Keep Me (Sinful Manor #1)

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

“You could have gone to jail,” Aaron mutters. He’s sitting on the bed facing away from me, his elbows on his knees.

Rolling my eyes, I drop onto the bed and pick up my laptop. “Stop being so dramatic. I’m fine.”

“Are you sure no one saw you?” he asks in a panic.

I drop my hands in a huff. “I told you no one saw me. Why do you care so much?”

“I have my image to worry about, Sylvie. I’m sorry you don’t care about anything, but I do, and if I’m going to run for office someday, I don’t need a criminal record in Scotland holding me back because my impulsive and careless girlfriend thinks she can just do anything.”

“Technically, I can do anything,” I mutter to myself as I open my laptop.

“Not without consequences, Sylvie.”

I click on the cloud drive on my laptop and immediately scan through the photos. There at the bottom of the array of pictures of the Scottish countryside and Edinburgh’s Royal Mile are the photos of the dusty old typewriter I nearly sacrificed my life for.

Aaron is still droning on and on about my actions and consequences and how it’s not technically my fault that my parents didn’t raise me with any discipline.

Same shit, different day.

I decide not to show him the photos.

Instead, I open an internet browser. I type Barclay Manor .

Immediately, a photo pops up on a basic wiki page about the manor, the town, the family, and its history.

The auto-generated questions below list: Does someone still live at Barclay Manor?

So I click on it.

“Are you even listening to me?” he asks. I glance up from my laptop.

“My parents were incompetent. I’m not going to disagree with you,” I reply noncommittally. He’s absolutely right. They were incredibly incompetent as parents. It’s not that they’re stupid people. In fact, they are brilliant and could hold a steady conversation for hours about the contextual theory of Van Gogh through his Parisian era, but they generally sucked as a mom and dad.

They were never afraid of being so bold to explain to me that parental love was inane and subconscious, which wasn’t always the warmest consolation as a child. Biologically, my mom loved me—because she had to.

Luckily for her and my father, they are both geniuses, and that talent paid for modern conveniences like full-time childcare, which made raising me nearly effortless.

“Yeah, well, you’re twenty-five now, Sylvie. It’s about time you start acting like it.”

“Why are you being so uptight?” I reply with annoyance. “What happened to the guy who snuck backstage at the music festival with me?”

“That was three years ago, Syl. Grow up.”

As he gives me a contemptuous glare, I sink into the bed, feeling the shame he’s hurling at me like knives. He sulks into the bathroom, slamming the door closed, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

It feels as if we’re growing in separate directions. He’s so focused on his future, settling down, and growing up. He sees twenty-five as some mature magical age when we’re supposed to suddenly have it all figured out. I don’t feel anywhere near having it figured out.

He’s on a speedboat, headed straight for dry land.

I’m floating on a breeze with no direction at all.

And for some reason, I should feel like shit about that.

I turn my attention back to the laptop. I click on the link there under the question Does someone still live at Barclay Manor? And right there on the screen is the man I saw today.

It’s a handsome photo with an inscription underneath— Killian Barclay.

Of course, in the photo, he’s dressed up. In a black jacket and green kilt, standing in front of some PR backdrop for a charity, he looks miserable and handsome at the same time. He appears a bit younger in this photo, and when I click on his name, it takes me to a screen full of photos of him.

Most are like this one—posed, strategic, flattering. But there are a couple mixed in that look more like bad paparazzi timing, drunkenly climbing into the back of an SUV. There’s one where he seems like he’s in the middle of a brawl at a party. And one where he’s actively yelling at the cameraman taking the photo.

This guy clearly has anger issues.

Clicking on his name takes me to his Wikipedia page, and I read that he’s almost thirty-seven years old. He’s the oldest of four in the Barclay family and has been living in the manor since the death of his parents when he was eighteen. As for photos, there aren’t many from the past ten years.

That’s all the page really says about him, but judging by the lack of details, I assume he’s unmarried without kids.

How strange it must be to live in that big house all alone.

I hear Aaron’s muffled voice in the bathroom, and I glance up from my laptop to try and decipher what he’s saying. I can’t quite make it out, so I return to my internet search instead.

I find myself staring at Killian’s picture again, replaying the entire interaction today. Something about it felt so off. Who was the girl who left before I walked in? A guy who lives alone in a mansion like that with probably millions and millions of dollars at his disposal would likely hire a sex worker instead of dating, right?

God, what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten out of there? Would he have expected me to have sex with him?

If he wasn’t such an ass, I might have. Not that I would cheat on Aaron. I just mean…if there was no Aaron, I might have let that six-foot-five rich Scottish jerk throw me around a little bit.

And what was up with the whole spying thing? Does his sister send spies in on him often? What is he hiding that would require spies?

That’s weird, right?

My phone is still shattered and will probably stay that way until we find a store to replace it, but I have been dying to tell my best friend Margot about what happened today. So I pull up our text message thread on my laptop.

Hey. I miss you.

Almost got ravaged by a giant Scotsman today.

#noregrets

But don’t tell Aaron. He’s being a jerk about it.

I smile down at the message thread and wait for her to read it. Checking the time, I see that it’s still midday in New York, even though it’s late here. So she should be up.

My best friend doesn’t have a sleep routine, or any kind of routine, really. She doesn’t have a job or a partner. She’s the only other person I know floating on the breeze with me.

I tell Margot everything. Her mom is an actress and model who became best friends with my parents back in the 1990s. Which means they basically raised us together. Margot took after her mother and pursued modeling, and she’s flawless.

When she doesn’t read my messages after about five minutes, I get a little annoyed. To be honest, I’m bored. Aaron is mad at me, and this whole fucking trip was for him. Now I just want to go home.

The bathroom door opens, and he walks in, shoving his phone into his back pocket.

“Let’s get some sleep,” he mutters quietly. “We have an early flight tomorrow.”

As he tears off his shirt, my computer pings with a message.

He’s probably just worried about you.

Her message annoys me. She’s not supposed to take his side. Without responding, I close my laptop and shove it on the side table. Then, I roll over with my back to Aaron.

“Who were you talking to in there?” I ask.

“You were hearing things. I wasn’t talking to anyone,” he replies flatly.

He switches the light off, bathing us in darkness, and I close my eyes.

The sooner I fall asleep, the sooner we wake up for the airport. And the sooner this whole trip will end.