Private Property (Rochester Trilogy 1)

“And you’re delirious.”

“Find Paige.”

“Fine, but you had better be here when I get back or I’m going to throttle you.”

It takes me about fifteen minutes that feels like fifteen hours before I find her curled up in a pile of pine needles, the kitten tucked under her chin. The painting we did of her mother only a few feet away, and I know without asking that it’s what drew her out tonight.

I wake her gently and let her know that Mr. Rochester’s been hurt. She figures out on her own that he was hurt while looking for her, so I hold her close and dry her tears. “It wasn’t your fault that he fell, but you need to stop going out at night. If you get scared or lonely or sad, you come to me. Even if you need to go outside, I’ll come with you. Promise?”

“Promise,” she says in a wavery voice.

We hold up Mr. Rochester on either side and limp together into the house. The kitten trails behind. It’s a slow and painful journey but it feels like we’re a small family.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Jane Mendoza

He didn’t just break one bone. He broke three and fractured another. The hospital sends him in for surgery while I wait at home with Paige, glued to my cell phone.

It’s enough to earn him doctor-ordered bed rest.

Even a crutch could aggravate the healing process.

He was only gone from the house for a total of twelve hours, but everything changes. If an ordinary grumpy asshole Mr. Rochester was a storm, then the new bed-ridden Mr. Rochester is an entire hurricane.

“I want that whiskey,” he growls from the bed.

I continue picking up dirty clothes that are strewn across the floor without meeting his gaze. “You can’t have whiskey with the pain medicine.”

“Fuck the pain medicine. I’m not going to take it. I want whiskey.”

“Why on earth wouldn’t you take pain medicine?”

A low growl. “If you don’t give it to me, I’m going downstairs myself.”

“Do you just want me to feel guilty?” I say, throwing up my hands. Tears prick my eyes. I hate being emotional at a time like this. I can’t seem to stop.

“Guilty? Why would you feel guilty?”

“I know what happened out there. You pushed me back onto the ground and let yourself fall instead. The only reason you have three broken bones is because of me.”

“God save me from crying females. It’s not your fault. It’s not Paige’s fault. It’s not anybody’s fault but this damn cliff and the ocean and a thousand years of history.”

“I’m going to stand here crying until you take the pain meds.” It’s not hard to make that threat, because I’m already standing here crying. When I was sixteen I talked back to my foster mother. She held my wrist so hard and twisted that it fractured. I didn’t cry the whole time she did it. I didn’t cry that night when I went to bed or in the morning when the school nurse realized what happened and sent me to the hospital. Now I’m a watering pot. It doesn’t make any sense.

“Christ.” He takes the two pills sitting on the nightstand and swallows them dry.

A hard sniffle is my attempt to stop crying. “I could drink the whiskey for you.”

“Get out.”

He continues to be a terrible patient, arguing every time he needs medicine, growling because he’s clearly in pain, demanding whiskey along with brandy and finally tequila.

Mrs. Fairfax bustles in to clean his room and the rest of the house. She leaves promptly at noon, the same way she does every day. “I don’t take care of invalids,” she says on her way out the door. “Don’t get paid to do that.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Beau Rochester

God save me from crying females.

Jane with her gorgeous wide doe eyes. I can’t believe how close she came to going over the side of that cliff. My body is made of salt and water, made to beat against these Maine rocks. She’s fragile. Slender. Young. The fall could have killed her.

My mind supplies that image for me. Every time I close my eyes, it’s not my own fall that I see. It’s hers. She could have gone over the cliff—and then what?

It would have broken me to see her hurt, or worse, killed.

I’ve gone far too deep with this girl. The sex was wrong. Inappropriate. Definitely taboo to ever touch the nanny, but it was only supposed to be sex. An approximation of sex. Touching and kissing. Fucking her mouth. Does that count as sex?

Now I’m feeling things for her I have no business feeling.

And she’s clearly feeling them, too.

I know what happened out there. You pushed me back onto the ground and let yourself fall instead. The only reason you have three broken bones is because of me.

What was I supposed to do? Let her fall?