A Collateral Attraction

by Liz Madrid

  I see the headlines as soon as Heath and I get settled back in his private jet and they all send a chill right through me. The news is everywhere — New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal — and they all say the same thing.

  Unconfirmed reports state that a car crash off an isolated stretch along Highway 40 is believed to have claimed the life of Heath Kheiron, 28, son of Edgar Kheiron and Rosalie Marie Ettinger, heir to the Ettinger fortune that’s worth billions. Another passenger in the car, Billie Delphine, twin sister to Ethan Kheiron’s fiancee, is missing, believed to have been thrown out of the car during the crash.

  “How is this possible?” I ask, incredulous at what I’m reading. “Isn’t this news corroborated by reporters, police department, witnesses?”

  “That’s why they’re unconfirmed,” Heath says softly. “With Wally’s body dragged near the SUV when it exploded and burned beyond recognition, his identity’s yet to be released pending notification of relatives. And remember, that stretch is pretty isolated — just two lanes, and winding in places.”

  Heath doesn’t have to remind me. Three years earlier, my parents’ car lay in a ravine for hours before someone finally found us. “So you’re using that to buy time?”

  “It will be confirmed soon enough, and until then, we play along and make people that we’re dead.”

  “But I was just at the hospital, Heath. They know-“

  “Fred had you registered under a different name,” he says. “You came with no identification, and he paid the bill in full.”

  “He also said I fell behind the house while admiring the rain,” I say wryly, remembering how Fred did tell the medical doctors that I was his niece and that I had stepped outside the house for a smoke, only to fall down the embankment behind the house, hence the state I came in with pine needles and leaves in my hair and cuts from branches and rocks.

  “There you go. You can’t blame Fred for being imaginative,” Heath says apologetically.

  “And Blythe knows this, right? She knows that I’m okay despite all the news.”

  “Yes, though I would prefer that you speak after we arrive in New York,” he says just as the flight attendants remind us to buckle our seat belts and get ready for take-off.

  As I buckle my seatbelt, I can’t help but notice how quiet it is on the plane, so unlike how busy it had been just the night before, with Heath’s whole team flying with us from Santa Barbara. It’s just us now, along with four other members of his security detail and the flight crew, for the rest of his office boarded a private charter two hours earlier.

  “Is this your normal?” I ask. “Is this why you’re so calm, even with everything happening around you, like it doesn’t even faze you? Is that how you can look at your name on the paper, presumed dead, and me presumed drowned and swept away, and remain calm?”

  “No, Billie, but it’s how I have to be right now, before I kill the person who’s behind all this,” he says and I see his jaw clench as he turns away from me. It’s then that I see something else on his face — a loneliness that cuts right into me.

  I reach for his hand across the table and squeeze it. “I’m sorry…I’m just trying to understand what’s going on. I mean…it all makes sense now, you telling me to get Blythe out of Santa Barbara because we were more expendable than others-“

  He covers my hand with his other hand. “We were all expendable — even me.”

  “So are we going to be okay now?” I ask, glancing up at the three men and one woman who sit close to us. “Or do I have to sleep with one eye open from here on?”

  “Everyone around us has been personally picked by Fred, and I trust them with my life, Billie. So in a sense, yes, we’re going to be okay now and you don’t have to sleep with one eye open,” he says, grinning as his dimples make their reappearance. “Besides, seeing you sleeping like that would seriously wig me out.”

  33

  Passed Over

  Our flight back to New York is estimated at five hours — five hours where Heath could spend every moment working like he always does, but he doesn’t. Instead, when the painkillers the doctors gave me at the hospital start working too well thirty minutes into the flight, he helps me into bed in the rear cabin, shuts the door, and joins me.

  For a few minutes, we just hold each other, my head resting on his chest as he plays with my hair. It feels like it’s the most natural thing in the world and I can’t help but feel good, as if the pieces in the puzzle of my life are finally starting to fit and I’m where I’m supposed to be – even if someone just tried to kill both of us.

  With everything that’s happened in the last few days, it feels like I’ve spent a lifetime with him, and as much as I hate to say it for it just feels so new, I want to spend another lifetime more.

  “Stay with me in New York, Billie,” Heath murmurs as he brings my hand to his lips before resting it on his shoulder. “I know it’s so different from Nevada City, but New York has a lot to offer as far as nature and wildlife. That is, if you count the 23,000 trees and 280 bird species in Central Park.”

  I chuckle. “Go on. What else?”

  “There’s fishing, maybe in Montauk – striped bass, fluke and porgie. We can even fish with a pole if you want. And you won’t have to leave Nevada City for good. We can fly back a few times a month if you want-”

  I raise my head from his chest. “Are you trying to sell me on New York?”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “That’s alright, you’re forgiven,” I say, laying my head back down and tracing circles on his chest, where my fingers have slipped between the V of his henley. “Keep going.”

  “You can go to school,” he says. “Blythe told me you dropped out of college to help your parents at the store. There’s Columbia University and NYU. That’s where Jessica went to study business.”

