Marcus smiled smoothly, as if Lorraine had simply recalled an ordinary memory.
“Hayes Meridian Consulting,” he said. “Your father’s logistics venture. I worked with his team about six years ago, maybe seven; brief engagement, just the feasibility phase. I’m surprised you remember me?”
Simone felt sheer panic.
He’s lying. Or maybe he wasn’t, which made it worse. She had no idea which way this was going to fall, and she stood in the middle of it while holding his arm like an idiot.
Lorraine didn’t move. Her eyes narrowed as she scanned Marcus’s face to search for an error, certain she would find it. The clipboard stayed tucked under her arm, though she did not reach for it yet.
“The feasibility phase?” Lorraine repeated, flat.
“I can give you names from your father’s old team if that helps place me?” Marcus’s voice stayed even. “Simone mentioned the wedding when we reconnected, and I thought, why not come support her properly?”
Reconnected. He had just handed her a bridge she had not built, and he did it without blinking.
Simone made a snap decision without examining it. She grabbed Marcus’s arm tighter and turned toward the main entrance.
“Lorraine, I know you’re slammed right now,” she said, pitching her voice bright and apologetic. “We’ll get out of your way. You’ve got a thousand things to coordinate before tonight? We’ll find you later, okay? After the welcome drinks.”
She was already moving and pulling Marcus along, her heels clicking fast against the stone path. For one terrible second, nothing happened; then Lorraine stepped aside.
It wasn’t gracious. She shifted just enough to clear the doorway, her gaze tracking them both with the kind of stillness that meant she was filing everything away. “Of course,” she said. “Settle in.”
Simone didn’t look back. She pushed through the vestibule door and kept moving until the heavy wood closed behind them, cutting off the bright afternoon light. She stopped immediately and dropped Marcus’s arm, putting two feet of cool, marble-floored air between them.
“Hayes Meridian Consulting,” she said quietly.
“It’s a real company,” Marcus said.
“That’s not what I asked?”
He looked at her steadily. “It bought us about forty minutes. Maybe more.”
Maybe more. She wanted to press him and demand the real version, but she heard Lorraine’s heels on the stone outside, slow and deliberate, not walking away. Through the narrow vestibule window, she caught a sliver of the porch; Lorraine had stopped and pulled a tablet from her jacket. Her thumb was already moving across the screen, scrolling through what looked like a long, dense list of old estate records. Simone watched her in silence, dread settling into her chest.“Hayes Meridian Consulting.” Simone kept her voice down, but the words carried clearly in the empty vestibule. “Real estate development. A good six or seven years back. That’s your story?”
“It’s accurate.”
“I don’t care if it’s accurate.” She stepped right up to him. “I care that Lorraine knew your name before I introduced you. I care that you walked onto this property like you already owned the place. So stop lying and tell me what’s going on.”
Marcus met her gaze without flinching. Then his focus drifted past her shoulder, sliding toward the wide corridor branching off to the right.
She turned to check. A long, dimly lit hallway ran straight toward the east wing of the house, quiet and shadowed. She turned back to him immediately.
“The consulting job was real,” he said, speaking in that calm, measured tone that always grated on her nerves. “A feasibility study for a development project your uncle wanted. He planned on converting part of the east grounds into private residential lots. It never went through, but I spent two months walking the land.”
Two months. “So you know this house.”
“I knew it for work. That was years ago.”
“And Lorraine?”
“She worked here. She was always around...” He let the sentence trail off, as if that explained everything, but it answered nothing at all.
Simone felt a sharp spike of pure irritation. His explanation was reasonable, and that was the exact problem. It was tidy enough to be true, yet slick enough to be completely fabricated, leaving her without any leverage to pull it apart.
“You should have told me,” she said coldly. “Before we stepped out of the car. Before I marched you straight over to Lorraine and let her corner us.”
“You never asked.”
“I shouldn’t have had to ask!”
Marcus offered no counter to that. He just kept his eyes on her, maddeningly composed, waiting patiently for her temper to cool. Then his gaze flicked sideways once more, locking onto that dark hallway again. He clearly thought she would miss it.
“What’s over there?” she demanded.
“What?”
“You can’t stop staring down that hall.”
Something tightened around his mouth, shifting uncomfortably close to guilt before he dragged his attention back to her face. “What’s our schedule for tonight? Welcome drinks, and what else?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“Simone. Tell me the schedule.”
She wanted to refuse and force him to answer, but anger caught in her throat. She understood the miserable reality of her situation: if she threw him out the front doors right now, she would be completely stranded. She would have to march back out into the afternoon heat alone, Lorraine would gloat over her checklist, and her mother would arrive in two hours to find her empty-handed.
“Drinks at six,” she answered flatly. “Dinner at eight. Rooms are preassigned, but I haven’t seen the list yet.”
“Then we should go find out.” He sounded entirely businesslike, briskly sorting out practical logistics.
Simone watched him closely. His eyes were already drifting back down the dark corridor, tracking the layout with that same quiet, methodical focus he had used on the overgrown path outside.
He was mapping the interior.