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The best thing, for the sake of my sanity, was to do my absolute best to avoid Shane Perkins for as long as I worked in this house.
CHAPTER THREE
After a few weeks working for Sophia, I was beginning to suspect I had already found myself caught up in Shane’s version of a game.
The first week, I managed to avoid him, for the most part successfully. The house wasn’t large, but I grew used to the moments when he would appear. He was often out in the afternoons when I arrived but usually made it back in the evenings to join his mother for her dinner. Sometimes he’d leave right afterward for the rest of the night, but there were times when he would linger.
I became adept at learning his favorite places to hang out and tended to avoid them. More often than not, that left me sitting in the sitting room near the front of the house or the library on the second floor. Sophia was a demanding but not high-maintenance patient, so I was often left with plenty of free time to do as I saw fit, which usually meant spending time on the internet or reading one of the books in the library.
It was in the second week that he managed to find me in the library. I heard his footsteps on the carpeted runner that led into the room and turned to see him eyeing me.
“Something wrong?” I asked politely.
“Does my mother know you’re in her library?” he asked, stepping into the room and looking around as though he expected to find the shelves down or something on fire.
“If you’re wondering if I have permission…sort of,” I admitted with a sigh, closing the book on Civil War trade routes. I honestly thought it would be the most tedious and stale listing of various deals and commissions during that time. Instead, I found interesting and informative firsthand tales from merchants and suppliers trying to survive traveling through the war-torn country. “She spotted me in here yesterday.”
“And…nothing?” he asked, arching a brow.
“She asked me what I was reading, and I told her,” I said, keeping the book open as a hint I was still engrossed in it. “She…sniffed and walked away.”
I honestly expected her to comment that she wasn’t paying me to sit around and read her books or ask a very pointed question about what else I could be doing. In truth, I’d wandered into the room and, out of curiosity, begun browsing the shelves to see what sort of collection she had. I’d grabbed one off the shelf to read out of curiosity and had only been there for less than a minute when she’d walked by. After that, I had taken it as implicit permission that I was allowed to use her library within reasonable limits.
“Fascinating,” he said, cocking his head. “And you can…get through these books?”
“Yeah,” I said, tapping the pages in my lap.
“I’ve always found her collection to be…rather dry,” he said, gazing around the shelves with disinterest. “All this history and biographies.”
“What’re you, an erotic reader?” I asked with a smirk.
He cast an amused glance my way. “Is that what you think of me?”
“Well, it’s either that or you have De Sade and John Phillips stowed away somewhere in your room,” I told him, unable to help my smirk.
“I see someone knows their scandalous erotic writers,” he chuckled, adjusting a book on a nearby shelf so it sat neatly with the rest. “And I did read them when I was younger, much to my mother’s irritation when she found out. Truthfully though, I find the old authors pale compared to what more…contemporary writers manage to pump out.”
“Is that so?” I asked, arching a brow. “So there’s no value to the historical relevance of the books, only whether or not they’re properly scandalous?”
“Oh, but you expect the historical texts to be shocking. That’s what they’re so infamously known for. Where’s the fun in that?”
I thought about it for a moment. “So, you’re more interested in what sparks scandal now rather than in the past?”
“What good is the past except to serve as an example that people will always be people, making the same mistakes and creating the same patterns? Yet those moments when someone came along and truly took them off-guard, those are the moments that stand out and perhaps even caused a shift.”
“De Sade is infamous for being a sadist. I wouldn’t call that a shift in any real thought at the time.”
“Ah, but the horror at what he had done was what really got to people. You forget how scandalous some of even the tamer things he did, by modern standards, were for the people. The very same things you’ll hear talked about comfortably and casually over the dinner table. After all, what’s a little bondage between lovers? A bit of spanking, nipple clamps, or even a bit of flogging?”
“Not my cup of tea,” I said, borrowing his phrase. “But…you have a point. Those are fairly common for the everyday man nowadays.”
“Common,” he agreed, then snorted. “And boring.”
“Right,” I drew out with a shake of my head. “Because a rich kid financing a drug and alcohol-fueled orgy while complaining about how boring life is, that’s not unoriginal at all.”
The words left my mouth before I could think about what I was saying, and he turned his head sharply toward me. I inwardly cursed myself. My mouth had always been a source of trouble, and I’d thought I was better at controlling it now I was older. It wasn’t exactly helpful that I found his entire speech irritating. I bet it was easy to find a lot of things boring when you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth and lived with enough money to fund designer drug parties.
“And reading stories from men long dead is?” he asked softly, face giving away nothing.
