by Ivy Layne
“My uncle Hugh and aunt Olivia loved this music. I used to walk in on them dancing together.”
He fell silent, his fingers tugging gently through my hair, lulling me to sleep. Letting out a long breath, he relaxed beneath me. I stretched my arm over his chest, my hand on his side as if I could hold him to me. As if I could keep him safe from the demons in his memories. I couldn’t change his past. I couldn’t heal his wounds. All I could do was hold him close to my heart and hope it was enough.
Chapter Thirteen
Sophie
My head pounded in fatigue the next morning. I’d dozed on the couch with Gage for a few hours, drifting between talking and sleeping. Long before dawn lit the sky, Gage had helped me to my feet, clicked off the fire and the music, and walked me to my room. He left me at the door, pressing a tender, lingering kiss to my mouth, saying only, “Thank you, Angel.”
I’d crawled into my bed and tried to go back to sleep, but sleep refused to come. I couldn't stop thinking about Gage. I tried not to compare him to Anthony, but it was impossible. For one thing, they were the only two men who’d ever really touched me, sexually.
If you added up every single episode of sexual contact in my marriage with Anthony, the total wouldn't come close to that explosive encounter on the couch with Gage. I thought I’d understood what an orgasm was, thought I'd given them to myself, alone in my bed in the dark of night.
I'd had no clue. That kind of pleasure… It was distracting and seductive.
Gage was nothing like Anthony. They had surface things in common. Anthony had been wealthy. So was Gage, though on a different level. They were both physically fit and attractive, though again in different ways. Anthony had been refined. Elegant. More like Aiden, actually.
There was a rough earthiness to Gage that I found reassuring. Maybe it was because Anthony and Aiden, men with that type of refined elegance, reminded me of my father. My cool, restrained father who had had only enough warmth in his heart for one woman, my mother. When she’d died, he'd buried himself in his job.
He’d told me not to marry Anthony, and when I hadn't listened, he cut me off. I’d managed to call him twice during my marriage, hoping he might offer a lifeline, but he’d told me calmly that I'd made my bed and I'd have to sleep in it. Literally. I hadn't seen him in five years.
I didn't think I could be attracted to a man who reminded me of my father or Anthony. I trusted Aiden as an employer, and I could appreciate his good looks, but they didn't do anything for me.
There was something about Gage I couldn't shake off. He was raw and honest and purely himself.
His control the night before had been intense. Not like Anthony. Another superficial thing they had in common that was completely different under the surface. Anthony had lived for control. Everything about him was a way to control others. The charming façade he presented to the world. The way he locked down every emotion except those he wanted to show.
When the ugly parts bubbled to the surface in a fit of violent rage, he’d still had enough control to save it all for me. And the moment he'd released enough of that rage through his fists or his belt or his kicking feet, the façade snapped back into place. Anthony used self-control as a shield and a weapon.
Even in his worst attacks on me, he’d been in control. He never left a bruise I couldn't cover with clothing. He never broke a bone. He bruised my kidneys once or twice badly enough that there'd been blood in my urine, but otherwise, I had no lasting damage.
If he'd injured me, I might have had to get medical attention, and that would reveal the truth of our marriage. Worse yet, a broken bone or internal bleeding would've required that I go to the hospital and Anthony refused to allow me to leave the property. More of his obsession with control. Sometimes I thought he’d married me so he could exert his will over another human being in every possible way.
After Anthony, I should've hated being near a man with that same iron control. But Gage didn't use control as a weapon; it was a part of his strength. He used it to protect the people around him.
The night before, dazed with pleasure and shaking in his arms, I would've given him anything he asked.
Never mind that he was right, I wasn't ready. I wasn't sure how I felt about Gage making that decision for me, but I’d felt the steely heat of his erection. If I hadn't touched him, I never would've known how much he wanted me. I wouldn't have understood what it took for him to hold back, to give me so much pleasure and take none in return.
Anthony had used his control to bring me a nightmare of pain. Gage used control to keep me safe. Even from himself.
“You need another cup of coffee,” Amelia said from across the table. I sent her a weak smile, and she said, “You didn't sleep well again, did you?”
“No, not really.” I didn't volunteer the exact nature of my not sleeping. Amelia was endlessly nosy and interfering. I didn't want to think about what she might do if she'd found out I’d spent the night with Gage. The possibilities were horrifying.
“Are you sure you don't want to try that tea again?” she asked.
I shuddered. I couldn't help it; the memory of the tea was that awful. I took a sip of coffee just to wash the thought of it away.
“I'll make a deal with you, Amelia,” I said. “I’ll drink another cup of that tea right after you drink two of them.”
“Why two?”
“Because you have more than enough grit to force yourself to drink one cup of that stuff, but two cups is an entirely different story. You'd never make it through two cups. No human being would voluntarily drink two cups of that tea.”
“That bad, huh?” Amelia winked at me, and I scowled back. “I'll find something else. Something that doesn't taste so terrible.”
“It's okay. I'm used to it by now,” I said.
Getting up from the table, I went to the buffet on the sideboard and took a few more pieces of bacon and another serving of eggs. With Aiden still out of town, there were only three of us eating regular meals at Winters House, but that didn't stop Abel from putting out a full spread every morning.
