“No. I wouldn’t mind fucking her,” Damon replied. He’d actually sort of looked forward to it. “But it’s obvious she doesn’t want the job, so I need to ask you about Chelsea.”

Both Taggarts stopped, staring at him for a minute.

“My sister?” Charlotte asked.

“The bitch from hell?” Ian offered and immediately moved out of his wife’s reach. “She doesn’t like me, baby. She calls me Satan. It hurts my feelings.”

She growled a little. “You don’t have feelings. And no. She is not going to play your sub, especially when there might be sex involved. No way.”

“It should be up to her,” Ian said quietly, turning serious. “You can’t protect her forever. The only reason she’s working this operation is Serena convinced her to take Adam’s place so he could stay home and help take care of Tristan. Jake should be shot for letting them pick that name. That boy is going to get his ass kicked starting in preschool. If Serena hadn’t convinced her, she would still be sitting at home brooding about whatever the fuck it is she broods about. She needs a job, and she won’t take one with me.”

“It’s not like she’s going to go to the supermarket and get a job sacking groceries, Ian. But she’s not an operative,” Charlotte complained.

“She’s not trained,” Taggart replied. “But I wouldn’t hesitate to send her into the field. From a strictly business standpoint, she’s made of the right stuff to be a successful field operative.”

Which meant she was cold, calculating. Like they were. Unlike Penelope Cash, who he would have to watch over. He would very likely not need to protect Chelsea Dennis. She could handle herself. It would be better that way. It really would. “So we can talk to her about it?”

Ian leaned forward, his business face on. “You’ll get pushback from Simon. There’s something odd going on with them. She’ll need to go to the shooting range and prove she can handle a gun. And I would watch her closely. Not because I’m worried about her. I don’t know where her loyalties really lie.”

“How can you talk about her like that?” Charlotte asked.

“Because I’m being the boss right now, Charlie. This is an op, and it’s an operation you’re involved in. I have to make sure it runs properly. I would never put you in this position because you’re far too emotional. You work with me and me alone because I don’t trust your safety to anyone else. Chelsea is different. Chelsea can handle herself. God knows she’ll put her own safety first. She’ll be fine.”

Charlotte got a little teary. “She’s not like that. You just don’t know her. Please, Ian.”

Damon waited as they seemed to wage a small but important war.

Taggart’s mouth became a flat line, and he looked back at Damon. “No. Chelsea can’t go in the field. She’s strictly tech.”

Charlotte turned and hugged him, whispering a “thank you.”

Ian Taggart was well and truly caught, and it fucked up Damon’s day.

“Sorry, man. You need to talk to that girl again,” Ian said, leaning into his wife, giving her the comfort she seemed to require. “If she’s perfect, then you’ll just have to convince her. Bring her to the club. If she’s submissive, she’ll be curious. You need to use that curiosity. Let Charlie talk to her. She’s awfully persuasive.”

Damon stared out as the limo slowed, caught in the never-ending London traffic. To his right, Hyde Park looked peaceful, tourists and locals milling about on a nice Saturday. Not a care in the world.

What was Penelope Cash doing?

And how was he going to convince her?

* * *

Penny closed her laptop, her face heated, her heart pounding.

Submission. Dominance. Discipline.

If she took this assignment, she would find out just what those words meant. Kinky sex stuff. It was kinky, weird sex stuff. Distasteful. She should march right back into Nigel’s office and shove his file in his face and tell him she was a lady and she wouldn’t be used as a prostitute.

Except it wasn’t really distasteful and she was rapidly discovering she wasn’t the prude everyone thought she was.

She’d known that. She’d never cared what people did in their own bedrooms. Or dungeons. Or playrooms. Or wherever people wanted to do the consensual things they did. She just didn’t think she wanted that for herself. She’d always imagined herself with a nice man, a quiet intellectual who she could talk to and raise a family with.

Of course, she’d had that man. Peter had been kind and quiet and should have been perfect. So why had she avoided sex with him after a couple of months of being engaged? She told herself that it was because her mother had gotten sick, but there had been chances to see him, chances to keep their relationship together, and she’d let them all drift by. By the time he’d left her, she’d actually felt grateful.

Her mobile trilled, the sound surprising her a bit. She looked down. Her sister. Diana was trying. Trying hard, and it wasn’t like she hadn’t lost anything. “Hello, Diana.”

“Pen. I wanted to ring to see if you need any help packing. I’ll see you at the wedding, but I can come down today if you need me. I know how much work there is to do. I really think you’re going to be happier, but you know you can stay as long as you want. George and I don’t mind. The house is yours.”

She felt a small smile crease her lips up. “I want to go with something smaller, and I’m going to split the money with you.”

They’d been having this argument for months, but it made her feel oddly secure. There was a lot of money in the house, but her siblings weren’t fighting her. She was having to fight to get them to take their portions. George was handling the legalities, and Diana had pitched in.

It made her realize how much she’d pushed her siblings away, how much she’d taken on her own shoulders.

