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17
It was past midnight before Flynn and Birdie returned to the mausoleum of a house that had once been a refuge. A house she and Marshall and sometimes Pearl, when she was having a good day, used to shop for, sharing the same aesthetic.
Now it was a Hollywood Regency design exercise gone wrong, with ornate gilt mirrors, walls painted in dark colors, and extravagant floor-to-ceiling heavy drapes that held back rays of sunshine from peeping through. The place looked more like a Dorothy Draper movie set than someone’s home, where memories were made and people loved one another and knew where each other were because they cared, not because they felt obligated or were a prisoner.
Not so much now. Now, the family members lurked through the house rarely speaking to one another, let alone sharing their plans for the day. Unless, of course, you were being surveilled by the contracted security team who dotted the property, talking into their headsets and watching the exits.
It was clear her and Flynn’s little jaunt last night had everyone on high alert. Likely having been called out for their blatant ineptitude by Ariana and Errol.
Upon returning, with Errol’s face blood red and Ariana waking Vanessa, asking for smelling salts, Flynn explained that they went for late night burgers. No harm, no foul.
Errol didn’t see it that way and told Flynn he was no longer permitted to leave the premises without his or Ariana’s permission. As if he were a child as opposed to a grown man. Flynn responded with a repetitive nod and profuse apologies. Completely out of character to the man Birdie had come to know, but similar to the one she’d first met.
A survival skill.
What a fucked-up family.
Much like her own, years ago.
That said, it was their lack of a familial bond that allowed Flynn to fly under the radar. It also helped he had become friendly with the staff, with the exception of the security team, earning their trust and overall good humor and happy to follow some of his more peculiar requests.
Like ignoring the man with garden shears who was hacking the shrubs around the pool area while waiting for Birdie to emerge from the house.
Standing by the kitchen window and drinking her morning coffee, she shook her head as Lucas made a cut into the side of a ten-foot evergreen, now with what looked to be a huge bite out of the side. The long line of tall shrubs no longer symmetrical.
She wondered how Flynn was going to explain that to the gardener, who treated the trees and foliage like precious sculptures, maintaining them with pride and unwavering exactitude.
Lucas’s disguise of the day was a pair of cargo shorts with ankle-high Welly boots, long gauntlet-sized gloves, and one of those long-sleeve shirts that was both UV and insect repellent. He wore a mesh sunhat with a wide brim and neck flap in the back.
Earlier, when she came stumbling down to the kitchen for coffee and noticed someone trimming hedges that didn’t need trimming, the person in question turned, gazing up at the tree as if trying to determine his next fatal snip, and she caught his profile.
And jawline.
Lucas.
This time instead of getting agitated, her anxiety levels hitting DEFCON 1 levels, her shoulders lowered and her entire body melted in a warm syrupy goo.
He was here to look after her. Protect her.
Refused to leave without her and dangerously committed to bringing down the Shepherd family in time for Mia’s birthday.
As she took another sip, a rosy flush covered her body and settled in her heart that was beating fast at the thoughts of last night.
It made her feel like the unpopular teenage girl who gets noticed by the high school prom king and, to her shock and dismay, becomes his girlfriend. Everyone in the fictional hometown realizing how blind they were to her beauty, thanks to a makeover by her quirky best friend.
Okay, maybe not that last part.
Like a bee to a hive, she stepped outside and walked toward him. She could tell that he sensed her from behind his sunglasses from the smirk on his face.
She took a sip of coffee. “I can see that your pool maintenance and waitering skills are only surpassed by your gardening prowess.”
He kept working, trimming one side of the tree until it looked as if it were leaning thirty degrees to the right.
“I’m more of a numbers guy and civil servant.”
“I can see that. But if you’re not careful, somebody is going to figure out that either the staff is sabotaging the estate or you’re scoping the place.”
“Not the place, just the woman.”
