AllFreeNovel
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Maybe it’s supposed to be grand, but it just feels desperate to me, especially after the sprawling luxury of Liam’s house. This house seems to be begging me to take it seriously out here in the middle of nowhere, where it’s been abandoned for so long that dust motes shimmer as they dance through the shafts of light peeking through gaps in the thick velvet drapes.
It’s kind of sad. Kind of hopeless. But the romantic, sentimental part of me loves it. I can easily imagine a Victorian lady going around and having fainting spells as she fans herself and complains about how tight her corset is.
Willow bumps into me from behind. “Oops, sorry.”
I step aside, giving her a little more room. She’s carrying three duffel bags, and I think she crammed a box into the back of Ada’s Tesla too. I’m still not sure how she ended up coming with us. We met her in the hallway, the young woman standing alongside her bags looking sorry for herself. Kat had said something about taking in strays, and that at least Willow wasn’t a ferret, which led to Ada agreeing Willow needed a room at the Walsh House too.
A split staircase leads to a landing where two hallways branch off to the west and the east wings of the house. Wilder passes us with a box clutched in his arms. He brightens as soon as he sees us, but when he opens his mouth to speak, Ada holds up a hand and clicks her fingers. He closes his mouth again and keeps walking, heading silently into the east wing.
“Don’t speak to them,” Ada tells me. “They’ll try anything to get in your pants.”
“What if I want them in my pants?” I ask. It was meant to be a silly quip, but both and Kat and Ada turn to look at me like I just suggested we set our hair on fire.
“I’d suggest you take a cold shower,” Kat says with a sniff. “Itoldyou they were trouble.”
“Oakes, you get Adams’s room,” Ada says in a bored drawl.
“The one that smells like old gym socks?” Kat complains, pinching her nose as she peeks her head inside the open door.
“As if you’ll notice with how much weed you smoke.” Ada clicks her fingers at a closed door a few yards away. “That’s yours, Evie.”
At least she calls me by my name. But considering she does it in a tone that almost makes it sound the same as ‘servant,’ I’m not sure it’s that much better than Kat calling me ‘noob.’
Stepping into the room Ada assigned, I purse my lips as I look the place over. It’s a narrow room, with enough space for a bed, a dresser, and a table… but that’s about it. A door leads off into a bathroom, which I realize I share with Kat when I go inside and see a second door opposite mine. I open it and watch Kat standing in the center of a room that looks almost as messy as her dorm room had been. Her hands are at her hips, a sullen pout on her face.
Wilder comes into my room, grabbing another box and muttering about how wrong it is that he was thrown out of his room for a bunch of women.
I close the bathroom door again and start unpacking my things. I keep feeling eyes on me, but when I turn to the doorway, the hall outside is empty. There’s a window outside my door on the other side of the hall, but all I can see out there are the dark shadows of the forest outside. In the distance, above the tree line, the spires of Pinecrest University can be seen.
Dropping my backpack onto the mattress, I stand still for a moment, staring out through the hallway window. Then I rush over to close my bedroom door, only to find there’s no key in the lock.
It’s not as if you need one. Nobody’s going to come inside without knocking, right?
I hurry back to my bed where I left my backpack and carefully slide my hand inside. As I look around the room, my fingers brush the hard, flat object wrapped inside a cashmere sweater. There are no good hiding places here, but I can’t leave something this important in my bag. As much as I’d like to, I can’t cart this embarrassment around everywhere I go either. Which means I’ll have to leave it behind at some point, and I can’t risk someone looking inside for valuables and finding… this.
After a moment’s indecision, I hide the bundle of cashmere in the lowest drawer of my dresser, behind my tennis shoes. As I’m standing, there’s a knock on my door.
As I’m closing the drawer, the door opens before I can answer.
I turn, expecting Kat or Ada… and my mouth dries when I see Owen Dalton filling the doorway. I haven’t opened my curtains yet, so the light from the window in the hallway behind him casts his face in shadow. That silhouette is unmistakable though.
Owen walks inside like he owns the place.
If what Kat told you over brunch is true, he kinda sorta does.
At least, hisfamilydoes… and he’s the heir.
“I see you’re settling in,” Owen says. “How are you liking everything so far?”
Why does it seem like everything this guy says has a double meaning?
The way he’s looking at me, it’s like he’s asking how I feel about him standing a yard away, looking every inch the prince he supposedly is in his dark jeans and black sweater.
“Could be better. I need a key for my bedroom door.”
“We have an open-door policy.”
“All the better for peeping toms then?”
