“I’ll snag you a slice with the little violets. They taste like blueberry,” he told me, already looking forward to his food.
I wanted some too.
But I watched him walk away, then go inside, then I hauled ass down the side of the house, into my car, and drove away.
I regretted it with every single rotation of my tires.
But I knew it was for the best.
The last time I dated an outlaw biker, I had to leave my fucking city to get away from him, his club, the nasty-ass old ladies, and everything to do with their world.
I couldn’t afford to do that again.
Literally.
But also just in general.
I potentially had something really good going in Navesink Bank. I couldn’t ruin it.
No matter how much I wanted to speed back to that clubhouse and jump that man.
It just couldn’t happen.
Case closed.
CHAPTER SIX
Theo
“Theodora,” a voice called, making me sigh hard since I was out of earshot.
He’d called through the intercom. The system ran through literally every room of the mansion. You could be sitting on the can and hear him call you.
Smart for people who needed acute care. But that wasn’t the case. At least not yet. And it was invasive.
Maybe I was just surly about it because I’d been sneaking a bagel that was left in a glass cake plate on the counter. And him calling me made me feel very much ‘caught in the act,’ since no one had told me I could have a damn bagel. Despite there being seven of them and only one person in the house to eat them. And they were going to be hard and stale by the next day.
So much waste.
That was what I learned about this estate in particular, which led me to think many of them were like that.
Perfectly good food was thrown away. Water for the sprinklers ran endlessly through the night. The whole grounds was lit up at night when it was completely unnecessary. Not to mention it made me feel like I was a teenager sneaking around the grounds to get to my little guest house where I was staying.
Swallowing back my mouthful of food, I called out, “I’m coming! One second.”
I didn’t even want to know how he knew I was already in the house, since I’d come in the back door and went right to the bagels.
He probably had cameras everywhere.
Hell, he probably knew about the bagel theft.
Oh well.
I wasn’t going to beat myself up about it. It was the first thing I’d had that wasn’t in my rotation of ramen and banana peanut butter wraps since that party at the clubhouse.
Ugh, no.
I needed to not be thinking about that.
It had been three days, going on four now. I’d worked all those nights. If Dezi had wanted to find me, he could have.
So the fact that he didn’t told me all I needed to know. He’d just fixated on me temporarily. But found me easily replaceable by another girl with legs that spread just a little more easily.
Guys like him, they never wanted anything serious.
And, despite my best efforts, some part of me wanted more than a fuck, or something casual.
Maybe I was just getting too old for all of that.
Maybe this new chapter in my life was making me think about shit like the future and plans, rather than just surviving and trying to find a good time when I could.
Speaking of that new chapter…
It was still so surreal walking through the mansion, despite doing so every day since I came to Navesink Bank.
It seemed to go on endlessly, a world of white and black marble tile, white walls, dark wood furniture, and art on the walls that probably cost more than I had ever paid in rent for my entire adult life.
Depending on which way you left it, the kitchen spilled into the massive dining room with ceilings so high I was sure they needed specialized ladders to get to the top to change out the bulbs in the chandelier. It was a space dominated by a gleaming wood table and no less than twelve chairs, though the table itself could fit sixteen “quite comfortably” if necessary. Or so I was told.
I opted to head out the side of the very white kitchen, going into a hall that led out below the butterfly staircase that led to the second floor.
I wondered sometimes if the cleaning ladies actually cleaned every single one of the rungs on the stairs and the overlook above. There had to be hundreds of them.
What ass-breaking work.
The foyer was an airy space with a gleaming chandelier and a round table right in the center of it that served no purpose whatsoever but to hold a vase full of endlessly fresh flowers.
I still didn’t know all the inner workings of the estate, but I did know that a florist came by every three days to change out all the vases of flowers.