Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 135300 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 677(@200wpm)___ 541(@250wpm)___ 451(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135300 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 677(@200wpm)___ 541(@250wpm)___ 451(@300wpm)
Before I can grill her, she’s moving.
“You know what, screw it,” she mutters, brushing past me and stalking to the back door where apparently she’s dumped a collection of her stuff. There’s an oversized rollaway parked next to a green leather bag resting on a chair, and she starts rifling through it.
That’s probably designer, too.
I don’t have a problem with luxury goods, even if Daria killed the shine.
Then again, Daria wouldn’t be here with a dust-covered ass and a bare face, moving like she doesn’t give a shit about how she looks.
That’s more appealing than my ex-wife’s carefully contrived appearances and public freakouts whenever she lost a single fake eyelash.
The supposed Blackthorn woman retrieves a small wallet from her purse and stalks back to me, yanking out a card and handing it to me.
“My license,” she announces. “Happy now?”
Happy isn’t the right word for this fuckery, but yes. A quick scan tells me she wasn’t lying about her name.
Margot Blackthorn.
The picture matches, too—and she’s somehow just as damnably pretty in that awful ID photo as she is in the flesh.
Just a few years younger.
Rounder face, the same sultry hooded eyes she has now, but without the same tiredness. I wonder if the past few years have been hard.
According to the license, I wasn’t far off with her age.
She’s only twenty-five.
Still not a reason to roll out the sympathy train.
“Margot,” I say, looking back at her like I’m a bouncer checking her ID.
“Awesome. You can read,” she says impatiently. “So do you believe me now?”
My jaw clenches.
Unless this is an excellent fake, I have no grounds not to believe her. And if she’s a Blackthorn, then chances are she really does own the place.
Which means—
Nothing fucking good.
I scratch my head, processing.
I’m stumped.
Mrs. Griffith assured me this place was vacant since it needed a little ‘fixin’’ in her words. Even so, it was still pricey for a vacation rental at the edge of the offseason.
I blamed that on its size and location, just steps from an awesome lake, the whole reason we’re here.
“Satisfied?” she clips again.
“Yeah,” I say. She looks ready to slash my throat with the license I’ve just passed back to her.
“Uh-huh.” She shrugs and returns her wallet to her bag. “So, now it’s my turn. Why are you here?” she asks over her shoulder.
“We have a reservation,” I say.
She turns, frowning until her pretty pink lips turn down.
It’s a normal expression I shouldn’t notice so much, but dammit, I do.
The lushness of her lips, the way they make her face more sensual than sharp, balancing out the point of her nose and slight point of her chin.
Blackthorn or not, she rocks supermodel good looks.
Not at all the type of woman I expected to find in this sorry, beat-up house.
“You’re renting it?” she clarifies, worry lining her face.
“From Mrs. Griffith, yeah. That was the plan.”
“I mean… in this state?” She coughs.
“Obviously.” My voice is dry. “I didn’t know you were coming or I’d have tidied up. Mrs. Griffith said the place was all good on the inside.”
She looks around again and winces at the dated wallpaper and a few long scuff marks on the wooden floor.
Possibly left by Leonidas himself. Or someone moving furniture around after his death, maybe.
Who knows.
Either way, this place isn’t rental-ready. Mrs. Griffith’s impression was a brutal understatement.
But we booked it. I have the emails to prove it.
“Oh. Well, I haven’t spoken to Mrs. Griffith since right after the funeral. Gramps’ lawyer was handling the rest,” Margot says slowly, like she’s piecing everything back together in her head. “I didn’t realize—I just assumed you knew the lake house was only being rented as a temporary thing. Had I known the house was this rough, we would’ve vetoed it.”
Yeah, shit.
“That makes two of us,” I grumble.
Mrs. Griffith didn’t say anything about temporary when I spoke with her last month. Or any of the times since.
Hell, I just picked up the keys when we rolled into town and no one said a damn word.
Fuck this day.
“Regardless, I paid good money for this place. I’m not looking to walk away just yet.”
“You did?” She frowns as she looks around again.
There’s no denying the ‘rough’ condition here after my daughter could’ve snapped her neck. I wouldn’t have paid so much for it if it hadn’t been the only thing available in the area.
Sully Bay stays busy deep into September with the spillover from the Bar Harbor crowd and Acadia leaf-peepers not far away. That’s what I found out when I went looking for the perfect fall getaway in driving distance.
Not Vermont with its bad memories in the wake of the divorce.
I thought Maine would be safer for the kids, and for me.
I pinch my nose, trying to keep my cool even though we drove up from New York this morning and I’m exhausted.