The force of his presence expanded and heated to the point I felt it press against my flesh and burn in my lungs.

I retreated a step but it was only a step because I hit counter.

His voice was vibrating with anger when he shared, “Yeah, Josie, she did seein’ as she loaned me the money to buy it.”

I blinked. “She did?”

“Yeah, she fuckin’ did. I paid her back but she put it up so I could keep my gym and keep my kids in clothes and food and for once have the cake to give them a decent life.”

My voice had risen when I asked, “By owning a strip club?”

His eyes narrowed on me. “Fuckin’ hell, you ever show Lydie how far that stick was shoved up your ass?”

Well!

I never!

“Mr. Spear,” I threw out my hands and snapped, “You own a strip club.”

The instant I was done snapping, he leaned toward me and roared, “Jake!”

His behavior and this scene first thing in the morning so incensed me, very unusually (as in, I wasn’t certain it had ever happened before), I lost my control, leaned toward him too and shouted a word I’d never used in my life in that manner, “Whatever!” I leaned back and kept at him. “Your business is to subjugate women.”

“What the fuck?” he bit out.

“Subjugate. Oppress. Use women who are in dire straits to do something demeaning for money.”

“Babe, I need a dancer, I put an ad in the paper. I don’t go out on the street, kidnap them, jack them up with junk and force their asses on the stage.”

“You know what I mean,” I hissed.

“Yeah?” he asked, leaning back and throwing out his arms. “I do? Well fuck me. I’m an asshole and I never would have thought it seein’ as the least talented of my girls makes five hundred dollars on a slow night. Must suck for my girls, walkin’ to their Corvettes after work wearin’ seven hundred dollar shoes.”

Five hundred dollars?

On a slow night?

I was stunned. That was quite a bit of money.

He kept speaking.

“My girls aren’t stupid. A guy thinks with his dick, using his money to do it, all they gotta do is dance around and take it from him. They feed their kids, got good furniture in their houses, nice cars to drive and live in good neighborhoods, depositing cash in their 401Ks and taking their vacations in the Bahamas. Not sure that’s oppression but figure they don’t think of it that way. But you wanna think narrow, not my job to stop you.”

I opened my mouth to say something but he wasn’t quite finished.

“And a woman’s body is beautiful, standin’, sittin’, lyin’ down, definitely dancin’. They know that, they use it, there’s not one fuckin’ thing wrong with it. Though, says a fuck of a lot about you that you look down your nose at it.”

I truly wished I didn’t have to admit it but he was not wrong. A woman’s body was beautiful.

And I’d never thought of exotic dancing like that.

I decided at that juncture not to admit that out loud and instead move us to a different subject.

Therefore, I asked, “Has it struck you as strange that you know me but I know nothing about you?”

“No.”

“Why not?” I queried.

“I don’t know,” he answered sarcastically. “Maybe it has somethin’ to do with you bein’ a judgmental, stick up your ass bitch who’d react just the way you reacted about a minute ago if she told you about me.”

I glared at him, not altogether thrilled with his words and especially not his sarcasm. “Yes, perhaps you’re correct, as I might be a wee bit judgmental and react if she told me she was loaning a man money to buy a strip club, a man who’s been married three times.”

His arms crossed on his chest and his face got hard. “You been askin’ around about me?”

“No. A not-so-gentlemanly gentleman hit on me last night at Breeze Point and I’ve had a difficult few days, was not up to dealing with him, and unwisely used you as my pretend lover to get him to leave me alone. He then shared a good deal about you in a scathing way. The good news about this was, my ploy worked. He went away. The bad news was, he shared a good deal about you before he did.”

More pressure hit the room, making me press back into the counter before he asked, “Some dick hit on you last night?”

“That isn’t the point,” I informed him.

“And what is the point, Josie?” he asked and didn’t allow me to answer. “With this shit, you sayin’ you know me when you don’t. You got my ticket when you have no fuckin’ clue. You want me to piss off when your grandmother wanted me in your life. Is that what the point is?”

“I don’t know the point,” I returned. “I might know if it you didn’t break in and start berating me practically the moment I awoke and definitely before I had my first cup of coffee.”

“Berating?” he clipped.

“Rebuking,” I explained. His face got even harder and I correctly took that as a sign he didn’t understand that either so I snapped, “Scolding.”

“You know, babe, it’s cute, normally. And it’s real cute, you in that nightie,” he stated, throwing out a hand and sweeping it up to indicate what I was wearing.

It was also something I forgot I was wearing and doing it without closing my robe, which was something I immediately rectified, my hands going to the edges of my robe and wrapping it around me.

“The uppity shit you got goin’ on,” he continued, explaining what was “cute.” “What isn’t cute is you hiding behind that shit in order to shield yourself from living your life.”

I felt my eyes get big as my heart started shriveling.

“You don’t know me. You can’t say something like that,” I whispered.

And he didn’t.

Except for what Gran had told him about me.

Was that was Gran thought about me?

“Babe, I don’t have to know you to know your fucked up gig. But, just sayin’, I do know you. It’s you who’s totally clueless about you.”

And on that, he turned toward the door, prowled to it and used it.

I lost sight of him and within moments heard the front door slam.

I stared at where I last saw him for some time before my feet moved.

And they moved to the family room where I could find them on the mantel over the fireplace.

Dozens of frames of all different sizes.

My eyes scanned them and I saw what I already knew was there.

Photos of my father and uncle when they were babies and young boys, nothing later than when they were nine years of age because, as Gran explained, “That’s when they turned, buttercup, and I don’t need a reminder of that.”

Photos of me from growing up to grown up.

Photos of my great-grandparents and my Aunt Julia who’d died in town, hit by a car when she was eleven.

I moved out of the family room and into the formal living room at the front of the house.

Two long, thin tables behind the two facing couches. More frames on both, all silver. Most of the photos black and white and old. My grandmother. Aunt Julia. My great-grandparents. Their siblings and children. And even older photos of long since gone family who’d lived in Lavender House.

And me.

The largest photo of them all, taken by Henry at a Dolce and Gabbana show years earlier. I was sitting beside the runway, my elbows to my knees, my chin held in my palms, my eyes turned up, my expression rapt. It was in profile.

I loved that picture. Henry had given it to Gran the Christmas after it was taken. And Gran had put it there and never moved it so when you walked into the house, if you turned your head left, that was what you’d see.

Me.

My heart was beating faster as I moved out of the living room, into the foyer then deeper into the house. What was there tried to force itself on my consciousness but I fought it back, my feet dragging but taking me there anyway.

The den.

Gran had had her bedroom set up there when it became difficult for her to negotiate stairs.

I hadn’t been in that room since I’d been home