Too late, he heard how he’d sounded. The silence crackled between them.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, backpedaling.
Yes, you did.
“I just meant to say—”
Stop.She held out a hand. You and I are not friends. I don’t belong to you. I don’t answer to you. I don’t need you to defend me or take care of me or come to my rescue. You are the hired help. You’re supposed to interpret when I ask you. Drive me when I need you. The rest of the time, you’re invisible.
He took his licks in silence, too keyed up to speak. They’d drawn closer as she lectured him. The space between them sparked like lit kindling. This, he knew, was also wrong. The right thing to do would be to send her away. If her mother stumbled on the two of them cloistered in the dark, he’d be thrown out so fast his head would spin.
“Was there anything else?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Great.” He stepped out of her way. “There’s the door.”
With a sniff, she waded through the mess of dress shirts and out into his bedroom. He followed, pulling the door shut behind him. Vivienne paused by the dresser, where his meager belongings sat in a line. The patron saint medallion his mother had gifted him for graduation. The tie he’d borrowed from his uncle. The cuff links he’d worn to his father’s funeral. She ran a fingertip over them each in turn, as though memorizing their texture. He felt it like a physical touch.
P-h-i-l-i-p won’t be happy with you, she signed when she noticed him looking.
“Why is that?”
He expects everyone on his staff to follow the dress code.
“Yeah? Should we tell him who destroyed my suits?”
She cut him a fleeting, conspiratorial glance.Must have been a mouse.
His laugh came out in a wryheh. “Cute.”
I’m sure he’ll buy you even nicer suits, she added. He’s very invested in you.She lifted his chain and inspected the medallion, turning it this way and that, so that the sword of Saint Michael the Archangel glinted in the sun. He felt that, too. His pulse gave a hard thump. Her gaze shot to his, as though she’d heard it. She set the necklace down.
You’re still going to be in trouble.
“Am I?”
A new wardrobe will take days to deliver. You need something today.
“What do you mean? There’s nothing on the schedule.”
False.She swiped her finger along the tip of her nose.I have a date.
“A date.” He didn’t have a word for the thing with thorns inside his chest. “When’s that happening?”
As if on cue, the doorbell rang. The sound was punctuated instantly by the deep baying of the dogs. Vivienne smiled sweetly.
Right now.
Sothiswas what she’d been doing in his closet. He’d assumed her actions were a response to his trip to New Haven. A little bit of melodrama. An act of petty vengeance.
He’d assumed wrong.
It was sabotage.
She pulled open the door and sashayed out into the hall, peering back over her shoulder at him as she went.I’ll need an interpreter. H-u-d-s-o-n doesn’t sign.
“Hudson,” he said aloud.“He sounds like an asshole.”
