Pretty Perfect Toy -- A Temptation Court Novel (Temptation Court, Book 2) by Angel Payne

“storage space” I originally passed this room off as holds a larger chunk of chaos. But her gaze is still steady. She’s determined to cross the bog with me—no matter how dirty she gets in the process.
    I haul in a long breath. This isn’t the time to dwell on the thousand layers of my gratitude for her, though that’s exactly what I long to do.
    Instead, I simply show her—with the only thing she still wants. The truth.
    “For a while, as I said, things got better.” So far so good—but I’m still at the easy part. “We started making plans for a real wedding, to take place as soon as the baby came. Continued looking for a place we could call our own, with a nursery for the baby.” A laugh escapes. “Hell. We must have looked at a thousand apartments in two weeks.”
    “Instead you found a mansion named Temptation.”
    My humor mellows into a smile. “For which we had Prim to thank. Or blame. I’m still debating which.”
    My sarcasm finds an appreciative target. She stops stroking my knuckles long enough for a delicate snort. “You said she was Lily’s best friend?”
    “Since prep school,” I supply. “Yes. In case you can’t tell, Prim’s not one of those heiresses who likes coloring inside the lines.”
    Second target hit. As I expected, the “heiress” bombshell detonates, turning Ella’s gaze into the expanse of summer skies. She’s always had the color; now she has the size. “Prim?” she challenges. “Prim Smith, with the dreadlocks and the pierced nose and the no-bra policy? That Prim…is…”
    “The daughter of Houston Smith, owner and CEO of Starstruck Entertainment, Five-Star Foods, and Starbright Tech. She and her brother, Houston the Second, are currently worth close to fifteen billion apiece.”
    I lift a finger, nudging her jaw closed. As soon as I pull it away, her mouth drops again. “But she is—she is—”
    “My cook?” I hitch a shoulder up and down. “Not exactly. Well, not officially.”
    “What does that mean?”
    I feel my smile disappear. “She likes it here, Ella.”
    She has no trouble slamming her lips back together now. “I wonder why.”
    “Because she just does,” I growl. “You think she can be herself, in all that Bohemian glory, in a crowd of billionaires’ daughters in Dallas?”
    Her eyes close as she exhales, betraying some inner command she levels for composure. “If Dallas is anything like the court of Arcadia, I imagine not.” When she looks at me again, her features return to open serenity. “So…she helped you pick this place out?”
    “Helped Lily,” I clarify. “By the time I was able to get away from the office and come look, she was pretty passionate about wanting it.” My lips lift again, just at the corners, at the memory of how excited Lily had been that day. “I bid on it at once.” Then paid cash, at a price significantly higher than the realtor’s ask—desperately hoping it would keep Lily that happy forever.
    Dumbshit.
    As if life hadn’t taught me in heaping piles already, hope and happy and forever didn’t belong in the same sentence together.
    “We closed on the sale and were moved in by the following week.” I push to keep the words coming, hoping it’ll help the difficult part, like warming up during a workout. But sometimes, workouts just feel like shit. “It wasn’t until a few weeks later, when Lily suddenly couldn’t find her ‘prenatal vitamins’, that Prim and I suspected something was up.”
    “Why?”
    “She freaked about it as if the jar were plated in gold and all the pills were diamonds.” I shake my head slowly, remembering that surreal night—well, early morning. “It was about two a.m. She woke everyone up, including the newly hired housekeeping staff—whom she immediately accused of stealing the pills for themselves. When Prim pointed out that both women were already grandmothers and had no need for prenatal vitamins, Lily swung the accusation her way.”
    “Oh, my.” A