CHAPTER FIVE

When the House was Empty

Even though Christian had told me not to waste my energy thinking about who could have planted the surveillance equipment, I was alone in a house with nothing particular to do or think about. I agreed with Christian that it didn’t seem like anyone on his payroll was likely to have planted the bugs. Besides, if any of them had wanted to spy on us, it would have been more effective to simply hang around with their ears open. By that logic, the cameras were more likely to be placed by someone who only visited the house occasionally.

Mable had taken to cooking my food at her house and bringing it over on a covered plate. She was so in and out, she seemed like the most likely person to be planting bugs, except I didn’t find any new bugs after that first night I looked alone.

Mrs. MacGavin came to the house every day to tidy up. She was at the house more than made sense. It wasn’t like I was a snail that tracked a trail of slime wherever I went, but to hear her tell it—I was the worst snail she’d ever met. I got a glass of milk in the morning, took it with me to the library, used a coaster, drank the rest of it, went to the bathroom, came back and she had snapped up my cup like I was a total burden. Well, it was an awfully good thing she was around to clean up after me. She also changed my sheets every day. They didn’t even do that at posh hotels. She held out a trash can for me two bites before I finished my candy bar. Sometimes she even waited for me to finish eating, hovering behind me like she was the next person in line at the airport. It was unnerving.

If someone wanted to spy on me, why bother setting up equipment? Just send in Mrs. MacGavin and tell her to clean up after me. She'd have a thorough report by the end of the day.

Charles stuck his tongue out at me when our paths crossed. I pretended I hadn’t seen him. He gave me the creeps. I had made absolutely no effort to try to clear up the misunderstanding. I had told Christian I would fix it, but I couldn’t remember clearly what I had said to Trinity, and I worried I wouldn’t be able to untangle the lies. If I just kept my head down long enough, he would forget exactly what happened.

The one person I never suspected was Brandon. He never came in the house and something about finicky electrical equipment just didn't seem like part of his personality. He was more of a shovel and pitchfork kind of man. His raw masculinity made it seem like no part of him ever spied on teenage girls. With very little effort, he could have been a model or an actor and seduced any woman he desired. He had to be a gardener because he liked it. It seemed unthinkable that he was interested in anything that wasn't growing under his care. He was pleasant in an unconcerned, mellow way. He was not a suspect.

“You must love being a gardener,” I exclaimed, watching him work.

“It’s the only job in the world that’s worth doing… at least for me,” he drawled.

“It’s great you have something you love to do.”

He stopped and looked at me. “You must have something you love too?”

I shrugged. “I almost died of heart disease, and let me tell you, what’s important in life gets very narrow when you’re about to die.”

His eyes traveled to my neckline, where a portion of my surgery scars showed. It had been so long since someone noticed them with any concern that I opened the flap of my shirt further, so he could see a bit more.

“Does your heart bother you anymore?”

“No. It hasn’t for years.”

He smiled broadly. “Your family must be very relieved you are healed.”

“I suppose they are, but they’re not fun. My father’s people only think about money. I won’t be a mentionable member of our family unless I have a house the size of a hospital, an apartment in New York, and a cabin on the Canadian Shield.”

Brandon regarded me gravely during my speech, but he did not interrupt, so I went on.

“I don’t hate them, but nor do I want anything to do with them. I’m not going to give them what they want, which is a connection. They want to be connected to powerful people, so if I decide to live like a hermit on the edge of a very cold beach in Iceland, I’ll be a failure to them. I have no value, except what I can give them. I don’t have complicated needs by myself,” I finished.

“I bet you don’t,” Brandon said so softly that I wasn’t sure if I heard him right.

“What did you just say?”

“Nothing,” he said as he scratched his nose.

I looked at him twice, but it didn’t seem like he was making a joke, so I continued. “Anyway, I’m distancing myself from them, so that one day, they’ll forget I ever was.”

“Problem solved,” he said, and his tone struck me as unusual. Wasn’t the sweet-natured gardener supposed to tell me to get along with my family and be sure to make them a part of my life? In those two words, and the way he said them, he left me with the feeling that he thought I was better off without them. His clear blue eyes were free from maliciousness. It was a very different message than the one Christian gave me.

“Do you have a family?” I suddenly asked, wondering if he’d had a hard time with them, which might be the reason for his advice.

Brandon dropped to his knees in front of his crumbling rock wall. “I never think about them. I chose something else.”

He patted my head with his gloved hand, leaving specks of dirt in my curls, before he took the handles of his wheelbarrow in both hands and lifted all those heavy rocks like they were light.

With Brandon gone, I was bored and Charles was in the garden. I thought some friendliness might go a long way in helping him forget anything ever happened.

He was watering the roses when I approached him. I sat down on one of the stone walls that wasn’t crumbling and started, “Hey Charles, do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”

He glanced at me. “Only a couple.”

“What’s your birthday?”

