Claimed by Caden

by Serena Akeroyd

Swallowing back her worries, she turned on her heel and made to step away from the clinic. It was damned hard to leave when this was the only place she wanted to be.

  She’d never known a hospital like it. One that wouldn’t accept a spouse because she didn’t come from the town. It was a wonder this place hadn’t been in the news, or had every kind of discriminatory lawsuit thrown at it.

  Grimly wishing it on them, as well as every other kind of suit, she strode toward Main Street. Before she started begging strangers for information as to where she was supposed to go, she ducked into one of the clothing stores.

  The prices were steep, but she’d expected nothing less, and in the end, she had to use the card Caden had given her—the one she hated to use and only did in times of emergencies.

  Now was hardly that, but it was either that or walk around in the same outfit for however long she was here. Christ, that really would make her feel like the poor relative.

  Shuddering at the thought, she selected some loose-fitting fawn pants, a slim-line skirt that had tucks at the waist, and a couple of shirts. All basic wear, all classy and pricey enough to suit Eloise. As she was looking through a clothing rail at the back, she heard the door burst open, and rapid footsteps approach the front of the shop.

  “Did you hear? It’s all around town. Caden Drummond was taken to the clinic. He collapsed in Manhattan!”

  “Oh my God, that means Chloë actually went through with it. She said she would I just didn’t believe she was capable of that,” the assistant said.

  “You know what she’s like. Can’t stand it when she doesn’t get her own way, the spoiled brat. He really pulled a number on her as well by marrying his little Mansk.”

  Mansk? What the hell did that mean?

  “I actually enjoyed Chloë and Eloise’s long faces. It was hilarious watching them mope about town when the news broke out. About time someone pulled those stuck-up bitches down a peg or two.”

  “He certainly had some balls to marry out of the Pride, didn’t he?”

  “Let’s see how big they are when Chloë carries on with her plan. Because, let’s face it, now she has him back in town, there’s no way she won’t follow through with it. I swear she’s even more of a psychopath than the Pride realizes.”

  Even though she understood the words, Lia felt as though they were talking a foreign language. But the county’s accent was audible, they hadn’t suddenly switched to Swahili. What the hell were they talking about Prides for? And who the fuck was this Chloë?

  She wasn’t sure which was the wisest option, slipping out of the store and keeping her face hidden or brazening it out. The assistant hadn’t really looked up when she’d walked in, so she could just saunter out, but by hiding the fact she’d overheard them, would that give the wrong impression?

  If the town refused to let anyone that wasn’t a citizen past the hospital reception, then it was a guarantee that a strange face would stick out like a sore thumb.

  They’d immediately guess who she was.

  Was that a bad thing?

  Still unsure, she decided on being brazen. She wasn’t afraid of these women, she wasn’t afraid of their opinion. Or of this Chloë’s. Being raised in the Bronx hadn’t been a picnic, but she’d survived, and along the way had learned the best goddamn way to do so.

  Stay strong and smart.

  The knowledge that this wasn’t a normal town whispered through her mind again. While she’d sensed it as she’d driven inside the city limits, it was nothing in comparison to the blow between the eyes she experienced now at the use of unfamiliar terms and words…almost like this place ran to a different rhythm. A rhythm peculiar to Anchor, and Anchor alone. Was that why Caden had kept her away from here?

  Moving through the rails, she headed to the cashier. Hearing her steps, the pair of them looked up, and blanched.

  A real positive reaction that.

  Christ, she should just get used to it. It was a good job Caden loved her, otherwise she’d be an insecure wreck.

  Both women ducked their heads in embarrassment, then the assistant looked up, a sheepish twist to her mouth. “You’re Caden’s wife, right?”

  Lia eyed the two of them, saw their mortification at being caught gossiping about her husband rather than their rejection, and smiled. It was rueful, not exactly warming, but still, what did they expect? They’d just inadvertently spilled the beans. Whoever the fuck this Chloë was, apparently, she’d drugged Caden.

  Yeah, like that wasn’t a lot to process.

  And by the sounds of it, this Chloë was Anchor’s Sweetheart. How could she say anything against her and be believed?