She got up and walked to the largest of the three bedrooms. Her parents’ room. She’d put it off long enough, and now she was packing up her mother’s things, keeping a few items, but giving away the clothes and knickknacks that represented her mother’s life. She pushed the speaker phone option and continued talking to her sister as she worked, emptying the dresser. “I’m fine, Diana. I’m almost done. There’s just the bedroom and then the kitchen. I’ll be ready to put it on the market in a couple of weeks.”

“All right. I just want to make sure I’m helping.”

She was overcompensating. “She knew you loved her, Diana. You came every week.”

“She didn’t know me at all at the end, Pen. And George and I let you take the load. I should have moved her in with me.”

Around the children? Her mother could get violent when she had an episode. “No. Please let it go. I don’t want to talk about this. We’ve discussed it and you’ve apologized.”

“Fine, I’ll let it go for now. I’ll see you tomorrow, right? You won’t leave me and George alone with the horrible Hendersons, will you?”

Their cousin, Beatrice Cash-Henderson, was marrying some posh nob and Penny had gotten dragged into the wedding. It was being held at some expensive club where Bea and her nasty sisters would lord it over the rest of the family.

And she’d promised to go.

“I think I feel a bout of Ebola coming on, Diana.”

“Oh, don’t you do that. There is no hemorrhagic fever in London. You’re going and that’s that. I’ll see you there. Do you want me to get you a date? I met a nice doctor the other day. He works at University College. I think you would like him.”

Her skin nearly crawled. The last time Diana had tried to set her up had been with an accountant who spent the entire night bemoaning the British tax system. “No. Oh, no. I’m fine going by myself.”

It would be miserable because everyone would ask her who she was seeing and why she’d let Peter go, and oh, did she really want to become an old maid and everyone knew some nice man they wanted to set her up with. Then there were a few who really thought she was a lesbian and tried to set her up with a nice lady.

It was the burden of being single and in her thirties.

She should date, but all she could think about now was Damon Knight and his devil’s bargain.

Diana chatted on for another few moments and then they hung up. Penny was left alone with the sum of her mother’s life. She took a long breath. Soon this house would belong to someone else. Some other group of kids would run and play in the garden in the back. They would fight and share secrets and grow up right here where she had.

It was odd to think that she’d spent her whole life in one place and now her future was somewhere else. It was a bit frightening.

She could stay here. George and Diana wouldn’t mind. She would be comfortable here. She could move right into her mother’s room and nothing would change.

Her hand came up against something hard in the last drawer. Odd. The dresser only had clothes in it. She pulled it free. It was a small notebook. A long sigh came from her chest. Her mother’s recipe book.

A sheen of tears hit her eyes as she sat back on the bed and started to flip through her mum’s personal versions of Yorkshire pudding, pot roast, popovers. All her favorites. The book had gone missing a year before and she’d been worried that her mother had lost it.

The recipes were written in her mum’s steady hand, each one a memory for Penny.

Until she got to the last page. It wasn’t a recipe she found there. It was a letter.

My Dearest Heart,

I’m lucid now. The times that I remember are getting further and further between and I need to talk to you but you’re at work. The nurse is kind, but I don’t trust her to remember what I need to say to you. George and Diana will be fine. They took after your father. They’ll find themselves and forge their own lives, but I am so worried about you, my Penny.

I know you’ve put life on hold to take care of me, and I can’t thank you enough. I wish it weren’t necessary. But I fear that you will continue to put your life on hold. Much as I did.

There is always an excuse to not do something. I wanted to go to university. I wanted to teach. But it was always something I would do next year or after the children were grown or after your father was settled. Tomorrow never comes when you keep telling it no.

I loved your father, loved you children, but I wanted more. I wanted something for myself. I fear if you continue down this path, you will have nothing for you, dear girl, and that would be a tragedy.

I’m going to leave this out and hope you find it. If you don’t, then you will likely discover this after I’m gone and I want you to stop grieving. Stop it this instant. Do one thing for me. I will only ask one thing more of you, my darling girl.

Say yes.

Say yes to one thing that frightens you, that intrigues, that you think you can’t do. Say yes and don’t look back. It will or it won’t be, but you’ll never know if you don’t say yes.

Her mother’s handwriting became indecipherable, the script turning into doodles as the dementia had obviously overtaken her again.

But the words had penetrated Penny’s soul. She stared though she couldn’t see through her tears.

If she stayed here she would never start her life. She would never begin that essential piece of a life—the part where she had no idea what the next day would bring. She’d gotten comfortable with the daily rituals of serving her family.

It was time to figure out who the hell she was, and she couldn’t do it here. She couldn’t do it if she was always, always so afraid.

Her mother had sent her a lifeline, a prayer for her.

Without another thought, without letting her brain take back over, she found her phone. The number she needed had been left in the file, and she dialed it with shaking hands.

One chance. If she didn’t do this, she likely would wake up tomorrow and come up with some excuse to go back to her safe life, but some decisions had to come from emotion, from instinct—from love.

The phone rang once and then again.

“This is Knight.” His deep voice rumbled into her ear.

If she did this, she would likely have sex with him. She would know what it meant to be Damon Knight’s lover.

“Penelope? Darling, are you there?” He was back to oozing charm. He must have seen her name on his caller identification.

“Yes.” She said it.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes.”

She could practically hear his satisfaction. “Yes. You said yes.”