Linc left the room, following his blazing path.
Hurrying through the hallway, dodging nurses left and right, Linc didn’t have to look back to know that Veda Vandyke was behind him. Not just because the squeak of her sneakers made it plain, but because, over the months, he’d learned she was nothing if not persistent. Even worse, she was nosey as hell.
He didn’t have the presence of mind to turn around and tell her to mind her own damn business.
He needed to find out what the hell that kid had been talking about.
6
The bustling noise from the hospital snuck under the closed door of Gage Blackwater’s top floor office. He leaned on his desk with his hands tangled in his hair. The frown he shot at the PowerPoint document on his computer screen grew stronger by the second, until a guttural groan joined in, causing his eyes to fly shut.
It had been months since the hospital’s chief of staff had been unceremoniously fired for drug embezzlement, and picking up his slack was beginning to drive Gage to the brink of madness. Gone were the days when Gage only dropped by the hospital every few months, just to make sure the place hadn’t burned to the ground, and the chief’s old top floor office had quickly become his second home.
Another groan popped from Gage’s lips. The unsuccessful search for a replacement had been convenient back when he’d needed an excuse to spend all hours at the hospital, chasing Veda, but now that they shared a bed he was running shorter on patience by the day. He made a mental note to buckle down, promising himself to find a replacement before the month was out.
The desk phone rang before he could allow himself to stew any further in how much he hated budget spreadsheet in front of him, and he snatched it up, thrilled for the distraction.
“Yes, Maria?” Gage answered.
“Mr. Blackwater, your mother is here.”
“Tell her I’m out.”
“I would, but she’s kind of standing right here…” Maria lowered her voice to a whisper. “Staring at me.”
Gage covered his forehead with his hand. “And how did she get past security without my being alerted?”
“Well… I… it… um…”
Since he could only imagine the venomous smile his mother was giving her, Gage gave his receptionist a break. “It’s fine, Maria, send her in.”
He hung up before she could say any more, swallowing back the pained groan that seemed intent on leaving his throat every few seconds.
He closed his eyes and thought of Veda—her beautiful face and her shapely naked body, and his skin grew a little less tight, his heartbeat a little less out of control, his very being more centered.
He thanked God for the vision of her smile because as his mother opened the door of his office without knocking and sauntered in, heels clicking, he knew he’d need it.
Wearing a knee length, eggplant colored Calvin Klein dress that didn’t leave a single inch of her womanly figure to the imagination, Celeste Blackwater lingered in the doorway with a gold clutch tucked under her slim arm. She bent one knee, making her slender leg jut out of the side-slit in her dress and the stiletto heel of her gold sandal leave the floor. When she tilted her head to the side, throwing her knowing green eyes across the room, it made her waist-length, jet-black hair fall forward to shade them.
“The lengths you’ll go to torture me,” she said.
“What do you want, Mother? I’ve got a lot on my plate this morning.” Gage rolled his shoulders, clenching his fists on top of the desk.
“What do I want? Well…” She went to start. The sudden jump of her arched eyebrows indicated she was about to be on a roll.
“And, allow me to preface, if what you’re about to say has anything to do with you asking me to leave my girlfriend, then you can save your breath.”
Celeste clapped her mouth shut.
“Jesus, Mother. I’ve told you time and time again that Veda and I are in love. I’m not leaving her. If that’s the reason you’re here, with all due respect, I think it’s better that you leave.”
“I haven’t seen you in weeks,” Celeste accused.
“Can’t imagine why.”
“None of your other girlfriends would’ve dreamed of keeping you from me this way.”
“Because all the others were vetted and approved by you and Dad first. But I won’t let that be my life anymore. I’m not some puppet waiting around for you two to get bored and start tugging at my strings to amuse yourselves. I’m a grown man. I’m a human being.”
“Of course you are, Darling. I’m simply…” With a dramatic sigh, Celeste crossed his office and took the chair across from his desk. “I’m so terribly worried. It’s as if you’ve had an exorcism overnight. One moment you’ve committed your life to the family business, and the next you’re in bed with some African-American nurse you know nothing about.”
“She’s a doctor, and you know it. Enough.”
“Darling, are you absolutely certain—”
“Yes.”
“You’ve only known this woman for a short time—”
“I love her.”
As if she couldn’t hear a word he was saying, Celeste leaned forward with a conspiratorial grin. “We’ve gotten word that it’s not too late to fix what you’ve broken with Scarlett.”
“I don’t want to fix what I’ve broken with Scarlett, Mother. How many different ways can I say that it’s over, and I don’t care what you all think about it? How many ways can I say that I’m in love? I don’t understand why you can’t just be happy for me.”
Celeste’s spine, as always, was so straight in her seat that it was damn near bending backward, and even though Gage couldn’t see her feet, he knew her toes were pointed from where they were crossed on the other side of the desk.
“Your father is deeply, deeply, hurt and upset by what you’ve done,” Celeste breathed, her teeth clenching softly. “Darling, I beg of you—”
“No, I beg of you, Mother.” Gage leaned forward. “I beg of you to hear what I’m saying… and give Veda a real chance. She’s terrified of meeting all of you because she knows you’re bound to hate her on sight. Please open your mind and allow me to go back to her with news that my family is happy for us. Not just accepting of our love, but eager to meet her as well.”