“You shouldn't be used to it,” Amelia said. “You're a nurse; you know a good night’s sleep is important. Going day after day without sleeping is terrible. It’s inhuman.”
“You only think so because you're part sloth,” I said, dryly. Sometimes I thought she was. I envied Amelia her close relationship with sleep. She went to bed early and slept until eight in the morning, sometimes getting as much as ten hours a night.
It wasn't unknown for her to doze off in the middle of the afternoon. She wasn't fatigued, she just loved to sleep. Normally, as people age, their need for sleep lessened, and Amelia had admitted she could get by on a lot less. She just didn't want to.
Some nights, when I was laying in bed staring at the ceiling, I thought I would've killed to be able to sleep like that.
“Maybe you need to find a therapist and talk about your nightmares,” she said, quietly. “Or exercise. Exercise is supposed to be great for helping you sleep.”
“Unfortunately, I have an allergy to exercise,” I said with a straight face. “Every time I do it I start sweating and get short of breath. It's terrible. I have to sit down until it goes away.”
Amelia rolled her eyes at me. “We should walk more,” she said, decisively. “We've been staying in too much since the weather turned cold. We should put on our jackets and go back to our regular walk in the Gardens.”
I didn't mind walking. Walking wasn't real exercise. Not the way we did it. In warmer weather, Amelia and I had gone to the Botanical Gardens a few times a week. The paths were wide and paved, perfect for Amelia, who could walk for hours but wasn't up for the grade changes and unstable terrain of hiking. Both the Botanical Gardens and Piedmont Park where they were located, were scenic and interesting.
“We could do that,” I agreed. Amelia looked out the windows of the dining room to the gray drizzle outside.
“Not today,” she said. “When is the
weather supposed to clear up?”
I pulled my phone from my pocket and opened the weather app. “Partly cloudy with some sun in the afternoon tomorrow,” I said.
“We'll go tomorrow then. Today we might as well finish those birdseed things for Charlie's wedding.”
I raised an eyebrow at Amelia. “Don't you mean I should finish the birdseed things? I don't remember you helping.”
Amelia shrugged one shoulder and grinned at me, digging her fork into her scrambled eggs. “I helped organize the ribbons,” she offered before scooping eggs into her mouth.
Amelia's irrepressible sense of mischief was one of the many things I loved about working for her. She really didn't need a nurse, and by taking this job, I knew I was letting my skills atrophy. The little real nursing I did was isolated to monitoring her blood sugar, her blood pressure, and overseeing her diet.
But I was happy here, and I couldn't deny Aiden paid me well, especially considering room and board were included in the deal. When I decided to leave Winters House, I’d have more than enough saved to cover any retraining I needed.
I got the second cup of coffee Amelia had recommended and waited for her to finish her breakfast. She tried to talk me into letting her have a muffin, I reminded her muffins were just cake with no frosting, she glared at me, and I laughed.
We went through some version of the same conversation every morning, and it always made me smile.
I headed for the living room, where I’d left my box of materials for Charlie's birdseed favors. Amelia didn't follow me in. Continuing down the hall, she said over her shoulder, “I want the library today. The living room looks cold.”
It wasn't cold, and it had a fireplace, but I knew what she meant. The living room was a bright, light-filled space, with high ceilings, pale walls and tall windows. In contrast, the library was paneled in dark wood, with heavy curtains and a bigger fireplace. The couch and armchairs all had blankets folded over the arms.
The living room was formal. Every room in Winters House was formal, but the living room always made me feel like I should change into a cocktail dress. The library invited me to stay, to curl up with a book and settle in.
It had been one of my favorite rooms in the heat of summer, the dark paneling and thick drapes giving off the feel of a cave, cool and dry—so unlike the heavy humidity that blanketed Atlanta that time of year.
I'd expected to find the room too cold once winter came, but it was the opposite. The dark paneling and thick drapes made it cozy, and the bigger fire threw off warmth that turned the room into a haven.
I smiled to myself as I walked through the door, holding the big box in my arms, and stopped short at the sight of Gage occupying one of the oversize armchairs, working on a laptop, a stack of papers and a mug on the side table to his left.
“Oh,” I said, stupidly. “We're interrupting. We can go somewhere else.”
“Nonsense,” said Amelia, settling in on the end of the couch closest to the fireplace, exactly where I'd sat the night before. “We won't bother Gage.”
A flush settled into my cheeks, and I looked at Gage. He was watching Amelia, a small smile playing over his lips. At the sight of that smile, my cheeks warmed another degree.
“You won't bother me,” Gage said.
I walked past him, not quite meeting his eyes, and said under my breath, “Liar.”
He smiled but said nothing. I sat down in the middle of the couch, setting my box beside me on the opposite end from Amelia, where Gage had been sprawled out the night before. This put me right next to Amelia, and about as far as I could get from Gage unless I somehow talked Amelia into giving up her spot close to the fire.
I wasn't ready to be around him yet. Everything had changed between us the night before. Not just physically, though that would've been enough. He’d had his fingers inside me. I remembered the way I’d straddled his body, pushed myself back on those fingers and ridden his hand to orgasm.
