Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 120631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 603(@200wpm)___ 483(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 603(@200wpm)___ 483(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
“Don’t worry about it.” He pulled her away to stop her incessant attempts to clean the glass. “They call it a wine-conditioner cabinet.”
“If that’s a cabinet, how big are your closets?”
He chuckled and pressed a button. The glass panels retracted and cool air spilled into the foyer. “Pick something.”
She looked at him skeptically. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. Anything you want.” A ladder attached to a rail glided across the doors, and she had the strangest urge to sing the “Candy Man” song from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
“I don’t know champagne. I’m more of a boxed wine gal.” Her palate was about as sophisticated as a kindergartener’s. She usually liked her adult beverages sweet enough to guzzle them like a juice box. The selection overwhelmed her. “How about I pick something later?”
“Okay.” Soren set his keys in a glass bowl. Everything had a place. “Want a tour?”
“Sure.”
He hung his jacket inside a coat closet with a built-in bench. Dark wool overcoats were arranged by length, and several keys hung from polished wooden hooks inside the wall.
“Here’s the bathroom if you need it. There are several others.”
The powder room off the foyer had black marble everything and lush hand towels with his initials embroidered in the cloth. She was afraid to touch them. “Did you make a Soren brand for yourself?” It was more than a monogram. It was a logo.
He grinned, the sort of grin he made when he was slightly embarrassed. “Maybe a little.”
The formal sitting room appeared untouched, existing for the version of him that entertained people he didn’t actually like. The study had a leather-topped desk, built-in bookshelves, a globe, and old books arranged by spine color.
“This was my dad’s,” he said, placing a hand on the mammoth desk.
Soren didn’t usually mention his father, and she knew from Wren that none of them had enjoyed an ideal relationship with the man. For him to claim his desk there had to be meaning behind it.
“It’s…nice.”
They moved to the formal dining room. A twelve-chair table stood beneath a chandelier. It was too formal not to poke fun at him. “Do you have dinner here, like in Citizen Kane?”
“I’ve never actually eaten in here.”
She understood why. It wasn’t the warmest of rooms, though it was elegant.
The great room was another living room, but this one was more lived in than the first sitting room he showed her. It had an enormous sectional, a gas fireplace, and fur throws draped about.
Soren’s color palette, she realized, regardless of the room, was dark and masculine, much like his wardrobe.
The kitchen was at the back of the house, through a stone arch and down a narrow hall. The walls leading there were dressed with framed black-and-white photos of Hawthorne fishing vessels through the decades.
“These are neat.”
“They’re reproductions. The originals are in the maritime museum.”
The kitchen, unlike the other formal rooms, smelled lived in. Proof of life showed in the travel mug by the sink and the hand towel draped over the oven handle. A state-of-the-art espresso machine dominated the black marble countertops, and crisply folded, custom embroidered linens sat in a basket by the gorgeous farm sink. The place was still more of a hotel than a home, but Soren had never been one to pass up luxury.
“You look thirsty. Let’s get you something to drink, then I’ll show you the upstairs.”
“Upstairs?” For some reason, the thought of seeing upstairs made her nervous. They did better in foyers and common areas.
“I’m just going to let the dogs in.”
All of her earlier reservations took a backseat to this odd sense of displacement. Despite knowing Soren for more than half her life, this was the first time she ever got an intimate look at the inside of his world.
She regretted bringing Cordelia, fearful she might piss on some priceless piece of art. This wasn’t a place for animals any more than it was a place for someone who left laundry sitting in the washer for six cycles before remembering to move it to the dryer.
Did Soren even have a dryer? He probably had a laundry service. Clothes just reappeared in his closet, fresh and pressed, and he never had to worry how they got there.
The luxury didn’t startle her. She knew he was rich. And wealth didn’t bother her either. To some, she was wealthy. But this level of comfort was something else entirely.
This was dumb money. Generational fortunes piled on top of generational fortunes. It wasn’t pretentious or gaudy or garish, but it was also unlike anything she’d ever seen.
His childhood home had been more lived in and dated. This was new and flawless, like the set of a movie.
He laughed. “You look constipated.”
She stopped staring and scowled at him. “Fuck off.”
“It’s just a house, Joce.”
“It’s not, and you know it.”
He tried not to smirk, but the cocky bastard failed.