by Dean Murray
I let my eyes drop down to his shoulders and biceps, and for a split second my sense of déjà vu was so strong I had to put my hand out to catch myself against the wall. The setting wasn't right—not even close—but him standing there cooking with his shirt off, the sun illuminating his muscles while I watched from a little ways away, that felt right in ways that I couldn't even begin to describe. It felt like something I'd done hundreds of times before.
"I was originally planning on showing you the rest of this wing, but I guess I could just leave you here if you want—you know, let you take in the…scenery. We aren't due back for a little while still, so he probably won't even realize that you're here…"
I opened my mouth, uncertain how to respond to that. In that moment Kat didn't sound very sisterly, but by the same stretch she didn't sound jealous or anything.
"I'm not sure whether I should be grossed out that you're talking about your brother like that or if I should just bow before the inevitable and admit that any girl would think Jace was hot."
"Yeah, well, there are brothers and then there are brothers. Don't think that I haven't noticed that you didn't answer my question. You're going to want to hurry up and decide though, Jace gets testy when dinner doesn't go as planned."
I took one last long look at Jace and then sighed. "I'd love to see the rest of the house, but you mentioned a shower. Can we start with that? I'm suddenly feeling like the ugly duckling. A shower and changing clothes won't magically put me in Jace's league, but maybe it will keep him from running away screaming for a few more days."
Kat raised her eyebrow suggestively. "Oh, I don't know—I think seeing you in those shorts might convert Jace to being a butt guy…"
My face went hot and I wished that I could make myself invisible, but the universe stubbornly refused to grant my wish.
"Can you please just show me to a bathroom? I don't want Jace to see me like this."
"He's seen you in a lot worse, but whatever. Let's get you showered."
That didn't make sense considering that Jace had seen me a grand total of twice before now, but by that point I was already following her through the house and the great room was so impressive that it took my breath away.
There was a huge water feature on one wall, a torrent of water that disappeared down into the floor, presumably cascading on into the basement before being pumped back upstairs. The décor had an almost industrial feel to it, all black, white and silver, but it fit the massive open space perfectly, as did the tall bay windows that looked out over the front of the house and the skylights that let additional light in.
"Sorry, I told Jace to leave that stupid waterfall off, but apparently he was determined to pull out all of the stops. He still doesn't believe me when I tell him that it's beyond pretentious."
"No, it's fine. It's spectacular—how did you guys end up with this place?"
"It belonged to some dot-com billionaire who ended up losing his shirt when the economy took a turn for the worse a few years ago. Like I said earlier, he was super-paranoid, so he built this place outside the town boundaries and managed to keep it a secret by importing a building crew from outside of the state."
"Wow. Just wow. It's amazing, but not very much like what I would have envisioned a paranoid billionaire building for himself. It doesn't feel very secure."
Kat grabbed my hand and pulled me into a hall that was wide enough for six people to walk abreast. "Yeah, don't let all of the glass fool you. It's all bulletproof—much thicker than it looks until you get pretty close to it. More than that though, the house is built in zones."
Kat waved at our surroundings, taking in the heated marble floors as if it was nothing out of the ordinary.
"This is one of the low-security zones. When you get to the bedrooms things are even more secure—thicker glass set inside a steel cage and all that. The coolest part is that there are hidden passages from the rooms down into this super bunker underground. It would take an army to dig you out from there if you locked yourself in and refused to come out."
She led me into a large room on the left that was full of every kind of exercise equipment imaginable. "This is the gym—just in case you were curious how Jace manages to keep his figure so studly."
The space had windows along two walls, mirrors on the other two, and a massive skylight that let in even more light than I'd seen in the great room. There were more than twenty different speakers hanging from the ceilings at various points, and half a dozen big-screen televisions mounted on the walls.
Kat gave me a second to take it all in, and then resumed talking. "It's wired for sound and temperature-controlled with a separate thermostat. There is a locker room back over there and as you can see we're looking out over the back of the house again, so the hot tub is just down that path and the lap pool is right here, less than twenty feet away from the exterior door."
"I think I might actually convince myself to work out if I had access to all of that stuff."
"I know, you'd think. Our exercise facilities were almost this good in the last place where we lived though and I gave up after a week or two. I keep telling myself that the exercise bug is just something that you're either born with or you aren't. If I say it often enough I can almost drown out the little voice that tells me I'm just lazy."
This time it was my turn to roll my eyes at her. "You can't seriously tell me that you stay that skinny without working out."
"Yep, sorry—I guess I just have good genetics. Don't worry though, your bod is just as slamming—trust me, it's come up with Jace a number of times already."
I managed not to blush again, but it was a near thing. "Speaking of Jace, I'm just about due for that shower. Do you just want me to use the locker room here?"
"Right, I'll stop showing off and we'll make a beeline to the bedrooms."
We passed more than two dozen more rooms over the next couple of minutes and I nearly stopped her a dozen times despite my desire to make sure I got cleaned up before I saw Jace again. It was like they'd purposely tried to make it hard for me to hold to my resolution.