My cheeks burned at the memory. I'd never done anything like that before. I'd felt lush and eager. Open. Willing to do anything if it meant he’d keep touching me.
Sitting there in the library beside Amelia, carefully pouring birdseed into squares of white tulle and securing them with pretty ribbons, wearing my neatly pressed camp shirt, jeans, and white Converse sneakers, I was my normal, buttoned-up self.
Why did my normal, buttoned-up self feel like a pair of shoes that were too small? There was safety in being proper and well behaved. At least, I wanted to think there was. Having orgasms with Gage on the couch was not safe. It was definitely not proper and well behaved.
I was not going to think about it while I was sitting next to Amelia. I tried to change my train of thought, suddenly worried that Amelia was secretly psychic and would figure out what was going through my head. If she looked closely, she’d see the flush in my cheeks.
I needed to get myself together and forget that Gage was sitting on the other side of the room. He appeared to be ignoring us, focused on whatever he was doing on the laptop. Every once in a while he would pick up some of the papers of the stack beside him and shuffle through them, find something he was looking for, nod to himself and return the papers to the end table. I lost myself in wondering what he was working on, jumping a little when Amelia interrupted my thoughts.
“Tear off a piece of paper from this. About an inch square,” Amelia said, handing me a notepad.
I tied off the ribbon on my bundled birdseed and set it aside in the box with the others before taking the notepad and doing as she asked. I tried to return both the pad and the square of paper, but she plucked the paper from my fingers and gestured for me to keep the pad.
“That's perfect, thank you,” she said. I looked at her lap to see a single drinking straw balanced on her knees. Amelia’s blue eyes sparkled as she crushed the square of paper into a ball, popped it into her mouth to get it wet, and then picked up the straw.
Oh, no.
Chapter Fourteen
Sophie
“Amelia Winters, you put that down right now,” I hissed.
“Put what down?” she asked, sounding so innocent I almost wanted to believe her despite the straw she held in her hand and the spitball she was carefully plugging into one end.
“What? Are you in second grade? This is a low point, even for you,” I said, exasperated. What was I supposed to do with a seventy-eight-year-old woman who thought spitballs were funny?
“You've vetoed everything I've come up with in the past week,” Amelia said, annoyed. She turned the straw in her fingers making sure the spitball filled the end, not leaving any gaps for air to escape.
“You know why I vetoed them,” I whispered. I didn't want Gage to hear our conversation since he'd been the reason I shot down Amelia's pranks. Remembering what he'd said the night we met, I refused to let her tape an airhorn to Aiden's desk chair. Ditto for attaching one to the back of the door. Random air horns going off in the house were the last thing Gage needed.
I'd also refused to sprinkle sprout seeds in Aiden's keyboard, on the grounds it would likely get me fired, and had said I absolutely would not put a square of bullion in Mrs. W’s shower head so she'd end up bathing in chicken soup. That was just mean. And gross.
“You're no fun,” Amelia said, lifting the straw.
“I know,” I said. I wasn't fun. I'd never been the fun type. If you wanted someone to help you with your homework or show up on time to get you at the airport, that was me. I was reliable and loyal, and honest, and I worked hard. But I'd never been particularly fun.
I wasn't sure I knew how to be fun. As that depressing thought drifted through my mind, Amelia put the straw to her mouth and blew. Her spitball struck directly between my eyes. Of course, Amelia would have excellent aim with spitballs.
The spitball fell to my lap where I retrieved it and dropped it on the coffee table. I didn't bother to pretend to be annoyed. I wasn't mad; I was resigned. Anyway, I adored Amelia, spitballs and all.
“If you apologize for that, I'll tear more pieces of paper for you. But only if you promise not to aim them at me.”
“Deal. And I'm sorry,” Amelia said, sounding genuinely contrite. I knew her too well.
“No you're not, but I appreciate the effort.”
I set aside my birdseed project and quickly tore a sheet of notepaper into a stack of one-inch squares. Handing them to Amelia, I scooted toward the other end of the couch, picking up my box of birdseed supplies and placing it between us.
When she got caught, I wanted plausible deniability.
Of all the things Amelia had proposed in the last week, spitballs were the most harmless. If I didn’t let her get this out of her system, she’d stop asking for my help, and then who knew what she’d get up to? I couldn’t forget the story I’d heard about a prank involving a candle, a set of curtains, and a fire in the living room.
I was just going to sit on the other side of the couch, work on my wedding project, and pretend I didn't see anything else in the room.
I had to stifle a giggle when a spitball hit Gage's shoulder, and he looked up, his gaze flicking around the room to spot whatever had interrupted his focus. Amelia was the picture of innocence, pretending to read a magazine, using the pages to hide her straw and squares of paper.
Watching her from the corner of my eye, I had to admire her methods. Amelia was sneaky. If I hadn’t already known what she was doing, I never would've noticed her hand going so often to her mouth and would've thought she was straightening her glasses, or tucking her hair behind her ear.
She was a master of deception, which was a little scary. But I already knew that. After six months she was still finding new places in her room to hide cookies.
