Page 6 of A Hidden Past

“Autumn Downs? For a place with exactly zero downs? No, I can’t say I’m a fan.”

“Exactly!” I say. “Downs are hills. There’s not a single hill here.”

“Astute observation, Nathan.”

I can’t tell if she’s teasing me or not.

“Of course,” she says. “There aren’t any heights around here either. So maybe I’m just a hypocrite.”

She looks me up and down one more time. I finish my lemonade and manage a smile. "Well, thank you for the lemonade, Miss Ch—Vivian. I um… I should get to the Kensington."

“Oh yes. We wouldn’t want to keep them waiting.”

“Right. Um, thank you.”

I start for the door, then realize that I’ve left my equipment in the back. I head out to get it, trying to avoid Vivian’s amused gaze. When I head back through the house, equipment in tow, she says, “I hope to see more of you, Nathan.”

“I hope to see more of you too,” I say before I can stop myself.

I manage to get to the van and I even manage to get inside of it and pull out of her driveway before I release the breath I’m holding.

“Holy shit,” I whisper. “God, what a babe.”

Despite that undeniable fact, my last thought as I pull away from her house isn’t of how well she filled out that two-piece but the odd thing she said to me about Autumn Downs.

The deception here is refreshingly honest.

Then, when I told her I wasn’t sure what she meant, You will be.

CHAPTER THREE

If Vivian Chase was nothing like what I expected, the Kensingtons are even stranger. Julian Kensington wears a veneer of politeness that carefully hides an even more carefully constructed persona of superiority. He greets me with a friendly smile, but his eyes are cold and hard as diamonds.

“It’s good to see you, Nate. I’ll have Clara show you to the pool.”

And that is the extent of our conversation.

Clara Kensington is beautiful but in a more stereotypical California bleach blonde way. Her plastic surgery isn’t terrible, but she hasn’t worn it well. Her face and body carry the telltale signs of someone who got hooked on drugs and alcohol too early and could never quite unhook herself. I’m all too familiar with those signs.

“Good afternoon, darling!” she says in the exquisitely manicured voice of a socialite. “It’s wonderful to see you!”

She offers me her hand, palm down, wrist limp, as though she expects me to kiss it. Instead, I shake it professionally, then release it. Her eyes widen and her lips tense slightly. Why she would care enough to be offended is beyond me, but I really don’t care.

“Okay,” I say. “If you take me to your pool, I can get started. It’s still early, so barring something unforeseen, I should have things wrapped up before dark.”

“Oh, I do hope so,” Clara says. “We’re expecting company tonight, and I’d love for them to be able to use the pool. It’s going to be a lovely evening.”

“Well, we do recommend that you wait twenty-four hours for the treatment to cycle,” I tell her.

She blinks, utterly stunned that I would ever suggest that she can’t have whatever she desires. “Oh. Well, that’s truly unfortunate. I was expecting the pool would be available for use once you were finished.”

“Jesus, Clara, you can wait one fucking day.”

Julian’s sudden vehemence shocks me. He looks at his wife with naked disdain. I can’t say I got a good first impression of the woman myself, but for God’s sake, that’s his wife!

Then again, I’m not a person. I’m just the pool cleaner. It doesn’t matter if he insults her in front of me.

She looks at him with a mixture of contempt, self-loathing, hate and despair that I’ve seen on the faces of every single wife here. In fact, the only happy woman I’ve met so far is Vivian, and she’s stopped being a wife.

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