Semua Bab The Stripping Heiress : Bab 31 - Bab 40

{Hailey’s POV}Kiara popped a strawberry into her mouth, then looked at me like she was about to start a fight. We were sitting in one of the smaller lounge rooms near the east wing, legs kicked up, sunlight pouring through the window like we were two girls on vacation instead of in the middle of some gothic mess.“Okay,” she said suddenly, smirking. “Which one?”I blinked. “Which what?”She rolled her eyes. “Don’t play dumb. Which Lachlan brother do you like?”I choked on my water. “Excuse me?”Kiara leaned forward like a gossip-hungry teenager. “Don’t act like you haven’t thought about it. They’re all hot. Each in their own tortured-rich-boy way. You’ve been living in the same creepy house as them for how long now? One of them has to be your type.”I tried to laugh it off. “I don’t have a type.”“Hailey.”“No, seriously. They’re all chaos.”“That’s not a denial,” she said, pointing her strawberry at me.I sighed, dragging a pillow onto my lap. “Fine. You want the truth?”Kiara sat u

{Hailey’s Pov} The sun was hot, but not nearly as hot as the buzz crawling through my skin.Kiara and I were walking, no, floating, through the estate trails behind the stables, our steps uneven and laughter loud as hell. We were high as fuck, and everything felt like a dream. Trees looked like sculptures. Birds were throwing concerts. The sky? An entire mood board.“I swear,” Kiara giggled, arms stretched to the sky. “If I see a deer right now, I’m kissing it.”I snorted. “If I see him, I'll drop to my knees.”“HIM?” she echoed. “Your Room Twelve Mystery Man?”I nodded slowly, arms crossed over my chest. “His voice is stuck in my head like a song I never learned the lyrics to.”“Manifest him,” she said. “Right now.”I closed my eyes, stumbling forward in the grass. “Commanding voice, six-foot-something, hands like”“Like he owns you,” Kiara finished, dreamy.We both giggled again, clinging to each other as we stumbled toward the old tennis court path. The trees swayed. The gravel cr

{Julian’s Pov} Kelvin wouldn’t shut up.We were outside, strolling toward the house, but he kept going like this was a joke. Like what he said, it didn’t burn through me like fire.“That girl?” he said with a smirk. “Room 12, Bourbon Club? Julian, man, she was wild. Mouth like a dream, and the way she moaned when—”“Don’t,” I cut in, my voice sharp.He blinked. “What?”“Don’t talk about her like that. Not to me.”He laughed like I was joking. “Come on, bro. What’s the big deal? I didn’t even know she was your problem until now.”“She’s not my problem.”“Then why do you look like you’re ready to punch a wall?”I didn’t answer.He kept going, clueless.“I told her to go take a bath first. I wasn’t about to touch a girl fresh off the pole.”My fists clenched.He chuckled. “And when she came out, wrapped in that towel, I made her kneel. Told her exactly what to do. She obeyed like she’d done it a hundred times. Not shy, not soft. She liked it.”I stopped walking.“You done?” I asked, jaw

{Hailey’s pov} I found myself listening, wondering: Was anyone back there? You won’t last a month in this house. I didn’t think Julian had meant that as a physical threat—and Williams certainly hadn’t reacted as if my life were being threatened. Still, I shivered. “Hailey? There’s something I have to show you.” Kaira flipped open my new tablet’s cover. “Just for the record, it’s okay if you want to yell. “Why would I—” I cut off when I saw what she’d pulled up. It was a video of Craig. He was standing next to a reporter. The fact that his hair was combed told me that the interview hadn’t been a total surprise. The caption across the screen read: Friend of the Vale family. “Hailey was always a loner,” Craig said on-screen. “She didn’t have any friends. I’m not saying she was a bad person. I think she was just kind of desperate for attention. She wanted to matter. A girl like that, a rich old man…” He trailed off. “Let’s just say that there were definite daddy issues.” Kaira cut th

{Hailey’s Pov} I’d known that things would go faster with an extra set of hands, but I hadn’t anticipated what it would feel like to be shut in a room with two Lachlan—particularly these two. As we worked, Julian behind me and Marcus above, I wondered if they’d always been like oil and water, if Julian had always taken himself too seriously, if Marcus had always made a game of taking nothing seriously at all.“There’s nothing here.” Julian punctuated that statement by placing a book back on the shelf a little too hard.“Coincidentally,” Marcus commented above, “you also don’t have to be here.”“If she’s here, I’m here.”“Hailey doesn’t bite.” For once, Marcus referred to me by my actual name. “Frankly, now that the issue of relatedness has been settled in the negative, I’d be game if she did.”I choked on my spit and seriously considered throttling him. He was baiting Julian —and using me to do it.“Marcus?” Julian sounded almost too calm. “Shut up and keep looking.”I did exactly th