  I lift my head up again and peer at him. “She went into business, too, like you?”

  “She did, and she even graduated first in her class,” Heath says, stroking my hair, his gaze on the gentle burls of the eucalyptus panels above us.

  “Did she ever work, like, before she got married?”

  “Of course. I was a senior in high school when she started working at Kheiron Industries,” Heath replies. “Then she started dating Daniel and by the time I was a junior in college, they got engaged.”

  “Daniel,” I say out loud, trying to remember when I first heard it. Then I remember the man I’d met the day Heath shut down the store for me for five hours so I could shop.

  Heath lifts his head up to peer at me. “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you knew. Daniel is Harris’ son. He’s the same age as Ethan so he’s younger than Jessica. He was interning at the company for his final year in college when they met and-”

  “I met them both,” I say and Heath stares at me, surprised. “On the day you left me to shop for five hours. She came in to pick up a purse she ordered and Daniel in after. They were on their way to some recital.”

  “How come you never told me?”

  “Has it ever occurred to you that with you, it’s one thing after another?” I ask as Heath chuckles. “Literally, it is. I mean, the moment we got the plane to go to Saint Lucia, I passed out from the-“

  “-Xanax, that’s right,” Heath says, nodding his head. “And then we got off on the wrong foot from then on.”

  “I should have told you but it never occurred to me…and even when we were in Santa Barbara, I completely forgot to tell you then either.”

  “Well, there was Blythe-“

  “Anyway, what position did Jessica have with the company then?”

  “She worked for the VP of Marketing first before taking over that position two years later,” he says slowly, as if trying to remember. “Then she stepped down.”

  “Why?”

  “After she had her first child, father didn’t want hormones interfering with business decisions so he asked her — no, told her — to step down. I do know it was con
tentious and she hasn’t worked for the company since or any company for that matter, especially now when she has three children. Though she is a member of the board, it’s not anything close to the position she held then.”

  “Why is that? Is that your choice?”

  Heath thinks for a few moments, his brow furrowing. “She never applied for her position back, and in the midst of restructuring, I never thought to ask her. I did remove Daniel from his position after I took over and had him assigned to another position that I felt suited his abilities more. Marketing.”

  “What was he before the restructure? I’d assume this was when Ethan and Jackson had to step down as well?”

  He nods. “Yes, it was major, and it didn’t make me very popular-“

  “-or popular at all for that matter.”

  “That would be Ethan, my dear,” Heath says. “But why the questions about Jessica?”

  I push myself up and sit cross-legged facing Heath as he props himself up over the pillows. “Did you ever consider Jessica for a position in the company after you took over? Given that she had experience-”

  “Not recent,” Heath says, though I can see him frown as he watches me.

  “Ethan has no experience, yet he was elected to head the board, which must have pissed her off,” I say. “He doesn’t have a degree in business, does he?”

  Heath shakes his head. “Ethan’s degree is in Marketing, unlike her which was Business and Economics, the same majors I pursued.”

  “Yet no one thought to hire her despite her having worked for two years-”

  “Just because Harris and the rest of the board elected Ethan despite his clear lack of qualifications right after father died didn’t mean I was about to do the same to Jessica,” Heath says. “She hasn’t worked in eight years-”

  “Yet she’s seen every man in her family take a position that she’s probably qualified — even overqualified — for,” I say. “Let me play devil’s advocate, alright?”

  “Alright.”

  “If she’s been watching everything along the sidelines, with everyone bypassing her — from her father, because she’s a woman who shouldn’t be working when she should be home raising her kids, to her brothers who are so busy fighting each other to realize that there’s a sister who’s probably much smarter than they both are-“ I hold up my hand as I see that Heath is about to object, “-devil’s advocate, remember? And yet she’s bypassed, too. Is it because she’s a woman?”

  “No,” Heath replies, annoyed. “In my case, it’s because she had no experience, not after eight years of not working in any company, and she never told me that she was interested.”

  “Yet there’s Ethan, who has no experience running anything, as his recent close call to being charged for fraud clearly shows,” I say, bringing my hands to my sides. “I’m sorry, but if I were Jessica, I’d be pissed as hell, too.”

  Heath sits up across from me, his frown growing deeper. “So what are you saying, Billie? That my own sister is behind all this?”

  “Well, you haven’t been able to talk to her since Ethan took the letters, have you? And like you said, she probably already knows that you’re not a Kheiron which I’m sure doesn’t help matters either, for here you are, the chairman of the board-”

  “I was elected for my qualifications and accomplishments in my field,” Heath says.

  “-as I’m sure Ethan was, too,” I say sarcastically, before resting my hand on Heath’s arm. “Look, I’m not itching for an argument, Heath. But whether or not she’s behind all this, I’m just asking you to see it from her point of view. And whatever you do, don’t blame her being a woman like her father did, or her lack of recent expertise, like you and the rest of the board are doing. Just because her experience now involves the PTA or mediating fights between her kids doesn’t make her any less qualified to hold a position in a company, especially when she has the qualifications on paper when it comes to her education — even experience — even if was just two years. Eight years being a mother and a wife should not be used as an excuse to leave her out of the company.”

