Lessons in Sin by Pam Godwin

CHAPTER 29

TINSLEY

Two hours later, a discreetly armed Constantine driver arrived to take me to Bishop’s Landing.

I hadn’t seen Magnus since our confessional blow job, and everything between us felt so strained and unresolved. Not only had he left me absolutely ravenous, but I also couldn’t unsee that grim look on his face—his loathing and guilt, not with me but with himself.

Stepping out of the main building with my bag, I scanned the campus grounds for him. Luxury cars with personal drivers lined the road to the gate. A sea of black steel, waiting to take the students back to their mansions.

I didn’t want to go.

How fucking ironic. I’d put so much time and effort into getting expelled so that I could go home. But nothing would change my future at this point. I only wanted to spend what little time I had left with Magnus.

Except he was nowhere in sight. That was odd. He would normally be standing at the front entrance, seeing everyone off.

He was avoiding me.

I pulled out my phone and sent him a text.

Me:Where are you?

It showed Read within seconds.

“Good evening, Miss Constantine.” My armed bodyguard-slash-driver approached and took my bag. “I’ll pull the car closer.”

“I can walk.”

“It’s beyond the gate, ma’am. If you don’t mind waiting—”

“I can walk.” I breezed past him, staring at my phone.

Magnus never replied. Not unusual. We rarely communicated this way. Too incriminating.

I sent another text.

Me:I want to say goodbye.

His reply was immediate.

Magnus:Go home, Tinsley.

My chest squeezed painfully.

I turned toward the main building and probed the third-floor windows until I came to his. I would recognize his stern silhouette anywhere, and there he was, standing behind the glass, wrapped in unsettling shadows. Watching. Avoiding.

“Oh, it’s going to be like that?” I thrust my hand up and shot him a universal gesture.

A gasp sounded beside me, someone’s wide-eyed, pearl-clutching mother. I flipped her off, too.

Without checking his reaction, I pivoted and made a show of shaking my ass in my sexy tight pants, giving him a taunting view all the way through the gate and to the waiting car beyond.

The moment I was inside the sedan and motoring away from Sion Academy, all cheekiness and self-confidence evaporated, leaving sadness in its wake. And loneliness.

I’d begged Daisy to spend the Christmas break with me in Bishop’s Landing. But she’d already made plans to stay at the convent in Vermont where she grew up. I wished I could’ve changed her mind. I didn’t want to spend this six-hour drive alone with my thoughts.

Or the next three weeks.

I tried to sleep on the way, but my mind wouldn’t shut off. I couldn’t stop checking my phone for messages from him. Couldn’t stop replaying our almost-sex in the confessional box. Couldn’t stop dreading the next three weeks without him.

This was a bona fide obsession, bordering on clingy, which I didn’t do. My only interest in guys was sexual. And though I felt intense sexual chemistry with Magnus, my desire for him was so much more.

I liked that he scowled when he was hiding a smile. I liked that he could scare my heart into a gallop, but he couldn’t scare me. I liked that he was twice my size and twice my age. He had a lot to teach me and show me while I ran circles around him and kept him young. I was so small, but compared to him, I was teeny tiny. I liked that. I liked that he was huge and aggressive and growly and could pick me up with one arm and maneuver me into any position imaginable. I liked that whenever I looked at him, he was immediately in control. No, I loved that. I was riveted by the energy he possessed. He was the fantasy. The powerhouse man that every woman wanted.

I was nothing like the mature women he used to date. But I was a woman he was attracted to, and he made that viscerally clear with his hands and lips and eyes. Fuck me, his eyes…

Those windows to his soul held answers to questions I didn’t even know to ask. I just knew there was something in there when he looked at me, connecting us on a level I didn’t understand. Whatever it was, it involved both of us. This wasn’t one-sided. Not by a long shot.

It was after nine at night when the mansions of Bishop’s Landing came into view.

Ours sat at the top of the hill like a queen on her throne overlooking her subjects. The Constantine land and its three-hundred-year-old sprawling estate was our legacy. Every tennis court, guardhouse, swimming pool, manicured garden, and helicopter pad within a one-mile radius belonged to my family.

The driver motored up the hill, following the long driveway to the front doors. During my mother’s many extravagant parties, those front doors gaped open as gowns and tuxedos meandered in and out, gathering on the huge veranda or in the ballroom.

Tonight, all was quiet. The only signs of life were the armed men in the guardhouses and on various balconies. The Morellis had never tried to take out our stronghold, but my mother would never risk it. She kept the mansion guarded like Fort Knox.

I didn’t care about the house. Only about the people in it. By the look of the empty driveway and carriage houses, no one was here.

