The Heiress

by Cassia Leo

  Daniel slid into the driver’s seat. “Where to, princess?”

  “I thought you got my address from the receptionist.”

  “The night is young,” he replied in that smooth voice as he tapped his steering wheel. “And this thing doesn’t turn back into a pumpkin for a few more hours.”

  I searched his gorgeous face for any indication he meant me harm, but all I saw was a genuine guy who seemed to want nothing more than to give me a choice: go home or go for a ride.

  I looked him in the eye. “What’s the best place to go in Manhattan if you want to disappear?”

  His smile dimmed a bit as he seemed to recognize my reluctance to go home might have less to do with wanting to spend time with him and more to do with a need to escape whatever was waiting for me at home. “That’s easy, the Botanical Gardens.”

  I drew in a long, deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Let’s disappear.”

  Smooth Jazz

  “You look hungry,” Daniel remarked, pulling his Range Rover into the sluggish traffic on 47th.

  “I ate before my shift, thanks.” I didn’t bother telling him my shift started almost seven hours ago.

  He chuckled at my response. “I wasn’t offering to get you something to eat. You look hungry for something, but whatever it is, it’s definitely not food.”

  I shifted uncomfortably in the leather seat, my gaze focused on the logo on the side of the work van parked against the curb beside us. “I don’t know what the fuck that means.”

  After a brief silence, I turned to Daniel and found him wearing a curious smile, as if he were considering whether he should let me in on a secret. Ultimately, he turned away to focus on the road, then he turned right into even worse traffic on West Side Highway.

  “You could have used some of this feisty attitude in the restaurant,” he said, with what I interpreted as a note of disappointment in his voice. “Why didn’t you speak up when your boss asked what that Ted Bundy wannabe did to you?”

  I was not mistaken. For some reason, this privileged asshole who barely knew me was disappointed in me.

  I shrugged. “Can we talk about something other than Roger?”

  “Sure. Why don’t we talk about why you want to disappear?”

  I sighed. “You know, being good looking doesn’t give you the right to be a nosy little prick.”

  His eyes widened, as did mine, as we both realized my slip. “So you find me good looking?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and stared out the window again. “All I meant is that you don’t have a right to pry into my personal life just because you think you saved me from Roger and Jerry.”

  “I think I saved you?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this, okay?”

  He focused his attention on the highway. “I won’t ask any more questions about your job…except for one.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “What?”

  “Why do you work there? I mean, shouldn’t you be in college or graduate school?”

  I snatched my purse off the floor and clutched it to my belly, suddenly feeling as if I needed something to hide behind. “It’s not a huge mystery or anything. I dropped out because I couldn’t afford it.”

  “Isn’t that what scholarships are for? You’re a…girl. There’s scholarships for women in just about every field these days.”

  I shot him a scathing look. “Can we drop the inquisition, please? I wanted to disappear, not put myself on trial for being a loser.”

  Though I immediately regretted speaking these words aloud, I was grateful it managed to get Daniel to stop his interrogation. However, traffic slowed as we passed Pier 1 on our left, and the silence seemed too much for him to handle. He pressed a few things on his flashy touchscreen and crisp musical notes flowed out of his sound system. He leaned back with a satisfied grin spreading across his beautiful face.

  I chuckled as the sound of elevator Muzak filled the air. “Very funny.”

  “What? You don’t like jazz?” he replied without a hint of a smile.

  I waited for him to burst into laughter, to say he was kidding, but he just stared at me as the car inched forward in traffic.

  “Hey, keep your eyes on the road,” I demanded.

  “We’re going, like, two miles per hour,” he replied, his gaze locked on my face.

  “My dad died in a car accident. I take driver safety very seriously,” I replied, inwardly cringing at the words my mother had repeated to me so many times, which I was almost certain were a lie. But I didn’t mind using this probable lie about my father’s death if it got Daniel and his gorgeous green eyes to stop staring into my soul.

  The Range Rover stopped dead as the other cars around us continued inching forward. “Your…your dad…died? What…I thought…”

  I cocked an eyebrow at this odd response. “Hey, it’s no big deal. It’s not like I knew him. He died when I was a baby. But now I…I don’t know, I guess I have a kind of phobia of car accidents. That’s why I don’t drive anymore.”

  I swallowed hard, trying to clear away the emotions that welled up as I thought of that night, and the real reason why I might never find the courage to get behind the wheel again. Suddenly, I could smell my own fear as the city lights burned streaks into my retinas while the car flipped over, spiraling into hell.

  We both let out deep, audible sighs at the same time, which confused the fuck out of me.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, unable to hide the note of torment in my voice, the result of allowing myself to remember that night.

  He nodded vigorously as the Rover moved forward again. “Yeah, yeah. I’m great. I just…I guess what you said about your dad caught me a little off guard. I…I never really had a dad around. My dad…He’s been in and out of prison since I was six.”

  I stared at him for a moment, searching for any indication that he was pulling my chain, trying to relate to me on some deeper level by constructing a fake sob story, but he appeared extremely uncomfortable, like someone who had just shared a shameful piece of their past with a complete stranger.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I replied, setting my purse back on the floor. “How about your mom?” I shook my head as the words came out of my mouth. Now I was the one being nosy.

