“Shall I put Dani’s bag in the green room?” I asked. It was where we normally put the guests on the rare occasions we had them.
“Unless she’s going to stay with you, that would be the right place,” Maribelle said with a wink and a smile. Dani flushed a color that rarely graced her cheeks. A color I remembered on them for a different reason while we’d been moving together, skin to skin.
“No. It’s not… We’re not?”
“I’m her security detail,” I interrupted so Dani wouldn’t have to continue to stutter out an explanation.
Maribelle’s smile only widened, mischievous, like she was once again getting me to hide Carson’s cigars from him. “Well, you do know how that movie,The Bodyguard, turned out, right?
I couldn’t help the chuckle that ripped out of me. Only Maribelle would suggest such a thing.
“I’m going to put the bags away, but I believe Dani might need some of your biscuits.”
I headed up the stairs before either woman could reply. I headed up the stairs, wondering if this spontaneous decision was going to be yet another thing I’d regret in my time with Dani. Would I be able to walk away from it a whole man, or would I be in pieces? As if an IED had exploded in front of me again, this time fracturing my insides as well as the burnt muscle I used to call a heart.
Dani
SWEETER PLACE
“Is there a place where I can hide away?
Red lips, French-kiss my worries all away,
There must be a sweeter place.”
Performed by Selena Gomez w/ Kid Cudi
Written by Kirkpatrick / Love Seguro Mescudi / Gomez / Emenike
Nash left me in the entrywayashe jogged up the stairs. I was astonished by all of it. The huge estate. The white-haired woman who hugged him with a fondness you could see etched around her. The antiques, paintings, sculptures, and tapestries scattered about which belonged in a museum. Our house in Wilmington had its fair share, but this place reeked of a time our country was still seeking forgiveness for.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected when Nash had said he was bringing me to his childhood home. Maybe a house in the suburbs. Maybe a craftsman home with a porch swing on a tree-lined street. But I certainly hadn’t expected for him to drive up to an eighteenth-century manor house, well-managed and well-kept enough to breathe wealth. A wealth Nash himself did not breathe.
As my disbelief wore off, my curiosity grew.
I followed Maribelle down the hallway toward the back of the house and into the kitchen. There was nothing left of its origins except a brick oven where an old fireplace had likely once stood. Instead, the kitchen was all stainless steel, marble, and deep woods, full of modern conveniences but presented in a way that echoed the paneling and the staircase we’d left behind.
Maribelle waved me toward a small, round table in an alcove with a cushioned window seat. A vase of gorgeous fresh flowers rested on it. When I sat down, the scent of lemon and honey wafted over me again. The same scent had filled the car as we’d approached the house.
“Please don’t worry about getting anything for me,” I told her as she bustled around in the kitchen. “I’m not even sure I’d be able to hold it down.”
“Don’t be silly. Nash knows I always have biscuits. It would be a sin not to have them in my kitchen.”
She brought over a tray with a basket of them so large and fluffy they screamed homemade. Resting on the engraved, silver tray were small jars of honey and jams with the labels stating “Wellsley Place” just like the gates.
“You make your own jams?” I asked.
Maribelle sat opposite me. “Not me personally, but the plant does.”
I was having a hard time keeping up.
“What has he told you about the farm?” she asked.
I shook my head, grabbing one of the biscuits and placing it on a vintage, blue-and-white china plate she’d given me. As I broke the biscuit apart, I answered, “Nothing. Literally nothing. I didn’t even know he had a family until yesterday.”
She didn’t look bowled over by this revelation, which kind of clenched my heart. She seemed to care for him. She had obviously been a part of his life for a while, and yet, he’d never once talked to anyone I knew about her. About any of it. What did that say about him? About his childhood? Had he grown up in this gorgeous setting but left with scars he didn’t want to remember?
“I’d like to say I’m surprised, but I’m not,” she said, pouring two glasses of sweet tea without even bothering to ask if I wanted one. I wasn’t sure I’d ever want tea again after yesterday, but when I took a tentative sip, I had to sigh with delight. It was the best tea I’d ever tasted, sweetened with honey and a hint of molasses or brown sugar.
