“Sorry—”
“Are you Layla?” She was short and round, with a Hilton Head sweatshirt zipped up to her neck. She had gray-blond hair pulled back into a bun, stray hairs frizzed out around her head making her look like she had a halo.
No. I was not Layla. I was never Layla.
But I said yes, because this was the bed I had made.
“Well, come on, girl, before these bugs make off with you.” She did not look nice. She was trying to look nice, but it wasn’t working. She wore a big smile that should have put me at ease, but didn’t come close. She was worried about me being here, or tense. Or something. Whatever her reasons, she didn’t want me here. And it was coming off of her like a radio signal.
Jesus, did I need to worry about her having a knife?
Without much choice, I stepped into the house. The door clicked shut behind me.
“Look at you, poor thing,” she said. “You don’t even have any shoes.”
“Or a purse,” I said. Or money. Or a bra. Such is the nature of trailer park kidnappings.
“Are you hungry?”
“No, please don’t go to any trouble for me.”
“It’s no trouble,” she said, waving me off like waking up at three in the morning to care for a surprise guest with no shoes was totally par for the course in her life.
Lord, maybe it was. Maybe Dylan Daniels brought women up here all the time. Women with no options or boob support.
I followed her through the cave-like foyer. I was beginning to think Dylan might be a Hobbit. A mole, maybe.
Whew, dodged a bullet there, I thought, giddy with panic; for a while I was imagining having sex with Bilbo Baggins.
“Well, you must be exhausted. Follow me and I’ll show you—”
“Where’s Dylan?” I asked.
“Let me show you to your room,” she said, with the kind of smile that indicated I would get no farther with her. That smile placed her firmly on Dylan’s side.
Dylan had a lot of people on his side. The driver. Joan. Margaret.
I had no one.
The woman led me out of the foyer and the house opened up into a wide, tall, beautiful room with a wall of windows facing a dark valley. Leather couches with big pillows faced that window. There was a kitchen in the back corner with stainless-steel appliances and a large dining room table, surrounded by chairs. The floors were hardwood, worn but shining. Rugs were scattered on those floors, under the table, in front of the sink, and before the big wall of windows—beautiful ones. Rich person ones.
Everything gleamed and glowed in the low light coming in those big windows.
The whole room looked like a movie set. A beautiful movie set—not for Hobbits.
For a very wealthy man.
Hoyt spent five years making me feel small. Unwanted. Unwantable. He made me feel like a nuisance and a failure. At the beginning I’d been hurt, wounded. But I slowly grew to not want anything. If I never wanted anything more than what I had, I could never be hurt.
So I was totally unprepared for how hurt I was looking at Dylan’s house. And I realized how much I’d wanted with him. How far I’d reached.
And I felt toyed with, shamed even. As if I were nothing, a speck, a stupid girl, a puppet, and he was the man with money and drivers and housekeepers and beautiful houses, pulling my strings.
My chest hurt.
Did he sit there? I wondered. Did he sit on that couch, with his feet up on that ottoman and study the mountains while he talked to me? Did he touch himself there? Did he ask me to eat dessert for breakfast and to taste my own come on my fingers? Right? There?
Did he hang up and laugh at me? At my eagerness? My total lack of experience or sophistication?
Was this fun for him, playing with me?
I couldn’t breathe; shock and anger had their fists down my throat.
“Are you coming?” Margaret asked, having walked across the room to stand at the entrance to another dark hallway.
“I need to see Dylan.”