slowly relaxed them and stood with as much grace as she
could muster. Claire didn’t raise her head. She didn’t notice.
She’d uprooted Haley’s entire life, threatened everything
she knew, and for what? She wasn’t even interested in her
guest. She’d spared a few minutes out of her day, and that was
the most she was willing to dedicate to the situation. The
situation being a living, breathing person. Claire barely paid
attention when Jenny came and ushered Haley out of the room
and back into the hall.
Claire had done it because she wanted revenge.
She’d done it because she could.
Chapter 3
Claire
It wasn’t that Claire was a stranger to laughter in her own
house, but when the peals of it sounded from somewhere deep
in a room that was a good distance from her office, high and
light and melodic, she found herself freezing.
She glanced up from the spreadsheets she’d been working
on. That was to be taken with a grain of salt, because ever
since Haley Watt arrived, she hadn’t done much of anything
except inhale the scent of her perfume, which was as young
and sweet as she was. She favored Robert, but she’d somehow
gotten the better parts of him. She’d grown into a real beauty.
Miles of wavy dark hair, thick lashes, and her dad’s blue eyes.
She was so young and so pretty. All innocence and sunlight,
and it did something to Claire. Something that had made it
impossible to work for the remainder of the afternoon. She’d
been lost the past few hours, she realized, and she’d just
surfaced at the sound of that laughter.
Bubbly laughter.