Page 29 of Elevating Eve

Holy shit. That was new.

Jonathan thought maybe he should be panicking right now, or even planning his escape route back to the plane. But none of those feelings materialized.

Instead, a warmth spread out from his chest, making him feel like he’d just stepped into a bright beam of sunshine.

Pulling his arm free of hers, he wrapped it around her shoulders, tucking her snugly against his side. “You’ll get used to it.”

CHAPTER 10

Eve

“That’s us,” Jonathan said, pointing as they walked down the wide Arrivals sidewalk. A balding man in a rumpled suit stood in front of older model Jeep Wrangler with a hideous, acid-green paint job and a black soft top. He looked supremely bored as he stared down at his phone, scrolling listlessly.

As they got closer to the older man, Eve noticed the car’s license plate read SLIMER. At least the paint color made sense now. She suspected the tire cover on the back had a Ghostbusters logo on it, though she didn’t get a chance to check before Jonathan helped her climb into the passenger seat.

Jonathan was one surprise after another today. She never could’ve imagined him in a vehicle even remotely like this, yet he looked perfectly at home as he tipped the driver and got behind the wheel.

They drove a little more than an hour before arriving at an enormous, log-cabin style home in a clearing buried deep in the woods. Sunlight glinted off the seemingly endless windows, making it impossible to see what waited inside. Multiple chimneys towered above the green metal roof.

Ignoring her questions about what this place was, Jonathan led her up onto the front porch, between the two stone columns flanking thestairs. He unlocked the door with a key from the same ring holding the Jeep’s key fob, beckoning for her to follow him inside.

Eve trailed her fingertips along the front door as she crossed the threshold, tracing the intricate relief carving of an oak tree with large acorns hanging from its branches. “Okay, we’re here,” she said, taking in as much as she could about the house as she looked for hints. “Are you finally going to tell me where we are?”

“Look around,” Jonathan said, nudging her forward with a hand on the small of her back. “See if you can figure it out.”

He closed the door as she turned a slow circle in the large, three-story entryway, examining the horseshoe-shaped halls above, behind cast iron railings. Wooden staircases with matching banisters and worn, forest-green carpet runners led to the upper floors. A huge chandelier that seemed to be fashioned of deer antlers hung out over the open space.

“Are we at Gaston’s secret American hunting lodge?” she joked, stepping out from under the chandelier. If that thing somehow fell, she didn’t want to be impaled, thank you very much.

Jonathan snorted. “Don’t worry. I don’t use antlers inallof my decorating.”

She grinned, more than a little surprised by his response. “He knows lyrics toBeauty and the Beastsongs,” she said, holding her phone up to her mouth as if it were a tape recorder. “Will I ever fully understand this strange and mysterious creature, or will he shock me to the very end?”

“Oh, I hope it’s the second one,” he shot back, winking. “That sounds way more interesting.”

Laughing, she moved deeper into the enormous house nestled in the Rocky Mountains. At least this house fit somewhat into the image she had of him in her head, despite the antlers. Big and expensive, even if some of the rugs and furniture looked past their prime. And just as private as the Manor to boot. She had a feeling there wasn’t another human around for several miles at least.

Good thing he’s not a serial killer, she thought, chuckling to herself as she entered a kind of great room area. She fidgeted with her ring as she looked around, twisting it absentmindedly around her middle finger.

The largest sectional sofa she’d ever seen dominated oneside of the room, facing a preposterously large TV mounted on the wall. On the other side were pool and foosball tables, a well-stocked bar with a Denver Broncos logo hanging over it, and several round high-top tables with matching stools. In the far corner, a low rectangular table sported a partially built puzzle. A shelf crammed with various other jigsaw puzzles and board games stood nearby.

Okay, maybe this house didn’t quite match the version of him in her head after all. This looked like a place for a large family to congregate, not a luxurious getaway for a ridiculously rich bachelor sex god and his latest conquest.

Her gaze lingered on a short bookcase in the corner behind the sectional. She wandered over there, Jonathan trailing a few feet behind. The battered wooden bookcase had clearly been much abused, with scratches and scuffs up the sides and across the top. A sizeable chunk was missing from the edge of the second shelf, but that didn’t stop it from being stuffed full of worn paperbacks with no discernable organizational system.

It wasn’t the books that caught her attention though, but the two large picture frames on top of the bookcase. One was a photo of four children in front of a Christmas tree—three boys ranging in age from about four to maybe ten, and an infant with a pink bow attached to her wispy brown hair.

She picked up the second frame, examining the other photo. It showed what looked like three generations of a family on a young, blond woman’s wedding day. The bride and groom beamed up at her from the center of the photo, the rest of the people arranged artfully around them.

Jonathan stood to the bride’s left, next to a man who was clearly his father. Same height, same broad shoulders, same cheekbones and nose. Though their eyes were different colors, they crinkled in exactly the same way when they smiled. Despite his dad being—presumably—at least twenty years his senior, they even had the same hairline.

“This is your family’s house,” she said softly, continuing to stare down at the picture. Jonathan looked so young...maybe mid-twenties? God, that felt like a lifetime ago to her. “Is this your sister?”

“One of them,” he said, peering over her shoulder at the picture. Hepointed at the brunette teenager standing next to him in a rose-pink bridesmaid dress. “That’s my baby sister, Maisie. She was only fifteen when Alice and Dillon got married.”

“How old were you?” The urge hit her to brush her fingertip over his beautiful, smiling face in the picture, but she didn’t want to smudge the glass.

“Twenty-six.” Predicting her next question, he added, “Alice was twenty-four.”

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