Her Wicked Heart (2 page)

But now that I’m here, I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do.

The second floor is the worst thing I’ve seen so far. No, it’s not as garish as the cherubs, but I’d almost prefer the fat winged babies to the numbers. They’re on every door—shiny, brass, impersonal numbers. Once, my family called that room on my left the Daffodil Room because it was painted that perfect shade of yellow. Now, it’s Room 231. That room on the right was the Sparrow Room, and that one just around the corner was the Star Suite—it has one of the clearest views of the sky. Now they’re 234 and 235.

I hear a footstep behind me, and I realize I’ve stopped in the middle of the hallway. I step to the side and glance back down the corridor.

There’s a man coming toward me. He’s probably in his mid-twenties or so, with reddish-brown hair and broad shoulders. I don’t even have to glance down to his tool belt or the hammer in his hand to know that he’s a handyman—with the way his muscles fill out that dirty T-shirt he’s wearing, there’s really no other option. He must have some last-minute projects up here or something.

He smiles when he catches my gaze, and his blue eyes flash. A little flicker of attraction flares in my belly. It would be so easy, so simple, to smile back.

“Lost?” he says when he’s a little closer.

I don’t miss the way his eyes flick from my face down my body, though it’s quick enough that I’m not even sure he’s aware he just checked me out. My belly grows warmer.

I want to say
Yes. Yes, I’m lost.
He wouldn’t be much of a challenge—some flirtatious looks, a couple of suggestive comments, and I bet I could steal a kiss in less than five minutes. And if I play my cards right—and if his business isn’t pressing—I could back him into one of these rooms in less than seven. Undo his belt. Slide his pants down to his ankles. Take him in my mouth until his groans make me forget about the cherubs and the numbers and everything else that’s so terribly wrong with this place.

I can feel it now: his warm, hard muscles beneath my hands. The salty flavor of him on my lips. He’d probably twine his fingers in my hair, and I wonder—would they tangle as easily in my new, straighter locks as they would have in my old curls? My scalp prickles at the thought. I’d moan with my mouth around him, letting him know how much I enjoyed the tugging of his fingers.

At least, that’s what the old Lou would do. The new Lou—the girl formerly known as Lou—needs to keep her mind out of the gutter and her hands to herself.

“I’m fine,” I tell him, not even daring to look him in the eyes again. And then I take off down the hall before I have the chance to change my mind.

I find Room 253 at the very end of the corridor, and when I spot the door, my heart gives a little jump in my chest. It’s the room my family and I used to call the Willow Room. From the window on a clear day you can see all the way down to the stream on the northeast corner of our property. On the northern bank of the stream is a giant weeping willow with branches so long that they trail in the water below. Father used to call it Grandfather Willow. The room has wallpaper to match—pale cream crossed with swirling tendrils the exact color of the willow’s leaves in early summer.

When I unlock the door, though, it’s all wrong.

They tore down the wallpaper and painted the walls a dull taupe color. The wrought iron bed and dark-wooded furniture that once graced this room have been replaced by simple, almost institutional pieces. Whoever decorated the rest of this place clearly hasn’t touched the staff rooms. I guess they decided to blow their budget on the suites where the paying guests will be staying. This looks like a college dorm.

I toss my suitcase down on the bed and walk over to the window. There’s a thin piece of off-white fabric hanging over the glass—calling it a curtain would be too generous—and I push it aside, looking out across the grounds toward the stream. My stomach clenches.

I can’t see Grandfather Willow. I can’t even see the stream. Instead, I see a cluster of small wooden buildings.

I run back to the bed and grab the welcome packet Mr. Haymore shoved in my hand. There, on the map where Grandfather Willow should be, is a cluster of small rectangles labeled “Crafts Cottages.”

Mr. Haymore mentioned these latest additions to the property—at least at some point during his rambling I remember him saying something about a blacksmith’s forge and candle-making shop and some other crap—but I didn’t hear him mention
where
they’d been built. Now there’s a miniature Colonial-era theme park blocking Grandfather Willow.