  “She’s gone,” he said, the solemn look on his face betrayed by the ridiculous soaring bellow of the saxophone coming from the speakers. “Breast cancer. She died a few years ago.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  A sickening weed of guilt grew inside my belly as I thought of my mom, at home alone. I could have gone home to be with her instead of going to the Botanical Gardens with a complete stranger, but I needed a break. I needed to forget, just for a few minutes, that I was the only thing standing between my mother and me being homeless.

  Daniel was saying something, but I couldn’t hear him over the thundering roar of guilt drowning out every thought in my head.

  “Can you just take me home?” I interrupted him. “I’m not far from the Botanical Gardens.”

  His gaze skimmed over my face, possibly searching for signs I had tired of his company. “Of course.”

  He seemed distant now, and I found myself wishing I had paid attention to whatever it was he was just saying. This happened often, tuning out in the middle of a conversation. I’d be speaking with a customer or coworker, then suddenly I’d find I hadn’t been paying attention for an unknown period of time. Always lost in thoughts of all the things I needed to do for my mother, or all the things I’d never get to do for myself.

  Or the terrible things I’d done in the past.

  We were four blocks from Hughes Avenue when my phone began to ring. Looking at the screen, I saw Leslie’s name and face. Leslie knew who to call if she ever saw my mom trying to leave the apartment without me.

  I understood my mom got bored up there with no one and nothing but the TV for company, but I couldn’t afford to hire a caretaker to watch her while I worked. I wished we had fam
ily in New York who could help. With my mom’s entire family in South Dakota, and my father supposedly dead, I was alone. Totally alone.

  “Leslie, what’s wrong?” I said, pressing the phone to my ear to hear her voice over the shrill bleat of the saxophone.

  “Oh, honey, you should get down here as soon as you can,” she said, her gravelly voice sounding as tired and weary as ever. “We’re at the Bronx-Lebanon ER. Your mom took a spill.”

  A Keeper

  Passing the parked ambulances on the way into the emergency entrance made me sick to my stomach. Despite Leslie’s assurances that my mother was not in grave condition, the guilt from not being there when she needed me only amplified my concern. However, the moment we stepped through the sliding doors, a tiny bit of my anxiety was relieved.

  Most people hated the smell of hospitals, but I actually found it soothing. Having spent so much time wandering these sterile corridors over the past few years, I’d come to associate the smell of hospital disinfectant with the feeling that my mother was in good hands, and I could rest. It was difficult to feel at ease when I was at work and she was home alone.

  “You really don’t have to stay here with me,” I insisted as Daniel and I approached the nurses’ station. “I can find my way home from here, thank you.”

  He ignored me as he sidled up next to me at the counter, and I couldn’t decide if I found his refusal to leave more infuriating or comforting. Turning back to the nurse behind the counter, I drew in a deep breath to calm myself before I spoke. The last thing an emergency room nurse needed was another shrill voice barking commands at her. I’d developed a pretty good feel for how to speak to hospital staff over the years.

  The nurse directed us to bay nineteen, where I found Leslie sitting at my mother’s bedside. She smiled warmly at me, then her eyebrows shot up as Daniel trailed in behind me.

  “Oh, Krissy. It’s so good to see you. Who’s this?”

  Before I could open my mouth, Daniel reached his hand out to Leslie. “I’m Daniel, Kristin’s bodyguard. It’s nice to meet you.”

  Leslie turned to me, her eyes wide with surprise.

  I waved off Daniel’s comment. “He’s not my bodyguard,” I said, trying to sound more annoyed than I actually was. “He’s a customer who was kind enough to give me a ride.”

  He turned to me, one eyebrow cocked. “Customer? What exactly am I paying you for?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Keep it up and you’ll be paying for a one-way ticket back to your car.”

  My mom exploded into a softly hoarse fit of laughter. “That’s my girl,” she said, her words thick and rounded from the pain medication.

  I stepped forward and placed my hand on her shoulder. “You scared the hell out of me. What happened?”

  “It’s not her fault, honey,” Leslie said. “Some little bastard pulled the fire alarm. I was already outside the building, standing there with the other idiots, when I remembered to check on your mom. Found her laid out on the fourth-floor landing. I’m so sorry, honey. I should’ve been up there.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t be silly. It’s not your fault, Les. I’m the one who should’ve been there.”

  My mom clumsily waved off our declarations of guilt. “Oh, please. It’s no one’s fault but mine and these knotty tree stumps below my waist.”

  I turned to face Leslie. “Are they going to do another surgery? Why are they holding her here?”

  Leslie looked confused. “They didn’t tell you? She popped a couple of screws in her knee out of place. She also shattered her elbow.” She whispered the last line out of the corner of her mouth, as if my mother wasn’t lying three feet away.

  My mom laughed again. “I’m crippled, Les, not deaf.”

  This got a hearty chuckle out of Daniel.

  I shot him a scathing look. “It’s not funny!”

  My mom squinted at Daniel, a lazy smile spreading across her plump cheeks. “Hey, handsome. What did you say your name was again?”

