Page 1 of Provoked

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I’m surrounded by a thousand little reminders that Ingrid wants nothing to do with me. The slim lavender envelope is out of place in my large tanned hand. It still smells faintly of her favorite floral scent. It should be exchanged at a ladies’ luncheon or maybe a birthday party full of giggling teenage girls. But I can’t seem to stop reflexively tapping it against my other palm. I haven’t opened it — I already know the basics of what it contains. I’ve fucked up. Again.

I’m very skilled at that — fucking things up, pretty much everything in my life except work. Which is probably why I spend most of my time there instead of digging myself deeper into holes with the people around me. God only knows why my old college friend Pers entrusted his teenage daughter to me all those years ago. The legal stuff, sure, but a grieving girl? “Idiot,” I call softly to absolutely no one, but intending it for Pers’ non-existent ghost.

More than once, I hoped his spiritwould appear with a word of advice as to how to handle Ingrid, but no. I, the perennial grumpy bachelor, was stuck trying to steer a naïve girl through life, or at least safely into adulthood. She’s alive and not on drugs as far as I know, and that’s about as much as I can take any credit for.

Ingrid won’t speak to me. Not in person or over the phone. She says I yell too much, hence the letter. The one I still haven’t opened. I think it’s been at least three years since she and I had an actual conversation. And that too, was a fight about a topic that seemed important at the time but which I’ve long since forgotten. No doubt something to do with her personal safety, which was one of the most frequent bones of contention.

Leaning against the door frame of Ingrid’s bedroom, the one she’s strenuously avoided for the last several years, I realize it’s completely wrong for her personality. When I moved her in, two weeks after her parents’ death in the Colombian jungle, I’d had a decorator come in ahead of time. Apparently, this was the perfect room for a teenage girl. And maybe it was for the average girl, but not Ingrid. I know that now. Looking at the hot pink bedding set against pale aqua walls and the fluffy feather and crystal chandelier, she must have hated it. I can see that now, when it’s too late. Why didn’t she say anything? I would have let her change it if she’d asked.

Sighing with resignation, I enter into the room for the first time in daylight and sit on the edge of the gilded bed. The silence is deafening. I tried to give Ingrid the space and privacy she needed. Too much? Not enough? I’ll never know, but when she had nightmares that first year, there were many times when I sat on this bed in the dark, holding her against my side until she fell asleep again. She never wanted to talk about it in the bright light of day, so I let her avoid the topic. Probably another mistake to add to my list of sins. But I didn’t want to make things even worse between us. When the nightmares faded, I let it go.

Sliding my thumb under the flap, I reluctantly open the letter and pull out a folded sheet with only a few lines of feminine loopy script.

Dear Justin,

I’ve decided to make a permanent move to Montana, just outside of Yellowstone National Park. Isn’t that amazing? It’s so different from New York. I’ve enjoyed the other places I’ve explored, but this little town truly feels like home. Would you please send my things in storage to the attached address? I know that’s a bother, but then you won’t have to keep paying the storage fee and you’ll know I’m out of your hair for good. You can get on with organizing the world without worrying about me. Really, I’m all grown up now. No need to hire new bodyguards now that Fred is retiring.

You must have guessed I didn’t make a fuss this last year because I thought he deserved a cushy last assignment after all the shitty ones you’ve given him over the years. Not that he was complaining. He thinks the world of you.

Love,

Ingrid

I rub my thumb over the scented pastel paper. She’s wrong. Fred thinks I’m an ass. He told me as much when he called to tell me exactly what Ingrid relayed in her letter. And it’s notlike Fred was ever one to mince words, whether or not he was talking to the guy that signed his checks. He’d spent too much time on the Jersey streets to pretty up his language. Except this time he said something along the lines of, “Wake the fuck up and start smelling the damn coffee, asshole, before that demented girl gives up all hope!”

Pretty clear to my eyes that Ingrid doesn’t want anything to do with me. Or she wouldn’t be moving to the other side of the country and refusing to take my calls. I roll my eyes at her insistence for communicating only via postal mail. Not even email. Surely, I don’t yell at her in email? How is that even possible?

No, it’s because she’s sweet. Too sweet. This is her way of saying fuck off to a bossy old man with the most polite twist of the knife possible.

