He’d made them in his own image.
The dead billionaire had always thought seven moves ahead, always killed twelve birds with one stone. How many times had the boys told me that? Still, I couldn’t help feeling like my subconscious had just served up a warning—and not about Tobias Hawthorne.
Someone else was out there, strategizing, thinking seven steps ahead. A storyteller telling a story—and making moves all the while.
I always win in the end.
Frustration building inside me, I pushed open the balcony doors. I let the night air hit my face, breathed it in. Down below, Grayson was in the pool, swimming in the dead of night, the pool lit just enough that I could make out his form. The moment I saw him, memory took me.
A crystal glass sits on the table in front of him. His hands lay on either side of the glass, the muscles in them tensed, like he might push off at any moment. I didn’t let myself sink into the memory, but another slice of it hit me anyway as I watched Grayson swimming down below.
“You saved that little girl,” I say.
“Immaterial.” Haunted silver eyes meet mine. “She was easy to save.”
Another outdoor light turned on below. The motion sensor by the pool.
My hand went to my knife, and I was on the verge of calling out for security when I saw the person who had tripped the sensor.
Eve was wearing a nightgown, one of mine that I didn’t remember her taking. It hit her mid-thigh. A breeze caught the material the second before Grayson saw her. From this distance, I couldn’t make out the expressions on their faces. I couldn’t hear what either of them said.
But I saw Grayson pull himself from the pool.
“Avery.”
I turned. “Jameson. I woke up, and you weren’t there.”
“Hawthorne insomnia. I had a lot on my mind.” Jameson pushed past me and looked down. I took that as permission to look again, too. To see Grayson placing an arm around Eve. He’s wet. She doesn’t care.
“How long would you have stood here, watching them, if I hadn’t come?” Jameson asked, an odd tone in his voice.
“I already told you, I’m worried about Grayson.” My mouth felt like cotton.
“Heiress.” Jameson turned back to me. “That’s not what I meant.”
A ball rose in my throat. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
Slowly, deliberately, Jameson pushed me up against the wall. He waited, as he always did, for my nod, then obliterated the space between us. His lips crushed mine. My legs wrapped around him as his body pinned mine to the wall.
Jameson Winchester Hawthorne.
“That was very… specific,” I said, trying to catch my breath. He was still holding on to me, and I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t know why he’d needed to kiss me like that. “I’m with you, Jameson,” I said. “I want to be with you.”
Then why do you care how Grayson looks at her? The question was alive in the air between us, but Jameson didn’t ask it.
“It was always going to be Grayson,” he said, letting go of me.
“No,” I insisted. I reached for him, pulled him back.
“For Emily,” Jameson told me. “It was always going to be Grayson. She and I—we were too much alike.”
“You are nothing like Emily,” I said fiercely. Emily had used them, both of them. She’d played them against each other.
“You didn’t know her,” Jameson told me. “You didn’t know me back then.”