  “Daniel,” he replied. “Daniel Meyers.”

  Her eyebrow twitched slightly. “I don’t buy this customer thing, Kristin. Do you have a handsome boyfriend you’ve been hiding from me?” she slurred as she beckoned Daniel to her bedside. “Come here. Let me have a good look at you.”

  I was mortified. I wanted to protest, but I didn’t know what to say. I’d never been in this situation before, introducing a male friend to my mother. Could I even call Daniel a friend? We’d known each other a matter of hours. Yet, he’d already paid my rent and saved me from a sexual assault. And now he was standing at my mother’s bedside, when he could be at the cantina tossing back beers or whatever a person in finance did at nine o’clock at night.

  Daniel grinned as he approached the other side of the bed. “Actually, ma’am, I’m not her boyfriend”—he looked up at me and winked—“yet.”

  My mom let out a hoarse cackle. “I like this kid. He’s a keeper.”

  My cheeks flushed with heat as I gripped the bedrail firmly. “Don’t you have a game of real-life monopoly to play or something?” I asked him.

  An unreadable expression passed over his chiseled features, then he blinked a few times and the cocky confidence returned. “Actually, I am thinking of putting some hotels on Park Place.”

  Something about his response made me think he was hiding something. “Yeah, whatever,” I said, shaking off my confusion as I turned back to Leslie. “So what are we waiting on?”

  Leslie tried to go into detail about my mother’s injuries, but she found herself fumbling for medical terms she could hardly remember, much less pronounce. In the end, she shrugged and complained that she and my mother had been waiting almost an hour for an orthopedic surgeon to arrive for a surgical consult. As my mother’s eyelids fell shut under the heaviness of the pain meds, Leslie urged me to take the opportunity to go home and get my mom at least one change of clothing and some toiletries.

  I didn’t want to involve Daniel any more, but when I looked up at him the hopeful look in his eyes made me smile. Either he assumed acting as my chauffeur was going to get him laid or he had a major hero complex. I couldn’t decide which option was more likely.

  I sighed. “Can you give me a ride to my apartment?”

  He tilted his gorgeous head to one side and smiled. “I’d love to.”

  Surreal Daydream

  “Take a right here,” I said as we approached Hughes. “There might be some parking in the lot right there on the left.”

  As he pulled in, I wasn’t surprised to find the small lot next to my building was completely full. I silently thanked the universe for this small karmic victory. Daniel would have to drop me off. While he was busy looking for a parking space, I could try to make the apartment look more presentable to someone who was surely accustomed to something a bit more luxurious.

  “Just drop me off here,” I said, reaching for the passenger door handle. “It’s apartment 502. The buzzer at the entrance is broken, so you can just walk right up.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “So, anyone can just walk into the building whenever they want? There’s no security?”

  I rolled my eyes. “In case you hadn’t noticed, this is not Fifth Avenue. Not a whole lot of valuables for criminals to pine after.”

  “Except you,” he replied, without a hint of irony.

  I opened my mouth to contradict him, but I couldn’t think of a single retort. “Um…I’ll see you upstairs,” I said, grabbing my purse in a hurry as I hopped out of the SUV and power-walked to the front entrance of my building.

  My heart raced as I yanked the door with the chipped burgundy paint open and rushed inside. The light in the entryway flickered a bit as the door closed behind me. I glanced at the brass mailboxes on the wall and decided against checking my mail. I needed to get upstairs and tidy the apartment before Daniel made it up there.

  My stomach churned with anxiety and hunger. I’d gone too long without food, or this amount of care and attention. I’d be ly
ing if I said I didn’t care about making a good impression on Daniel. He was gorgeous and wealthy and, apparently, had a strong desire to help people. Actually, I didn’t know if that last quality was true. I knew he wanted to help me, but for all I knew, he was a greedy bastard who beat up homeless people in his spare time.

  As soon as I entered the apartment, I quickly made up my mom’s hospital bed in the living room. I picked up the empty coffee mug and almost completely full glass of water off the side table, and carried the cups to the kitchen. I washed them as fast I could, along with the bowl my mother had apparently used to eat some of her favorite Cheerios. Then, I stashed away the box of cereal she’d left on the counter, because she couldn’t stand on her tiptoes anymore to put the box away.

  Grabbing a clean rag and a spray bottle of cleaner, I quickly dusted the tops of the tables and TV stand in the living room, which doubled as my mother’s bedroom. Exactly twenty-two minutes had passed, and I was just putting away the bottle of cleaner under the kitchen sink when I heard a loud creaking noise behind me.

  I thought of what I’d just said to Daniel about criminals wanting nothing from our rundown apartment, and how he’d looked so concerned with our lack of security. But I knew it wouldn’t be a criminal walking through my front door this evening. When I turned around, I would find a dangerously handsome man in a suit entering my living room. What would he think of the place I called home?

  I spun around in time to see Daniel closing the door behind him. “You found me,” I said, running my fingernails softly over my left arm, a comforting mechanism I often resorted to when I was especially anxious.

  The door clicked shut and he turned to face me, his expression unreadable. “I’m beginning to doubt that.”

  “What?” I replied with a nervous chuckle.