For everything other than the bedrooms and the bathrooms, the doors to the various rooms were made out of glass, which meant I caught glimpses of the rooms as we passed. It wasn't enough to really get the full effect of the massive home theater that was upholstered all in black leather. It was just enough to whet my appetite and make me want to stop.
The same went for the large office space on the front side of the house and the library that adjoined it. The wood shelving in the latter ran from the floor all the way up to a second story and had one of the rolling ladders that I'd seen at the Cold Springs library before they'd started transitioning to electronic devices rather than actual physical books.
Some of the bedroom doors were open, which meant that I saw a guest bedroom that was almost as big as our entire house and which Kat casually mentioned had multiple sets of bunk beds built right into the wall.
It was the massage room with its raised table and folded privacy sheet though that really made my knees weak.
"Oh, you should ask Jace to give you a massage some time. He's forgotten more about rubbing knots out of someone's back than most people will ever know."
The idea of stripping down to nothing and having Jace's hands on my bare body brought back my earlier blush with a vengeance. Kat looked back at exactly the right time to catch my reaction and she laughed again.
"I can stay in the room if you want—you know, just to make sure that the two of you behave yourselves."
"I think my dad would kill Jace and then kill me if he found out that I'd let Jace give me a massage—regardless of who else was in the room."
"Oh, well, it's your loss."
Kat let us through another biometric reader and heavy glass door and then we went up a set of stairs that opened into a large central area that had only two doors leading off of it. The open area didn't have any windows, but the top was nothing more than one huge skylight. I was so shocke
d that I stopped moving and Kat had to grab my arm so she could tow me along towards the door on the far room of the area.
"The one back there is my room, but I need a shower too so you're going to be using Jace's room."
"Hold on—I just wanted a shower, any of the guest rooms would have been just fine."
"Sorry, Selene, we just moved in yesterday. We had the movers arrange most of the furniture that we had shipped in, but we haven't had time to re-stock every bathroom in this place. Right now the only bathrooms that have toiletries and towels are the two up here. Of course you could always just go back downstairs and wait with Jace while I shower—I'm sure he wouldn't mind what you're wearing."
"That was a low blow, Kat."
"I know, but you'll thank me for it later."
"All right, lead on."
Jace's room continued the same 'glass as far as the eye can see' theme that had been so prominent in the sitting room at the top of the stairs. Kat had said that the bedrooms were heavy glass inside of a steel cage, but so far I couldn't see very many places that weren't glass, so I wasn't sure where the steel came in. In fact, the baseball-diamond-shaped room was nothing like I'd been expecting.
The door we'd just walked through was set into a wall that was made up of something more substantial than glass. That wall butted up against another wall at right angles which contained a door to the bathroom and closet, but everything else was nothing but open space and a beautiful view.
"The glass all polarizes if a current is run through it, so if Jace wants some privacy he just hits a button on his phone and this all goes opaque."
I nodded, but I was only partially listening. The wooden bed was huge—three people could have slept on it and never bumped elbows during the middle of the night—and it dominated the center of the room. There were small tables on either side of it, but no lamp. I guess that made sense when your entire room was wired and you could turn your lights off from your smartphone.
There were a couple of chairs and a small table almost directly across from us. It looked almost like a little breakfast nook. Off to our right there was a desk and rolling office chair that formed a tidy workspace which featured a computer that looked like it could power all of the space shuttles at once.
Next to the desk was a large bookcase that held a number of slender, leather-bound books. I started towards the bookcase, curious what books Jace valued so much that he kept them in his room rather than down in the enormous library, but Kat grabbed my arm and tugged me towards the other door.
"You're going to run out of time if you don't hurry. Remember, you didn't want to do any more sightseeing until after you were clean and presentable."
I reluctantly followed her. It was one more thing that didn't make sense, but the longer I looked at the bookshelf the more convinced I became that it was somehow important. The carpet was more than amazing. It cradled my bare feet in ways that I wouldn't have believed were possible. If I'd lived in this house I would have never put on shoes again. I could see why Jace was so protective of it.
"Is your room like this?"
"Yeah, mostly. I mean the carpets and furniture are all different and I have a TV, but they are almost the same size. I let Jace have the bigger one because mine has the better bathroom."
I started to ask her what her bathroom was like, but then I stepped into Jace's bathroom and the question lost all meaning.
I'd expected the bathroom to be impressive given the sheer size and luxury of everything else I'd seen up to that point, but I'd still somehow managed to be too conservative in my expectations. The bathroom and closet combined were almost as big as Jace's bedroom, which was as big as my entire house.
Everything from the floor to the sink to the gigantic bathtub was done in black granite, or something that looked like black granite but which was probably several times as expensive. It should have given the bathroom a dark, forbidding look, but the plentiful skylights and the frequent lights kept it looking bright and cheery.
