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“What are you thinking?" he asked as he led her through the maze of cars and into the garage.
“That I have terrible taste in men.”
He snorted, motioning for her to go ahead of him through the door. Evie and Declan were in the formal living room cuddled up on one of the couches, and Evie smiled when she saw them enter, the warmth in her face suddenly cooling when she saw their expressions.
“What’s wrong? What happened?" she demanded.
“We have a problem.”
He reached into his back pocket for the envelope and dropped it on the coffee table.
ChapterNineteen
Viv sat on the floor of Aidan’s closet, arranging her shoes in neat rows. Technically it was their closet, but after less than twenty-four hours in Glenmore House, she hardly felt like she could claim anything as hers. Space had been cleared for her, though, so she was intent on filling it up.
Sometime between when she’d left her parents’ house for the wedding and when they’d arrived yesterday, all the things from her childhood home that she’d carefully packed into boxes had appeared stacked in the corner of Aidan’s—their—room.
It seemed like magic, even if it was probably someone on the staff. Aidan said they had several live-in staff members who had rooms on the third floor.
She set a navy stiletto next to its mate and shook her head, reaching into the box for the next pair of shoes. He’d said it so casually she nearly laughed. The closest she could ever say she’d come to any sort of staff had been the once monthly housekeeper her mother paid to deep clean a house well used by five active children.
Not even married two full days, and she already felt wildly out of her depth. Surrounded by the opulence of Glenmore House with its decades of history, live-in staff, and the family that called it home. But this was her life now. All she could do was unpack and poke around to get her bearings.
She’d gotten a lot done since waking up alone with no idea where her husband was. Her clothes now lined the other half of the closet in neat rows; pants and panties and bras were tucked into built-in drawers. Her shoes took up every spare inch of the floor on her side she could find. Why the hell did she have so many shoes?
The second vanity in the bathroom was now filled with her things, neatly organized in the recessed medicine cabinet with its fancy sliding mirrors. She’d lined up her bottles of shampoos and creams in the shower and wondered if Aidan saw this as an invasion. Of his space and his privacy. Of his life.
Whether it was an invasion or the inevitable conclusion to the wedding, they had much more space to avoid each other here than they might have somewhere else. Waking up alone with no note certainly felt like avoidance.
Leaving the hotel had popped whatever bubble they’d found themselves in on their wedding night. Sex with Aidan was an all-consuming fire that ignited in her belly and spread out until she was liquid with it, desperate, needy, begging. Life with Aidan, well, that was something else entirely. And she hated that she had no idea what to expect from it.
Giving up trying to squeeze any more shoes into the space, she pushed the half-empty box into a back corner and made a mental note to look into some kind of shoe organizing solution. She could hear Aidan’s quips about her sizable collection even now. He could complain all he wanted; he didn’t seem to mind looking at her legs in a good pair of heels.
On her way to the door, she paused next to the bed. She’d slung the covers up loosely over the pillows when she got up, but it had been neatly made when they’d fallen into it last night, and she wondered if she should do that or not. A knock on the door drew her eyes to Evie framed in the doorway.
“Morning.” Evie smiled. “Did you sleep okay?”
“I did. Thanks.”
Evie surveyed the now empty corner where the boxes had been and frowned. “How long have you been up?”
“A few hours. Why?”
“I figured you weren’t at breakfast because you were still sleeping. But now I’m going to assume Aidan didn’t tell you about breakfast.” Viv shook her head, and Evie snorted. “Figures. You must be starving.”
When Evie turned on her heel and disappeared from view, Viv trailed behind her, catching the flash of a gray maid’s uniform disappearing into a bedroom at the far end of the hall as she made her way to the stairs.Thatwas definitely going to take some getting used to. She would have to ask Aidan how many several meant exactly.
A wide set of stairs swept down to the grand foyer while two narrower sets curved up on either side to the third floor. She wondered if there was anything else up there besides staff rooms. Aidan hadn’t exactly been forthcoming with a tour or many details the day before.
Following Evie down, she knew to her right would be the formal living room, where they’d sat for hours going through all the photos, analyzing each one. Time, date, location. It chilled her to know someone had been following her for so long. It worried her more that Aidan’s face had been scratched out. In some cases, whoever had left the photos had scratched at his face so violently they’d torn a hole through the paper.
In the end, they hadn’t been able to come up with much. With no digital footprint, Brogan couldn’t dig anything up, and with nothing that clearly identified the photographer in the photos, it was impossible to figure out who had left them. Even the security tapes at the hotel resulted in a dead end. Whoever it was managed to stand just out of frame and slide the box in front of the door with their hand.
Which meant they knew exactly where the security cameras were and how to avoid them. It might be impressive if Viv wasn’t the target. Or Aidan. They disagreed on who seemed to be in more danger. Viv was convinced it was Aidan because of the way he'd been purposefully erased, and Aidan was convinced it was Viv because she was the subject of all the photos.
Turning left as Evie had done, Viv wandered past a few closed doors and another large living room, although this one looked like it actually got some regular use with its overstuffed couches and chairs and a well-stocked bar cart against one wall. Beyond the family room was a dining room with a long table big enough to seat twenty. It made the two tables they shoved together at her family’s house for Sunday dinners look like a child’s toy.
There was a door at the far end of the dining room, but she couldn’t see what lay beyond it from this vantage point, and she didn’t want to wander off while she was supposed to be following Evie for breakfast. She turned toward the end of the hall and stopped short in the doorway to a kitchen that took her breath away.