If Grandfather Willow is there at all. For all I know they
’ve ripped him up by the roots.

This is wrong. This is all wrong.

I didn’t handle my father’s death very well. My brother implied as much, the day he convinced me to return to Chiang Mai. And then in Thailand, after months of trying to distract myself with Ian—well, Ian said the same thing to my face, the night things blew up between us. I can still see him: Ian, who was always so kind, so forgiving, standing there staring at me with such anger and such pain in his eyes.

This isn’t how normal people grieve
, he said.
This isn’t healthy.

He was right. I’ve never handled grief in a healthy way. Back when I was ten, when one of our horses died, my father was so concerned for me that he sent me to a shrink.

I still remember what she told me:
The worst thing to do when you’re trying to let go of something is to run the other way. Sometimes, you must hold on to let go.
At the time, I thought she was an idiot. That she didn’t understand. But I’ve never forgotten those words. They’re the very words that drew me back here.

Sometimes, you must hold on to let go
, I repeat in my head. That’s why I’m here. To face all of these changes and learn to let go.

But how am I supposed to do that when they’re destroying this place piece by piece? When they’re tearing down my family’s legacy and replacing it with this ridiculous stuff? Soon, this place will be swarming with tourists, and people will gawk at the decor and stupid crafts cottages and believe that we actually lived like this. Either that, or they’ll see it all as some massive joke.

Give it time
, I tell myself.
Healing takes time.

I don’t want to run anymore. I want to learn how to feel okay again. To feel
normal
again. If I want to move on with my life, I have to accept that this is Huntington Manor now, not the Cunningham estate. I
need
to accept it. I need to move on. I need…

I turn away from the window. I’m across the room so quickly that I don’t even realize what I’m doing until I’m in the hallway.

He couldn’t have gotten far.

As it is, he’s only around the corner. I just follow the sound of the hammering. The door to Room 244 is ajar, and when I push it open a little wider, I find the handyman inside, working on the window.

For a moment, I just stand there watching. His cheap T-shirt is thin enough that I can see the muscles of his back shift as he moves his arm. I didn’t notice it before, but there’s a dark tattoo circling his right bicep. I wonder how many more he has hidden beneath his clothes.

I place my hand on the door, swinging it all the way open, and he turns. The surprise in his eyes shifts quickly to pleasure.

“Lost after all?” he says, grinning. It’s a lop-sided smile, just goofy enough to make him look devastatingly attractive. I don’t say anything. I don’t know what I
should
say right now. Instead, I stride across the room and grab the front of his shirt.

I only have the chance to see the quickest flash of shock in his eyes before I tug his face down to mine.

His mouth is much warmer than I imagined it would be. His lips are hard—he wasn’t expecting this—but as I continue to kiss him, they soften slightly, even parting. A moment later, his tongue slips into my mouth, and heat courses through me.

I’m still clutching his shirt with both fists. I hear the thud of his hammer hitting the floor, and then his arms come up around me, pulling me against his chest. He smells faintly of sweat, but it’s a pleasant scent—or maybe I’m just too worked up to care. I widen my lips, letting him press his tongue deeper into my mouth, and I lift my own tongue to meet his. One of his hands moves up
to my hair, and his fingers twist through the strands just as I imagined they would. Curls or not, he has no trouble finding a grip. He pulls just hard enough to send a surge of heat from my scalp down to my very core.

It’s not enough. My body is alive with sensation, but the hollowness is still there, hovering just beneath the surface. I release his shirt and move my hands down across his stomach. Even through the fabric of his shirt, I can feel every muscle. He contracts them slightly beneath my touch and presses closer to me. His hand continues to pull at my hair, while the other slides down to the small of my back.

I slip my hands between us and drop them to his belt. It’s more difficult to undo a tool belt than it is to open a normal buckle, but I manage without too much trouble. The tools crash to the floor. But as I’m reaching for the fly of his jeans, he suddenly catches me by the wrists, and he pulls his mouth away from mine.

