Fallen

He considered her for a moment. He’d only known her a handful of days, her presence was a damn inconvenience to him to say the least, and yet he found himself intrigued by her, interested in the things that came out of her mouth, the way she viewed the world. And of course, there was the way she made his body feel, both clumsy and electrified just by virtue of the way she looked. He stared at her a moment longer. Yeah, so he was definitely attracted to her.

Didn’t matter. He had one goal in mind, and she wasn’t going to get in the way. But not at the expense of her safety.

She had a little girl, an innocent child.

And she’d known Kandace. He was still having a hard time wrapping his mind around that.

Hey, Dreamboat. He still heard her voice in his head sometimes, that nickname that had both embarrassed him and filled him with pleasure.

Camden turned, heading away again. “Call me if you smell something dead coming from the walls.”

Behind him, Scarlett gasped, rushing to descend the stairs next to him. “You’re not serious.”

They stepped into the foyer together and came to halt, Camden turning toward her, feeling a twinge of humor at the mild outrage on her face. He hadn’t been serious. He’d checked the crawl space—shone his flashlight up and down it on each floor—and knew no one was in it, but he took another moment to enjoy her reaction. He had the feeling that if he told her there was likely some drug-addled teenager locked up in her walls, she’d take a sledgehammer and make it her job to free him or her. Dumb woman. She was going to get herself hurt. She was going to get her child hurt.

Farrow was no place for her.

Lilith House might prove dangerous.

And what will you do about it, Cam? Come up with an excuse to board up every window and crawl space? Sit on her doorstep with a pistol? Wouldn’t it be easier just to let them do what they want, so long as they don’t hurt her?

Yeah, yeah it would.

He’d tried to remind himself of that as he’d walked through her mess of a kitchen to check the window, spotting the drawings of cakes she had hanging up on one empty wall underneath a logo that read Ruby Sugar. The colored sketches were so outrageously beautiful and unique that they had stunned him for a moment. And Camden wasn’t a man generally impressed by spun sugar and frosted flowers.

So she was beautiful and kind and ridiculously talented. So what?

Where exactly do your loyalties lie? Those had been Georgia’s words and they rang in his ears now.

With you, Georgie, he’d answered. Always with you.

“There was no one in the crawl space,” he said. “When you start with the renovations, you might want to have them sealed up permanently though.”

Her eyes ran over his face as though she could see under his skin. It made him nervous. It made him feel like she knew things about him he didn’t want her to know. She doesn’t. How could she? “What was the original purpose of those crawl spaces? Any idea?”

“I don’t know if anyone knows for sure. I’ve heard Hubert Bancroft had them created as hiding spaces for his family should there be an invasion of some sort. It was a lawless time back then. Wealthy people often had hidden spaces in their homes where they might hide people or things worth stealing.”

“Things worth stealing,” she muttered as if mulling over the phrase. Scarlett’s gaze moved away for a moment and she nodded her head. “Not to mention Hubert Bancroft considered himself judge, jury, and executioner in the murder of innocent people. I might be paranoid too if I was a stone-cold devil any fair-minded person would relish seeing dead.”

Like that, he thought, a small chuckle moving up his throat at her phrasing, true though it was. She said things like that and it made him want to protect her, not just from physical harm, but from anything that might distress or scare her, or even make that small frown line appear between her eyes. Because she was perceptive and caring and decency poured off her like a tangible thing.

Christ Almighty.

He scrubbed a hand over his face, opening his mouth to tell her to lock the door behind him. He didn’t want to spend another moment with this woman. It was shaking things up. It was going to ruin everything.

A shrill chirping came from the direction of the kitchen. He turned toward it. “What was that?”

Scarlett sighed. “Our temporary guest.” She turned, heading toward the noise and, unable to resist, Camden followed.

When they arrived at the kitchen, Scarlett went immediately to a Tupperware container sitting on the counter, picking it up and turning toward him. Inside the container, nestled in a kitchen towel was a baby bird.