  “Unfortunately for you two, yeah, I’m Lia Drummond.”

  The woman who had rushed into the store bit her lip, then held out her hand. “I’m Chessie, Lia,” she told her, still nibbling her lip shyly.

  “Laura,” the cashier said next.

  “I’d say it’s a pleasure to meet you both, and in different circumstances, I’m sure it would be.”

  “Is he okay?” Laura asked.

  “His father assures me he’s fine.”

  Chessie sighed. “Of course, the ‘Citizen’ rule.”

  While the quote marks weren’t acted out, Lia knew they were there. In a way she was relieved. If Chessie knew about the rule, it meant Eloise hadn’t barred her from the clinic. “Yeah, apparently I’m not allowed to see my husband. Even though he’s ill.” She swallowed at that, tried not to make herself cry or upset the inner beast that wanted to tear down the walls of the clinic just to get to her man.

  She might have spunk, more spunk than a lot of women her age, but growing up in her tenement building did that to a girl. Boy, did it. But she wasn’t the violent sort. Not really, she played by the rules for the most part, and this was a whole different side to her. One she had trouble understanding herself.

  It was a part of her nature that only came out to play in dire circumstances.

  When her brother had been sent to jail, she’d wanted to tear someone’s guts out. She knew it was his fault—he’d been guilty of carjacking, and deserved the punishment. But, and there was a huge but, she and Tomas had always loved open spaces. She knew few people were appreciative of six-by-eight-feet cells, but for her and Tomas, their need was different.

  She couldn’t explain why, but being cooped up drove them both crazy, and the idea of Tomas being penned in, permanently, had made her feel sick with a rage she hadn’t been able to control.

  Then, when her mother had died, she’d felt like something inside of her wanted to burst free with grief. Like there was a different part of her soul that was experiencing the pain of loss in a whole separate way, a way that had concentrated her suffering, doubling it. Those months after her mother’s death were some of the worst of her life.

  It freaked her out to think about it. To think there were “two parts of her soul.” It made her feel like there was something seriously wrong with her. An unnamed mental illness.

  It wasn’t that she heard voices. She refused to even think that, because to think about it, was to open up the box. And Lia knew in that instant, she’d be like Pandora. Whatever she let out, would never go back in.

  At the moment, with Caden locked away from her, that “other” part was really starting to push at the seams. It vied with the desire to cry.

  Lia could honestly say she’d never felt so strong yet more like a watering pot.

  Weird.

  “I’m sorry you can’t see him, Lia,” Chessie told her, sounding quite earnest, and jolting her from her discomforting thoughts. “It’s just a private clinic.”

  “I belong to a private clinic myself, Chessie. I’ve never known them to pick and choose who can visit their patients.” Feeling her right eye twitch with irritation, she blew out a breath, sucked it back in, and pasted on a false smile. “I’ll be needing these, please, Laura.” As Laura grabbed the clothes Lia had chosen and started to process them through the till, Chessie asked, “How
much did you hear of our conversation, Lia?”

  When Laura sighed, rolling her eyes heavenward, Lia bit back a smile. “All of it.”

  “Oh, damn.”

  “Yeah,” Lia retorted. “I was actually going to ask you two things. Firstly, do you know where my mother and father-in-law live? And who the hell is Chloë?” When the two of them looked at each other, then down at the floor, Lia sighed. “You couldn’t have expected me not to ask?”

  “If we tell you, it’s putting us in a very difficult position,” Laura told her. The strange thing was, it didn’t sound ingenuous. Or like she was avoiding the question.

  After living in New York all her life, after years of studying to be then actually practicing as a legal secretary, honesty was not something Lia was accustomed to, but she’d grown pretty good at sensing the truth from the lies. And these two were being relatively truthful.

  “I understand that, but you’ve just said that Chloë drugged my husband. I need to tell the hospital what she used to drug him. That way they can treat him.”

  Chessie snorted. “She doesn’t want to hurt him, Lia. Anything but. I wouldn’t worry about her giving him something poisonous. She just wanted to get him back here.”