I glance up, confused. His pupils are large and dark—all the more obvious because of the brilliant blue of his irises—but beneath the haze of lust there’s confusion in his face, too. And just like that, I realize with shocking clarity exactly what I was about to do.

I stumble back, pulling out of his grip. This guy is a complete stranger. I don’t even know his name. What was I thinking? I have his pants undone. I was about to… I would have…

He’s still looking at me like I’m insane. “Are you…?”

I shake my head, too shocked to speak. He looks like he wants to say something else, but I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to know what he’s thinking right now.

And so I do what I always do when I get in over my head: I run.

CHAPTER TWO

Fortunately, in a place as large as Huntington Manor, it
’s easy to avoid people.

It helps that the day after my little “incident” with the handyman, Mr. Haymore gives me a To Do list long enough to wrap around the earth about two and a half times, and that keeps me occupied for those first few days on the job. It appears that I’m not only Haymore’s assistant, I’m also his secretary, gopher, delivery girl, personal shopper, and the official double- and triple-checker of everything he writes. Apparently he believes it’s physically possible for someone to proofread an email, place a call to the kitchens, retrieve a package from the front desk, and sift through his receipts at the exact same time.

But I don’t mind the work as much as I feel like I should.

When Mr. Haymore’s yelling to me from his office next door, it’s hard to think about what I almost did with that random handyman. Sometimes I even forget that I’m doing all of this for Huntington Manor—until I stumble across one of the glossy brochures and reality comes crashing down again. Fortunately, my new boss can only go about ten minutes at a time before piling something else up on my plate, and then the cycle starts all over again.

They’ve put me in a little room off of Haymore’s office that my father used to use for storage. Any books or files that couldn’t fit in my father’s study went here, and I think I only set foot in here once during my entire childhood. After all, it wasn’t really anything more than a glorified closet. I’m not sure whether I’m relieved or sad that I’m having trouble picturing the way it used to look.

Currently, it’s been decorated to match Mr. Haymore’s office. If I stare at the walls too long, I start to get dizzy. There’s a small window overlooking the eastern part of the estate, and sometimes when I get overwhelmed I stand at the glass and stare down at the gardens.

I missed them the most when I was in Thailand. This house always made me feel a little uncomfortable about our wealth, but the gardens… even on my guiltiest of days, I could go sit in the gardens and breathe in all the life and things just felt better somehow. There was a place in the hedge maze—a small nook carved into one of the leafy walls about halfway through the labyrinth—where I’d curl up sometimes and just think. The hedges would block out everything but the sky high overhead, and I’d close my eyes and try to find peace.

It’s funny. Back then I thought that leaving this place would help me. That giving everything up and dedicating my life to helping others would give me a sense of inner harmony. A purpose. Instead, it just made me more aware of how utterly self-centered I am.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think of Ian. Of the way he looked at me. Of the things he said to me.

If I close my eyes, there he is, sitting on the edge of his bed that last night in Chiang Mai, watching me scramble for my clothes.

What was all this, then?
he asked me.
Just a way to make yourself feel better? A distraction?

No
, I said.
It wasn’t just a distraction.
But even then, those words struck too close to the truth.

You can’t just bury your feelings, Lou
, he said.
I know it’s hard, but it doesn’t work that way.

What feelings? I
wanted
feelings. All those nights I’d turned to him, I’d just wanted to feel something,
anything
, but sickening emptiness.

And I’d never cared that it came at Ian’s expense. I’d never stopped to think about how he felt. What I was giving to him in exchange for everything he was giving me. I just took and took and took until he had nothing left.

I pull away from the window. It’s funny, how easy it is to go twenty-four years without realizing what a horrible, selfish person you are.

“Ms. Thomas!” Haymore calls from the other room, pulling me out of my thoughts before I can fully lose myself in self-loathing.

I flick my ponytail over my shoulder and straighten my skirt before walking over to his office.

