“Want more?” Stone asks. He lifts the orange juice pitcher, and I nod. He tops me off. When he settles back into his seat, he says, “We should probably talk about how we’re going to move forward.”
I eye the guys suspiciously. They’ve been alarmingly civil this morning, and I’m just waiting for the shoe to drop. There’s no talk of owning me or making sure I stay away from other people. In fact, it’s been almost nice. “Thanks for letting me sleep here last night,” I say tentatively. I was raised with fucking manners, and if someone lets you stay at their house because some weirdo walked into your dorm and left you a creepy message, you say thanks. Regardless of your feelings about said person. Or whether you trust them fully.
“That about killed you, didn’t it?” Stone asks.
I let out a breath. “Damn near. I think I feel a stroke coming on.”
“You know, our families don’t have to hate each other.” He pins me with a look that I know is just a trap waiting to spring.
“We’re just wired that way,” I tell him, shrugging like I can’t stop it, just like I couldn’t stop the world from turning if I wanted to.
“I’ve always thought it was dumb.”
“I’ve always thought it necessary,” I counter.
He narrows his gaze, and I find I actually do like talking to people. Who knew?
“Now that we’re working together, I hope you’ll open your mind a little more.”
I wipe my face with a napkin. “We’ll see,” I say. I stare around at the mess that’s left. We wiped out the omelets and the bacon. There are two cinnamon rolls left, and I have to tell myself that I don’t need to stuff them in my bag. I stand, taking my empty plate and starting to gather theirs as well.
“What are you doing?” Stone asks.
Lucas chuckles. “She’s cleaning up after herself.”
“Oh,” Stone says, a line forming between his eyes. “You can stop that.”
“Um, what?” The perplexed look on his face is, dare I say, adorable.
“We have a housekeeper who comes in every day.”
I drop my plate back to the stone table, and it rattles. “Of course, you do.”
“I told you it’s weird,” Wyatt says, sniping at his friend.
“We were ten,” Stone groans.
Wyatt turns toward me. “This guy has never cleaned up after himself in his life. He’s lucky he can afford to keep the help. Otherwise, he’d be fucking screwed.”
I glare at Stone. “Not ever?”
“I can,” he says defensively.
“But you just don’t?”
Crimson rushes to Stone’s cheeks. “I can pick up after myself. I do it on occasion,” he says, glaring at his friend. “I was brought up with the idea that everyone has their jobs to do.”
“And yours is to watch the help clean up after you?” Anger laces my voice. I just can’t help it. How fucking ridiculous? How is that teaching anybody anything?
“No,” Stone growls. “My family is run like a business. Our jobs were to work on more complex problems. It’s why you see people hiring housekeepers or gardeners or mechanics,” he says. “We could all, theoretically, do the work ourselves, but that would take away from the time needed for more important things. If my father cleaned the house or did the dishes, do you think he’d be as well off as he is right now? Think about how many hours you waste doing things you need to do rather than focusing on school. Or when you get older, a job. Doing those things only takes away a precious, limited commodity: Time.”
“But you might also learn something really important,” I say, disbelieving that he was really brought up like that. “How to be humble.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Dakota.” For the first time today, his voice gets that haughty edge to it again. It’s cold and lacking emotion. “You should only be humble to those who deserve it. Once you start acting that way, people see you as weak. A target.”
I swallow. I can tell he believes every single thing that is coming out of his mouth. “What a shitty world you must have grown up in.”
“As compared to yours? When’s the last time you had a decent meal, Dakota?”
Fury surges through me like the crack of a whip. Embarrassment surges in quickly after. I push back from the table and ignore my name on his lips as he yells for me to stop.
Just when I think they might be okay, I’m reminded of why us Wilders have sworn off the Jacobs.
Pompous fucking assholes.
15
“God, you’re a fucking prick, you know that?” It’s Lucas’s sure voice that calls Stone out as I make my way back to the bedroom I was given. Sticking up for me, his voice is that kind of chocolate-dipped caramel dessert that calls to me. Stone responds, but I can’t decipher what he says.
I go into the room, closing the door and keeping the blinds lowered, so I don’t have to see their faces or the fancy shit I’m surrounded in. At least in this room, I can just pretend I’m in a box. A well-furnished box, but a box just the same.
I should’ve been more careful. I should’ve guarded myself more. Maybe I should ask Lucas how he does it. It’s like he can pick and choose what facets of himself he wants the world to see. With my dad, it was the exact opposite. He always told me to feel my feelings, unless they were about him, of course. I never went there.
This house—this life of theirs—made me too comfortable. I’ve only been here less than twenty-four hours, but it’s true. I can see how your bones can ease in a place like this. Relax into a world where everything is done for you, and you truly don’t have to worry about anything. Hell, with their fancy security system, they don’t even have to worry about whoever this so-called other treasure hunter is. If that’s what’s actually happening.
And who just might it be anyway?