Christmas was four days away. Unfortunately, Keaton couldn’t fly in until the following week. But where was everyone else?

The butler met me at the door and disappeared with my bag. I hadn’t been home in four months. Nothing had changed. Yet everything felt different.

I wandered down the halls, through the kitchen, around the wood-paneled study, past the windows that overlooked the pool house and swimming pools. I encountered a few people who were paid to live here—bodyguards, security detail, housekeepers, and chefs—but didn’t see anyone who was raised here, namely my brothers and sisters.

Corridors led to other corridors, mazes of stairs, and more sitting rooms than any family needed. If I hadn’t grown up here, it would’ve been easy to get turned around in the many wings of The Queen of Bishop’s Landing.

But I knew where I was going.

Her throne awaited in the turret. I climbed the grand staircase to the second floor, a smaller staircase to the third, past the maid’s quarters, and took the final staircase to my mother’s office.

“Welcome home, Miss Constantine.” Justin smiled from behind his desk at the top of the stairs.

“Where is everyone?”

“Your mother is holding a video conference with overseas clients.” He touched a finger to his lips as if I needed a reminder to keep my voice low. “Your siblings are out.”

“Out where?”

“Don’t know.” He turned his gaze to his computer screen. “Would you like to make an appointment to see your mother?”

“Not really.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Is she working straight through until Christmas?”

“She’s very busy.”

I refused to schedule a time to see her. “If she wants to talk to me, she can come find me. I’ll be in the east guardhouse, fucking that new security guy I just ran into.” I fanned myself. “So. Hot.”

His face turned beet red, and he averted his eyes. “I’ll just put you down for eight a.m. on Friday.”

“Oh, yay,” I deadpanned. “What should I bring?”

“Good behavior.”

“Fuck that. I’m not coming.” I turned toward the stairs and glanced back, meeting his puppy eyes over my shoulder. “That single bag you packed for me? Fuck you. Also, you said no thongs. Wrong as usual, Justin. There’s butt floss underneath all those plaid skirts. You’re fired.”

I had no authority to fire my mother’s lapdog, but it felt good to say.

I took the stairs back to the main floor, roamed the empty rooms for a while, and eventually retired to my equally empty bedroom suite.

For the next twenty-four hours, I slept, ate, watched movies, and obsessively checked my phone. After dozens of texts and calls to my siblings, I’d heard from most of them.

Viv was out of town with a friend. Luckily, I got a quick meal with Winny and Perry before they raced off to another business meeting. But Elaine wasn’t returning my messages.

Neither was Magnus.

I spent two goddamn days in this compound, completely alone.

The worst part? I knew Magnus was sitting in Maine, completely alone, too.

I didn’t see my mother until the third day.

She pushed her way into the kitchen pantry, shoving right past me as I reached for a bag of granola. She grabbed a bottle of aspirin and left without a word.

“Mother?” I tried not to take her aloofness personally, but dammit, it hurt. I chased her through the kitchen. “Hello? Remember me?”

“I’m in a hurry.” She didn’t spare me a glance. “If you need something, talk to Justin—”

“I need you.

She paused, checked her watch, smoothed down the straight lines of her pantsuit, and turned to face me. “You have three minutes.”

“Where’s Elaine?”

“She’s been staying in the city.”

“She’s not answering her phone.”

“She rarely does. Is that all you needed?”

“I’m not marrying Tucker.”

She was known as the ice queen, and that was the face she gave me now. But inside those tiny lines that fanned out from the corners of her eyes, I saw the sadness she tried so hard to conceal beneath makeup and counterfeit smiles. My father had been dead for five years, and she still missed him.

“I want a marriage like you had with Dad.” I softened my voice. “I want love. I won’t marry for any other reason.”

“Do you love this family?”

“Yes, of course. More than anything.”

“Marrying a Kensington is marrying for love. Love for your family. We need this merger, Tinsley. If we don’t strengthen our holdings—”

“The Morellis will own us. I get it.” I stared at my feet and pulled in a ragged breath.

I could run away. Call a cab. Skip town. And just go, go, go. Maybe I could outrun all her henchmen. But what would happen to my siblings? I couldn’t leave them. Even if they weren’t physically in this house, I couldn’t walk out of their lives.

But I didn’t have to be here. Not in Bishop’s Landing. I didn’t have to spend the holiday alone.

“I want to return to Maine.” I brushed past her. “Today.”

“Tomorrow is Christmas Eve.”

“Do you intend to spend any time with me at all?”

Her face blanked, and her lips pinched in a line.

“Why am I here, Mother? Why did I even come home?” My pulse quickened with a cautious mix of excitement and sadness. “Tell Justin to arrange a driver. I’ll be ready to leave in an hour.”