My new boss is a little high-strung even at the best of times—I suppose it’s inevitable, this close to the grand opening—but he’s looking extra frazzled today.

“I just got off the phone with Edward Carolson,” he says without looking up. “Apparently he’s decided to fly down a day early. And he’s bringing his family with him.”

Edward Carolson. Just the name makes my skin crawl. Carolson’s the new owner of the estate. He didn’t tell Calder anything about his plans to convert the house into a resort during the negotiations for this place, but as soon as the contract was signed, he set about getting the property rezoned. As much as I always disliked the idea of anyone outside of our family living here, it would have been far preferable to
this.

Yeah, Carolson’s not exactly on my list of favorite people right now.

But I’m confused.

“A day early?” I say. “That means—”

“Tonight,” Mr. Haymore says. “Their flight gets in at five. I need you to arrange a car.”

I nod.

“He wants us to plan a luncheon for tomorrow,” he adds, sifting through the mess of papers on his desk. “For all the staff. Day laborers, too. Apparently he wants to talk with everyone. We’ll need a full menu from the kitchens. And we—did those new brochures come in? The ones with the fold-out map?”

“I don’t know, but I can—”

“Any word on the press badges?”

“They should be here this aft—”

“Confirm it. He’ll want to make sure everything’s ready for next week.”

I nod again, adding it to the never-ending To Do list in my head, when he glances up.

“Why aren’t you writing this down?”

“I can go grab a—”

“There’s no time for that right now. What’s this?” He points at my ear.

My hand flies up, touching the small diamond stud. These were my mother’s, once.

“No jewelry while on duty,” he says. He points to my name tag. “And wipe the smudge marks off of that.”

“Yes, sir.”

Apparently I don’t sound enthusiastic enough because he shoots me a look before sitting back down. He begins searching through the stacks of papers on his desk again, and I can’t tell whether he actually knows what he’s looking for or if he’s just too frazzled to keep still.

“You’re dismissed,” he says, without looking up at me again.

I’m only too happy to escape back to my little office.

Honestly, none of the tasks he’s given me are particularly difficult, but that definitely doesn’t make them pleasant. As I pull up the number for a local car service, I entertain myself by brainstorming all the terrible little ways I could torture Mr. Haymore. Nothing dangerous or illegal, of course—just a prank here and there to keep him on his toes. To ruffle that mustache of his. Salt in his morning coffee, maybe. Plastic wrap across his personal toilet. You know, the usual. Unfortunately, all of these stunts would point right back to me, and in spite of all the muddled things I’m feeling about this place, I’m not willing to get fired just yet. After all the work it took to pull off this charade—calling in some favors from some less-than-reputable old friends, charming my way through three interviews, and heck, just having the courage to step inside this house again—I’m not about to throw it all away. Even for the chance to pull one over on a grumpy old warthog like Mr. Haymore. A pity, though. I think it might have been good for him.

Turns out, the universe has its own plans for keeping Haymore on his toes today.

I’m halfway through my call with the kitchen when the trouble starts.

I hear the shouts first. They’re faint—from somewhere down the hall? I frown, pulling the receiver slightly away from my ear so I can hear better.

After a few seconds, it comes again. There’s definitely someone yelling. Multiple someones. And it doesn’t sound good.

“I’ll have to call you back,” I say quickly into the phone before hanging up. I leap up from my desk and hurry out to the hallway. Mr. Haymore races out of his office at the same time.

“What’s going on?” he says. “What—”

Down the hall, in the direction of the main entrance, the shouting picks up again, and though I can’t make out the words, it’s clear that someone’s definitely ticked off.

Mr. Haymore’s eyes go wide in horror. He doesn’t say a word to me, just rushes past me down the hall. I race after him. There’s no way I’m missing this, whatever it is.

“Fuck you!” I hear as we get closer. “You fucking asswipe! You lying piece of—
ooof
!” The man’s shouting cuts off to the unmistakable sound of someone getting socked.