  Heath is glaring at me but I keep going. “She’s been bypassed by her own family more times than she can probably count — by your father, her brothers, even her mother, who handed you all the shares of the company even if it was only to save it.”

  Heath is silent for a few moments, and I can see his jaw clenching as he looks away from me. He reaches for the phone on the panel and dials a number.

  “Tyler, who else is going to be at the meeting?” he asks and I can hear Tyler’s voice on the phone, remembering the proud woman who told me she’d been hired to add diversity to the board though she had worked just as hard as everyone else.

  Heath thanks her and hangs up the phone, though he doesn’t speak to me right away.

  “Jessica is going to be there, as well as Daniel,” he says as I remember the bearded man who had come into the shop telling her the girls were waiting in the car.

  “Has Ethan been able to talk to her since this all began?”

  “No, he hasn’t. It’s like she’s shut him out, too,” Heath replies, shaking his head. “But I’m afraid you’re right, Billie, though at the same time, I hope to God you’re wrong.”

  “I hope I’m wrong, too, at least when it comes to the length she’s had to go through to get her point across.”

  “But you are right about one thing,” Heath adds, his brow furrowing.

  “What’s that?”

  “She has been bypassed so many times, even by me, when I should have known better,” he says, shaking his head as he looks away. “Maybe I am just like my father after all.”

  “Oh, come on, Heath, you are so not like your father at all!” I scoff.

  “Family is not just about bloodlines, Billie,” Heath says. “Edgar Kheiron still raised me-”

  “Oh, he did?” I ask, looking at him incredulously. Something makes me feel bold enough to keep going, bolder than I’ve ever felt before, and I take my chance. Even if I’m wrong about it all, if it makes Heath start to think beyond the misogynist that is Edgar Kheiron, I’ll take the chance. “Why don’t you answer me this, Heath. Who taught you about Orion? The constellations? Was it Edgar?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Who taught you how to fish — and I mean the first time, like, with a fishing pole and worms for bait. Was it Edgar?”

  “He would never-” Heath pauses, his frown deepening.

  “When Edgar was busy with his mistresses — your aunts — and your mother was committed to the mental institution, who kept an eye on you?” I ask, even though I know I’m pushing it for Heath’s scowl deepens even more. “Who was there for you when you struck out on your own, taking the subways, and the buses to get where you were going when you could have had the planes and the chauffeured cars?”

  Heath raises a finger to stop me from continuing, his gaze turning cold. “If I were you, Billie, I’d quit while you’re ahead,” he says and before I can offer an apology for butting into business that’s not my own, Heath gets out of bed and slips out of the rear cabin, shutting the door behind him.

  34

  Everything In Place

  I know better than to get out of bed and go after Heath, not when I see him through the gap in the doors between the cabins sitting in his chair and talking on the phone. And though I fall asleep for the next two hours, I awake when he enters the rear cabin to change his shirt and the dressing around his wound.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you,” he says as he peels off his shirt and sets it aside. “I’m going to change the bandages in the bathroom.”

  “Will you let me help you?”

  He nods and I follow him into the bathroom, though we leave the door open. I find the first aid kit underneath the counter and for the next few minutes, we work in silence.

  I know I look horrible. The cuts on my face still sting to the touch and I’m completely without make-up on, but I feel Heath’s gaze as I gently clean t
he gash along his side with antibiotic cream and then wrap the bandage around his torso.

  “You lied about it being just a scratch,” I murmur as I secure the ends of the bandages with clips and he winces.

  “It’s nothing compared to what you had to go through, Billie,” he says. “I had my security around me. After Wally was killed, you were all alone.”

  I swallow, nodding, though I force a smile before I look up at him. “If it makes you feel any better, I did deliver an awesome right hook, one that Richard will never forget. Well, that along with the knee to the balls.”

  “Ouch,” Heath says chuckling, “though I don’t feel sorry for him.”

  He tilts my chin up so I’m facing him, deep blue eyes flecked with gray. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Now put a shirt on before I take advantage of you right here.”

  “Well, there’s that. But what I mean is, thank you for telling me your thoughts about Jessica,” Heath says. “It’s hard to believe but at the same time, I can’t rule it out, not after I personally recommended Daniel’s transfer from finance to marketing, which must have looked like a demotion to Jessica, even though there was no change in salary or benefits. Not that she has to worry. Her net worth is…pretty substantial.”

  “But you were left out, Heath,” I say. “Doesn’t that bother you that none of them thought of including you in their share, even split it three ways?”

  “And open it up for all of father’s other illegitimate children? No, and even if they did, I would have refused. The only reason I went to work for a brokerage firm right after college even when I didn’t need to work was to prove to my…to Edgar that I could do it without his damn money. Not even my mother’s money, though it was there, of course. There was something about living like a normal person, someone who paid rent, took the subways or cabs, showed up to work before 7 am or earlier depending on which country I was talking to on the phone and come home at 10 pm-“