The floors were warm, apparently heated, which was good because Jace hadn't put down much in the way of rugs. The fixtures were all elegant brushed silver, but I took that in as an afterthought as I continued past the giant mirror and further into the room.
I'd initially thought the bathtub was gigantic, but I wasn't sure that I'd done it justice. It was a jetted, multi-level masterpiece that probably would have taken hours to fill if not for the fact that there were four separate spouts.
There was a separate shower that was frosted glass that seemed designed less with privacy in mind than it was to tease. I very carefully avoided thinking about Jace in there all wet and soapy. Given my record so far with blushing, that would probably cause me to spontaneously burst into flame.
The closet portion of the bathroom was set behind a set of double glass doors that Kat opened with a hiss of equalizing air pressure.
"The closet is designed to be temperature and humidity-controlled so that you don't have to worry about long showers ruining your clothes."
I just nodded. I'd never seen so much space for clothing outside of a department store. There were racks and racks of shirts, drawers filled with socks, shelves for jeans and sweaters, and an entire section filled with suits that looked like they'd never been worn before. Jace had more clothes than Ari, my dad and I combined, but he still only filled up a quarter of the available space. There were bags and boxes in piles on the floor still waiting to be unpacked and racked, but I couldn't believe that they would be enough to finish filling up the remaining space.
"Your closet is bigger than this?"
"Oh yeah, almost twice as big."
"And I'm guessing that yours is full, isn't it?"
Kat had the grace to look a little embarrassed. "No, not quite, but it will be once the next load of stuff arrives from our last place."
"Unbelievable. What did you say your parents used to do?"
"Our family is in precious metals." She chuckled, but when I gave her a confused look she just waved my question away. "You'll understand later."
"You do know that's getting to be really old, right?"
"Yeah, don't worry though, you're not that far from understanding it all." She checked her watch and then frowned. "Hmm, this has all taken a lot longer than I realized. I need to get going if I'm going to get showered in time to go back and get Ari. Everything you need should be here. Soap and shampoo are in the shower, towels are in the closet right over there."
"You said there is some kind of secret passage down into the basement from here?"
Kat nodded and pointed at one of the shelves inside the closet. "It's in there, but you don't need to worry about it. It's got a biometric lock on it too. Oh, that reminds me, you're not going to want to close the bathroom door all of the way. It's designed to lock too and then you'd have to wait for Jace or me to come get you out."
"Wow, this place isn't very visitor-friendly, is it?"
"Not up here it isn't. The lower levels aren't like this, but like I said, the former owner was crazy paranoid. Don't worry though, Jace is a perfect gentleman, he won't walk in on you or anything."
That last bit was said over her shoulder as she headed out the door. I stood there in astonishment for several seconds before realizing I was running out of time if I wanted to be done before Jace came looking for me.
I stripped off my shirt and rolled it up so that I could use it as a doorstop. It was probably unnecessary and I felt a little silly kneeling down on the floor in my sports bra to place it between the door and the frame, but I was determined not to get locked out of the bedroom.
My shower went just fine. I'd never actually had a shower with that much water pressure. It was like standing under a waterfall, and I got the feeling that the hot water was the next best thing to unlimited.
In fact, the shower was so nice that I lost track of time and ended up staying in there for a lot longer than I'd meant to. By the time I finally got out, my fingers looked like prunes and even the
n I only forced myself out of the shower because I was worried that Jace would end up accidentally walking in on me if I didn't.
I hadn't thought to get a towel out of the linen closet before I got into the shower, so I ended up having to cross over all of that black, gloriously slick granite dripping wet before I could pull the largest, fluffiest white towel in the world out of the closet and finally start toweling off. The trail of water puddles was regrettable, but I couldn't just stand there in the shower and wait to drip-dry.
Once I was dry, I wrapped the towel around my body and headed back over to the counter where I'd left all of my clothes. I'd just picked up my underwear when something green and glittery shot through the sliver of space between the bathroom door and the frame and bounced off of me.
I'd never seen anything like it and my natural inclination had been to get away, but it was moving too fast, so all I managed to do was throw myself dangerously off balance on a slick surface that had entirely too much water on it.
My arms had already started flailing; I probably would have fallen over even if nothing else had happened, but the impact from the glittering green spark sealed my fate. Something that small, even moving so fast, shouldn't have been able to hit me hard enough to overbalance me, but there was an odd sense of weight to the spark when it hit me, and I was already so off-balance.
I felt my legs fly out from under me with a flash of panic that superseded all concerns about modesty or anything else. My panties went flying through the air, forgotten as I made a mad grab for the counter.
I didn't realize that I'd screamed until my butt landed on the hard black floor and the green, glittery spark that had caused me so many problems disappeared with a pop.
"Selene! Are you okay?"
I once again wished that I could just disappear into a hole in the ground and pull it closed after me. I wanted nothing more than to just sit there and nurse my wounds, but Jace sounded like he was in a near panic—if I didn't respond soon he was going to come charging through the bathroom door.
