Chapter 6: I Don't Like Her 🌶️🌶️🌶️

The housekeeper didn't bring breakfast up, so Adelaide knew Owen was still there. He had rules about that.

He was a busy man. He almost never stayed past dawn. If he was still in the apartment, it was because he'd carved out time on purpose, which meant he wanted to talk to her about something. But over breakfast he didn't bring it up. So she didn't either. She texted Sutton instead.

"Hear your brother is getting engaged?"

She'd been at the Halloways' for eleven years. Sutton was three years older than her. They'd been close. After it happened, Adelaide had pulled away from the whole household, Sutton included.

She felt guilty about it. There was no fixing it. She just hated Owen more for it. She figured Sutton wouldn't reply.

The phone buzzed.

"Engaged isn't married yet. Soon-ish though."

So she'd heard right.

Edmund was pushing hard. With Sutton already married, he wasn't going to let Owen drift. Beneath that, Owen was thirty. Time.

"That's great," Adelaide typed honestly, then deleted it. "Do you know when? I want to get a gift."

"Didn't my brother already tell you? End of the month. Mom and Dad were supposed to tell you but he insisted on doing it himself. Then he didn't. Such a dick."

Adelaide gave him cover. "He's busy. Probably forgot."

Owen, across the table, watched her thumbs fly. He didn't like it.

She kept reading. "Anyway. I don't like the Caldwell girl. Whitney. She seems calculating. Brother bailed on the welcome dinner and she didn't even get mad, she sat there comforting Mom and Dad. Doesn't that seem fake?"

Owen reached for her phone. She tucked it behind her back like a child.

"Who are you texting?" His tone was flat. No read.

She glanced up at him, annoyed. "You want to police this too?"

He paused. "Your foot's hurt. Call out. You're not going to campus today."

Just like that. Out of nowhere. She put her fork down and stood up. "I'm going to class right now."

"It's an elective. What's the rush? Finish breakfast. I'll drive you."

A concession. She wasn't taking it. "I don't need you to drive me. I'll get there myself."

She grabbed her bag. He spoke to her back. "Who are you in such a hurry to see?" Then: "Sit down."

She hesitated. The soreness between her legs argued against this fight. She came back. She didn't sit.

She tilted her head. "You're getting engaged and you're still this clingy? Won't your fiancée be unhappy?"

Owen was unimpressed. Cold. "So you already know."

"Weren't you going to tell me yourself? Why haven't you? Are you scared?"

He lifted his eyes a fraction and smiled with no warmth. "You really think you're a Halloway? Have a vote in everything we do?"

Her face fell.

He always knew where to cut.

She kept her voice perfectly even. "Whether I have a say or not — congratulations on your marriage." She turned to walk out.

He wasn't angry. The voice came stronger now. Authority. "Sit. Down. Eat your breakfast."

She turned around, eyes wide.

That tone, repeated, was a command.

Adelaide clenched her teeth. She wouldn't sit. She wouldn't leave.

The housekeeper pressed the fork back into her hand. "Just listen to Mr. Halloway. Finish, then go. It won't take long."

Owen wasn't usually like this. He let her have most things. Today was off. Pilar was unsettled by it. What had Miss Addie done?

"In a rush to find your next sponsor?" Owen said.

Adelaide stalled. Then she understood. "You're engaged. I can't see anyone myself, like a normal person?"

"You've known him two weeks and you're texting him at breakfast."

He was jealous. There it was.

She actually laughed. "I wasn't texting him. I was texting Sutton. And by the way — your engagement is also a two-week affair."

He looked at her once and said two words. "Called it off."

He didn't elaborate.

He was too steady. She'd hoped he'd sound emotional. He didn't. He was treating it like a junior staff briefing. She laughed in disbelief.

"That's my business. Since when do you get to decide? Half the U.S. Attorney's office is speculating about who's backing me — picking a respectable boy from a respectable family to shut everyone up is exactly the play. Honestly, I learned it from you. Your parents push you to bring a girl home. You bring a girl. We're both running cover. You can. I can't?"

Look at her. He said one thing. She got back ten. She was the only one who would talk to him like this.

He listened. He didn't get angry. There was something faint at the edge of his mouth that might have been amusement. "Jealous?"

She made a hard ts sound and turned her face. Her ear, though, was red. She said to the housekeeper, "Pilar — call Diego."

Diego was the household driver. She wanted out.

Pilar looked sideways at Owen for direction. He didn't move. She turned back to Adelaide. "Miss, sit down a minute, talk it out, then Mr. Halloway will get you a car."

The help knew who actually paid. Adelaide had a temper but she wasn't going to be the one to fire someone. Crossing Owen could mean Pilar's job.

"I said I don't want him driving me — whose side are you on!"

"Miss — please, just—"

"He's the one who should be calming down!"

"If she wants to go, let her go." Owen finally weighed in. He laced his fingers on the table. Quiet. "She won't actually leave. She's afraid I'll punish her."

Silence.

The housekeeper backed out of the room. The next part wasn't going to be a fight.

Pilar had always thought Owen didn't, wouldn't, hadn't ever needed to coddle a woman. Then she'd watched him bring Adelaide back from one of her stunts — three nights and three days he'd combed the city for her. She came back sick. He didn't bring up a single thing. She'd had pneumonia, then a respiratory infection, then quarantine in the ICU. He'd sat at her bedside all of it. He'd caught it himself.

After that, Adelaide had softened. She didn't say "I'll die" anymore.

Pilar had wondered, briefly, if Mr. Halloway was making up for some debt. Then one day she'd walked in on Adelaide in his lap, breasts unbound under a knit top, her body rocking softly on him, and she'd understood.

That was the relationship the Halloway family did not know about. If they ever found out, the house would crack open.

Pilar had not been able to look at Mr. Halloway in the eye for weeks. The cool, distant, almost monastic prosecutor at the breakfast table — and the man in the study chair with the boss's daughter astride his hips — were impossible to reconcile.

She peeked around the kitchen doorframe now.

And froze.

Under the table, Adelaide's bare legs, white and smooth, were wrapped around Owen's, sliding deliberately, with friction. The cuff of Owen's suit pants had ridden up where she'd been working her ankle along his calf.