Private Property (Rochester Trilogy 1)

She stood in my room, so proud and so strong. She’s made of twigs, really. Twigs and leaves and whatever weight fills the air. She’s delicate—but she made me take my pain medicine. I hate feeling groggy. I hate losing control. And I’m losing control to Jane.

I’m alone in the room now, but for how long?

She’ll be back, taking care of me, nursing me back to health, and I’ll fucking fall in love with her. It’s a disaster. I need to fix this—for my sake and for hers. She’s nineteen with dreams of her own. She doesn’t need to be saddled with a bastard like me and my millions of secrets.

The world already looks a little more hazy from the meds.

At least my leg throbs less.

I pick up my phone. Mateo. That’s who I should call. My old friend would give me shit about falling off a cliff, but he’d help me. Probably.

Unless he’s shooting some commercial.

Instead I scroll to the bottom and dial Zoey Aldridge.

She makes me wait ten rings before answering. I can imagine her in her black-lacquer apartment, nails clicking against a glass tabletop while she watches her iPhone ring.

“Hello, Beau.” There’s that sultry voice I remember.

“Zoey.”

“Didn’t think I’d be hearing from you again. After I got your parting gift. In the mail.”

She’s pissed. Of course she’d be pissed. I didn’t feel like meeting her just to break up, so I sent her something pretty from Tiffany’s. Not like she returned it.

In the silence that follows I can hear her calculating her next move. It’s sweet, actually. Being with someone I can understand. Not like Jane with her dark eyes and mystery.

“I broke my leg. In three places.”

“Is that your way of saying you miss me?”

“It’s my way of inviting you to Maine.”

“If you want me to fuck you with your leg broken, you can think again.”

“I did miss this,” I say with a laugh. It’s the same way you miss the rough open seas. Not because they were pleasant, but because it’s all you knew. “Pick out a present. Send me the link. And get on a fucking plane.”

“You’re a bastard, Beau Rochester. Everyone told me.”

“Everyone was right.” Zoey Aldridge is a beautiful woman, but I don’t want to fuck her. I can’t imagine ever doing it again. The terrifying part is that I can’t imagine ever wanting any woman who isn’t Jane again. That’s untenable. It won’t do. That is why I need Zoey here, a wedge between us. I need to push Jane away, because I’m already too close.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Jane Mendoza

Turns out that Paige’s private school has a counselor on staff, so we schedule a Zoom call. The counselor sends a note beforehand that Mr. Rochester should plan to attend. When I mention it to him, he growls a threatening and creative use of swear words.

The first counseling session ends up being helpful for both her guilt over Mr. Rochester getting hurt and her reluctance to do schoolwork. The woman asks gentle questions about why she feels safer holding a paintbrush than a pencil, without judgment. We make an appointment for her to meet with Paige online once a week so they can work through some of this together.

I’m heating up the dinner that Mrs. Fairfax left when the doorbell rings.

A woman stands on the step, a man in a suit holding an umbrella over her head. She looks only vaguely familiar in a blonde-and-beautiful kind of way.

I’m sure we’ve never met.

A limo waits behind them. I stare at them, struck for a moment between the differences in our arrivals. Me, in an economy Toyota Prius with Walmart luggage in the freezing rain. Her, with a chauffeured driver, her no-doubt Louis Vuitton bags in the trunk.

“I’m here for Beau,” she says with a kind, sympathetic smile.

“Like a doctor?”

She scrunches her nose, as if embarrassed for me. “We’re together.”

Oh. Oh. I’ve been here for three months now, and I’ve never seen him go on a date. That doesn’t mean he’s not with someone. He could have a long-distance relationship. Hell, he could have gone to New Hampshire to see her late at night, and I wouldn’t have known about it.

“Right. Let me just…” It seems weird to let a stranger into the house when we aren’t expecting her. I mean technically she could be a thief. Though I don’t know why a thief would have a Tory Burch trench coat. Seems unlikely you’d hire a limo for a theft. “Let me check with Beau.”

And I proceed to close the door in her face.

“What’s going on?” Paige asks as I walk by the kitchen.

“Nothing, sweetheart. Be there in a minute.” I head up the stairs, feeling like an idiot times a hundred. I’m muttering to myself—excuses, denials. Reasons why I closed the door on someone who is most likely a treasured guest. “There’s a child in the house. You can’t be too careful.”