  “Back to Anchor?”

  Laura nodded. “Yeah, he’s safe, Lia. We can almost guarantee that.”

  For some reason, even though they were withholding the full truth from her, even though she wanted to demand answers, there was something she liked about these two women. A crazy time to make such a realization, but hormones were hormones. She’d always thought she’d be above pregnancy craziness. Apparently not, if she could actually get a vague sense of kinship from these two strangers.

  Just what she needed, those weird instincts of hers to come out to play.

  “Because she wants to steal him from me?”

  Chessie nodded. “Technically, well, to Chloë at any rate, you stole him from her.”

  Laura’s chuckle was muffled. “She’s been drooling over him since grade school. In her very obsessed eyes, yeah, he belongs to her.”

  “In a bunny boiler kind of way,” Chessie pointed out in a hushed voice, like the walls had ears.

  “Good to know.” She didn’t understand it, especially considering the subject matter, but these two women made her want to laugh. Not in a mean way, but they were just very cute together.

  Chessie continued, “Oh, the whole town knows she’s potty over Caden. He was the one that got away. At least to her. It doesn’t matter the whole P—… town knows how desperate she is for him, that just seems to egg her on all the more!”

  It didn’t escape Lia’s notice that Chessie was going to use the word “Pride” again. She wondered at it for a moment, wondered if it was some country bumpkin thing—although she doubted it because they were only two hours away from one of the busiest cities on Earth, and while this place looked sleepy, it didn’t look inbred.

  “Thank you for warning me. Where I come from, we know how to handle women like that,” she told them pleasantly. Hell, how many times had she seen women bloodying other women’s noses, and all over a guy? Her building had been so bad, it would have provided Jerry Springer with enough material for a decade.

  “Oh yes, you’re from the Bronx, aren’t you?” Chessie murmured, both disgusted and intrigued by this tidbit. Her nose was scrunched but she’d leaned forward as though seeking more information.

  “I take it Eloise’s dislike of me is as well-known as this Chloë’s need to steal my husband from me?”

  “Oh yes,” came Chessie’s easy reply, which earned her a swift glare from Laura. “What?” she asked the blushing woman. “It’s the truth. And if you always tell the truth, then gossiping isn’t mean. That’s what my mother always tells me.”

  Feeling a little ancient at such a naïve comment, Lia bit back her sigh.

  “You’ve hurt Lia’s feelings,” Laura retorted. “So how does the whole ‘gossiping isn’t mean’ approach work?”

  Chessie nibbled her lip. “I’m sorry, Lia. I really didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “You didn’t, Chessie. It’s just embarrassing to know that this entire town knows more about why my mother-in-law dislikes me than I do. Well, aside from the fact that I come from the Bronx. As far as I can tell, that’s the only real reason she has to disapprove of me.”

  A sudden hush fell between the two of them, and Lia knew, just knew that these two strangers were well aware of why Eloise thought she wasn’t good enough for her son.

  That reason however, not even the loose-lipped Chessie, was willing to share. She could tell from the way she kept her head bowed and wandered over to the shoe aisle.

  Talk about a conversation breaker.

  She handed Laura her credit card, then, when her bag of new clothes was in her hand, asked, “Could you tell me where Eloise lives?”

  Laura’s cheeks were tinged with red by the time she’d given Lia the directions. It eased the humiliation she felt at being so openly discussed in Anchor by complete and utter strangers.

  What gave Eloise the right to denigrate her to so wide an audience?

  Sucking it up because she had few other options, she said a stifled farewell to the women who had told her so much by saying relatively little, and headed back onto the street. On the way to the Drummond household, she called into the drugstore and picked up some essentials, then headed to the home from hell. A house that had never been open to her before.

  It was impressive, she couldn’t deny that. But then, so was the town. All of it looked like it belonged in a fairy tale. Every part of it was immaculate. Not a roof was battered, or a yard poorly kempt. The stores were pristine, the verges lining the pavements neatly mowed, with flowering bushes perfectly trimmed at intermittent stops.

