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“Is that totally necessary?” I asked, looking out the back window.
“On a property this size, with the house as isolated as it is, I really feel more comfortable with some security.” Neil rolled down his window. “The scent of the ocean. I can’t believe I might have retired in Somerset and missed this.”
“I can’t believe we have security guards.” I was a little uneasy, and I wasn’t letting it go yet. “I mean, do I have to do anything special if I want to leave? What if I want to be spontaneous?”
“They’re security guards, not jailers,” he said patiently. “You can come and go as you like. I know you aren’t used to it, but you must remember that your life is vastly different now. One of the adjus
tments you have to make, no matter how uncomfortable it may be, is remembering that with money comes a certain amount of caution.”
“I guess I can see where you’re coming from. You buy a seventy-eight-million-dollar house, you don’t want anyone fucking with it.”
“There is that, but more importantly, I wouldn’t want anyone fucking with us. Your name will be in society sections when we publicly announce our engagement, and when we’re married. And there are people out there who aren’t stable.” He looked back to me, and his expression softened, so I must have looked completely terrified. “Darling, I didn’t mean to frighten you. Nothing has ever happened to me, or to Emma. Elizabeth didn’t have any troubles. But when Emma was young, there were some letters, some… Well, there were threats.”
“Against Emma?” I could only imagine how that had made him feel. He loved Emma more than any other human being on the planet.
He nodded. “I’m a bit more cautious now. But not excessively so, I wouldn’t think.”
“Nah, probably not.” I hadn’t given much thought to the fact that some of the realities of my new life were a bit more severe than merely having to cope with spending money.
“Besides, we’ll never see them up near the house, unless there’s an emergency. There are only four of them on each shift,” he reassured me.
The driveway was lined with tall red pines, the ground beneath them recently churned up.
My jaw dropped. “You didn’t!”
He looked smug at his little surprise. “I told you, we were doing some renovations. I thought you might like something to remind you of home.”
The same trees surrounded the trailer where I’d grown up. The fact that he’d noticed, remembered, and had full-grown trees transplanted onto our property astounded me.
“You know, you’re really something else.” I grinned at him, and he grabbed my hand and dropped a kiss on my knuckles.
My legs were grateful for the stretch when we pulled up at the front door and climbed out of the car.
“We won’t be needing anything else today, Tony. Thank you,” Neil told the driver. “Take some time to get settled in.”
Tony would be living in the apartment above the porte-cochere, but those rooms hadn’t come furnished. Tony’s U-Haul was parked near the service entrance. I hoped he had someone to help him move the stuff in. I wasn’t above lifting furniture.
“Wait.” Neil stopped me at the door. “I’m supposed to carry you over the threshold.”
“I think that’s just when somebody is married,” I reminded him, but I stood still anyway, waiting for him to scoop me off my feet.
Instead, he leaned down and hefted me over his shoulder like a sack of onions.
“Hey!” I laughed, all the blood rushing to my head. “I’m entering our new home for the first time upside down.”
“I’m carrying you over the threshold,” was all he said in his defense, and when we stepped into the foyer, he set me on my feet and kissed me. “Welcome home.”
When we’d been to the house before we’d bought it, it had been someone else’s house. It was ours now, and it still felt like someone else’s. Someone else’s furniture, someone else’s art on the walls; I felt like I shouldn’t touch anything.
Neil stood behind me and ran his hand down my arm, over the sleeve of my coat. “What do you suppose we should do now?”
I knew what he was getting at, and he probably expected me to say, “Do it in every room of this enormous mansion,” but I had other plans.
“I’m going to run around and touch everything.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Well, I wasn’t expecting that answer, but here we are.”
I jumped up and down and clapped my hands before tearing off like a five-year-old. I ran into the master bedroom and rolled around on the new mattress in the huge four-poster bed. I clomped my way up the stairs in the tower room and ran out onto the circular deck that surrounded it, not caring a second about the cool wind off the sea. In the dining room, I shrugged my coat off and ran around the table, tapping my fingers on each of the fourteen chairs before I headed off to every single guest bedroom and bathroom.
