This building doesn’t look like anyone’s home. It looks likemoney. All glass windows and steel frames and polished stone rising high enough that the lingering twinges in my body ache as I tilt my head back so I can see it all.
On the front of the building, the letters read: Samuel E. Reynolds. It has to be an office building. Through the front door, I see a reception desk. Men in suits and stylish women in heels move briskly through security, coming and going.
As Dallas joins me on the sidewalk, arm going around my shoulder, I twist my head so that I can peer up at the closed-off expression on his face.
I gulp. “This… this is where we live? In an office building?”
He jerks his head, a single nod, as though he’s not so happy that that’s the case. “Welcome to the Fortress. The penthouse is ours.”
The Fortress. Thepenthouse. Before I can think better of it, I blurt out: “Do you have money?”
Dallas’s mouth twitches just enough that I know I didn’t offend him with my crass question. “Does that surprise you?”
Considering he’s a mechanic, kind of. I still don’t know what I did for work, though when I asked Dallas, he told me that I was a waitress at an upscale bar and grill in Harmony Heights before we got married. But maybe I didn’t work after that. Maybe he only does because he needs something to fill his days?—
“It’s all from my old man. When he kicked the bucket, I was the only one he could give all of this to. I inherited the penthouse he owned in this commercial building, the rep he had as one of the businessmen who worked out of it on the floor below plus that office for whatever I want to use it for, his bank account… yeah. We have money, baby. So don’t worry about that hospital bill anymore, okay? I’ve already taken care of it.”
My stomach twists. I admitted to him last night that I was worried about how much the stay at St. Luke’s, plus all of my treatment, was going to cost me. There was no record of any insurance for Lucy Wright in the system, but Dallas told me he’d get it straightened out. Maybe he did—or maybe he threw enough money at accounting to make my bill go away.
Either way, I don’t know how to react.Thank youseems like not enough, but he’s my husband, estranged or not. I get the feeling that he didn’t even think twice about paying my bills.Still, it feels weird to me, letting Dallas take care of me like that when I hardly know him for real.
He doesn’t need a reaction, though. After waving off his cousin, he uses his hold on my shoulder to steer me through the front door of the building.
Security waves us through without question. The guard nods at Dallas like he’s royalty, though there’s no denying that I’m the one getting stared at now. The entire trip from the entrance to the wall of elevators draws attention from everyone milling about the lobby, and it’s a relief when Dallas steps inside of a car, entering a passcode into a panel on the wall to take us all the way up to the private penthouse.
Until it lets us out in a carpeted hall, leading up to a locked door that Dallas has a key to, I thought he was fucking with me. To wake up into an uncertain reality and discover that my husband is sexy as sin, devoted to caring for me after I was injured, and that he is so fucking rich, he owns apenthouse… pinch me, I have to be dreaming.
Then he lets me into the quiet penthouse and I actually do sneak a pinch.
The penthouse ishuge. Just the first room we walk into is, like, four times the size of the hospital room I’ve been trapped in for days, with marble floors, gold accessories, and wall-to-ceiling windows along the furthest wall.
The kitchen looks like all of the appliances came right off of a sales floor. In the living room, I see minimalist furniture that looks expensive enough to make me nervous about using it.
“Thisis where we live?” I ask again, my voice coming out strangled.
Dallas has dogged each of my steps as I floated throughout the penthouse, taking in every room as I come to it. Now, he eases my discharge papers from my hand, tosses them absently on the couch closest to him, then joins me again.
“It’s where we live now,” he rumbles, his voice impossibly deep as though having me in the sanctuary of his home has done something to him. Peeking up at him, he looks the most relaxed that I’ve seen him. “When we were living together, it wasn’t here.” A slightest twitch in his cheek shows he’s nottoorelaxed as he remembers our estrangement. “But once I could move in here, I did. Now you can stay with me where it’s safe.”
My gaze flickers over to one of the sky-high windows. A shiver courses down my spine and I have to fight the urge to take multiple steps away from it. I’m not even close to it. I bet, if I peered out of the window and down, I’d be so many floors up that there would be no chance of surviving a fall here. I’d never jump, but not that far removed from the accident that nearly killed me—and stole my memories from me—there’s one thing I do know: I hate windows.
I’ll have to get to used to them, though, and because I don’t even know how to start, I turn to Dallas, intent on distracting myself by asking him more questions.
“You inherited this, right?” I ask, remembering what he said.
Dallas waves his hand around, gesturing everywhere. “It was all my father’s,” he confirms. “After my parents died, it became mine. Ja— Dad died in June. Last June, not the one that just passed. You… you were already gone then, and I wasn’t sure you’d ever come back. That’s when I decided I might as well stay here.”
There’s something in his voice when he saysparentsthat’s almost as hard to hear as when he talks about how I was gone for… well… it’s been hard to get Dallas to pin down the length of our estrangement, but if I go back to last June, that’s almost a year-and-a-half, give or take.
If there’s one thing I learned over the last two days, it’s that he doesn’t like to talk about our separation. Maybe it’s safer to ask abouthim.
I hesitate before asking, but the question slips out anyway. “You don’t have any family left? Other than your cousin?”
He ducks his head, looking at me intently. “Youare my family.”
My cheeks heat up. “Oh.”
Oh.
