After dinner, the guests dispersed to various rooms in the house—the music room, the front parlor, the Wingthorn Hall portrait gallery. The rain had picked up, and it beat hard against the roof and windows. People were going to be trapped at the house until the storm was over.
“Aphrodite,” Lia muttered on her way to the music room, “you are useless.”
“Watch out. She probably heard that.”
Lia spun around and found August walking behind her.
He grinned and caught up to her.
“Stop eavesdropping when I talk to myself,” she said. “It’s rude.”
“You were talking to Aphrodite.”
Lia glared at him. “Don’t be right when I want you to be wrong, please.”
He laughed, low and throaty.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“The music room.”
“May I join you?”
“I’d prefer if you didn’t.”
“I’ve offended you.” He didn’t look hurt by this realization. Lia was annoyed to find he looked rather pleased with himself. He leaned back against the wall, hands in his trouser pockets, looking the very picture of casual elegance.
“No, I just don’t like parties very much.”
“Why not?”
“The usual reasons. Strangers. Awkward chitchat.” She was the madam of an illegal escort agency, and her parents had unwittingly invited three of Lia’s escorts and half their client list.
“Let’s go and have some unawkward chitchat.” He nodded toward the morning room.
“I need to mingle,” she said. “Sorry.”
She turned away from him and started down the hall again, toward the music room. August, of course, walked right at her side.
“We need to talk.” His tone was no longer flippant and flirtatious. In fact, he sounded almost scared. “Please believe me when I say it’s important.”
“Leave your card with the butler,” she said. “My visiting day is the fifth Tuesday of every month.”
“We could be friends, Lia,” he said. “We have a lot in common, after all.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“You have wealthy, powerful parents. I have wealthy, powerful parents. You love Greek mythology. I eat, sleep and breathe Greek mythology. I’m handsome. You’re beautiful. We’re practically twins.”
“We are not amused.”
“Will you at least open your gift?” This man was determined. She gave him credit for that.
Lia looked at him. “Now?” This was her graduation party, not a child’s birthday party.
He nodded. “It’s nothing indecent, I promise. You’ll like it.”
“And you’ll stop flirting with me if I open it?”
“If you want me to,” he said. “Do you want me to?”
Lia didn’t answer.
“Well?” he asked.
“Let me get back to you on that.”
“Open your gift. Then you can tell me if I can keep flirting with you or not.”
Too intrigued to say no, Lia crossed the hall to the morning room. She found his gift in its plain brown wrapper. She tore off the paper, lifted the lid and pushed the gold foil tissue aside.
“Oh,” she said, unable to mask the delight in her voice.
He’d given her a copy of The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, her favorite novel of all time. The cover was a deep forest green with the Greek god Pan engraved on the front in gilt. This wasn’t simply a copy of her favorite book of all time—this was a rare first edition of her favorite book of all time.
“How did you know?” she asked him.
“It’s my favorite book, too,” he said.
“It is?” She didn’t know anyone who read it anymore, except children.
“I love the part where Ratty and Mole set out by boat at night on a search-and-rescue mission for the missing baby otter, and they accidentally end up—”
“Yes, on Pan’s Island,” Lia said, running her fingertips gently over the golden lines of Pan on the cover. “I love when they find Pan himself sitting there with the otter asleep at his feet.”
“And Ratty and Mole are overwhelmed by wonder and love,” August said.
“Yes, right.” She smiled like a child. “That’s my favorite part, too. I could recite the whole passage, I’ve read it so many times.”
“Surely not,” he said, a smile lurking at the corner of his mouth. He was teasing her, she knew it, but she didn’t care anymore. He’d knocked her guards down with one little gift. Without her meaning to do it, the words of her most precious story tumbled out.
“‘He looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper,’” Lia recited, “‘saw the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were looking down on them humorously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corners...’”
Lia paused and flipped open the book to the exact page, handed it to him so he could read along and see that she didn’t miss a single word.
“‘All this he saw,’” she continued, “‘for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.’
“‘“Rat!” he found breath to whisper, shaking. “Are you afraid?”’
“‘“Afraid?” murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. “Afraid! Of him? O, never, never! And yet—and yet—”’”
“‘“O, Mole, I am afraid!”’” August finished as he closed the book with a gentle thud and passed it back to Lia. She took it carefully from him and held it to her chest. Then he raised a hand to her face and, with a flick of his thumb, wiped a tear off the arch of her cheek.
“I stand corrected. You know your Willows.”
“Oh, sorry,” she said. She put the book back into the tissue paper and hid it away in the box like she did with so many of the things that brought tears to her eyes. “Daddy used to read that book to me every night. Every summer day when I was little, we’d walk in the woods, looking for Pan’s Island.”
“Did you find it?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “But finding it wasn’t so much the point as looking for it with Daddy.” She laughed to stop herself from shedding another tear. “Anyway, if I’d found it I wouldn’t be here. I’d still be there.”
“You’ll find it someday.”
She wasn’t sure why, but when he said that, she almost believed him. Must have been his Greek accent.
“Thank you very much,” Lia said. She was determined to take control of this conversation again. “This was very kind of you, Mr. Bowman.” He arched his eyebrow. “Sorry, August.”
He looked to the left, looked to the right. He crooked two fingers at her, beckoning her to step forward to hear a secret. She leaned in so close she could have kissed him. He bent his head and put his lips to her ear.
“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,” he said. She wasn’t sure what it meant but it made her knees weak to hear it, and her thighs weren’t holding up all that well, either.
“Um...my Latin’s a little rusty,” she said, meeting his eyes, the wild color of storm clouds.
He put his hand to his mouth as if to tell her a secret.
“Beware Greeks bearing gifts,” he said. His breath tickled the sensitive skin of her shoulder.
Lia raised a finger and wagged it at his face.
“You’re trouble.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” he said.
“I’m going now. Thank you for the gift. Flirting over.”
Lia couldn’t believe she’d cried in front of the man. It had been years since she’d shed a single tear over anyone or anything. She’d forgotten how much she hated being vulnerable in front of someone. Thanks to August Bowman, she remembered.
Wanting to put distance between them quickly, Lia strode across the hallway, stepped into the music room and stopped dead in her tracks.
Across the room, at the fireplace, stood her mother with a man Lia had not seen in four years and had hoped to never, ever see again. The second he saw her, he smiled and raised his glass of red wine to her in a mocking toast.
David.
Here it was. This. The thing she’d been dreading. The knot in her stomach. The hand wrapped around her heart. She’d been right. Something monumentally bad had happened tonight, was happening right that second.
David Bell was here, in her home.
Her mother spotted Lia at the same instant and waved her over.
“Lia? Are you all right?” August suddenly stood at her side.
She was too scared to lie. “No.” Her breathing was so fast she thought she might faint. “Help me. Please?”
As if answering her “please,” the house reverberated with a clap of thunder. The windows turned white as lightning split apart the sky.
The power went out and they were all plunged into darkness.
“I wish I could take the credit,” August said. “But that wasn’t me.”