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If I asked her, she’d probably votenot, but Svetlana’s assault quickly stirs the rest of the coop into a frenzy.
I yank the flimsy door hard enough that the hinges whine while Jango barks frantically at the commotion. Behind the voracious flock pecking away at each spilled morsel, Heather’s fallen on her butt with her knees pulled up to her chest.
The fat black hen victoriously climbs a heaping food pile to claim as hers.
“Svetlana,” I growl, but she only bobs her head, clucking pure innocence.
Heather’s hair is matted with feathers and debris while that same finger she poked me with earlier is now aimed at the temperamental bird. “She attacked me.”
When she unfurls her legs, her thin shirt is torn almost clean through the middle, fully exposing a light pink sports bra.
I thought those things were supposed to be ugly–not accentuate those lethal weapons with a triangle cut and straps thick enough to raise them to her chin.
Shifting my gaze to anything but her rack, I offer my hand.
She swats it away. “You set me up.”
“Actually, I tried to warn you.”
Heather pins me with an accusing glare. “Warn me? I think I would remember if you’d told me these chickens were tiny, feathered demons with a craving for flesh.”
I laugh, amused by her blustering. “Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
“Why would I go anywhere with you after this?”
Reaching for her again, I take an immense amount of pleasure in popping her bubble. “Because you’re sitting in chicken shit.”
Cursing both me and the chickens under her breath, she reluctantly takes my palm. I can all but feel her angry gaze licking up one side of my back and down the other as she follows me into the house.
“Remind me the rules of your NDA again?”
After Penelope told me about Heather’s hobby, I had her draw up a contract. The last thing I need is for some travel blog to go viral because she’s plastered my face and family home all over the front page.
She perches a hand on her hip as if I completely exasperate her.
“No pictures of you or the house, and zero mention of you on any media outlets.” Mocking me now, she walks her fingers between our faces. “Especially the part about you sneaking out of rehab.”
My gaze narrows, but the moment she turns to face the living room, she gasps. “Marcus, this place isamazing.”
For the first time since meeting the woman, that guard of hers slips, and an almost innocent type of wonder parts her mouth, softening all her sharp edges.
I slip my hands into my front pockets, watching her take it all in.
She’s not wrong. My aunt and uncle do have great taste. But what’s got my wheels spinning is the way her approval slides over me, pulling my shoulders back with pride. Maybe it’s the way she gawks at the twenty-foot ceilings or how her fingers fidget as if to pilfer through my aunt’s collection of books.
Whatever the reason, an uncharted part of my soul rouses beneath it.
“My gilded cage,” I grouse.
“Penelope mentioned growing up here with her cousins. Were you one of them?”
Careful not to reveal too much, I correct, “Only during the summers.”
“Well,” she says, tucking her hands under her arms, “this is far more than I could have ever hoped for as a kid.”
There’s an isolated longing wrapped around her words, and part of me hates that I’ve diminished her excitement. The other obnoxious, and increasingly hard to ignore, part of me wants to ask her what she means.
“Besides, it has to be better than AA meetings and cafeteria food,” she muses.