  The place’s affluence even scented the air. Cheap smells of pizza or beer didn’t carry on the afternoon wind. Oh no, not for Anchor. Here, freshly-baked palmiers perfumed the street, alongside the gusts of eau de toilette and hairspray that wafted out of the busy salon.

  The worst part of Anchor, however, was not its looks. Or its smells. No, it was knowing she was in the crosshairs of everyone’s attention.

  Every step she took didn’t go unnoticed. As she passed the busy salon, she saw from the corner of her eye how everyone in there paused to watch her walk on by.

  People stopped talking to gawk at her in the street. Cars slowed as they drove past.

  She’d never felt so unwelcome and so alien in all her life.

  Her pace increased to reach the house as soon as she could. Being made to feel like an outcast was how she’d spent the two terms she’d had at Princeton. It wasn’t something she’d fancied repeating, but now, it was being thrust on her, and she didn’t have a damn choice, the only thing she could do was endure.

  By the time she made it to the Drummond household, she was so furious she almost missed it. And that would have been stupid because the frickin’ place was huge.

  The houses were all lined up like this was suburbia, a short yard in front of the building, which put them on the roadside, but these weren’t the suburbs. These houses were not houses. Calling them that was to denigrate them. They were mansions. And they were bigger, better and more beautiful than the ones she’d seen on her way into town.

  Glaring up at it, with its perfect facade, and perfect lawn, and perfect perfection that was already tiring her, she trudged up the garden path. It took her to a Spanish-styled house. Four different floors, each with huge adobe archways, and shuttered windows. It was an unusual house for the area, and it came as a surprise to her, but she was past caring about her mother-in-law’s home. She just wanted in and to get away from all the eyes that were glued on her.

  She knew how improbable it was that the whole town was gawking at her...yet she knew it to be the truth. The instant the maid opened the door, she didn’t wait to be invited in, Lia pushed her way in, ignoring the flustered reprimands of the other woman.

  “I’
m Lia Drummond,” she bit out, when the maid started blabbering away in angry Spanish. “Soy la mujer de Caden!” she snapped, switching to the other language to calm the woman down and to hasten her to shut the goddamn door. She had no problem in telling her that she was Caden’s wife. There’d been an advantage to living next door to arguing Mexicans—she’d learned the language just to eavesdrop.

  When her mouth rounded into an O, the maid quickly shut out the outside world, and Lia sighed in relief.

  The foyer was huge. A big-ass, curling staircase that was visible from the ground up and right to the fourth floor. A large chandelier swung from the center of the ceiling, and like a necklace, glimmered in its own light, which illuminated the corridors visible thanks to the mezzanine layout.

  The space was filled with that golden glow, highlighting antiques and furniture, priceless paintings and statuettes that would make a museum’s curator weep.

  It was hard not to be overwhelmed by the space. Hard not to feel small, especially when she realized this was where Caden had grown up. He’d spent his childhood here. The Drummonds’ home in Hawaii, and the apartment in Aspen were impressive, but they were nothing like this.

  “Can you show me to my room, please?” she asked the maid in a quiet voice, feeling utterly weary now she’d arrived here.

  Her mood swings were tiring her more than the shit being leveled her way by a scheming mother-in-law who didn’t know when to quit, and while she wanted desperately to be by Caden’s side, she knew she’d be taking a nap the instant her head hit the pillow.

  When the maid bobbed her head politely, a smile on her face now that she knew who Lia was as well as the fact she could speak Spanish, the woman took the carrier bags from Lia’s hands and guided her to the elevator. They traveled in the small, teak-lined carriage to the fourth floor, where from the maid’s sudden flustered embarrassment, Lia realized Eloise was about to insult her. Yet again. And without even being in the house.

  Call her perceptive, or call Eloise obvious, another snub was winging its way to Lia’s feet.

  She had her confirmation when Lia followed the maid—Consuela as she’d been told mid-journey to the fourth floor—past carved doors so widely spread she knew they led to suites, and they continued on. And on. To a tighter corridor that was no longer lined with paintings and occasional tables. Here, things were pretty bleak. Tiled floors rather than carpets, everything neat and tidy but worn.