woman with her hair pulled into a bun, stray blond strands falling loose at the sides of her face. Barely able to speak, her lips parted and closed again, her shoulders trembling as she swallowed her fear.
“Yes, sir. I’m needed in the kitchen.”
I turned my body to let her pass, not that it was needed in hallways that were seven feet across.
“Don’t let me hold you up. I’d hate for you to be late.”
Surprise widened her eyes, but she nodded her head.
“It’s hard in this place. I’ve never worked in a house so big. I get lost.”
And the person who managed the maids and other workers was a whip crack of a woman. Her attention to detail was unlike anything I’d seen, but she was a stickler for timeliness and work ethic and could be hard on the staff if they failed to meet her demands.
“If Gretchen gives you a problem, tell her I held you up to ask a question. She’ll leave you alone after that.”
A hesitant smile stretched her lips.
“Thank you,” she breathed out before grabbing the handle of her cart to push in front of her.
She was two steps away when I asked, “What’s your name?”
The maid stopped and turned my direction. “Holly.”
Nodding, I offered a polite smile and watched her walk away before setting off on my own path toward my suite of bedrooms. I rounded a corner into the private family quarters to find Franklin sitting on a couch, his expression stern as he read a newspaper and sipped from a black mug.
“Take a seat. We have something to discuss.”
It felt like spiders were crawling beneath my skin, an energy I could barely contain after an hour long meeting stuck at a table with men I didn’t much care for. I needed to work it out before I lost my mind.
“I was heading to the gym-“
“Sit down, Callan,” he snapped. “You’ll want to hear this, and since changes will be happening in the next few days, it’s best you prepare yourself for them.”
Changes? I was intrigued to say the least. My gaze caught his across the room.
Rarely was Franklin frazzled, and I wasn’t sure I’d heard him snap at me in the years since I’d taken over the family. Whatever bothered him now was enough to set his jaw on edge, his knuckles blanching white where they held his mug.
It wouldn’t kill me to accommodate him.
I crossed the room and took a seat on the opposite couch, my arms spread out on the backrest and my legs stretched in front of me.
“Is there a problem?”
He set the mug on a side table and shook the paper to fold it and set aside. “There’s no dancing around this, so I’ll just spit it out.”
Eyes meeting mine, he could have pulled out a gun to shoot me and it wouldn’t have been less unexpected. “Lisbeth has been found.”
Every muscle in my body tensed, but I wouldn’t let my bored expression shift. Franklin knew good and goddamned well what that name meant to me and the lengths I’d gone to find her in the years she’d been missing.
Tapping a thumb against the backrest of the couch, I shifted my posture and took a minute to prepare myself for whatever changes her sudden reappearance would entail.
“Is that so? And here I’d hoped the bitch was dead.”
He flashed me a grin, the expression anything but friendly.
“You and I both. But it seems she’s been hidden in some hole somewhere, at least until now. I met with her this morning. She’s in town and has asked to return to the family estate.”
Interesting.
“Does she know I’m here? That I’ve taken the place of her father?”
Franklin laughed. “No. I thought I’d save that information for when she returns. At this point, she believes I’m the person running the family.”
“And I assume, by that statement, you’ve given her permission to come here.”
Another grin. “I assumed you wouldn’t have it any other way.”
He was right about that. There was nothing in this world that interested me more than Lisbeth Rebel Rose.
Franklin took a sip from his mug, his throat working to swallow the liquid down as his eyes held mine from across the room. Our silence meant nothing at that point. We both knew what the other was thinking.
“I told her she could return tonight. Apparently, she had nowhere else to go and was hopeful I would extend the courtesy of a rushed decision.”
“It won’t be easy for her here. Did you tell her that?”