He blinked, stunned into silence. “But, where, I mean . . .” He spun in the room, looking up and down and everywhere at once. “Where do you live?”
“Family rooms are on the second and third floors.”
“How do you even get there?” He couldn’t see a single staircase anywhere.
She pointed again toward the kitchen area. “There’s a private staircase back there. We use a back entrance because it leads to that staircase.”
“Gretchen, I’m going to try to say this as delicately as possible, but What the fuck?”
She laughed, and it legitimately echoed. “I know,” she said, a little sigh following the words. “Trust me. I know.”
He raked a hand over his hair. “Look, I’m not trying to second-guess your choices or anything . . .”
She shoved her hands in her coat pockets. “It’s never a good sign when you start a question that way.”
“Why do you live in that apartment when you could be living here?”
Her response was another bitter laugh. “You haven’t met my parents.”
“True, but you could live here and never see them.”
This time she didn’t respond at all. Because maybe that was the problem. This was a house designed to show off to strangers, not for snuggling your loved ones. It was meant to impress, to intimidate, to create awe and envy.
This wasn’t a house.
It was a fucking museum.
And she’d been a little girl here.
A little girl who was closer to an uncle and a security guard than her own parents. A little girl who grew up to be a woman who preferred living in a single-bedroom apartment with a creaky radiator than within all this opulence.
Looking at her now, a tiny speck of fire in the center of a cold, soulless room, a flush of an emotion he couldn’t identify filled his chest and scrambled his senses and turned his voice to sandpaper. “Show me your room.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
If there was one thing Gretchen hated, it was pity, and it was radiating off Colton in waves.
“You’re doing it again,” she snapped, spinning on her heel.
He followed closely behind, his footsteps a quiet thud on the hard, shiny floor. “Doing what?”
“Looking at me like I’m some kind of poor little rich girl.”
She wouldn’t have brought him here if she’d known he’d end up looking at her like she needed a hug or something. She didn’t. She’d had everything she needed growing up here. Food. Shelter. Clothes. Education.
“I didn’t say anything,” he said, still following her down the long hallway toward the back staircase.
“You didn’t have to. I can see it in your eyes.”
Colton’s hand snagged her elbow and tugged her to a stop. He circled around in front of her. “The only thing you should see in my eyes is that I think you’re one of the bravest, smartest, and most impressive women I’ve ever met.”
Her heart flipped over. Sarcasm rose to the occasion. “Then you need to get out more. There’s nothing particularly brave or impressive about me.”
He quirked a smile. “But smart?”
“I’ll own that one. I’m incredibly smart.”
He gave her elbow a squeeze as he inched closer. “Your confidence is the sexiest thing about you.”
She smirked, mostly to cover the shiver of awareness, and brushed past them. “This way, Clark Kent.”
The back staircase was private but no less absurd than the rest of the house. It was twenty steps to the first landing, which was big enough for an entire sitting area that no one in her memory had ever used, and then continued for twenty more steps to the second floor of the house. The stairs opened into the hallway that overlooked the Great Hall, but that too was just for show, a place to show off paintings of the family and other artwork her parents had purchased just because they could.
“This way.” She gestured for him to follow her to the right. At the corner were a set of double doors that opened into the private rooms. He followed her into the foyer and paused again to look around, settling his gaze inexplicably on the coat closet.
“So you do have one,” he said.
“A closet?”
“I couldn’t figure out where you hung stuff up when you got home.”
She let him wander for a few minutes, trying to imagine it all through his eyes. This part of the house—the residence, as her parents called it—was softer but no less lavish than the first floor. The family living room could’ve fit three of her entire apartments in it. The family kitchen was the same size as Colton’s but probably got used a lot less than his. She couldn’t ever remember seeing her parents cook.