I can’t see Grandfather Willow. I can’t even see the stream. Instead, I see a cluster of small wooden buildings.
I run back to the bed and grab the welcome packet Mr. Haymore shoved in my hand. There, on the map where Grandfather Willow should be, is a cluster of small rectangles labeled “Crafts Cottages.”
Mr. Haymore mentioned these latest additions to the property—at least at some point during his rambling I remember him saying something about a blacksmith’s forge and candle-making shop and some other crap—but I didn’t hear him mention where they’d been built. Now there’s a miniature Colonial-era theme park blocking Grandfather Willow.
If Grandfather Willow is there at all. For all I know they’ve ripped him up by the roots.
This is wrong. This is all wrong.
I didn’t handle my father’s death very well. My brother implied as much, the day he convinced me to return to Chiang Mai. And then in Thailand, after months of trying to distract myself with Ian—well, Ian said the same thing to my face, the night things blew up between us. I can still see him: Ian, who was always so kind, so forgiving, standing there staring at me with such anger and such pain in his eyes.
This isn’t how normal people grieve, he said. This isn’t healthy.
He was right. I’ve never handled grief in a healthy way. Back when I was ten, when one of our horses died, my father was so concerned for me that he sent me to a shrink.
I still remember what she told me: The worst thing to do when you’re trying to let go of something is to run the other way. Sometimes, you must hold on to let go. At the time, I thought she was an idiot. That she didn’t understand. But I’ve never forgotten those words. They’re the very words that drew me back here.
Sometimes, you must hold on to let go, I repeat in my head. That’s why I’m here. To face all of these changes and learn to let go.
But how am I supposed to do that when they’re destroying this place piece by piece? When they’re tearing down my family’s legacy and replacing it with this ridiculous stuff? Soon, this place will be swarming with tourists, and people will gawk at the decor and stupid crafts cottages and believe that we actually lived like this. Either that, or they’ll see it all as some massive joke.
Give it time, I tell myself. Healing takes time.
I don’t want to run anymore. I want to learn how to feel okay again. To feel normal again. If I want to move on with my life, I have to accept that this is Huntington Manor now, not the Cunningham estate. I need to accept it. I need to move on. I need…
I turn away from the window. I’m across the room so quickly that I don’t even realize what I’m doing until I’m in the hallway.
He couldn’t have gotten far.
As it is, he’s only around the corner. I just follow the sound of the hammering. The door to Room 244 is ajar, and when I push it open a little wider, I find the handyman inside, working on the window.
For a moment, I just stand there watching. His cheap T-shirt is thin enough that I can see the muscles of his back shift as he moves his arm. I didn’t notice it before, but there’s a dark tattoo circling his right bicep. I wonder how many more he has hidden beneath his clothes.
I place my hand on the door, swinging it all the way open, and he turns. The surprise in his eyes shifts quickly to pleasure.
“Lost after all?” he says, grinning. It’s a lop-sided smile, just goofy enough to make him look devastatingly attractive. I don’t say anything. I don’t know what I should say right now. Instead, I stride across the room and grab the front of his shirt.
I only have the chance to see the quickest flash of shock in his eyes before I tug his face down to mine.
His mouth is much warmer than I imagined it would be. His lips are hard—he wasn’t expecting this—but as I continue to kiss him, they soften slightly, even parting. A moment later, his tongue slips into my mouth, and heat courses through me.
I’m still clutching his shirt with both fists. I hear the thud of his hammer hitting the floor, and then his arms come up around me, pulling me against his chest. He smells faintly of sweat, but it’s a pleasant scent—or maybe I’m just too worked up to care. I widen my lips, letting him press his tongue deeper into my mouth, and I lift my own tongue to meet his. One of his hands moves up to my hair, and his fingers twist through the strands just as I imagined they would. Curls or not, he has no trouble finding a grip. He pulls just hard enough to send a surge of heat from my scalp down to my very core.
It’s not enough. My body is alive with sensation, but the hollowness is still there, hovering just beneath the surface. I release his shirt and move my hands down across his stomach. Even through the fabric of his shirt, I can feel every muscle. He contracts them slightly beneath my touch and presses closer to me. His hand continues to pull at my hair, while the other slides down to the small of my back.
I slip my hands between us and drop them to his belt. It’s more difficult to undo a tool belt than it is to open a normal buckle, but I manage without too much trouble. The tools crash to the floor. But as I’m reaching for the fly of his jeans, he suddenly catches me by the wrists, and he pulls his mouth away from mine.
I glance up, confused. His pupils are large and dark—all the more obvious because of the brilliant blue of his irises—but beneath the haze of lust there’s confusion in his face, too. And just like that, I realize with shocking clarity exactly what I was about to do.
I stumble back, pulling out of his grip. This guy is a complete stranger. I don’t even know his name. What was I thinking? I have his pants undone. I was about to… I would have…
He’s still looking at me like I’m insane. “Are you…?”
I shake my head, too shocked to speak. He looks like he wants to say something else, but I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to know what he’s thinking right now.
And so I do what I always do when I get in over my head: I run.
CHAPTER TWO
Fortunately, in a place as large as Huntington Manor, it’s easy to avoid people.
It helps that the day after my little “incident” with the handyman, Mr. Haymore gives me a To Do list long enough to wrap around the earth about two and a half times, and that keeps me occupied for those first few days on the job. It appears that I’m not only Haymore’s assistant, I’m also his secretary, gopher, delivery girl, personal shopper, and the official double- and triple-checker of everything he writes. Apparently he believes it’s physically possible for someone to proofread an email, place a call to the kitchens, retrieve a package from the front desk, and sift through his receipts at the exact same time.