“Open sesame. What was it?”
“The password? ‘I love Ethan Montclair.’” His voice broke, and pain bloomed in his chest, bright and hard. Would these be the last words he heard from his wife?
“How perfectly adorable.”
“Email first,” Ethan said gruffly.
Ivy hovered over the mail icon, clicked it. Ethan gestured, and Ivy stood, let him take over the chair.
The first five messages were all from this morning, from the weird sisters, from Jess. All asking if Sutton was all right. All after Ethan being in touch to see what they knew.
Then there was an array of the kinds of email Ethan himself received—used to receive—editors and publicists and marketing folk, all with terribly good news or don’t-worry-about-it news. Sutton had received a starred review from Publishers Weekly for her latest book that was due out in a month. Nice that she hadn’t mentioned that to him. A familiar seething anger started inside him, made up of equal parts jealousy, pride, and his own unique brand of self-loathing. His wife, the writer, was getting serious accolades for her bodice rippers, while Ethan, the author whose work actually mattered, whose literary contributions would be remembered, sat on his hands unable to write a fucking word.
And then there were the nasty-grams. His animus melted in the face of them. He hadn’t realized; she hadn’t told him. They were still coming in, no longer hundreds a day as they were in the beginning, but still too many. He counted twenty over the past week alone. She had them all saved to a folder, a filter labeling them. Hate mail from her previously loyal readers. He opened her sent folder. Nothing since Thursday. A chill paraded down his spine.
“You find anything?”
He hadn’t realized Ivy had disappeared, but she now held her sweating glass of water. He knew she’d left it in the kitchen.
“Nothing of use. I haven’t gotten into her files yet, I’ve only looked at the email. Could she have a different account?”
The doorbell rang.
“Better go get that,” Ivy said. “It will be the police. I’ll keep looking here for a minute, see if she left anything unfinished in her files. And I’ve only ever gotten mail from her from this account. But, Ethan, anything’s possible.”
“Ivy, you don’t think...”
“What?”
He shook his head. “Never mind. You keep looking.”
Two officers stood on the front porch, appraising the house. Ethan knew the effect it had on people—the wide, graceful wraparound screamed Southern luxury. The double doors with their lion’s head knockers, the dormer windows, the tower. The whole house was special, each piece lovingly crafted, and it showed.
He’d always taken pride in it, though it was Sutton who’d made it a home.
One cop was a young woman in uniform. The second was an older, grizzled man in his fifties wearing a rumpled blue suit. The woman spoke first. “Sir? I’m Officer Graham, and this is Sergeant Moreno. We understand you’ve reported your wife missing?”
“Yes, I—”
A voice from the street called, “Hold up!”
Joel Robinson was motoring up the sidewalk as fast as his short legs could carry him. The white picket fence—for God’s sake, they even had a white picket fence—had a kissing gate, and Robinson fiddled with the latch for a moment, then barreled through, smiling, hand outstretched. “Roy, you old dog. How are things? How’s Beverly?”
Moreno shook hands with Robinson.
“Bev’s fine.”
“Still making that tuna noodle casserole for the church ladies?”
“She’ll never stop.”
“Give her my best, will you? I’ve missed the last few weeks, getting ready for a trial, you know how it is.”
“I do. Why are you here?”
Robinson stepped past the cops and took up position at Ethan’s side. “Ethan’s a friend. I thought I’d stop by and see if there’s been any news on Sutton. Has there?”
Ethan shook his head mutely.
“Well, then, let’s go inside and have a chat. Terrible thing. Terrible thing.”
And he hustled everyone inside. Ethan was starting to get an idea of why Joel Robinson was so respected as a criminal defense attorney.
Inside, Moreno introduced Graham. Robinson was all smiles again. “I know your daddy, he’s a good man. Fair, and not unwilling to admit it when he’s wrong. You tell him his pal from the other side of the fence says hello, will you?”
“I will. He’s spoken of you to me before. He says the same thing about you.”
“Good to know, good to know. All righty, then, let’s get down to business, shall we? We’ve got ourselves a gorgeous redhead to find.”
Then
“Oh, Ethan. I love it! It’s absolutely perfect.”
They were standing on a sidewalk in the quaint downtown community of Franklin, Tennessee. The house was Victorian, ruined, and needed a ton of work. All he could see were dollar signs, but Sutton was bouncing around like a puppy on crack, begging to call the Realtor and look inside, and he couldn’t say no to her. He never said no to her. It wouldn’t kill them to look. Looking wasn’t buying.
Half an hour later, the Realtor gave them the key. “Take a walk around the place, see what you think. It’s not the turnkey you were hoping for, but the bones are there. She could be a real stunner with a little work and TLC.”
And the commission would be twice what the Realtor would get from the other houses she’d shown them, but Ethan bit back those words and followed his lovely wife into the run-down beast.
The Realtor was right, it did have good bones. The house had been abandoned; the previous owner ran into bad times and couldn’t make the payments, and the bank had foreclosed on this monstrosity. The floors were blond teak but scraped and scratched; the owners must have had a large dog. The front porch needed a complete overhaul; he could see a large crack in one of the plaster Doric columns.
Sutton came tearing around the corner from what he assumed was the kitchen. She had a smudge of filth on her cheek and was smiling wider than he’d seen since the first time he’d taken her to bed. Her eyes danced with happiness.
“Oh, Ethan,” she breathed, and he knew, without a doubt, the cause was already lost. They’d be putting in an offer this afternoon. This was their new home.
Would he have allowed her to fall in love with the old wreck had he known where the house would lead them? The agony they’d experience behind these very walls?
Bloody well not. The house would bring them nothing but pain and sorrow. He didn’t care if they were supposed to learn and grow from their experiences, this place was damned, and he’d known it that day when he’d allowed her to fall in love, allowed her to deviate so wholly from their plan. They’d had a plan, and if they’d just stuck to it, none of this would have happened, none of it.
They didn’t need five bedrooms and three fireplaces and an albatross of a house that would require an entire renovation inside and out to make it livable. They didn’t need anything