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“Need I remind you, that’s his money.”
“And if I were to include a settlement amount for you, Maddie?”
Her eyes widened. “You mean a bribe? To get him to sell?”
“He wants to sell,” Rocco replied, his gravelled voice emphatic. “He is waiting for your agreement.”
She rolled her eyes. “Why do you keep acting as if you have the answers to everything?”
“I’m good with people.”
She laughed, a genuine laugh that morphed into something scoffing. “I’m sorry. You’re being serious?”
“I understand what makes them tick,” he amended. “Your grandfather is old, and his health is not as it once was. The maintenance of the house is beyond him; it pains him to see it growing more and more rundown.”
“I help with?—,”
“Si,” Rocco interrupted, leaning forward, so whether consciously or not, their legs brushed beneath the table and her pulse went haywire. “You help, and do you think he likes that? Do you think he likes seeing his fully-grown granddaughter still living at home, taking care of him? Do you think he enjoys knowing you have stopped living your life out of a desire to serve him?”
Her jaw dropped and her fingers fidgeted in front of her. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Am I wrong?”
Maddie’s eyes swept shut. Was he? She wanted to immediately declare that he was, but the truth was, she hadn’t really thought about any of this from Jack’s perspective.
Maddie wanted him to stay in the house.
Maddie wanted him to be just where he’d always been—the only father figure she’d ever known, the only touchstone to familiarity and stability, a house that had come to mean more to her than a physical place, a house that had come to symbolize where Maddie belonged in the world.
It had always been important to her, but after Brock, she’d unconsciously retreated back into the cocoon of the house, the garden, of Jack. Just like when she’d been a little girl and had come to live with her grandparents, reeling from the fact her mother had chosen a life with her new husband over Maddie.
She tilted her chin, seeking a spirit of defiance that seemed determined to fail her. Suddenly, it all just seemed too hard. She was adrift, house or not, and she hated the feeling. “I don’t know how this ends.” She ran her finger over the base of her champagne flute. “I don’t want to sell the house to you, but I get the feeling…”
“Si?” He leaned forward, so she felt the warmth of his breath and nearness.
“You’re really not going to give up, are you?”
CHAPTER FIVE
ROCCO’S EYES GLINTED with something like sympathy and Maddie had to fight an urge to slap him. Her fingers tingled and she wrapped one hand firmly around her champagne flute, just in case she gave into temptation.
“I think we’ve established that.”
She let out a slow breath. “How did you even find these houses?” She muttered, changing tack. “Why this street? There are hundreds in the area that would suit your purposes.”
“True,” he agreed.
“So why Honeybee Lane?”
“I’d been looking for an opportunity such as it presented for a long time.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s not an opportunity; it’s where we live.”
“Both can be true at the same time.”
She sipped her champagne.
“There are relatively few houses, for the size of the street—meaning fewer owners to win over—the fact it’s directly across from the beach. But I had also been dealing with a couple of realtors and knew of two residents in the street looking to move on. That left only eleven other homeowners to convince. Given the state of several of the houses, I suspected funds had tightened— out of step with the value of the land.”
