She hadn’t been down there since her first night at the Moriarty mansion. To remember it was like plunging into a past life. The cuts and bruises had faded, but Amelia healed up differently on the inside. The pieces fit together again, but the picture was no longer the same. At the other end of the hall, someone eclipsed the sunlight streaming from the great room.
Emory.
Amelia didn’t have to look. His presence spoke for itself in a language she knew well—the grace of his gait unusual in such a tall man and the intensity he wore like a well-tailored suit.
Emory approached with his hands behind his back. He smelled of spiced cologne and the fresh-pressed linen of his white button-up shirt. His skin was a deeper bronze, as if time in the sun had treated him well, and his hair hung in loose waves about his shoulders.
“Don’t you wanna be with the others?” he asked.
The question vibrated like long-ago days of solitude on theswing set and her father’s car rumbling up to an empty school playground.“Why aren’t you with your friends, Amelia?”
She shook her head as butterflies battered her composure and squandered all the clever things she might say.
“Not particularly. Don’t you wanna be down there?”
Amelia motioned to the dying lines of “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” lilting from the basement. Emory mulled it over with a handsome smile. There he stood with the ease of a man who’d shed his duty, if only for the night. And there she stood, pulling apart at the seams because her crushes always started the same way—so shy, it whittled her breath to a whisper in her chest then dropped her eyes and stilled her tongue.
“Not particularly,” he said. “It’s too loud, too…”
“Crowded?”
“Precisely.” He drifted closer, his smile fading. “I was actually coming to look for you. Mirabelle said you’ve seemed distant the past few days. Is everything alright?”
Another echo of paternal wisdom.“You’d be happier with your head out of the clouds and feet on the ground.”To her father, pragmatism was a virtue. Daydreams were not. She was an aberration under some other man’s roof, and like her father, perhaps Emory intended to chide her about it.
Amelia crossed her arms and took up her own defense. “I’m fine. I just needed some space.”
It wasn’t a lie, just absurd. No one clamored for her company. She was a stranger shoved in the corner, the houseplant someone forgot to water. Did it matter why she wilted? It must’ve to him. Sincerity gentled Emory’s voice.
“Take whatever space you need. I just wanted to give you this.”
He revealed what was behind his back—a black leather notebook withA. Havickstamped in the bottom corner. On top was a polished fountain pen with ivy leaves carved into the brass body.
“It’s for your poetry,” he said, his fingers brushing hers as the notebook exchanged hands. “I thought you could use it to write.”
Emory stared at her lips but licked his own. It seemed neither had forgotten their kiss in the courtyard, fleeting as it was. Like a precious jewel, Amelia had examined every facet of it—the surprising softness of his lips, his hair sweeping her cheek, his strong arms holding her close. She wanted to gush about it to someone and deconstruct the moment to relive it again. There was no one to humor her, though, so Amelia buried it like a secret by day and unearthed it each night.
“Emory, thank you. It’s gorgeous,” she said and stroked the notebook as sleek as that black phone and the pen’s body gleaming like the rotary dial. Her heart sank with rediscovered guilt, and she cleared a tickle in her throat. “I feel like I don’t deserve it.”
“Of course, you do,” he laughed with a folded brow, apparently flummoxed at her modesty. “If anything, I’d say you deserve far more.”
Emory stalled and his hands disappeared into his pockets. Any other day, it would’ve marked the natural end to their rendezvous, and he’d be on his way to wherever his men had gathered.
“This was always my favorite part of the house,” he said instead, and Amelia followed his gaze to the photographs lining the hall.
The confession surprised her. The Moriarty mansion was palatial and lavishly appointed, every part meant for admiration.
“Really? But everything here is so beautiful.”
“That’s the point, I guess. This part is simple, nostalgic.”
There it was again, Emory and his need for simplicity. He studied a photo of a woman cradling a baby on the porch of a bungalow home. She was a paragon of fifties glamour with black curls and ruby red lips.
“Who is that?” Amelia asked.
“Liam’s mom.” Emory pointed to the next frame where a scowling soldier puffed out his chest. “This is his dad, Joseph, in Vietnam.”
“How then did this all start?”
