Page 47 of Another Man’s Treasure

“Nope.” Lemon shakes her head. “Just typical old house things.”

Above our heads, the crystal chandelier sways, tinkling unhappily.

“Sorry,” Lemon says, lifting both hands. “I didn’t mean to call you old, sweet girl.”

Willa opens the front door of the clock, revealing the swinging arm that would tick if the clock were working. We all stare inside, but there’s nothing notable.

Frowning, Willa steps up on the interior of the clock edge, peering into the hand mechanism. “It’s stuck at seven p.m.,” she muses aloud, “but I wonder what might happen if we switched this to eleven.”

“Try it,” Bluebell groans, grabbing the box of baked goods from me.

Willa deftly moves the hour hand to eleven, and nothing happens.

“Try the minutes too,” I say as we watch in silence.

Willa tips the minute hand around past six and eight, and the moment it hits twelve, the clock lets out a click, followed by a groan that shakes its entire base. We all jump back as the refurbished flooring around the clock twists and spins, forming a hole that grows larger by the second.

“Get back, everyone!” Willa shouts. “Make room!”

The house creaks and groans a warning as we back nearly to the top of the stairway.

“Very interesting,” Willa murmurs as pieces of the wall and floor flip and flop into an opening.

The grandfather clock moves to the side like it's on an invisible track. My mouth drops open as a series of curving stairs appear in the hole in the floor, leading down into an impossible darkness.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Wilder says. “Did we just discover a secret lair?”

Wilder

“Alright, let’s go,” Willa says, heading for the hole in the floor.

Everyone starts speaking at once, warning her to be careful, to think this through, to just wait for a second. But I know my sister, and she’s a dog with a bone in everything she does—making friends, solving mysteries, getting me good deals on things I want. Which is why I don’t bother to try slowin’ her down when she heads for the stairs and promptly disappears down them.

Lemon spins and stares at me with wide eyes. “Is she always like this?”

I nod. If I keep saying it, eventually folks will believe me.

“We don’t even know where it leads!” Lemon exclaims, placing both hands atop her head as she stares at the spot where Willa disappeared.

Just then, Willa pops back out of the hole with a big smile. “You guys comin’ or what?”

“Fuck it,” Bluebell grumbles. “If we die, at least I won’t have a headache anymore.”

I’m torn between wanting to protect my sister and not wanting Oz to follow her into who knows what. But another part of me is curious and doesn’t think the house would send us willfully into danger.

Oz looks up at me, and for a moment, I find myself lost in the amethyst of his eyes behind those glasses he sometimes wears for show. That decision fascinates me. The fact that he seems not to need them but chooses to wear them is so…oddly adorable? Last night, those little glasses about did me in, the way his dark lashes fluttered behind the lenses, the way his lips dropped open, releasing those breathy little moans. The way he arched into me.

Just like that, I’m hard, the entire clock-and-stair mystery forgotten as I think about just how real last night felt to me. It wasn’t staged; it wasn't necessary. Just his body beneath mine, melting against me, opening for me. Sex with Oz was fucking poetic, transcendent, completely and utterly intoxicating.

Now he looks up at me again. “Shall we, Hubby?”

Play-acting again. I hate it only because I know it’s not real like this, and I don’t want the falseness of this relationship we’ve been forced into. I want the real Oz because I want to know if last night was a sexy one-off, or if it was fully him. We’ve blurred every line we started with, and I’m unsure where that leaves us.

“Lead the way,” I say. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“Hope you will,” he says with a little wink, rubbing my chest once before he disappears toward the hole in the floor.

Willa shoots me a quizzical look that I do my best to ignore. I don’t want her to read this and ask me a bunch of questions I don’t fully know the answers to. Oz and I haven’t even had a chance to talk about last night, and we probably should before I discuss it with third parties.