I stare around the room blindly. Her parents’ things have stayed boxed in storage for the last seven years, so it’s a simple matter of getting them onto a truck. I don’t even know what’s in there because it was all sorted and packed by the housekeeper after Pers and Anna’s deaths. Ingrid had been staying with a family friend while they were out of the country, so she never returned to the house. I doubt she even knows what was kept and what was discarded. This room doesn’t seem to have much of her personal shit, either. I don’t know if it ever did. She only lived here full time for a year and a summer before she went off to college — out of state, against my advice, I might add.

Then she found every excuse in the book to hang out with her best friend and her family in California instead of with me. I can’t really blame her, but I didn’t like the thought of her out there without any adult having only her best interests in mind. I made her come back here at least once a year so I could check up on her. It never went well, but I don’t regret it.

I slide open her nightstand drawer cautiously. There’s anold paperback romance novel and half a pack of hard candy, a few pens. Right, pretty sure I can throw the candy out, but God only knows what she thinks is valuable in this room. Not the decor, that’s for sure. I head out to the kitchen to look for a few boxes. Which I don’t find.

Kate, my housekeeper, is entirely too efficient about breaking things down and getting them relocated to the recycling carts in the basement. I finally find a suitable box in the utility cupboard holding extra soap and similar shit. I empty the contents on to one of the guest beds without a qualm. Not like it’s ever going to be used. There’s nobody close enough to me to invite. Kate will sort it out when she comes in a day or so, probably while rolling her eyes behind my back, but what else is new?

When I was a kid, growing up in a crowded three-bedroom house upstate with six kids and my parents, privacy was my ultimate fantasy. I dreamed of exactly what I have now: acres of space without another human in sight or even hearing distance. The traffic noise from the street is dulled by the dizzying heights of my Manhattan condo. Now, though, the silence is oddly ominous. Like I could die here on this spot and nobody would find me until Kate came through on her next cleaning run. My lips curl sardonically at the question of whether she’d call my family with condolences or Tony the super to help with the heavy lifting of getting my body down to the trash. The macabre humor jolts me out of my mood and I head back to the task at hand. Letting Ingrid get on with her life — without me.

There’s a firm knock on the front door, which startles me because Kate has a key and any other rare visitors are called up by the doorman first. At least whoever this is will likely be a welcome distraction from worrying about Ingrid. Or not, I comment to myself dryly when I glance at the security panel by the entry that displays the door camera. It might not be incolor, but there’s no mistaking the studied casualness of a certain redhead.

I open the door anyway, somewhat against my better judgment. “Margot, what the hell are you doing here? And how did you get past the doorman?”

She slinks by me with a tinkling laugh. “Darling, I’m still on the guest list. To leave me on for so long after we split, were you hoping I’d come back?” She smiles with predatory grace as she pats the lapel of my suit jacket possessively.

Okay, one more thing on my to-do list. “What can I do for you, Margot?” I sigh with exasperation. We’d had an amicable split, or so I’d thought, years ago, and it’s not like we had more than a mutual back-scratching relationship with benefits to start with.

She trails a single finger down the line of my lapel. “I’ve been thinking about us. How good we were together. And besides, you still owe me.”

The wine glass in my hand is empty. I frown at the distance between it and the bottle of sparkling peach wine sitting just out of reach on the coffee table. Just one more chapter and I’ll get up for a refill. I need to get dressed for my date soon, anyway. Setting the glass down on the polished hardwood floor, I sigh happily and turn the page.

The arrogant duke leaned against the entry to his ward’s bedroom. It was empty. Against his express orders, his wayward charge had run away again. This time, she’d made sure he couldn’t retrieve her easily, having hopped on a ship bound for the Americas. Or so she’d led himto believe.

He frowned angrily, tapping the missive the elderly butler had handed him only moments before against the palm of his left hand. Where was the minx, really? And why was she doing this? She had a perfectly safe home right here.

Rafael, the Duke of Greenwood, strode firmly over the threshold and yanked open the drawer of the delicate, japanned nightstand. He frowned harder. The small drawer held only a folded handkerchief and an ivory fan with a clearly broken stick. Rafe shut the drawer sharply and began pacing around the room.

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