Crown Jewels (Off-Limits Romance #1)

I get up and walk to one of the windows, look out over Cold Sound. In the dusky blue light, the ocean looks black, and deceptively flat. In bright light, you can see the small white-caps of current rushing between the Isle of Gael’s north border and tiny Sheep Island thirty meters out. The current there is brutal: inaccessible by most boats.

In bygone times, when Gael was under threat, the royal family would be whisked away by special boat and hidden there among the sheep. I feel a dull shot of longing for such a clean escape before my mind boomerangs to Lucy.

Lucy Rhodes.

I check Twitter again. Let out the breath that I’ve been holding.

Fucking Parsons.

When Lucy fell asleep that night, her body tucked against my chest, her soft face pressed against my throat, the first thing I did was lie there, inhaling her sweet scent and feeling her warm curves against my harder planes. But after that, I left a guard at her door and went to find my old friend Dec.

He noted my unzipped fly and smirked, but when he realized how pissed off I was, he knew he couldn’t bullshit me.

“What was wrong with her? Carolina told me she saw Lucy drop her flute when she saw a market heir? Rice?”

“Bryce.” He nodded. “Bryce Parsons. His family owns Parsons’ Grocers. Mr. Parsons has been escorted from the premises.”

“Tell me,” I demanded.

“Tell you what?”

“You know what. Tell me what the fuck he did to her! Don’t lie to me, Dec. Why did you have him thrown out?”

He shook his head, rubbing his jaw as he stared at his half-drained tumbler.

“Declan.”

“It’s not mine to tell.”

“She came upstairs…fucked up. Distraught, not drunk but scared. I tried to calm her down.” I shake my head. That isn’t really true. I left her there at first. I feel like shit for it now. I let my irritation zero in on Declan. “I’ll find out somehow. And when I do, I’m going after him.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean kick his fucking ass. Dec, you didn’t see her. She was shaking. She settled down, but for a second I was going to find you. I thought we’d need to take her somewhere.”

“Damn.” He rubs his forehead.

And so—Dec told me. What he learned from Maggie. What most people in their circle knew but never said. That Bryce and Lucy had been engaged, and the fucker had raped her. Gotten all amped up on something and hurt her at a Hamptons party two summers ago.

Their families had settled out of court—something we don’t allow in Gael in cases of abuse—and after that, Lucy had left The Rhodes of Concord. Moved out to Colorado.

“You’re sure?” I asked. “It’s all true?”

He nodded.

Half an hour later, we were down on Parsons’ beach. I came at the motherfucker first, threw a bag over his head. Declan helped me fuck him up. After it was over, he thought I had gone too far. I laughed.

“Too far, he wouldn’t be breathing.”

Dec and I go way back. We’ve been friends since we were wearing diapers, since my mother was alive.

He’s a real friend. Really more a brother.

I text him now and get a reply in seconds. Yes, it’s true. Parsons heard I fucked her—Lucy—that night, and he’s suing her for breach of contract, for breaching the non-disclosure agreement Americans lump in with their cowardly out-of-court settlements. He’s assuming Lucy told me about her past with him.

I rest my forehead on the window. Blow a breath out. Watch it fog.

I can’t tell Parsons it wasn’t Lucy who told me without linking myself more formally to his beating. But if I don’t say something—if I don’t tell him it’s not a very well-kept secret; if I don’t tell him Dec told me; if I don’t tell him something to clear Lucy—that bastard will sue her.

I slide my phone into my pocket and go pour another glass.





*



Lucy





I’ve never been afraid to stay at my Estes house alone before. Never. Not once. Until tonight.

Amelia is flying in tomorrow afternoon. I told her she didn’t need to. She said nothing could stop her. She mentioned Charley wants to come out next week, and Mags might come a few days then, too. As if it’s just coincidence and I don’t know they had a pow-wow.

I spend the afternoon making phone calls to my legal team, my family, and my therapist, who’s taken the liberty of leaving me a pep-talk voice mail. I’m still seeing her every third week—she’s here in Estes—but I decide not to call her back just yet. I need to sit with this.

Or so I think.

The doorbell rings just after sunset, and it startles me so much, I toss my phone halfway across the dining room table, causing Grey to jump onto the fireplace mantel.

I peek at the porch through a curtain in the formal dining room and feel my body slacken when I see it’s only Frieda.

Who did you think it would be?

I think about the question after Frieda leaves, having given me some honey from the hives behind their house and confirmed for my mom that I’m okay.

Who did I think would be at the door? Who do I think will be at the door or one of the windows tonight, I ask myself as I sit in the billiards room playing solitaire with shaking fingers.

Not Bryce. But maybe someone sent here by him.

Rationally, it sounds ridiculous that I’m scared he’ll have me harmed or even killed. But fear’s not rational.

I missed a thousand warnings signs with Bryce while we were dating. The way, when we were in high school, he used to clamp his fingers around the nape of my neck, under my hair, and steer me around at parties. The way he only ever wanted doggie-style sex, and he would wrap something around my neck and tug on it and call me “whore.” The way he’d tell me what I should and shouldn’t wear, and sometimes suggest I change my top or pants or skirt so I’d look better. The way, in spring 2014, when things finally started to unravel, he told me he would break off our engagement if the show’s producers didn’t write him into the storyline and let me wear my ring on camera. And finally, the way his personality changed when he started snorting what I thought at first was coke, but apparently was sometimes coke and other times, another drug called ketamine.

Then there was the threesome. It seemed regular enough to me. Sure, I didn’t want it, and he knew that, but didn’t a lot of guys pressure their girlfriends into things like that? Fiancé in my case, but who was counting? When the girl went to the press… I was angry, but it seemed like my mistake, not Bryce’s.

And then that week, the week right after the Fourth of July. Bryce’s father came to Southampton for once, and Bryce didn’t want to see me for two days. I found out he had been out both nights, with other girls. When I confronted him about it, he slapped me. Then he sobbed and dropped down to his knees and told me he slapped me because his father used to hit him. I was still recovering from that, still processing, still trying to get my brain to believe Bryce was a good guy, the night I wanted to snuggle during his party.

The night I learned what real fear meant.