“December second.”

He was nineteen, so to save my questions, I did the math in my head and figured out his birth year.

“You said before that you’ve never been to Canada?”

“I haven’t been.”

“Do you have a passport?”

“No.”

“Have you ever tried to get one?”

“No.” He was getting huffy now.

My brain was whirring. Why had Christian had all the stuff with him to turn him into Charles Lewis? At the airport, I saw Christian had a British passport with Charles’ information. Had that thing been government-issued, or faked? Christian had also said his hotel room was in Charles’ name. Why? What was special about him that Christian was impersonating him?

“What’s your family like? Are they in business?” My questions were risky because I didn’t like it when I was quizzed about my family.

He set down his hose and gave me a sideways glance. “Why are you suddenly so interested?”

“I just was wondering if you’re playing at being a gardener when actually, you’re something more,” I said, hoping he would think I was being the snotty rich girl I was and interviewing him to see if he was good enough for me. I hoped it was a shortcut in getting him to spill his secrets.

“I don’t have much family,” he said slowly. “Brandon was a friend of my mum’s.”

“Okay...” I said slowly, thinking that had not been what I had been hoping for.

He looked like he wanted to say more, but couldn’t. Then I realized that what he had just admitted to was a lie. What he was saying was a rehearsed excuse designed to give a plausible explanation. He’d been told to say that, and he was saying it.

“Okay. Next question—”

He interrupted. “I don’t know if I want to answer any more questions.”

“It won’t take long.”

“It’s not the length of the questions,” he rebutted. “It’s the content. Why are you asking me about my passport? Shouldn’t you be asking me questions like, what’s your favorite film? What kind of music do you listen to? What are you doing Saturday night? Stuff like that?”

I paused. I did not want to ask him out on a date. I leaned back on my elbows. “Okay. Do I need to ask you about your favorite film? Do you need me to ask you a collection of random questions to hide the question I really want an answer to?”

He glared at me. “Maybe you do.”

I smiled. “Or maybe I could bribe you by telling you things about me? What do you want to know?”

“Do you want to date me?” he asked without flinching.

“No.”

“No?” he gasped in surprise. “After all the flirting you’ve done?”

My gaze flicked around nervously. “I haven’t been flirting with you intentionally.”

“You’ve been making eyes at me,” Charles insisted.

Just like when I was with Christian, I tried to make myself look innocent by crossing my ankles. “I don’t know much about dating,” I admitted.

“Really?”

“I'm only seventeen.”

His expression read that he thought he was the man-of-the-hour since I'd never dated before. “Then ask your questions. I have this place I want to take you—”

“I don’t want to leave the house. Besides, I only have one more question for you. Do you know Damen Cross?”

“I hate you,” he said shortly as he turned on his heel and left me there.

I watched him go and wondered what had made him so angry. Damen Cross was one of Christian’s aliases. Sometimes I did Google searches on him just to see his face. Damen was gorgeous beyond understanding. There were three pictures I liked the best. The first one was of him on the red carpet at a movie premiere with a famous actress. The second one was supposed to be a casual picture of him on a pier by a lake, but it came off as a glamor shot. It was for a financial magazine about big money makers in investment banking. The last one was of him cutting the ribbon at the grand opening of a bank.

He had dark wavy hair and penetrating brown eyes. His jaw bone was the same, the eye shape was the same, but his eyebrows were bushier, and his chin looked rounder than that of the Christian I knew. Like it or not—it was definitely him—adding extra pieces or perhaps taking them away. It had never occurred to me that he might be wearing foam on his face when he played Christian, but if he didn’t, why had he been forced to escort me back to my school made up like Charles Lewis?

Brandon came around the corner. His wheelbarrow was empty. “What bee got in his bonnet?” he asked, pointing his chin in Charles’ direction.

“I asked him if he knew Damen Cross and he flipped out and walked away.”

Brandon smiled and his kind eyes turned up at the corners. He took off his work gloves, smacked the dust from them and threw them in the wheelbarrow. “I have no idea.”

I growled and began biting my thumb.

“But…” he said tantalizingly, “if I were to venture a guess, I would say that he wouldn’t like to be asked about another man. He fancies you, so it might make him jealous.”

“But this guy is a millionaire and many years older than me, so why would he be a threat?” I whined.

“You’re not the only person who’s here for the summer with no friends and no one to talk to,” Brandon reminded me.

“I have people to talk to.”

“Mable says you don’t talk to her. Hilary says you don’t talk to her. Apparently, you talk to me and the big man and that’s it. Aren’t you lonely? Isn’t Charles better than no one?”

I sat cross-legged in the well-trimmed grass. “I don’t want to date Charles. The idea is oppressive.”

“Then why did ye tell your friend ye were winching him outside your school?”

“I was what?” I cried in misguided outrage.

“Kissing him. Kissing him,” Brandon amended.

