Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 66

Chapter 66

I did not look back. I went down the hall to the guest room, stepped inside, and turned the lock.

His knock came almost immediately. Three sharp raps.

I sat on the edge of the guest bed and looked at my nails.

He knocked again.

I said nothing.

After a while, the knocking stopped.

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I was up before him the next morning.

I showered, dressed, and was in the living room when I heard him come out. He looked surprised to find me already ready, which told me he had expected to find things back to normal. Breakfast on the table. A wife who had softened overnight.

“What are we having?” he asked.

I picked up my bag. “I have no idea. I stopped cooking a few days ago. You would have noticed if you had been home.”

He stared at me.

“Hire a maid,” I told him, and walked out.

The day was long and full and exactly what I needed.

The new lab location consumed everything. There were contractors to meet and equipment lists to approve and decisions that needed to be made immediately and decisions that could wait and Pat moving through all of it beside me with the particular energy of a woman who had been waiting years for this exact problem to have.

I drove home late, my feet aching, my mind still running through the list of everything that needed to happen before the end of

the week.

I opened the front door.

And stopped.

Suitcases in the hallway. Two of them, large, the kind people bring when they intend to stay.

Julian came out of the living room and when he saw me his expression did something careful and deliberate.

“My mother and sister are going to be staying with us for a few months,” he announced.

I looked past him into the living room.

They were both there. Julian’s mother, sitting with the particular posture of a woman who has already decided she owns the room she is in. Julian’s sister, standing with her arms crossed, looking at me the way she always looked at me.

Dominic.

I answered immediately, walking toward the far end of the hallway, my back to the room.

“I will be sending a handyman to your home early tomorrow morning,” he said, his voice low and even. “When he arrives, take him into your bedroom and lock the door. The message I am sending is confidential and for your eyes only. Your bedroom is the only place you can receive it privately. Can you do that?”

I stood there with Julian’s mother’s eyes on my back and Julian’s sister’s silence pressing against the room and a smile pulling at the corner of my mouth that I was glad nobody could see.

My brows pulled together in the most convincing expression of polite confusion I could manage, just in case anyone was watching my face.

What on earth was Dominic Ford up to now.

“Yes,” I said quietly into the phone. “I can do that.”

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