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Fiona nods and keeps nodding.Helicopter, she mouths.
Get used to it, I want to tell her, but I have no idea if she’ll be around to get used to anything. I have no idea what to tell her, how to prepare her.
I’ve never brought anyone like her home before. There’s a reason for that.
I don’t say anything during the short drive. The helicopter is waiting in the far parking lot, and I put an arm around Fiona’s shoulders, showing her how to crouch as we run to the open door.
As soon as we’re settled, the pilot takes off and Fiona grips my hand. “I’ve never been in a helicopter before,” she says after we have the headsets on.
“It’s not my first choice,” I admit. She looks at me, big blue eyes full of concern— and there’s that melting sensation again. “I really don’t like flying.”
“But you fly everywhere with the team.”
“I’m better in big planes. Anything small like the jet and this—” I hold my stomach with one hand. “Not great.”
“Are you going to throw up again?”
The pilot, who can hear everything we say through his own headset, glances over his shoulder at us. “Hopefully not.”
“You should learn how to fly,” Fiona says. “It might help.”
“Help feeling like I’m not about to empty my stomach on your new shoes?” It hasn’t escaped my notice that Fiona is once again wearing one of the new pairs I bought her as well as the flower ring—turned the right way and glinting in the sunshine.
“If I’m feeling really anxious about something, it’s better if I just do it, rather than worrying about it. Because the real thing is never as bad as what you expect it’s going to be.”
“That’s smart. But unfortunately, I can assure you, meeting with my grandfather will not be pleasant.”
She tightens her grip on my hand as I stare unseeingly out the window.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Fiona
Iremembertheveryfirst romance novel I read. Judith Krantz’s Princess Daisy. My brother and I had been in a used bookstore soon after our mother died and Gil said that at twelve, I couldn’t read a book that thick.
I happily proved him wrong. Although there was quite a bit in the book that was a little old for tween me, I’ve never forgotten how the words and story transported me to another world.
Flying into Mase’s family home is a lot like that.
Two hours after we leave Las Vegas, the helicopter banks, and I get a perfect view of the house. Mansion would be the correct term. Palatial, might be another. Big ass-house.
“There’s the compound,” Mase says unnecessarily.
Compound. He lives in a compound.
“I thought you said San Francisco.” I expected steep hills, Golden Gate Bridge, with the infamous Alcatraz in the harbour.
“Technically, it’s outside the city. Tiburon,” he says. “It’s close.”
I see nothing of San Francisco as we prepare to land at the compound. It makes sense to call it that because besides the huge main house—which has two wings forming a letter U— there are at least six other buildings. I also see a tennis court, a driving range, and of course, a pool before we land on a helipad off to the side.
This place is too big to fit inside the city limits.
I just flew to my husband’s family home in a helicopter. This is straight from one of my romance novels.
I want to text Bexley and tell her about the place, but it doesn’t seem to be the time for that. I look at everything, trying to absorb it all so I can describe it to her.
Or try and remember if this is the only time I’ll be here.