The smile vanished from Celeste’s face. She seemed in the midst of thinking up the best words with which to tell him he’d lost his damn mind, but in the next instant, she’d painted a new smile back on. It didn’t quite reach her green eyes.
“Well, I’d love nothing more than to meet this… Veda.”
Gage faltered. “I can’t help but be concerned by how quickly you just agreed to that.”
“Well, do you want me to meet her, Darling, or don’t you?”
“I want you to meet her. I want you to like her. I want her to like you. I want her to see the good in all of you. Because right now she’s afraid. For God’s sake, just last night, she told me she was worried you planned to have her assassinated.”
Celeste’s smile widened. “How absurd.”
“That grin on your face says otherwise.”
“Can’t I do anything right?”
Gage relented, falling back in his seat.
A hint of crimson snuck up to her pale cheeks. “The family hasn’t seen you in a month. Not since you ended your engagement to play house with this… this Veda.”
“Can we please try harder to use a more amiable tone while discussing my girlfriend?”
Celeste gazed out of the window on the other side of the office. A silence fell before she looked at Gage from the corner of her eyes. “Next weekend it is, then.”
Gage tilted his head at her, feeling the emotion in his eyes. “Mother, do you mean it?”
“What’s her favorite food? I’ll bring in a professional chef and pull out all the stops. All the trimmings. I’ll even invite your grandfather.”
Still feeling deeply suspicious at how easy this was, Gage cut his own eyes at her.
Celeste pushed her hair back with one finger, lifting her nose. “While we’re certainly shaken by all of the egregious choices you’ve been making as of late, your father and I never want to go an entire month without seeing you. And if seeing you means meeting this… this Veda—”
“She’s not a this, Mother. She’s Veda. Just Veda.”
“Veda…” Celeste’s smile wavered as she seemed to contemplate something. “What a beautiful girl.”
“Yes, she is.”
“She doesn’t smile often, does she?”
“She’s an authentic person. She smiles only when she means it, and I doubt you’ve gone out of your way to give her any reason to.”
Celeste shook her head back, pointing her nose even higher in the sky. “I must say, she was absolutely alight when I passed her on my way inside. She was speaking to Lincoln Hill. I suppose he just brings it out of her?”
And, just like that, Gage’s heart fell.
It was as if Celeste had climbed inside his body and could see it happening. “It certainly does seem those two get along just… swimmingly, don’t they?”
Gage slammed his hands down on the desk and stood. “I’m sure you were imagining things.”
“I’m most certain I was not.”
“I think it’s time for you to go, Mother.” He circled the desk and took her arm gently, understanding that she was purposely provoking him. He wouldn’t get a lick of work done as long as he was allowing her to get in his head this way. “I’ll walk you out.”
Even as he took her arm in a gentle hold and lifted her from her seat, Celeste yelped as if he’d just yanked it clear out of its socket, raising her chin with a huff as he pulled her toward the door.
Once outside, he released her, and they walked down the hallway side-by-side. They took the elevator to the first floor in silence, and it wasn’t until Gage was leading his mother out the front doors of the hospital, with a hand on the small of her back, that he caught sight of Veda and Linc, sure enough, talking in the hospital courtyard.
His eyes managed to widen even as his brows furrowed. His chest hitched even as his chin lowered. At the distinct sensation of his body caving in on itself, he covered his stomach with a trembling hand, feeling every inch of color draining from his face.
The air stolen from Gage’s lungs seemed to relocate to Celeste’s as she took a deep breath and kissed his cheek. The ends of her hair tickled his hands as the air blowing into the open doors blew it towards him.
“I do so hate being right when it hurts you this deeply, my darling.” She brushed the back of her fingers along his jaw. “And if the family has to have dinner with this woman, who is so clearly enamored with another man, to prove to you she will never fit into our world, then so be it. Have her at the manor next Sunday.”
Gage couldn’t even look at his mother as she spoke. The sight of Veda and Linc smiling at each other, mixed with his mother’s words, had him feeling sicker to his stomach than he could ever remember feeling. He was unable to speak past the dread hardening his abs.
As if Celeste could see it, she placed a gentle hand over his stomach. Gage barely felt the second gentle kiss she placed on his cheek, even though he swore he could feel the smile curling her lips.
Only when she sauntered away, causing Gage’s hand to fall from the small of her back, was he snapped back to reality.
He watched his mother go, still standing in the doorway, and waited for her to climb into her Mercedes before he looked back to Veda and Linc.
Crossing his arms, he watched them, wondering how long it would take for either of them to realize a world existed outside of the conversation they were entrenched in. He knew Veda hated being told what to do, how protective she was over her freedom, so the last thing he could do was charge over to her, take her arm and drag her away from Linc, even though every bone in his body told him to do just that. He thanked God for the voice in the back of his head reminding him that the more he tried to control her, the more she’d slip away. And he already felt like he was hanging on by a thread.
So he waited.
He waited for his girlfriend to prove his mother wrong.
