My Fiance's Uncle's Property

Chapter eight

Eveline.

The villa sits behind a gate that opens without you touching anything, like the house has been informed in advance that its owner is arriving.

Stone and glass, low and wide instead of tall, the kind of architecture that whispers money instead of announcing it. Lights come on automatically as the car pulls up the drive, section by section, like the building is waking itself for us.

"You'll have the east wing," Lucian finally speaks, the first sentence either of us has managed since the hospital. "Private entrance if you want it. Staff comes twice a week — Tuesdays and Fridays — otherwise it's just the two of us."

Just the two of us. He says it like a logistical detail. It lands like something else entirely.

I follow him through the front door into a hallway that smells faintly of cedar and something colder underneath it, leather maybe, the smell of a house that belongs to someone who barely has anyone coming around.

Everything is clean lines and controlled color — grey, white, the occasional dark wood — nothing loud, nothing that asks to be noticed. It suits him disturbingly well.

“We can drop the act now, or how long do you intend to pretend like I'm a stranger” I confront him. He turns, his dark grey eyes digging into mine.

“And who says I'm pretending?” He asks, walking toward me. I take steps back, but he doesn't stop, he continues walking towards me, making me walk backwards.

“What are you doing?” My back finally hit the ceiling-to-ground window, he's now almost pressing into me.

“Today's Wednesday…”

“So?” I ask, then I realize. He just said the staff comes Tuesdays and Fridays, I'm alone here with him, and no one is coming to save me.

“I suggest you act right while you're here with me” he says, his eyes circling my entire body, like a predator studying its prey.

My heart is pumping more blood that it should, I have goosebumps all over, I feel my p***y throbbing. Oh gosh! Everything is happening all at once.

This is pure torture.

This man is technically my uncle, I can't let my p***y throb for him like this. Where does that put Julian? Even if I know Julian can never make me horny, besides, he gets to have fun, why can't I?

But not with his uncle!!! I have to keep it together.

I take a gulp.

"Kitchen's through there,” he finally steps away. “My study is this way”, he says pointing upstairs.

“Shall I take you to your room?” He offers.

“No, just direct me, I'll find it myself”

I can't let him take me there with the way I feel currently, I might start something that I have no idea how to finish.

“if you ever need anything." He gestures up the stairs again, “my room is beside yours, and the study is beside my room”

What the actual f**k?!

Why does he have to be so close?!

Oh God help me!! Help me keep it together while I'm here with this dude.

"Your room is the last door on the left. That should be enough direction for you to figure out where it is”

“Yes, thank you”

I head up the stairs with my luggage. I brought just a box, I don't plan to stay here for long.

"Get some rest," he calls out to me, "Thursday's going to be a long day for both of us."

***

I don't sleep. Not really. I lie in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar house, staring at a ceiling I don't recognize, running Harold's sentence through my head on a loop until the words stop meaning anything and start sounding like static.

‘There are things about your father — your birth father — that I've been protecting you from for a very long time.’

I don't know what to believe anymore. First, it's Harold and Lucian knowing each other, then learning there are secrets to my birth father that I still don't know — not that I expect to know but Harold telling me that now that Lucian is here, and his health is declining is quite scary, now I'm living in the same house with the same person who I supposed to be a stranger.

Everything is happening all at once, psychology didn't teach me how to process this.

Around one in the morning, thirst wins over pride, and I give up on sleep entirely.

The kitchen is dark except for the faint glow of the range hood light. I pour water I don't really want, mostly to have something to do with my hands, and that's when I hear it — his study door, opening down the hall upstairs, followed by footsteps that aren't heading toward a bedroom, but down the stairs.

He finds me at the counter before I can decide whether to disappear.

"Couldn't sleep either?" He's half dressed, his bare chest, chiseled muscles, and his defined shoulders calling out to my kitty.

He looks exhausted though.

"Too much on my mind," I say, which is true and also nothing.

He leans against the counter, a careful distance away, close enough that I feel it anyway. "Harold told you something before I picked you up. I could see it on your face the entire drive."

"You could see it." I set the glass down harder than I mean to. "You've known me for less than twenty-four hours and you can already read my face that well?"

Something shifts behind his eyes — amusement, maybe, or something adjacent to it. "I read people for a living, Eveline. It's not a compliment. It's a habit I can't turn off."

“You're a surgeon dude” I roll my eyes at him.

I see something curl at the side of his mouth. Is that…a smile?

"Fine. Read this, then." I fold my arms, refusing to look away first. "Harold said you knew my birth father. Before either of you knew me. He didn't get to finish before his heart monitor decided to interrupt us."

The amusement disappears completely.

For one full second, Lucian Vale — a man who stayed perfectly composed while a patient's chest fought for air in front of him — looks like he doesn't know what to do with his own face.

"Did he," is all he says. Careful. Too careful.

"You're not denying it."

"No," he says, quiet, measured, choosing every word the way I imagine he chooses his incisions. "I'm not."

The kitchen feels smaller than it did thirty seconds ago. My pulse is doing something inconvenient in my throat.

"So tell me," I say. "Tell me what you know about him."

He looks at me for a long moment — long enough that I start to think he might actually do it, might hand me the piece Harold couldn't — and then something closes behind his eyes, a door shutting on a room he's decided I'm not allowed into yet.

"Not tonight," he says. "You need to sleep before tomorrow, and this isn't a conversation I'm having at one in the morning in a kitchen."

"Lucian—"

"Eveline." My name again, lower this time, an edge underneath it I haven't heard from him yet. "I promised your father I'd keep you safe. Not necessarily info

rmed. Those aren't always the same thing."

I go very still.

Your father? Not Harold. He doesn't say Harold.