into a corner and then dragged the two suitcases out of the closet. I was a fast packer. Product of growing up as a military brat and traveling year after year after year to various locales the Air Force had sent us. As a vacation home watcher, I carried the entirety of my life in these two suitcases so that it was easy to move in. And, now, more importantly, out.
All signs had pointed that this was the perfect opportunity for me. Now, all signs pointed to run and run fast. I couldn’t have been more awkward if I’d tried. I wasn’t even that awkward when I tried. But something had just come over me. A cataclysmic reaction to being in Penn’s presence again. My brain had shut off, and my mouth had opened. Ready to unleash on a relative stranger.
A stranger who was the son of my boss.
Who apparently was friends with the woman who had hired me.
I shook my head in exasperation as I unzipped the suitcase and pulled out the packing cubes. What had I even been thinking?
Of course, I hadn’t been thinking. I’d just acted on impulse. Six years of pent-up anger had just unleashed.
I yanked open the first drawer and removed my clothes. This was such a fucking disaster.
Now, I had no idea what I was going to do for the rest of the year. This was a cushy job. Sit around and watch someone’s house? Get paid to do that? Um…yeah, a no-brainer. But, without that, I’d probably have to go home. Back to Charleston. A month at home had been plenty to begin with. Between my parents constant arguing about my job and nagging about the lack of boyfriend situation and my perfect little sister, Melanie, starting her senior year of high school with the same guy that she’d dated since we moved to the town. I couldn’t handle it.
I’d have to find another way. Maybe have Amy get me a job at the gallery even though she really didn’t need the help. And maybe I could move in temporarily. Current boyfriend—Steve or Chuck or Tom or whatever his name was—probably wouldn’t like that. They always thought they were the one until a few months later when Amy would kick them out because a new artist had come into town for her gallery. It was a recurring cycle. She loved artists. She somehow continued to settle for losers back home in the interim.
I needed to call her.
She’d freak out about Penn.
She was the one who had warned me about him to begin with.
Of course, I hadn’t listened.
But I realized I didn’t even know where my phone was. Where had I left it after getting that awful email from my agent? Probably the living room.
I grumbled under my breath as I stuffed a bunch of underwear into a small cube. I was fucked because no way in hell was I going back out there to make a fool of myself.
It was bad enough that Penn was here. Let alone that he had seen me naked and watched me humiliate myself. I didn’t have to make it worse.
Plus, what the hell did I have in common with those people? I threw the cube into the suitcase. They all looked famous with their fabulous clothes and perfect hair and manicures and stylish makeup and easy confidence. They’d had their life given to them on a silver spoon. And I had grown up with nothing. Amy had money, but even she wasn’t rich like this.
There was rich, and then there was wealthy.
And I didn’t even follow the lives of the rich and famous, but I knew the name Kensington carried its weight in gold.
I was an idiot. I’d known in Paris that he had money. He’d opened doors that I couldn’t fathom even now. But it had never occurred to me that he was the heir to the Kensington fortune. That he was that wealthy.
A knock on the bedroom door broke me from my silent rant.
“Natalie?” Penn called from the other side.
What the hell? What was he doing, trying to talk to me?
I’d basically run away from him and his friends on his suggestion. It hadn’t been long enough for him to consider his offer of privacy expired.
“Yes?” I took a half-step toward the door and then stopped.
“May I come in?”
Come in? What the fuck? No!
I checked my clothes. Still in shorts and an oversized Grimke University T-shirt. It was one of the best damn private schools