7
After following Lincoln Hill and the kid who’d blazed a path out of Eugene’s hospital room, Veda hadn’t been able to stop herself from latching onto the spine-chilling word that had come out of that kid’s mouth.
“You told them I was a predator?”
She’d been unable to get her heart around the sound of that word. It had invaded her brain like a virus, and Veda couldn’t help but wonder if he was right.
Was he right?
Was she a predator?
She’d decided that was too weighted a question to address while she was chasing after two men who walked as fast as she ran. She’d never realized how big Lincoln Hill was until she’d found herself chasing behind him. His broad body had blocked the entire hallway, making it impossible to see the people in front of him until they’d milled around, parting for him like the Red Sea.
Linc hadn’t even turned his head to accept the inviting gazes and smiles of the female personnel who’d made elevator eyes at him, nor had he attempt to turn his body to the side to avoid a run in. No, he’d just allowed everyone to duck, dodge, and leap out of his way, lest they be run down by his six’ five”, 200-pound mountain-man body.
Thanks to the path he’d cleared, Veda had been able to keep up easily. The kid had beaten them to the elevator, and she hadn’t hesitated to follow Linc when he’d taken the stairs, two at a time, down to the first floor where he’d taken up a run, racing through the sliding doors and into the hospital courtyard.
She slowed to a stop behind Linc just as a black Toyota Corolla with dents littering the frame and rims missing from every tire tore out of the lot and down the street.
“He’s gone,” Veda breathed, her eyes following the car as it blazed out of sight.
Linc shot a look over his shoulder as if stunned by the sound of her voice, and immediately looked away with a groan upon seeing her face. “Jesus…”
Her eyes ran his body. His dark washed jeans, his large, muscled arms jutting out of a white t-shirt that danced with the morning breeze. She traced the dark brown goatee around his plump lips—which curled down more with every second her eyes drank him in. She noticed his nostrils, slightly upturned, were even more flared than usual, making her plant her feet like a gazelle who’d just caught sight of a lion across the tundra, her knees trembling as she was unable to fight the feeling of being slightly off balance. Slightly vulnerable.
She breathed in when her brown eyes finally made it up to his green. Wisps of his long brown hair escaped from the messy bun tied low on his neck, shadowing his eyes, making them look deeper and darker than they already did by nature.
“You really followed me all the way down here?” he asked. “What the hell do they pay you nurses for, huh?”
Veda sucked in a breath as the deep bass in his voice reached across the courtyard and took over her body. She crossed her arms tight, remembering the first time she’d heard that voice, ten years ago. The ten savages who’d crushed her soul had left her in the ocean to die, but Linc had fished her out in the nick of time, given her mouth to mouth on the black sands of the beach and saved her life.
She thought of the first breath she’d taken back then. The feel of his strong hand rubbing her back as she expelled what had felt like an entire ocean of water from her neglected lungs. The glimmer of the bronze chip he’d given her to calm her down.
She clutched her hand around that chip, which never left her pocket, hardly able to speak as the memories assaulted her.
“How dare you?” she managed to whisper, fighting a smile. “I’m a medical doctor, thank you very much, and I did not go half a million dollars into debt to be mistaken for a nurse.”
He lifted his left eyebrow, which had a deep scar down the middle where the hair would never grow back.
Veda both hated and loved tha
t her eighteen-year-old self had put that scar there. Hated it, because she felt bad about marring him in a moment of fear, and loved it because it meant he’d always have a piece of her. Just like she’d always have a piece of him.
Even if he didn’t know it.
Even if he never would.
She tightened her grip on the bronze chip—the sober chip that had once belonged to his mother—while nodding towards the path the Toyota had made. “We have to go after that kid, right? Find out what he knows about Kong.”
“Kong?”
“Eugene. Kong was his nickname in high school for obvious roid-head reasons.”
“I’m serious. What do they pay you for?” Linc’s eyes always smiled long before his lips—which almost never did—and the evidence of his amusement made his green orbs squint into slits. “Are you a medical doctor or a hand-me-down detective?”
“Are you a detective, at all?” she countered. “I swear to God, every time I see you, you’re letting another innocent victim slip through your fingers, never to be seen or heard from again.”
“My only victim is the man lying in that fifth-floor hospital bed.” He faced her, crossing his arms.
“You don’t believe that.” She couldn’t stop her eyes from falling to his biceps, noticing how they grew almost as big as her head when he crossed them. “You don’t even believe the words coming out of your own mouth. You know as well as I do what the rich people on this island are like. None of them are victims.” She realized she didn’t even know what she was saying as she watched his muscles flex. She hoped she was, at the very least, speaking English.
Her words seemed to resonate because he hesitated. “Look, I got the plates, alright?”
Veda lifted her eyes to his. “Huh?” she asked, stupidly, some part of her still wrapped up in his pulsating arms.
“I got his plate number.” His voice rose. “If that makes you feel any better about whether or not I’m doing my job correctly.”
Veda’s voice went soft. “I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job. I’m just saying… Kong, err, Eugene… he isn’t a good guy. None of the rich people on this island are good guys.”
Tingle (Revenge Book 2) Page 6