Sutton Sethford might be the one person on earth who actually sees me. Not the me that I am not. Not the money. Not the company. Not all the blah, blah, blah bullshit layers and faces I have to put on every single day to hide the fact that at the heart of everything, I miss my dad, and I’m terrified of letting him down. Terrified of fucking up what he took a lifetime to build.
The fact that I think she gets it is even more terrifying.
CHAPTER 5
Sutton
Our cab ride takes about twenty minutes. They’re probably the worst twenty minutes of my life, and I feel like I’m on the verge of having a panic attack. Philippe sits beside me in the back seat. He takes up the whole thing, his knees practically jamming into his chest because the car is so small, but he doesn’t complain. Actually, he doesn’t say anything, and my regret mounts with every mile.
Why did I agree to go to his house?
Of course, we pull up to a gated neighborhood. There’s a passcode Philippe inserts, and then we’re in. The houses are all new—huge and extravagant million-dollar shacks, and by million, I mean not a single million. Most of these places probably cost four or five or more to build.
Philippe’s house is insane. It’s one of those modern things with angled roofs jutting out all over. It’s also painted a dark brown, so dark it almost looks black. There are big silver numbers on the front, at least a couple feet high. Also, it has a four-car garage. Not even kidding.
Philippe pays the cab driver with his credit card—probably the company card since he keeps the receipt and shoves it into his wallet. I follow him up to the front door, which is like twelve feet tall. It’s the biggest door I’ve ever seen. It’s dark, but the house is lit up with all sorts of lights from below the roofline. It illuminates a nicely manicured front lawn.
“It’s fake,” Philippe says when he sees me studying it.
“What is?”
“The lawn. It’s not real. It’s fake grass. I never have to mow it, and it stays green all year round.” His door doesn’t have a lock or a code on it. It has a thumbprint ID pad. Of course, it does.
“Uh, that’s really helpful when it’s covered in like five feet of snow. Or is it heated, and it melts the snow as it lands?”
“I never thought of that.” He pushes the huge door in, and the lights immediately come on. I’m sure he didn’t do that. There must be motion sensors or something. “It’s a good idea, though. Maybe I should invent it. The roof is heated, so the snow melts off, and the pool is heated too. Why shouldn’t the grass be?”
“You have a pool?”
“Yes. And a hot tub, a home gym, and a home theatre in the basement.”
“And in the kitchen, your oven probably takes your orders, cooks the food itself, and spits it out. And you have a robot that looks like a lady who wears a pink frilly apron to clean your house for you.”
“How did you know?” Philippe starts unbuttoning his shirt before I even have the door closed. Panic claws wildly inside of me.
“What are you doing?”
“Changing. My shirt’s soaked. It’s uncomfortable, and I probably stink. I’m embarrassed you had to share a cab home with me.”
“Yeah,” I respond sarcastically. “The poor cab driver. My nose just about dropped off along the way. Not sure how he handled it.”
Philippe’s slender and strong fingers pause on the third button. A gap of creamy skin shows through just below his throat. I swallow hard. Or at least I try. It’s kind of impossible seeing as my throat is entirely closed up. Philippe has a nice olive undertone to his skin. Over the years, I’ve noticed how he gets very tanned during the summer, but right now, the bronze hue adorning his skin is getting lighter by day as we get less sun.
He keeps working at the buttons as he walks through the house. I basically have to run to keep up. I bypass the living room, which is expansive and filled with black accents and expensive-looking leather couches. There’s a fireplace built into the wall and a huge TV above it.
The hallway opens up into a kitchen that could seriously fit a family of thirty in it. Maybe more. Who needs a kitchen this big? The fridge could probably fit at least five bodies if Philippe were so inclined. I really hope he’s not, though. Because I’m here alone.
“Make yourself at home. Raid the fridge. See if there’s anything edible in there.” Philippe punctuates that statement by turning around.
He’s done unbuttoning his shirt, and it hangs open, exposing a chest that more closely resembles titanium than actual human skin. I mean, it looks like skin. And acres and layers of muscle. It looks like he’s the robot, and whoever designed him did a really good job of making him look real. All that creamy skin is real, even the carved in eight-pack abs and smattering of dark hair that circles his naval and trails lower like an arrow pointing straight down to his family treasure.
Good god, did I really just think that?
I realize I’m staring, and I might have a drool trail dribbling out of the side of my mouth, down to the floor. My eyes are probably bulging. I might look like I’ve never seen a half-naked man before.
I definitely feel like I haven’t. Not
