my own. I sighed. I had hoped that in living away from me, she would have forgone that particular trait. I’d hoped it was learned, not inherited.
“Brooklyn?” she wondered. “You mean we’ve been driving for hours and we’re still in New York?”
Matthew’s deep green eyes flickered playfully in the mirror. “No, sweetheart, Brookline. It’s a suburb of Boston. Some friends of mine live here.”
When he called her “sweetheart”—foreign to someone certainly no more accustomed to such endearments as I was when I met him—Olivia started toying with one braid. I watched curiously as the corner of my daughter’s mouth twitched once she knew Matthew wasn’t looking at her anymore.
The ice was thawing. I knew the signs. She liked Matthew. She liked him very much.
“Brookline,” she murmured to herself, over and over again. “Sweetheart.”
Ten minutes later, we pulled up to a solid iron gate barring entrance to a large property surrounded by stone walls. Jane wasn’t joking when she said this was one of the safest places we could possibly be. The Sterlings’ property was a veritable fortress in the middle of Boston.
“Hey, it’s Jane here with a bunch from New York,” Jane spoke into the intercom clearly manned by some kind of security center inside the compound. She also waved at the cameras pointed at the car.
“They had some issues with security when they first got together,” Matthew murmured as the gates opened for us almost immediately. “Brandon is pretty protective over his family.”
I nodded. “Well, yes. He would have to be, wouldn’t he?”
“What do you mean?”
“Wealth makes you a target,” I said with a shrug. “It can be quite a burden, you know.”
Matthew snorted. “Yeah, I’m sure it’s terrible to have all those millions and billions you have.”
It was hard to explain to those who didn’t live it. I had had security on and off since I was born, depending on the family’s visibility and what kinds of threats we were receiving. There were several years during my adolescence when multiple stalkers meant I needed twenty-four-hour bodyguards.
“No, she’s right,” Jane put in a little too sharply.
Her gaze flickered back to mine through the mirror with the same kind of knowing, though hers was threaded with more than a little residual terror. Of course, she’d experienced the realities of that targeting in the worst possible way only a short time ago. She had jumped right into the frying pan, whereas I had built up a tolerance against the sizzle all my life.
Matthew stayed quiet for the rest of the short drive to the house at the end of the maple-lined driveway. It wasn’t nearly as large as the Long Island compound, but still big enough to contain two separate guesthouses at the far end of several acres, a small orchard, and a huge meadow surrounded by other bright green trees that seemed perfect for climbing. One of them even had a tree house in it.
But I was too busy meditating on the previous conversation to appreciate Olivia’s apparent excitement about her new surroundings.
The note of accusation in Matthew’s voice was still ringing through my ears.
“I didn’t choose this life,” I said quietly.
Matthew turned back again, and his glance flickered to my wedding rings, then back up again. “Didn’t you?”
We stared at each other hard. But before I could answer, the car pulled to a stop.
“Come on, doll,” Matthew said quietly as Jane and Olivia scrambled out of the car. He glanced around, then reached a lightning-quick hand back to squeeze my knee before retracting it. “Meet some good people. You deserve a few more of them in your life.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
I had met the Sterlings a few other times. Close friends of Jane and Eric, both Brandon and Skylar were in their wedding last year, and Skylar, as matron of honor, had treated the entire bridal party, including me, to a trip to London for Jane’s bachelorette party. I didn’t know her well, but I did recall her being kind, genuine, and straightforward in the best possible way.
The two of them were standing outside the large white colonial farmhouse when we emerged from the car at the end of the gravel drive, but it wasn’t in welcome. Instead, it sounded more like they had escaped the house to have an argument. Skylar’s small, tomato-red head was swinging angrily as she gesticulated wildly at her husband’s towering form. He simply crossed and uncrossed his arms grumpily.
“Brandon, this is insane,” she was saying. “I do not need a bunch of random women performing