Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Delivering all that, she looked to Richard.
“Dearest, we need to let the young ones sort themselves out. I feel like Indian for lunch. I’m going to the village. Would you care to join me?”
“Gladly,” Richard replied.
He collected her and they walked out of the room arm in arm like they were promenading beside the Serpentine.
“Good luck,” Daniel said to Ian, then to Portia. “Let’s go.”
She got up but warned, “I’m only going with you because I don’t want to be alone in this house, but Ian needs us to leave so he can apologize for being a meanie.”
A meanie.
I almost laughed.
I was way too pissed to laugh.
They took off too, with Daniel trying to grab her hand, but she pulled it away from him.
Which left me with Ian.
I returned my glare to him.
He walked to me, and I sat very still in umbrage as he reached toward me.
He didn’t touch me, exactly.
He pulled something from my hair, and when he came away, I saw the nuance of the gossamer of a cobweb.
Ulk.
He brushed it off his fingers and moved to recline, legs crossed, in the corner of my couch, arm stretched across the back.
I scooched away from him.
But I found his deathly calm unnerving.
“Promise me you’ll never do something like that again,” he demanded in a voice much like his current attitude.
“What would you have done?” I asked.
“Chased after him. But I have several pounds on you, several inches, and I know those passages like the back of my hand, playing hide and seek with Danny, cousins and friends, and other fuckwittery kids get into when they’re young.”
“Did you find the shoe?”
“Yes.”
“Is it Dorothy’s?”
“From the pictures of her that night, it appears to be.”
“Was that shoe, to your knowledge, housed in storage here in this house?”
“Not to my knowledge, no.”
“So this is our bad guy, or girl, and they’re escalating in the creepiest way imaginable.”
“Daphne—”
“I don’t need my boyfriend dressing me down in front of his parents, brother and my sister.”
“Then don’t do anything else that’s stupid.”
Oh.
My.
God.
I moved to stand up.
He caught my hand and pulled me back down, much closer to him. I was almost on his lap.
“Ian, I wish to leave.”
“I know you do, but we’re making a deal right now that when we have an argument, we sort it. One doesn’t leave the other and stew, which invariably makes it worse. We communicate and move on. We’re communicating.”
It was tough to find the high road when someone was hogging it.
And now, woefully, I was understanding Daniel’s actions of the day before.
I went back to glaring.
“Do we have a deal?” he asked softly.
“You can’t fight fire with maturity, it’s annoying.”
His lips twitched.
I narrowed my eyes on them.
“You said the other day, that when a woman doesn’t want to talk, you wait until she’s ready,” I reminded him.
“I meant Danny and Portia. Not you and me.”
Ugh!
“You’re infuriating.”
“I’ve seen my marks on you,” he whispered. “I like them. I’m proud of them. I love leaving them because I love fucking you. Hard. You’ve made no attempt to hide you love it too. What bruises will I find on you tonight, love? Hmm?”
Okay, maybe it was a little foolish I went racing through the dark corridors with nothing but a phone flashlight and adrenalin to aid my pursuit.
And yes, if I’d fallen all the way down those stairs, shit could have been real.
And finally, yes, I’d likely have been powerless to do anything if I caught him (or her). And in order not to get caught, who knew what they might have done with me? What was known was that they effectively shoved me down some stairs.
But I wasn’t ready to admit to any of that out loud.
Ian, in my fucking brain, read my thoughts and tugged on me to pull me into the curve of his arm, murmuring, “Come here.”
“I’m mad at you,” I said, even as I slouched into him.
He curled me closer. “You’re mad at what’s happening. And you’re scared. You aren’t mad at me, outside of knowing I’m right, and that wounds your pride.”
Argh!
“So do I have your promise?” he pushed. “You’ll let me figure out what’s going on?”
“It’s not right that Dorothy’s shoe was up there, Ian.”
“No, it isn’t. But it’s another clue, and we’ll use it to figure out who’s doing this.”
I grew silent.
“You haven’t promised,” he prompted quietly.
“Okay. Okay. I promise not to go chasing bad guys in scary-as-shit, dark walls.”
He gave me a squeeze, let me get over it then said, “Mum’s right. It was brave.”
“Whatever,” I muttered mutinously.
“Though also right it wasn’t commendable.”
I tipped my head to glare at him again. “You’ve made your point.”
“Good,” he murmured, his eyes moving over my face like he was belatedly trying to figure out if I was unscathed, though, when he’d gotten to me earlier, he’d done an all-over body scan with eyes and hands.