My Stepbrother's Regret novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Prove It

Roarke thinks she's covering for herself until she shows him a pawn ticket for his mother's pearls, dated before the Duttons ever lived in the house.

"Well," Roarke said. "That was fast."

I opened my hand.

The Carrera lay across my palm, black dial up.

He didn't reach for it.

He looked at it, and then at my mother's door, and then at me.

"Inside," he said, and nodded at his own door. "Unless you want to do this where she can hear."

His room was at the end of the hall, over the lake.

It was bigger than my old apartment.

There was a rowing machine, a desk covered in store floor plans, and a bed made so tight it looked angry.

He shut the door and leaned on it.

"Go ahead," he said. "Tell me where you found it."

"In my mother's makeup case. Under the lining."

"Convenient."

"Not for me."

"You had the week to find it. You found it in a day." He came off the door. "And the person you found it on is the one person in this house I can't touch without my father losing his mind. So either your mother is a thief, or you are, and you just picked the best place to put it."

"I didn't put it anywhere."

"You'd say that either way."

"You're right," I said. "I would."

That stopped him for half a second.

He took a step closer.

I didn't step back.

My back was almost against his desk, and his floor plans crackled when I put my hand down on them.

He smelled like his shower and like the lake air coming in the window.

He had a little scar through his left eyebrow I hadn't noticed at the party.

"You want to know what I think?" he said. "I think you two have done this before."

"Nine times."

He frowned.

"I've moved nine times," I said. "I didn't know why until about ten minutes ago."

"And I'm supposed to believe the watchmaker never noticed?"

"I was a kid. Then I was a kid with a bench and a loupe and a lot of watches that needed me more than my mother did."

"That's a good line."

"It's not a line."

His jaw moved.

He was close enough that I could see his pulse in his throat.

My own was louder.

I hated that.

I hated that I noticed how his T-shirt pulled across his shoulders when he crossed his arms, and that he noticed me noticing.

"You're staring," he said.

"You're in my way."

"You came in here."

"You told me to."

"And you listened. First time all week."

He held out his hand, palm up, between us.

I put the watch in it.

He closed his fingers around it slowly.

His thumb found the caseback without looking, the engraving.

Something went out of his shoulders.

"Thank you," he said, very low, like he didn't want to.

"You can thank me Saturday. In front of forty people."

"If you didn't take it."

I reached into my jeans and pulled out the pink slip.

"Then explain this one."

He unfolded it under his desk lamp.

I watched him read it.

LAKE COUNTY GOLD AND LOAN, WAUKEGAN.

ITEM: 1 PR PEARL EARRINGS, 14K, 8MM, LEVER BACKS.

LOAN: $900.00.

He went white around the mouth.

"Those are my mother's."

"I figured."

"They're in her jewelry box. In my dad's closet. He doesn't let anybody touch that box."

"Go look."

He didn't move.

He was holding the ticket in one hand and his mother's watch in the other.

"She wore them every Christmas," he said. "Every single one. She had them on in the hospital."

I didn't say anything.

There wasn't anything to say that wouldn't be a line.

He looked at the ticket again, and his eyes stopped on the date in the corner.

Then he looked up at me.

The anger was gone.

What was in its place was worse.

"You've never been in this house before Tuesday," he said.

"No."

"Your mother came for dinner for five months. She came for brunch. She came the night my dad proposed."

"I know."

He turned the ticket around and held it up between us, so I could read the date stamped in purple ink.

It was the day before the courthouse.

The day before I'd ever met him.

The day before either of us was anybody's stepsibling, and the day before my mother had a key.

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