Three Of A Kind

Under One Roof

I'd packed my life into four boxes and a garment bag, and somehow it still felt like too much and not nearly enough for what I was walking into.

The car pulled up the long gravel drive just after seven, headlights catching against a house that looked less like a home and more like a statement, stone and glass stacked against the dark like it had never once doubted its own permanence. I sat there a moment longer than necessary, hands flat against my knees, running through every version of composure I owned and trying to decide which one I'd need first.

A member of the household staff met me at the door, older, kind-eyed, introducing herself as Netta before taking one of my boxes without being asked. "Mr. Alistair spoke of you often," she said, leading me through a foyer with ceilings too high for comfort. "Said you were the only person in his life who never once asked him for anything."

I didn't know what to do with that, so I said nothing at all.

My room was in the west wing, well clear of the office where the will had been read that afternoon, close enough to the others that I could hear a door close somewhere down the hall as I set my bags down, far enough that it still felt like I was intruding on something I hadn't been invited to. I unpacked slowly, methodically, the way I did everything, and told myself the unsteady feeling low in my stomach was nerves about tomorrow and not about the three men currently somewhere under this same roof.

I lasted forty minutes before hunger won out over pride.

The kitchen was empty when I found it, all dark marble and cold light, and I'd just found the kettle when I heard footsteps behind me, unhurried, familiar already even after only one meeting.

"Couldn't sleep either?" Barrett leaned against the doorframe, sleeves pushed up, looking entirely too at ease for a man whose entire future had been thrown into question that afternoon. "Or is the great and powerful estate administrator too disciplined for something as human as insomnia?"

"I was hungry," I said, which was true, and easier than admitting the rest of it.

"There's leftover pasta in the fridge. Rosa makes enough to feed a small army out of habit, ever since we were kids." He crossed the kitchen without asking, pulled out a container, set it in front of me like it was the most natural thing in the world, then dropped onto the stool across from me instead of leaving. "So. First day on the job. How does it feel to be the most hated woman in this house?"

"Thrilling," I said. "You should see my other job reviews."

That got a real laugh out of him, low and warm. "What did you do before this? Before us, I mean."

"Estate law, mostly. Trusts, successions. Cleaning up messes rich men leave behind when they die without saying what they actually meant."

"And is that what this is? A mess?"

"This is the biggest one I've ever seen." I meant it as a joke. It didn't quite land as one.

"Fair." He stole a piece of pasta straight off my fork before I could stop him, grinning at my look of outrage. "Emory would call that a tactical error, letting the enemy see your fork undefended."

"Is that what I am? The enemy?"

"Jury's still out." He studied me for a second, something steadier moving under the humor. "You don't seem like someone who enjoys holding power over people, for what it's worth. Roan does. Emory would, if he let himself want anything as openly as power. You just look like you'd rather be anywhere else."

"That obvious?"

"Only to someone who's spent his whole life reading rooms to survive them." He said it lightly, but something flickered behind his eyes when he said it, something that looked, for just a second, like the tiredness underneath all that easy charm. "For what it's worth, I don't actually think you're the enemy here. Whatever the others decide to think."

"You don't know anything about me."

"I know you looked like the floor dropped out from under you when Winslow said you'd be living here for a year. Same as us." His voice dropped, quieter now, the teasing edge gone from it entirely. "That's not the reaction of someone who planned this. Or wanted it."

I set my spoon down carefully, buying myself a second I didn't actually have. "Maybe I just don't like surprises."

"Sure," he said, not quite believing me, close enough now that I could feel the warmth radiating off him again, that same unsettling pull from the office resettling low in my chest. "We'll go with that for now."

He didn't push further, which somehow unsettled me more than if he had. We talked another twenty minutes about nothing that mattered, his terrible taste in music, the dog he'd had as a kid, the way Netta had been threatening to retire for a decade and never had, and it would have been almost comfortable if I hadn't spent the entire time aware of exactly how close his hand rested to mine on the counter, close enough that the air between us felt charged in a way I had no right to be noticing on my first night in this house.

I said goodnight before it could become something I'd have to explain to myself later, and took the long way back to my room, past a study with its door left open and lamplight spilling into the hall.

I shouldn't have stopped. I told myself that even as I did.

Roan sat behind a desk stacked with folders, sleeves rolled to the elbow, a single lamp casting hard shadows across a face that looked, for the first time since I'd met him, tired instead of controlled. He didn't look up right away, and for a moment I let myself watch him, the concentration in his jaw, the way his hand moved through his hair like he was trying to physically hold himself together.

"You're supposed to be settling in," he said, without looking up, and I startled at being caught.

"You're supposed to be doing the same."

"I don't sleep well in this house anymore." He said it flatly, like a fact rather than a confession, but something in his voice cracked just slightly around the edges. He finally looked up, and whatever he saw in my face made his own expression shift, guarded, assessing, that same unplaceable recognition from the office resurfacing behind his eyes. "You didn't answer my question earlier. Why you."

"Your father trusted me."

"That's not an answer. That's a deflection." He stood, came around the desk slowly, and I made myself hold still despite every instinct telling me to put distance between us. Up close, he smelled like cedar and ink and something warmer underneath it, and I hated how much that unraveled me. "I've spent my entire life reading people for a living, Ms. Ashby. I'm very good at it. And you are hiding something."

"Everyone's hiding something, Mr. Castellane."

"Roan," he said, quiet, close enough now that I had to tilt my head back to hold his gaze. "If we're going to spend the next year living under the same roof, you might as well use my name."

My pulse was doing something entirely inappropriate for a professional conversation about estate compliance. "Roan," I repeated, and watched something shift behind his eyes at the sound of it, something that looked almost like want, quickly buried under control again.

Neither of us moved for a long moment. Neither of us looked away.

It was the sound of a third voice, low and unimpressed, that finally broke it.

"Well," Emory said from the doorway, arms crossed, watching the two of us with an expression I couldn't begin to read. "Isn't this interesting."