Page 55 of Faking Cinderella
Computer and my real ID are still locked in their case beneath my bed.
Bed’s still made meticulously the way I left it this morning with the moose quilt.
The sliding closet door is exactly as I left it too, hanging halfway off of its hinges, which Lucky told me was something they’d all been waiting on each other to fix, but none of them had yet.
They’ve had the cabin for about a year, and according to Lucky, they’re still debating if they want to expand it into something the three of them can fully enjoy together, if they want to turn it into a vacation rental, or if they want to keep it as is.
Apparently Decker likes to use it for a nearby writing retreat when he needs a change in scenery. Jack likes it as a spot close enough to his favorite trails that he doesn’t need to find parking to use them. And Lucky likes it because Lucky seems to like everyone and everything.
There’s a rustic wooden dresser that I found empty when I got here, where I hid a stash of cash inside a box of tampons beneath some clothes in the third drawer down, and that’s undisturbed too.
If Rhys searched in here, he left no trace.
Not that he’d find much unless he picked the lock on the safe holding my computer.
A presence looms in the bedroom doorway.
I turn and find my housemate half-naked, still wet, wearing just a gray towel around his waist. “Forgot to grab my clothes,” he mutters.
You’d think being stripped of nearly every stitch of clothing would make the man seem smaller.
Instead, his broad chest, thick abdomen with the subtle outline of a round bruise, and wide, muscled shoulders, bare except for his skin and the hair on his chest, seem to have expanded in the shower, which has my brain giving a very large, very loudeven better than we imagined.
How does he even fit in the doorway?
Is he this big everywhere?
And yes, I meaneverywhere.
I’m back in the closet at the retreat center, my hands on his chest, trying desperately not to notice how solid the wall of muscle was beneath my palms and fingers, and even more desperately not to like it.
Seriously. Brutes have never been my thing.
But Rhys O’Malley—the man is getting to me.
I force a swallow and a no-nonsense glare at him. “Are you going to get dressed for this conversation?”
He rubs his beard and puckers his brows together like he’s contemplating the question. Then—“No.”
I occasionally visit Daphne in her adopted hometown of Athena’s Rest in upstate New York. It’s a couple hours’ drive from the city, and she swears bad things happen whenever she comes back near where we grew up, plus she hates our parents and reminders of them, which—legit.
But something she always says to me when I go see her and remark on basically anything charming in her small town is drifting in the back of my mind now.
Margot, you need to get out more.
She doesn’t mean to shows and dinners and drinks with friends.
She means to see more of the world. To get out in nature like she does regularly. To have a broader variety of experiences beyond work and city life, and according to her, it doesn’t count asgetting out morewhen I hide away in any number of various mansions that I’ve bought or that our family has owned for decades in another city where I don’t often leave the property and instead treat myself to gorgeous views while sipping wine or coffee or occasionally hiking close to my property, most often solo, because the solo life fits me these days.
Being interrogated by a nearly naked bear of a man in a remote cabin in the Rockies qualifies to me asgetting out more.
And honestly?
I don’t hate it.
The view for this interrogation isn’t bad.
Could definitely be worse, in fact.