“Stop it!” a woman cries. “Both of you! Stop!”

There’s the sound of a struggle, and Haymore and I round the corner just in time to see someone get pushed against the wall. The man hits a portrait, knocking the piece from its hooks. The frame cracks and splits as it hits the floor. The man himself is already back on his feet, and he looks ready to kill.

It only takes me a minute to take it all in. While a small crowd of employees has started to gather, they’ve left a wide berth between themselves and the three people who seem to be behind this commotion: the man who just face-planted against the wall, a pretty brunette woman, and a surprisingly calm-looking handyman.

My
handyman.

The bottom drops out of my stomach when I recognize the nameless, auburn-haired target of my temporary insanity. So much for avoiding him. I consider turning around and running back to my office, but I find that my feet can’t move. I’m too curious.

The brunette is tugging at the arm of the other man. There’s blood on his face, but I can’t tell whether it’s from his nose or his lip. Probably the nose. His blond hair is pushed up in all directions, and his T-shirt is torn. The woman is trying to pull him away, but he ignores her. He’s seething.

It’s pretty clear, even to me, a casual observer, what’s going on here. You’ve got two guys fighting and a girl trying to pull them apart. That can only mean one thing. Looks like my handyman is a regular Casanova.

Mr. Haymore pushes through the people who’ve gathered near us. “What the hell is going on—”

The blond guy with the bloody nose roars and charges. The woman shrieks again, but Casanova ducks easily out of the reach of his opponent. Bloody Nose definitely has the height in this battle, but his opponent has the speed and the muscle. When Bloody Nose comes in for another charge, Casanova clocks him right in the cheek.

Beside me, Mr. Haymore’s starting to go purple.

“Stop this!” he demands. “Stop this right now!”

No one hears him. For a minute I think Haymore’s actually going to run out into the middle of the brawl, but he’s not that reckless. Even for the sake of keeping this place a
respectable establishment.

The young woman, however, is a little braver. And she doesn’t seem particularly interested in watching one of her lovers beat the other to a pulp. She steps in and grabs Bloody Nose’s arm again.

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s go.”

But the blond guy jerks out of her grasp. “I’m not going anywhere with you, bitch.”

My friend Casanova raises his hands in a calming gesture. “Why don’t we try and discuss this like adults?” I don’t miss the glint of amusement in his eyes. He’s enjoying this. He’s having a friggin’ blast.

Bloody Nose sees it, too. “Like fuck we will.”

He lunges for Casanova again, and this time he catches the handyman by the front of the T-shirt. He pushes him up against the wall, but Casanova just grins at him.

“Come on, Luke,” Casanova says. “Is she really worth all of this?”

The woman makes a sound of protest, but for a moment, Bloody Nose—Luke—falters. Casanova reaches up and grabs him by the wrists.

“Let it go,” he says. “There are plenty of other chicks out there. Better ones than her.”

Luke relaxes his hands, and Casanova slips free and moves to the nearest doorway.

“Now if you don’t mind, I need to be getting back to work like a good little employee,” he says. There’s still humor in his voice, but it’s darker now. Almost bitter.

For a moment, it looks like it’s going to end just like that. No one moves. Even Mr. Haymore is perfectly still beside me.

“Oh,” Casanova adds suddenly, “And you better get someone to look at that nose. It’s gushing all over the place.”

That’s all it takes. Luke lets out a roar of unbridled rage and throws himself at his opponent.

The two men crash into the room behind Casanova. There’s the sound of a scuffle, a crash—and then wood splintering.

None of us can get to the doorway fast enough.

“Out of my way!” Mr. Haymore shouts, but no one listens. All of the onlookers want to see how this plays out, and we all try to cram ourselves through the doorway. Above the heads of the other employees, I hear the scuffle of feet, more cursing, and the smack of a fist hitting flesh.

And then, just when I think it might be over, we’re treated to the sound of glass shattering. A
lot
of glass.