Pierre froze in place, staring back at her with beady, red eyes. He’d been well taken care of in here, that was clear. His cage looked clean, his water tube filled, and plenty of food filled a dish linked onto the cage’s side.
“He’s so cute,” she said.
“I knew it would be you, you know.” Maddox spoke in that strange way of not sticking to the topic, or of leaping from one topic to the next.
Adelie straightened and faced him. “What?”
He sauntered closer, resting a hand on top of the cage. The lines of muscle on his arm became that much more evident. “The moment I saw you sitting there, looking totally content as the only guest at a mad tea party, I thought, wouldn’t it be awesome if she was the one to find him? And you did.”
“I—” Words failed her, stolen by the admiration gleaming in his gaze. No man had ever looked at her like that. Like she was special. Like she’d humored him, and he wanted her to keep doing it.
He shifted. “Did you figure it out yet?”
Her mouth was dry. So dry. She swallowed. “Figure what out?”
“Why a raven is like a writing desk?”
Adelie’s heart was the rabbit in a cage. It pounded, trapped but not against its will. This was a willing entrapment, and it pulsed with the desire to remain a prisoner.
“That might be you,” she said.
“Me?”
“The answer. To the riddle.”
The corner of his lips quirked up. “Explain?”
She stepped away, needing distance. She couldn’t handle a third almost-kiss moment today, not unless he was going to actually kiss her.
“You’re this billionaire, with a massive house. But that has nothing to do with who you really are. While anyone might think you started your livelihood as a ploy to get money, you did it for exactly the opposite.
“It’s in honor of your mother and it just ended up being amazing because you deserve for it to be that way. Like the raven is nothing like a writing desk. You’re nothing like what you make people think you are.”
She wasn’t sure if that made any sense.
“Adelie,” he said, ending there as if saying her name was enough of a response. “How can you think I’m like the writing desk?”
She laughed and punched his shoulder.
He captured her hand and stared at it, rubbing his thumb across her skin. “You’re wrong, you know. I am doing this for money.”
The admission was a bee sting. Small, but sharp. She pulled her hand away. “I don’t believe you.”
“Well, maybe Wonderland wasn’t about money to begin with, but it is now. I’m greedy. I’m not as wonderful as you seem to think.”
“What if you’re just as wonderful as I think?”
His gaze trailed from her hairline to her mouth, stopping when it met her eyes. “You’ve had a long day. Come on, I’ll walk you back to the house.”
He didn’t deny his greed, and she couldn’t help wondering the entire way back to his house what he’d possibly meant by admitting as much. Had their marriage been as she’d thought after all? He’d only done this for his own benefit?
She didn’t want to believe it, but what else could she think?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Adelie rose from the bed and carefully arranged the blankets the best she could. She’d never been one to make her bed religiously, the way her grandma had, but she felt the responsibility now, in this house that was more like a palace. A place of luxury that demanded to be treated differently. She cared about the home she’d grown up in, but it was different from this somehow.
How would it be if she left the blankets disheveled? If she scattered her clothes across the floor? It didn’t fit the space. She knew Martha would probably be along to make the bed or put up her clothes for her regardless, but Adelie didn’t want to do that either. She had too much respect for herself, she supposed, especially after Maddox’s comment to the maid the day before.
She crept toward the closet with its double-doored entrance and used two hands to throw them both open. The amount of space within the white closet took her breath away.
“This is bigger than my room.”
She stepped in and swept an inquisitive gaze across the shelves. Some were thin and closer together—for shoes, Adelie suspected. Some were wide and tall, perfect for boxes or crates. There were pegs to hang purses, beams for hanging shirts, and it was all vacant, all waiting to be filled.
Adelie hugged herself and plunked onto the rotund stool within the center of the closet. “I don’t think I even have enough to fill a quarter of this.”
She supposed she could bring her suitcases in here and begin to test her theory, but she dressed quickly in a simple pair of jeans and a pink t-shirt and then returned her pajamas to the suitcase. She brushed her teeth and hair, and stood, a stranger in a decadent room.
Logically, she knew this was now her home, for as long as she wanted it to be. Maddox had promised. But she couldn’t trust the situation enough to settle in fully just yet. After the confusing end to their conversation the night before, she still worried he would pull the proverbial rug from beneath her.
This couldn’t really be her home. She was a project to him, nothing more. He would grow tired of her. He’d back out on his promise. It was what her parents had done when they’d abandoned her. The only people she’d been able to rely on were her grandparents and Suzie. She had to remember that.
Sunlight splashed through the windows that made a hexagon shape around her. It was almost like an embrace, with the light pooling around her, the way the windows seemed to envelop her. Adelie wanted to allow it to sink in, to make her feel warmer in the space that was supposedly hers.
She’d accepted the money he’d offered for
