Or she could stay.
Stay in this city she didn’t know, live with a man she’d never met, without a job or friends, without the clout her family name commanded on the East Coast.
The Greenwich gossip hounds would salivate over her disgrace. She could already picture the headline. No Longer “In Bloom,” Careful Clara Shacks Up with Stranger.
Not this time. She straightened her shoulders, smoothed her shirt, and ran her tongue over her teeth to ward off rogue lipstick. You only got one chance to make a first impression.
The heavy thump of Everett’s car stereo pounded in her ears as he pulled out, but Clara didn’t turn to watch him drive away.
Paint peeled back from the faded door when she pressed her palm against it. Damn. The society pages were going to have a field day with this one.
Bracing herself, Clara entered her new home the way soldiers enter enemy territory: with light footsteps, eyes mapping the terrain, and elbows tucked tight against her body.
Plush carpet muted her heeled sandals as she surveyed the living room. Without rose-colored glasses crafted by over a decade of repressed lust, the space left much to be desired.
She ran a fingertip through the blanket of dust coating a bookcase in the corner. An odor of decay wafted from abandoned take-out containers littering the coffee table. Clara tried to inhale through her mouth.
Underneath her foot, something crunched. Kicking up her heel, she identified the remains of a potato chip.
Despite the stench and the mess, the little house radiated a retro coziness that stood in direct contrast to both her family’s sprawling colonial in Connecticut and the cramped Morningside Heights walk-up she’d rented near campus.
The faded wallpaper exuded kitschy charm, fighting for her affection, but she couldn’t shake the crushing weight of her disappointment. Clara wiped off the seat of the sofa before sitting down.
“So this is how it feels to be well and truly fucked.”
“I get that a lot,” said a low voice behind her.
Clara sprang to her feet so fast she stumbled. “Oh . . . um . . . Hello.” She scrambled to stand behind her massive wheeled suitcase, creating a fifty-pound shield between her and the man standing in the doorway separating the kitchen and the living room.
He leaned against the door frame. “I don’t suppose you’re robbing me?”
When Clara frowned in confusion, he gestured to her ensemble.
She lowered her chin and scrutinized the sleeveless black turtleneck and matching skinny jeans she’d picked out that morning. Some time in her midtwenties, she’d traded the Argyle and houndstooth of her youth for a closet full of well-tailored monotone basics. Unfortunately, it seemed black clothing, while widely considered slimming and chic in New York City, was the preferred attire of home intruders in Los Angeles.
“Er . . . no.” Clara tugged at her collar, glad, in retrospect, that she’d suffered the indignity of touching up her makeup in the tiny airplane bathroom while one of her fellow passengers pounded on the door. “I’m Clara Wheaton,” she said when silence lingered.
“Josh.” He closed the distance between them, offering her a handshake. “Nice to meet you.”
When their hands came together, she inspected his fingernails as a bellwether for his personal hygiene habits. Neat and trim. Thank goodness.
After five seconds, Josh raised an eyebrow and Clara released his hand with a sheepish smile.
Despite his impressive height and the fact that his shoulders had filled most of the door frame, she didn’t find him intimidating. His rumpled clothes and the mop of overgrown blond curls suggested he’d just rolled out of bed. Striking dark brows should have cast him as surly, but the rest of his face resisted brooding.
He was cute but not quite handsome. Not like Everett, whose mere presence still made her speech falter after all these years. Clara accepted this small form of mercy from the universe. She’d always found it impossible to talk to handsome men.
“Nice to meet you,” she echoed, adding, “Please don’t murder or molest me,” as an afterthought.
“You got it.” He raised both hands in a helpless gesture. “So . . . I guess that means we’ll be living together?”
“For the time being.” At least long enough for her to develop a contingency plan.
Josh peered into the open door of the bathroom. “Where’s Everett? He didn’t stick around to get you settled?”
Clara’s shoulders crept toward her ears. “The band needed to get on the road right away.”
“Pretty crazy, huh? Them getting invited to tour last minute?”
“Yeah.” She fought to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “Wild.”
“Worked out for me, though. I couldn’t believe the lowball rent Everett asked for on a place this nice.”
Clara decided not to mention that Everett had inherited the house, free and clear, from his grandfather and likely only charged enough to cover the taxes. She massaged her temples, trying to ward off a monstrous headache. Whether it came from stress, jet lag, or dying dreams, she couldn’t say.
The longer she stood in this house, the more real the nightmare became. She sat back down on the couch when her vision swam.
“Hey, are you okay?” Her new roommate came to kneel in front of her, the way adults do when they want to speak to a small child. Clara glanced away from where his thighs strained the seams of his jeans.
He had a spattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose. She focused on the one at the very center and spoke to it. “I’m fine. Just reckoning with the consequences of a multigenerational family curse. Pretend I’m not here.”
You’d think decades of old money and carefully monitored good breeding would weed out the Wheatons’ notorious inclination toward destructive behavior, but if the recent arrest of her brother, Oliver, was anything to go by, the longer their lineage grew, the grimmer the consequences of their behavioral missteps.
Comparatively, she’d gotten off easy with an old house and a broken heart.
Josh wrinkled his forehead. “Um, if you say so. Oh, hey, wait here a minute.”
As if she had anywhere else to go.
“I think I’ve got something that might help.” He strode into the kitchen and returned a moment later to press a cold can of beer into her hands. “Sorry I don’t have anything stronger.”
Clara wasn’t much of a beer drinker. But at this point, it couldn’t hurt. She popped the top and took a deep slug. “Blech.” Why did men insist on pretending IPAs tasted good? She dropped her head between her knees and employed a deep-breathing technique she’d observed once when accompanying her cousin to Lamaze class.