Chapter 2

The Whitlock estate sits on two hundred acres of Connecticut coastline. Iron gates. Stone lions. A driveway so long Lily fell asleep before we reached the house. I hadn't seen it in seven years. Gran was waiting at the front steps in a silk robe and diamond earrings at one in the morning. Eleanor Whitlock does not lower her standards for the hour. She took one look at Lily asleep on my shoulder, and her iron face cracked. "Give her to me," she whispered. I did. My grandmother, who had once made a Saudi prince wait three hours for a meeting, carried my daughter up the grand staircase like she was made of glass. The room she carried her into was pale yellow. A canopy bed. A dollhouse shaped exactly like the estate. Shelves of books. "How long has this room been here?" I asked. "Since the day I heard she was born." Gran tucked the blanket under Lily's chin. "I redecorate it every birthday. I never knew what she liked." The guilt hit me so hard I had to hold the doorframe. Seven years ago, I was twenty-four and tired of men who looked at me and saw dollar signs. So I did something reckless. I took a job at the front desk of one of our own hotels, under my mother's maiden name. No one knew. I wore a polyester uniform. I covered night shifts. I cleaned rooms when housekeeping was short. And one night, a charming junior manager named Grant Hayes brought me coffee and said, "You look like you need this more than I do." He didn't know who I was. That was the point. I thought I'd finally found a man who loved me for nothing. Turns out, he thought I was nothing. Downstairs, a fire was burning in Gran's study. And standing beside it, tall and rumpled in a gray sweater, was a face I hadn't seen in years. "Sebastian?" Sebastian Crane. My childhood best friend. The boy who taught me to sail and once punched a senator's son for calling me spoiled. Now he was Whitlock's general counsel. Dark hair. Steady green eyes. Still looking at me like I was the only person in the room. "Hey, Nora." His voice was soft. "I'm sorry about tonight." "You saw?" "Everyone saw." His jaw tightened. "I wanted to walk up on that stage and break his nose." "Get in line," Gran said, pouring three glasses of brandy. "Sit. We have business." Sebastian opened a leather folder. "Here's what Grant doesn't know. His CEO appointment isn't final. Under the company charter, any new CEO must be ratified by the controlling shareholder." "The Whitlock Family Trust," I said slowly. "Which you inherited in full when your mother passed," Sebastian said. "You own sixty-one percent of this company, Nora. You've just never shown up to vote." Gran set down her glass. "The ratification meeting is Monday. Say the word, and I'll have him fired by breakfast." I thought about it. About Grant's bored voice. Diane's pearls. Brooke's hand on her belly. Lily's glitter card, still clutched in her sleeping fingers upstairs. "No," I said. "I want to be in that room. I want him to look me in the eye when he finds out." Sebastian's mouth curved into a slow smile. "That's the Nora I remember." "There's more," Gran said. "Your accounts. The house. Everything in his name?" "Everything," I admitted. "He said it was simpler for taxes." "Of course he did." She shook her head. "And your personal savings?" "I put it all into the house. The down payment was mine. My mother's life insurance." Sebastian's pen stopped moving. "You paid for the house?" "He told everyone his parents helped." The room went quiet. The fire crackled. "Well," Gran said finally, with the smile that used to make hotel tycoons cancel their vacations. "Then it seems Diane was right about one thing. Someone in that marriage brought nothing." I laughed for the first time all night. It came out broken, but it came out. Then my phone buzzed. Grant. "Where the hell is my daughter? Bring her back tomorrow or I call the police. By the way, Brooke's moving in. Your stuff will be on the lawn." I stared at the screen until the words blurred. "Nora?" Sebastian leaned forward. "What is it?" I turned the phone toward him. "He's moving his mistress into the house I paid for," I said. "And he's throwing my things on the lawn." Sebastian stood up so fast his chair scraped. "Then we go get them," he said. "Tomorrow. Together."