I carry my bag back to the car. “I was just coming in to say hello and then getting Das—Benjamin to take me to my hotel—inn. It’s an inn.”
His mother nods her head in my direction. “We have a guesthouse for just these sorts of situations. Now surely nuns wouldn’t shun you, such a devout Catholic girl, for staying in a guesthouse? The rooms are quite sizable and you will find the general splendor of the guest house more to your liking, I believe.”
I open my mouth and snap my jaw shut. A point for Mrs. Dash.
Nichols snatches my bag back and hustles inside before I attempt to do his job again.
Dash grabs my hand and pulls me along, all the while still chatting with his father about something to do with golf.
His mother loops her arm in mine, placing a perfectly manicured hand on my arm. “Benjamin did mention that you were orphaned during a terrible car accident when you were a young girl. How tragic.”
The sweating starts again. I don’t understand why she’s touching me. I don’t touch people I don’t know, ever. It’s weird to go sharing yourself so easily.
She leans in, her words turning to a full whisper: “We are grateful to be able to offer you our family as a replacement for your own. We only hope we are able to help you fit in.” She pats my arm and walks gracefully inside, floating as if steered by the giant carrot in her ass. “I have laid out some dresses for you, something more suitable for tonight.”
I want to stab Dash, but I remind myself repeatedly that he isn’t at fault. It doesn’t work because, in my mind, he is completely at fault. He lied. He lied and he knows it.
But meeting them confirms exactly why he lied.
I never would have come.
A girl in a maid’s uniform, and not the naughty Halloween kind, slinks up next to me and curtseys. Dash’s mother nods at the girl. “Evangeline will show you to your room.”
“Please, come with me.” The maid holds a soft hand out for me, guiding me in another direction. I sigh the moment we are out of range of their prying eyes.
“Tell me you aren’t as stuffy as they are.”
She gives me a coy grin. “I try not to be, but they prefer we all have the same set of manners, opinions, and habits.”
“Can you not curtsey and act stuffy when it’s just us?”
She nods. “If that is what you wish.” She winks animatedly, giving the exact opposite effect a wink is meant to. Instead of it feeling like she is joking, I feel like she is laughing at me. But she does seem to relax a bit when she speaks again. “They just stopped making the staff line up on the stairs in formation when they arrived home. Apparently they still have to do it in Europe, but here in Virginia everyone finds it antiquated, so they have told us we no longer have to.”
Good God. “Where are you from?” I ask, glancing around the vast hallways and huge rooms as my stomach balls into knots I am certain will never heal.
She pauses, giving me a look. “What do you mean? Here, of course.”
I roll my eyes as she leads me to a set of doors. “You were bred in captivity?”
She lifts a brow. “No, Canada, actually. I’m from the East Coast, but I have worked here for five years. Since I turned eighteen.” She opens the back doors to a terrace that takes my breath away. It’s ridiculous, like the house. We walk under a long pergola next to a huge pool with a water slide and a hot tub. I stop. “What’s with the two pools? Is one heated?”
She pauses too. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“The pool out front and this one—is the one out front the cold pool? Like in Mexico?”
She giggles, as if she were ten years old. “No, it’s part of the garden, part of the fountain. That’s not a swimming pool out front. This is the only pool.”
I don’t even say the things floating around in my mind, and change the subject. “How big is the house?”
“Twenty-four thousand square feet for the main house, a thousand square feet for the pool house, and two thousand square feet in the guesthouse.” She holds a hand out to the small house that’s actually a regular-sized house in the real world. We walk beneath purple flowers and vines growing on the top of the pergola. They smell like lilacs but aren’t bushes. I’ve never seen them this way. It really is beautiful. Even if it’s more of a retreat than a personal home.
When we get inside of the guesthouse I sigh. It’s cozy and large, a perfect space. The small kitchen is a bar, really, and the sitting area has a huge fireplace and three oversized sofas. There are windows all around the house, letting in tons of natural light.