telling him. I never moved.
I sat suspended until he would leave.
He’d come in for a general report from her. He wanted to know how Cyclone was during the day, what projects he spent time on, his dietary habits even. He would ask about Seraphina. He would ask if she had heard from Matt. He got the layout of how the staff was doing, who was complaining, who was doing well. He liked to praise the ones who worked the hardest, and he would watch the ones Marie said weren’t working. After a week, one of those was let go. After two weeks, a second one was let go.
He even asked about Quinn, wanting to know when she left, what charities she had mentioned to Marie.
She told him what she knew. Marie never hesitated or lied.
The only two people he never asked about were Kash and me.
It stung at first. I mean, how could it not? A father that I was foisted on. He was gone the first few weeks, then here, and still not talking to me—or about me even. But then again, maybe he asked when I wasn’t around? Maybe he knew I was there? Maybe that’s why he continued to ask her those questions, knowing I was there, wanting, in a weird way, to build a connection to me?
I didn’t know.
He just didn’t ask about me. That’s what I knew.
A month passed, and another couple weeks after that.
More days spent with my siblings. More nights with Kash. It was now nearing the end of July, and I was missing Chrissy.
“Heya, lonely sister, but one that’s so much more mature than me.”
Matt dropped into the chair behind me with a collapsing sigh. His head fell back, his mouth opened, and a full groan left him. “It’s fucking hot.” He rotated in the chair, casting a beady look at Marie, who was sitting at her desk. “I know you like it hot, but would it kill you to put a fan in here?” He gestured to me. “At least for Bailey’s sake. There’s a whole sweat line going down her back.”
“There is?”
I shot him a look. “Dumbass. I’m fine.”
“Doesn’t matter, because,” Matt stood, saying to me, “I came to rescue you.”
“Rescue?” I was still pissed at him. We had never talked about the sex club night.
“From Victoria and the German tutor for Cyclone. They have lessons in an hour, and I know Quinn is intending to ask both of them to stay for lunch.”
Marie piped in, “Mistress Quinn is still here?”
He nodded at her. “She pulled in when I got here. Called from the car to invite me for lunch.”
Marie hurried out of the room, the door slamming in her wake.
Matt smirked at me. He raised an eyebrow. “Want to tell me why you lied just now? I can see how uncomfortable you are, and this room is hot-like-a-sauna hot.”
More shifting around. I didn’t like this, not a bit.
“Spill it.” He was scowling.
I turned back to the computer monitor. “I just don’t want to be a nuisance. To anyone.”
I was turning the computer off.
Matt had fallen silent.
If he had come in to rescue me, I knew he wasn’t going to make me stay for that lunch. Not that Quinn would invite me. She’d been avoiding me as much as I had her, and it wasn’t the first time since I was here that the tutor and Victoria were at the estate.
They came once a week.
Marie would pointedly suggest I fix something on her computer, or Theresa’s monitor, or would say they would bring me something to eat in Kash’s villa.
No one had mentioned their visits, and while I caught the tail end of Victoria leaving once, I hadn’t brought them up, either.
I turned back, standing up. Then, catching Matt’s face, I froze.
He was pissed. Seriously pissed.
“What?”
“Why do you think you’re a nuisance?”
Oh God. Where would I start? “Matt…”
“Bailey,” he ground out.
He was waiting. His other eyebrow went up.
“Look, it’s nothing. For real. I don’t want to bug Marie. That’s all.”
He waited, still studying me.
I was waiting too. I didn’t want him to push this. It felt wrong to complain to him about his own family, because it wasn’t just Marie or Theresa that I didn’t want to bother. It was everyone. Well, not Kash. I liked bugging him. A lot. Every night. Multiple times a night. An itching was forming under my skin, and I knew that wouldn’t go away until Kash came again. It’d been three full nights since