Chapter 2
The pounding came again.
Three hard knocks against the bedroom door.
I jerked upright so quickly the room tilted.
Declan’s hand tightened beneath mine.
Not around it.
Beneath it.
As though he had deliberately stayed still so he wouldn’t startle me.
“Easy,” he said.
My eyes moved from his face to our hands.
My fingers were wrapped around his.
Heat rushed into my cheeks.
I released him at once.
“I’m sorry.”
Declan flexed his fingers once, slowly, as if bringing feeling back into them.
“For what?”
“I—” I stared at the pale sheets gathered around my waist. “Why am I in a bed?”
His expression didn’t change.
“You were asleep.”
“On the library floor.”
“Yes.”
“That wasn’t a question.”
“I know.”
The knocking sounded again.
A woman’s voice followed it.
“Declan, if you make Dr. Patel wait another minute, she’s going to charge you for wasting her morning.”
Declan glanced toward the door.
“She already charges me for wasting her mornings.”
“Because you do it professionally.”
Despite myself, I blinked.
I had never heard anyone speak to Declan Walsh like that.
The door opened before he could answer.
Maeve Donnelly stepped inside carrying a tray with tea, toast, a small bowl of fruit, and the unmistakable expression of a woman who had decided everyone in the room belonged to her whether they knew it or not.
Maeve managed the Walsh mansion.
At least, that was her official job.
In practice, she seemed to manage the schedules, meals, tempers, clothing, visitors, and general survival of every person who entered it.
Behind her came a woman in a navy coat with a leather medical bag.
I recognized her vaguely.
Dr. Anika Patel had a clinic near St. Agnes Hospital.
I had passed it hundreds of times.
I had never gone inside.
Doctors cost money.
“Clara Bennett,” Maeve said, setting the tray on the table. “You look considerably better with your eyes open.”
My name sounded strange in that room.
Too ordinary for the silk curtains and carved bedposts.
“I need to leave.”
Dr. Patel stopped beside the bed.
“You need to sit still.”
“I have work.”
“So do I,” she said pleasantly. “Which is why I’d appreciate it if you didn’t make mine more difficult.”
I looked at Declan.
He almost smiled.
Almost.
Traitor.
“I’m fine,” I said.
Dr. Patel took my wrist before I could pull it beneath the blanket.
“Everybody who says that before I examine them is legally required to be lying.”
“I don’t think that’s a law.”
“It is in this room.”
Maeve folded her arms.
Declan remained silent.
Three against one.
I looked toward the windows.
Morning light spilled over gardens silvered by frost.
Morning.
My stomach dropped.
“What time is it?”
“A little after nine,” Maeve said.
Nine.
I threw the blanket aside.
“No.”
The floor seemed to move the instant my feet touched it.
Declan stood.
He didn’t grab me.
He didn’t order me back into bed.
He simply stepped close enough that when my balance failed, his hand was there beneath my elbow.
That somehow made it worse.
“I was supposed to open the diner at five.”
“You didn’t,” Maeve said.
“My manager is going to—”
“Rosa knows you’re ill.”
I froze.
“You called Rosa?”
Declan looked at Maeve.
Maeve looked entirely unapologetic.
“I did,” she said. “Your emergency contact card was in your wallet.”
“You went through my wallet?”
“To find out who would worry when you didn’t appear for work. I didn’t inspect your receipts.”
I closed my eyes.
Rosa had given me the diner job two years earlier when she caught me sleeping in a booth between shifts.
She had never asked why.
She had merely put a cup of coffee in front of me and said, If you’re going to fall asleep here, you might as well earn minimum wage while doing it.
She would be worried.
That was almost worse than her being angry.
“I have to call her.”
“You can,” Maeve said.
“I have to go.”
“You can’t,” Dr. Patel said.
I opened my eyes.
“Why?”
“Because you fainted from exhaustion, your blood pressure is low, you’re dehydrated, and unless my instincts have deteriorated overnight, you’ve been living on coffee and whatever food can be eaten while standing.”
Nobody spoke.
Dr. Patel’s gaze softened.
“How often do you sleep?”
“Every night.”
Declan’s eyebrows moved.