“Oh...” I said, cooling. “Argh! Seriously, this is a misunderstanding that is not my fault. You’re just as bad as Christian. I think half the reason he sent me here for the summer was to set me up with Charles, but I don’t want to be set up.”

“I am not suggesting to ye that you date him,” Brandon said. “I just thought there wouldn’t be much harm in befriending him.”

“Do you think he could befriend me? I have never been able to be ‘just friends’ with a man I liked. Why would he be able to just be friends with me if he likes me so much?”

Brandon didn’t reply but instead smiled at me as if he understood my little ploy to insert myself into Christian’s life. The thing that was the most charming about it was that his expression did not smack of disapproval or ridicule. Unless I was mistaken, it seemed like he was rooting for me.

I looked at the gardener. “You know, you’re really easy to talk to.”

“Am I?” Brandon said. Even those two words were inviting.

“Yeah. I feel like I could tell you anything.”

But when I admitted to feeling that way, something in his countenance fell. Something in his eyes barred me from telling him anything more. He was warning me with the set of his lips and the shards in his eyes that he and I were not to become close. I might have suspected him as the person who was bugging the house, except that he was such an easy confidant for me that he couldn’t have been. I would have told him anything, but he was begging me not to.

***

It was late. Christian was supposed to be back from London. I knew he wasn’t working his supposed job as a communications director, and I was very curious about what he did with his weekday.

I didn’t hear him come in, but I heard him splash in the pool. As quietly as I could, I hurried out of bed and down the stairs. I was half-way through the dining room when I heard voices. The door between the dining room and the conservatory was open and I could hear Brandon’s voice. A few steps closer and I could make out what they were saying. Christian was in the pool and Brandon squatted on the deck, bending low to speak to him.

“No!” Christian exclaimed, failing at keeping his voice down.

Brandon’s Scottish accent faded completely as he said clearly, “You think you can make it not true by denying it? Have you looked at her? Did you look at her all those years ago? That’s not baby fat coming off her cheeks.”

Through the crack in the door, I watched Christian stand up and thump the water with his palm angrily. The splash did not hit Brandon. “I need more proof.”

“You need to tell her the truth and get her away from here,” Brandon insisted.

“And if you’re wrong? What then? What will happen then? What if I tell her what you’ve told me and you’re wrong?”

“I am not wrong!” Brandon said bitingly.

Christian shook his head. “This is too big. If you’re wrong and I have to repent and turn her loose, she won’t be able to keep the secret. No one can keep the secret and I’ll have a whole new group of devils biting at my heels.”

“Not with her,” Brandon maintained steadily. “I am not wrong and you have nothing to fear from her. She’ll be able to keep the secret.”

“It won’t be up to her,” Christian retorted, getting more heated and more contradictory.

“Someone will put her and me together in an equation, they’ll think she knows something, and suddenly she’ll go missing. You know what will happen then?”

Brandon looked away. “You don’t have to keep rubbing it in my face that I don’t have as much experience with these things. I can imagine all sorts of grizzly situations if you ask me to.”

“She deserves to have another chance at the life she has. If you’re right, waiting a few years won’t change anything,” Christian said, using the reasonable voice he sometimes used with me.

“Yes, but can you wait?”

Christian scoffed. “Why wouldn’t I be able to wait?”

Brandon looked at him meaningfully.

“We don’t talk about that. I don’t even think about that.”

Brandon chuckled. “You know what might be the most beautiful thing in the world? A beautiful woman who is not an object. She never thinks of herself as an object. She knows she is actually the only thing worth living for, worth dying for, and yet she’s not a trophy. She’s an actual force for change, like a queen on a chess board. If you’re the king, your hands are tied, but she’s going to wage war for you.”

Christian stared at him with his lips parted in disbelief. “What nonsense are you talking about?”

“Your girl. Even if you dress her like she’s a princess with a petal skirt, eventually she is going to get blood on her face and you will think you’ve never seen a woman so finely attired.”

Christian frowned. “You don’t know that.”

“I do know that. Mark my words. I warned you how this was going to unravel. Send her back to Canada at the end of the summer if you must, but you’re fighting against this unnecessarily. She’s ready. You’re the one who’s not ready.”

Christian turned toward me in the water so his chest was visible, and I felt the familiar tightening of my chest as he did so. He lifted himself effortlessly out of the water and reached for his towel. He dried his face and wrapped the towel around his neck as he stood to face Brandon. He was taller and looked down on him.

“What did she say to you that supports that conclusion?” Christian asked.

“It’s not what you think. She doesn’t understand what’s going on yet. She’s still asking questions about Damen Cross.” He left the conservatory through the door that led outside into the summer night, and Christian followed him.

I sank against the wall. The only thing that was clear to me was that I needed to get out of the dining room and upstairs to my room before anyone found me. What they said needed dissecting, but not just then. I scurried down the hall and up the stairs.