100% Compatibility novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Stoop

Jacqueline moves into Ronan's brownstone and shames Barrett and Sutton on the street, then Odette moves the Showcase up to nine days.

Number nine Marlborough Street was a brownstone with a black door and a brass knocker shaped like a hand.

I had two garbage bags and a laundry basket.

Maeve carried the third bag and the cat carrier, because the cat had refused to be left behind.

"It's very tall," she said, looking up at the windows.

"It's very quiet," I said.

"That's what I'm afraid of."

Ronan opened the door before we knocked.

He had changed into a gray sweater, and it did nothing to make him look soft.

He looked at the cat carrier for one second.

"There is a cat," he said.

"Her name is Biscuit," said Maeve.

"She bites men who talk like spreadsheets."

"Then we'll get along," he said, and stepped back to let us in.

The house smelled of old paper and lemon oil.

There was a staircase that curled up four floors, and one entire wall of books.

He walked us up to the second floor and opened a door onto a bedroom with a tall window.

The bed was made so tightly I could have bounced a coin on it.

"Mine is on the fourth floor," he said.

"The study is on the first and is off limits."

"The kitchen is yours."

"I don't cook."

"Then it will be quiet too," I said.

His mouth did something small at one corner.

It was gone before I could be sure.

"Rules," he said.

"One. Nobody in this house speaks to my mother, my brother or anyone from the firm without the other present."

"Two. We are seen together, in public, and we are relaxed about it."

"Relaxed," I said.

"Convincingly relaxed."

"You hold your arm like a coat rack," said Maeve from the doorway.

"I am told that," said Ronan.

"Three. If you want out, you say so and I will open the door myself."

I stared at him.

He had said it was the easiest rule of the three.

"Why?" I said.

"Because you owe me nothing," he said.

He did not look at me when he said it.

I thought that was strange, and I put it away to think about later.

Ten minutes later the doorbell rang, and it rang again, three bright pings in a row.

From the window I saw a white van at the curb.

A man with a camera on a strap was setting up a tripod in the middle of the sidewalk.

On the stoop stood Barrett, in a blue overcoat, with Sutton at his elbow holding a bouquet.

"Oh, I'm going to enjoy this," said Maeve.

"No," I said.

"I am."

I went down the stairs and opened the black door myself.

The photographer lifted his camera.

"Jackie," said Barrett, with his warmest face on.

"I just wanted to bring you flowers and make sure you're safe."

"Mom is worried."

Sutton held out the bouquet like she was handing in a report.

I looked at the flowers and at the camera, and I understood the whole plan in one second.

Jacqueline Keogh, jilted and crawling into the brother's house.

Barrett, the kind one, bringing roses.

It would be on every feed by noon.

I took the bouquet.

I smelled it.

"Lilies," I said.

"Barrett, you know I'm allergic to lilies."

"Eleven months, and you never once remembered," I said.

"My mother likes lilies," he said.

"Your mother wants me sneezing in the photograph," I said, loud enough for the whole block.

Across the street, a woman walking a dachshund stopped to look.

A man in a delivery vest took out his phone.

I turned to the tripod.

"You can film this," I said.

"This is my fiance of eleven months, who was sleeping with this woman for fourteen of them."

"Sutton, tell the nice man how long it's been."

Sutton's face went the color of the stone.

"Jacqueline, that's enough," Barrett said, through his teeth.

"Also, thank you for the sixty-two," I said.

"I coached your intake test, Barrett."

"Question one hundred and four asks if you have ever been unfaithful, and you answered no."

The man in the delivery vest laughed out loud.

The woman with the dachshund lifted her phone.

Barrett's lips went white.

He took one step up the stoop, and a shadow fell across the doorway.

Ronan had come down behind me and was standing a pace back with his hands in his pockets.

He had not touched me, and he did not say a thing.

He just looked at his brother, and Barrett stopped.

"Take the flowers back," Ronan said.

"She's allergic."

Barrett took them.

He turned, and Sutton turned with him, and the two of them went down the steps with their shoulders high.

The photographer looked at the street, at the dachshund, and at the phones, and packed up his tripod without a word.

My shoulders came down.

"Relaxed," Ronan said, dryly, beside me.

"Convincingly."

"Don't," I said.

"It was good," he said.

I turned to look at him.

His face was as unreadable as ever, but he was looking at me.

Then his phone buzzed.

He read the screen.

His face changed into something shut and cold.

"My mother has moved the Showcase," he said.

"It's not in three weeks anymore."

"It's in nine days."

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