Page 26 of The Love Losers

There’d been questions about who I was marrying of course, and she’d hedged about my “secret” bride.

She gives me an expectant look, her lips raised slightly as if she’s preparing for a counter-argument. “Oh, pish. They’re used to me by now, or they should be. They’ll think nothing of it if I turn right back around and cancel it tomorrow. You don’t need the trust fund, Anthony. You know I’ll always give you anything you need.”

I do.

But she’s not the only one in this family who cares about coming out ahead. I want to be the man my father told me I’d never be, if only to definitively prove him wrong.

I shift my weight in the chair. “I’m not going to take your money.”

“Our money,” she says, pausing before she adds, “I want you to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you and Emma.”

“You can’t force a person to be happy, Mother.”

“What if those investigators are right?” she asks, her gaze shrewd. “What if this whole mess is about your trust fund?”

I sit up straighter, surprised. All evening, I’d assumed she was keeping me at the house because she was concerned about her own safety, but I should have known better. My mother has always had an outsized confidence in her ability to protect herself. She’s worried aboutme.

“I can take care of myself.”

“We all need help sometimes. You needed help with Nina. You were looking at the big picture and ignored what was going on in front of your face.”

“I know,” I say, acknowledging this as one of my failings.

I don’t point out that she did the same with my father. That she stayed even though he made every day a living hell for all of us. She did it because of the bigger picture. Because of this house and all the money and prestige that went with it. Because she knew I would be granted a job I hated once I came of age.

Sometimes I resent her for that, but on my better days I understand. She did what she thought was best, which is all any of us can do.

There’s a pause, the fire crackling and the floor groaning, and then my mother says, “I want you to stay at Smith House until this is all over.”

“For three weeks?” I cringe at the thought.

“There’s plenty of room and a capable guard. You’ll be safe here.” She pauses. “I’llbe able to sleep.

I rub my forehead. “Mother…I…”

“Please,” she says, and it’s so perilously close to begging, I find myself nodding.

“Okay.”

“Good,” she says with a beatific smile. “You can sleep in your old room, of course.”

“Fantastic,” I mutter, because every grown man wants to sleep in the same bed where he used to jerk off as a teenager. And, I’ll be perfectly honest, I might be doing the same thing tonight, with my “big, capable” hands…while I think about a woman tracing the collar of my shirt.

Leave it to Rosie James to make me lose myself with a swipe of her fingers.

CHAPTER NINE

ANTHONY

Conversation with Emma

Are you sure Mother didn’t create the website herself to get attention?

Oh, you finally saw fit to get back to me.

I don’t think it was her. She pointed out that the website is really low quality.

She could have put it together like that intentionally to avert suspicion.

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