Page 6 of The Ruling Class
We?I wondered. I didn’t let myself get further than that as I followed Ivy up a spiral staircase to what appeared to be a sparsely decorated apartment. “The kitchen up here is more of a kitchenette,” she told me. “I don’t cook much. We mostly order in.”
Bodie cleared his throat and when she didn’t respond the first time, he repeated the action, only louder.
“We mostly order in, and sometimes Bodie makes pancakes downstairs,” Ivy amended. I took that to mean that Bodie was definitely part of Ivy’swe.
“Do you live here, Bodie?” I asked, darting a sideways glance at Ivy’s “driver.”
He choked on his own spit. “Ahh … no,” he said, once he’d recovered. “I don’t live here.” I must have looked skeptical, because he elaborated. “Kid, I worked for your sister for a year and a half before she even invited me up here, and that was only because she broke the plumbing.”
“I did not break the plumbing,” Ivy replied testily. “It broke itself.” She turned back to me. “Your room is through here.”
My room?I thought. She spoke so casually, I could almost believe that I wasn’t just some unpleasant surprise that fate and Alzheimer’s had dropped in her lap.
“Don’t you mean the guest room?” I asked.
Ivy opened the bedroom door, and I realized that the room was completely empty—no furniture. Nothing.
Not a guest room.
The room was mostly square, with a nook by the window and a ceiling that sloped on either side. The floors were a dark mahogany wood. A series of mirrors doubled as sliding doors to the closet.
“I thought you might like to decorate it yourself.” Ivy stepped into the room. If I hadn’t known better, I would have said she looked almost nervous. “I know it’s a little on the small side, but it’s my favorite room in the house. And you’ve got your own bathroom.”
The room was beautiful, but even thinking that felt disloyal. “Where am I going to sleep?” I asked.
“Wherever you put the bed.” Ivy’s reply was brusque, like she’d caught herself caring and managed to put a cork in it.
“Where am I going to sleepuntil I get a bed?” I asked, checking the impulse to roll my eyes.
“Tell me what kind of bed you want,” Ivy replied, “and Bodie will make sure it gets here tonight. I’ve got some furniture catalogs you can look at.”
I stared at my sister, wondering if she realized just how ridiculous that plan sounded. “I don’t think furniture companies do same-day delivery on a Saturday night,” I said, stating the obvious.
Bodie set my bags against the wall and then leaned back against the doorjamb. “They do,” he told me, “if you’re Ivy Kendrick.”
CHAPTER 5
The next morning, when I woke up in the bed I’d selected more or less randomly from one of Ivy’s catalogs, there was no escaping the physical reminders of where I was. And where I wasn’t. The bed beneath me was too comfortable. The ceiling above wasn’t my ceiling. Everything about this felt wrong.
I thought of Gramps, waking up in Boston and staring at a strange ceiling of his own. Pushing back against the suffocating wave of emotion that washed over me just thinking about it, I got up, got dressed, and pondered the fact that the mere mention of my sister’s name had been enough to make furniture appear within hours of being ordered. Back on the ranch, she’d managed to have herself declared my legal guardian and obtained our grandfather’s power of attorney almost as quickly.
Whodidthat? And more importantly—who could?
I should have known what my sister did for a living. I should have known Ivy. But I didn’t. Making my way out of the bedroom, I found the loft empty, a visceral reminder that it hadalways been my sister’s choice not to know me. She was the one who’d left. She was the one who’d stopped answering my calls.
Whoever she was, whatever she did—she’d chosen this life over me.
The muted sound of voices rose up from downstairs. At the top of the spiral staircase, I paused. The female voice was unmistakably Ivy’s. The person she was talking to was male.
“You don’t think that this was, just possibly, a little bit impulsive?” The mystery man’s tone of voice made it quite clear that he thoughtlittle bitwas an understatement.
“Impulsive, Adam?” Ivy shot back. “You’re the one who taught me to trust my instincts.”
“This wasn’t instinct,” the man—Adam—countered. “This was guilt, Ivy.”
“I’m not debating this with you.”
“Evidence would suggest you are.”
