“But you’re staying?” she asks.
I press my lips together as I consider. I don’t want to stay. I want to scream for Mick at the top of my lungs and hightail it back to Manhattan, where people buy bread, and where it’s not so freaking quiet, and where crippled war vets don’t have sexy blue eyes and shitty attitudes.
But then I picture Paul’s smug condescension as he stared down at me from that ravaged, once-gorgeous face. He knew I would feel this way. Heck, he’s made sure that there’s nothing to hold me here. It’s as though he saw right through my plan to swoop in here like a saintly guardian angel in order to atone for my own sins, and he’s telling me he isn’t going to play.
Clearly getting forgiveness isn’t going to be as simple as ladling soup into a weary, appreciative soul’s mouth.
Lindy gives another of those half smiles that she seems to have in endless supply. It’s a smile that says, Life sucks, but it’s always worth living. “Most people don’t admit how frustrating he is,” she is. “Most of them pretend he’s an absolute dear and claim they’re the one who can fix him. Although sometimes they don’t bother to pretend. They just leave within minutes of meeting him.”
“Can’t say I blame them,” I say, pushing away from the counter. “But it just so happens I have nowhere else to be. And I’m also probably not the right person to help him, but then I don’t know if there is such a thing when you’re dealing with him.”
“Well then.” Lindy gives the dough a satisfied pat before wiping her hands on a dish towel. “I’ll show you to your room.”
The upstairs of the house is as vast and grand as the downstairs, but its emptiness is a little unnerving. I follow Lindy down a long series of hardwood hallways, noting that we pass a half dozen bedrooms, not one of which seems to be in use. Of course, they wouldn’t be: Paul’s father doesn’t live here, and I’m assuming Mick and Lindy live in the nearby staff house, wherever that is. Which means it’s just me and Paul. Alone.
The thought should be terrifying, and it is. But then I remember my reaction to him…that pure, undiluted surge of attraction, and now I’m agitated on top of being nervous as hell.
“Here we go,” Lindy says, stopping at a room on the left at the end of the hall. “It’s not the biggest of the guest rooms, but the view’s the best in the house. Other than the master suite, of course.”
“Is the master suite where Paul’s father sleeps when he comes?” I ask, stepping into the room.
“Mr. Langdon rarely stays the night,” Lindy says quietly. “When he does, it’s in a guest room as far from Paul as he can get. It’s the only way they can keep the peace.”
“How wonderfully dysfunctional,” I mutter.
But as I take in my new bedroom, I temporarily forget all about the Langdons’ issues, because the room looks like something out of a luxury resort. The bed is huge, its bedding a pristine white save for the fur blanket draped across the foot. The furniture is all natural wood and has that sort of oversized one-of-a-kind quality look that makes me think it was made locally instead of created in bulk and distributed to thousands of households.
There’s a large desk in one corner, a reading chair in another, but the star of the room is the massive windows overlooking the water. “Wow,” I whisper.
“See, we do have a few things New York City doesn’t,” Lindy says, not bothering to hide the pride in her voice. “Frenchman Bay is one of them.”