nakey?”
“Okay, little girl, you’ve made yourself quite familiar with me already. You don’t get to see anything else. How about you go back to bed and I’ll come and get you just as soon as I get up and brush my teeth?”
“And put your clothes on.”
“And put my clothes on.”
There was a knock on the door and Con’s voice rang out. “Autumn? I’m so sorry to bother you, but is Grace in there?”
Grace giggled and jumped off of me. “In here, Daddy!”
“No, Grace, don’t—” It was too late. Grace unlocked and opened the door, letting her father into my room. I cringed and considered pulling the blanket over my head and hiding.
“Grace, baby, you’re not supposed to bother Autumn. And you’re not supposed to use the little doors to sneak in on people. It’s ru—” Con’s voice stopped short, and there was silence for a beat before he cleared his throat. “Sorry, she was just curious to meet you.”
Grace ran back to me and settled on my lap again. “She’s pretty, Daddy.”
I knew my cheeks were flushed, and I was beyond grateful for the first time in my life that I had such crap vision. I couldn’t see details of Con’s face and if he was even looking at me. I could see his figure move dangerously close, though, and then his hand extended my glasses to me from the bedside stand.
My stomach fluttered. He remembered. I didn’t know if I was hoping he wouldn’t recognize me or that he’d had some kind of concussion in his life that made him forget me, but there was a silly part of me that hoped to get out of the summer unscathed from Con. It was harder if he remembered me and wanted to talk details.
I took my glasses, frowning when our fingers touched. Slipping them on, I focused on Grace and went into teacher mode. “Now, I can see you. Wow. This whole time I thought I was talking to the family’s pet cat.”
“I’m not a cat!” Laughing, Grace pulled my glasses down and giggled. “Am I a cat now?”
“Meow?”
She fell backward laughing, leaving me to fix my glasses. My death grip on the blanket covering my naked body from them slipped a bit, but I quickly caught it and readjusted, attempting to cover even more.
“Okay, Grace, it’s time to leave Autumn alone.”
Grace jumped up and ran to the door. “I’m going to go wake up Caroline!”
I watched as she disappeared and bit my lip when I realized it left me alone with Con. I stared down at my lap and prayed he left fast, without saying anything.
“Sorry for both of us barging in on you like this.”
I still didn’t look at him. “No problem.”
“She doesn’t know boundaries yet. Or if she does, she’s decided they don’t apply to her.” He grunted. “She’s so cute, it’s hard to discipline her when she does shit like this.”
“She storms the bedrooms of naked nannies often?” I said it without thinking and then cursed myself for using the word naked. It somehow made my nakedness more real. And a feature of the conversation.
Con cleared his throat. “Um. Naked. No, not that I can recall.”
I made the mistake of looking up at him and felt a bolt of awareness shoot through me. The look on Con’s face, interest and desire, was one that I recognized from another summer spent being the help for the rich people of Southampton. Meeting his eyes, seeing the bright blue shift darker, even as his pupils dilated, was dumb. Those eyes had always been my kryptonite.
He clenched his jaw and licked his lips. “I…”
It wasn’t fair that smoke alarms weren’t going off, or a tornado warning, or something. Con was dangerous, and I had to remember that. Jerking to action, I scooted to the opposite side of the bed and yanked the blanket off as I stood up, wrapping it around me like a cocoon. Standing as far away from him as I could get, I shrouded myself from him and his eyes. “Well, I’ll be out soon.”
He got the hint and backed away. “Again, I’m sorry for this.”
I wanted to ask him what else he was sorry for, if he remembered it the same way that I did. I wanted to demand an apology for the hell he’d put me through. Instead, I forced a smile and waited until he closed the door behind him to let out a shaky breath.
There was no sense in expecting remorse from him. I knew the type of men they were. My family had worked for them for decades. They didn’t apologize, not really. They didn’t care who they hurt on their way to getting what they wanted. I just had to remember that.