I hated that he could apparently raise one eyebrow more judgmentally than most people could deliver a lecture.
Dr. Patel noticed too.
“How many hours?”
I picked at a loose thread on the blanket.
“Depends.”
“On?”
“Bus schedules.”
Maeve made a quiet sound.
Not pity.
That would have been unbearable.
It sounded more like annoyance directed at the universe.
Dr. Patel continued examining me.
“How many jobs?”
“Three.”
Maeve stared.
Dr. Patel paused.
Declan already knew.
I could tell.
His face had gone very still.
“Three,” Dr. Patel repeated.
“I need them.”
“Most people need money,” she said. “Most people do not need three full-time schedules competing for one human body.”
“They’re not all full-time.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“I’ll eat more.”
“You’ll rest more.”
“I can’t.”
The words came out sharper than I intended.
Silence settled over the room.
Dr. Patel stepped back.
“All right.”
I looked up.
She closed her medical bag.
“I’m not going to argue with you.”
That surprised me.
“You aren’t?”
“No. You’re an adult. You know your circumstances better than I do.” She glanced at the untouched breakfast. “But bodies keep their own accounts, Clara. Yours is overdrawn.”
I stared at her.
“You can choose what you do about that. I’m merely telling you the balance.”
Something about the word balance made my stomach knot.
Three thousand dollars.
Every month.
Always due.
Never enough.
Declan noticed.
Of course he did.
His attention shifted to the floor beside the chair.
That was when I saw my canvas cleaning bag.
Someone had brought it upstairs.
The zipper was partly open.
Inside, tucked between yellow gloves and a bottle of wood polish, was a cream-colored envelope.
My payment envelope.
The lighthouse symbol printed in dark gray at the corner was visible from across the room.
Declan looked at it.
Then at me.
For the first time since I had opened my eyes, something changed in his expression.
Not anger.
Recognition.
“Who do you know at Harbor Mutual?” he asked.
The air left my lungs.
I reached for the bag.
“Nobody.”
“Clara.”
“It’s nothing.”
His gaze stayed on the envelope.
“Harbor Mutual doesn’t send birthday cards.”
Maeve glanced between us.
Dr. Patel quietly closed her medical bag.
I clutched the envelope.
“It’s private.”
Declan nodded once.
“Then I won’t ask again.”
That startled me more than if he had demanded an answer.
I waited.
He didn’t change his mind.
Dr. Patel gave me instructions, made me promise to eat, and left after extracting another promise that I would visit her clinic within the week.
Maeve followed her downstairs.
Declan remained by the window.
I began gathering my things.
“You don’t have to pay me for last night,” I said.
He turned.
“What?”
“I didn’t finish everything. And I slept for hours.”
“You finished the job before you collapsed.”
“I broke a wine glass.”
“I own others.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
I shoved my cleaning gloves into the bag.
He watched me struggle with the zipper.
Then he spoke quietly.
“How much?”
My hands stopped.
I didn’t look at him.
“You said you wouldn’t ask again.”
“I said I wouldn’t ask who.”
I should have been angry.
Instead, exhaustion had scraped me too thin.
“Three thousand.”
His silence made me wish I had lied.
“Every month?” he asked.
I nodded.
“For how long?”
“That’s another question.”
“Yes.”
I closed the bag.
“I’m leaving.”
He stepped aside immediately.
No argument.
No blocked doorway.
That should have relieved me.
Instead, for reasons I didn’t understand, I felt disappointed.
At the threshold, his voice followed me.
“Clara.”
I stopped.
“If Harbor Mutual told you the debt keeps increasing even while you make full payments, read every page they gave you.”
I looked back.
“How do you know what they told me?”
His jaw tightened slightly.
“Because companies like that rarely invent new tricks.”
“Companies like that?”
He looked toward the envelope in my hand.
“That lighthouse logo used to belong to a legitimate charitable lending program.”
“Used to?”
“It hasn’t for years.”
A cold feeling slipped through me.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying read your paperwork.”
“Why?”
“Because I recognize the name.”
The hallway suddenly felt colder.
“How?”
May you like
His expression closed.
“Because my family once did business with the man who runs it.”
