The Hawthorne Legacy (The Inheritance Games #2)(2)

“Like what?” he countered.

I folded my arms and stared him down. “You turn on the charm when you want something.”

“Heiress, you wound me.” Jameson looked better smirking than anyone had a right to look. “All I want is for you to rifle through your memory banks a little. My grandfather was a person who thought in four dimensions. He might have had more than one reason for choosing you. Why kill two birds with one stone, he always said, when you could kill twelve?”

There was something about his voice, about the way he was still looking at me, that would have made it easy to get caught up in it all. The possibilities. The mystery. Him.

But I wasn’t the kind of person who made the same mistake twice. “Maybe you’ve got it wrong.” I turned away from him. “What if your grandfather didn’t know that Toby was alive? What if Toby was the one who realized that the old man was watching me? Considering leaving the entire fortune to me?”

Harry, as I’d known him, had been one hell of a chess player. Maybe that day in the park wasn’t a coincidence. Maybe he’d sought me out.

“We’re missing something,” Jameson said, coming up to stand close behind me. “Or maybe,” he murmured, directly into the back of my head, “you’re holding something back.”

He wasn’t entirely wrong. I wasn’t built to lay all my cards on the table—and Jameson Winchester Hawthorne didn’t even pretend to be trustworthy.

“I see how it is, Heiress.” I could practically hear his crooked little grin. “If that’s how you want to play it, why don’t we make this interesting?”

I turned back to face him. Eye to eye, it was hard not to remember that when Jameson kissed a girl, it wasn’t tentative. It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t real, I reminded myself. I’d been a part of the puzzle to him, a tool to be used. I was still a part of the puzzle.

“Not everything is a game,” I said.

“And maybe,” Jameson countered, eyes alight, “that’s the problem. Maybe that’s why we’re spinning our wheels in these tunnels day after day, rehashing this and getting nowhere. Because this isn’t a game. Yet. A game has rules. A game has a winner. Maybe, Heiress, what you and I need to solve the mystery of Toby Hawthorne is a little motivation.”

“What kind of motivation?” I narrowed my eyes at him.

“How about a wager?” Jameson arched an eyebrow. “If I figure all of this out first, then you have to forgive and forget my little lapse of judgment after we decoded the Black Wood.”

The Black Wood was where we’d figured out that his dead ex-girlfriend had died on my birthday. That was the moment when it had first become clear that Tobias Hawthorne hadn’t chosen me because I was special. He’d chosen me for what it would do to them.

Immediately afterward, Jameson had dropped me cold.

“And if I win,” I countered, staring into those green eyes of his, “then you have to forget that we ever kissed—and never try to charm me into kissing you again.”

I didn’t trust him, but I also didn’t trust myself with him.

“Well then, Heiress.” Jameson stepped forward. Standing directly to my side, he brought his lips down to my ear and whispered, “Game on.”





CHAPTER 2


Our wager struck, Jameson took off in one direction in the tunnels, and I went in another. Hawthorne House was massive, sprawling, big enough that, even after three weeks, I still hadn’t seen it all. A person could spend years exploring this place and still not know all the ins and outs, all the secret passageways and hidden compartments—and that wasn’t even counting the underground tunnels.

Lucky for me, I was a quick learner. I cut from underneath the gymnasium wing to a tunnel that went below the music room. I passed beneath the solarium, then climbed a hidden staircase into the Great Room, where I found Nash Hawthorne leaning casually against a stone fireplace. Waiting.

“Hey, kid.” Nash didn’t bat an eye at the fact that I’d just appeared seemingly out of nowhere. In fact, the oldest Hawthorne brother gave the impression that the whole mansion could come crashing down around him and he’d just keep leaning against that fireplace. Nash Hawthorne would probably tip his cowboy hat to Death herself.

“Hey,” I replied.

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen Grayson?” Nash asked, his Texas drawl making the question sound almost lazy.

That did nothing to soften the impact of what he’d just said. “Nope.” I kept my answer short and my face blank. Grayson Hawthorne and I had been keeping our distance.

“And I don’t suppose you know anything about a chat Gray had with our mother, right before she moved out?”

Skye Hawthorne, Tobias Hawthorne’s younger daughter and the mother of all four Hawthorne grandsons, had tried to have me killed. The person who’d actually pulled the trigger was the one in a jail cell, but Skye had been forced to leave Hawthorne House. By Grayson. I will always protect you, he’d told me. But this… us… It can’t happen, Avery.

“No clue,” I said flatly.

“Didn’t think so.” Nash gave me a little wink. “Your sister and your lawyer are looking for you. East Wing.” That was a loaded statement if I’d ever heard one. My lawyer was his ex-fiancée, and my sister was…