Nobody's Princess

by Sarah Hegger

  “Ryan,” Tiffany said. Show no fear. Where the hell was Lola getting her information?

  Lola’s eyes glittered as she made thousands of minute calculations. “Things must be getting serious?”

  “Yup.” Lola needed to go. Tiffany picked up Lola’s fur and held it out. “And the car is due here”—she checked her phone for the time—“now.”

  Lola chugged the remainder of the wine. “Does your father know about, you know?” Lola leaned forward. “Our missing friend?”

  “No.” Damn. Strategic error, because now Lola looked smug.

  “And we will keep it that way.” Lola winked at her. She jerked her shiny head at her son. “Get in here.”

  Dakota shambled a couple of steps forward.

  “Lola, I have to go out.” Tiffany shook the fur in encouragement.

  “I know, Precious.” That wink again that made Tiffany grind her teeth. “I know everything, and this is your show. I will not interfere.” She put the glass down on the counter with a loud click. “This works out nicely for everyone. Sí?”

  Tiffany concealed her wince as the other woman slid obediently into her coat. “I’ll call you in the morning.”

  “You can’t.” Lola replaced her sunglasses. “I’m going away in the morning.”

  Something about the way she said away made Tiffany itch to ask.

  The intercom from the lobby chimed. Her car waited downstairs.

  “Okay.” Tiffany grabbed her purse. “Then you call me when you get back. Nice to see you, Dakota. Take care.”

  A disquieting glitter played across Lola’s face. She clicked her fingers at her son. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stepped into the kitchen.

  “Don’t fuck up.” Lola opened the front door and sailed toward the elevator. Her heels clacked against the marble corridor outside Tiffany’s condo.

  Tiffany’s mouth dropped open. Wow! As far as parental advice went, just, wow.

  Dakota blinked.

  The elevator pinged from the hallway. Lola was walking away. And Dakota wasn’t going with her. He stood in her entrance hall like the walking dead with a middle-distance stare fixed on the view.

  It was difficult to run in five-inch sandals, but Tiffany managed to catch up with Lola as the other woman stepped into the elevator. “Where are you going?”

  “Away.” Lola pursed her lips as she jabbed at the buttons on the elevator panel. “I told you that.”

  “Yes, but what about Dakota?”

  The teen stood exactly where she’d left him. He kind of curved over like a bold-print exclamation mark. “Come on.” Tiffany waved her hands at him. “Your mother is leaving.”

  The elevator doors slid shut. The soft whir of mechanics carried Lola away.

  “No.” Tiffany hit the down button. “No, no, no.” This wasn’t happening to her. This. Was. Not. Happening. The illuminated numbers above the door crawled up to her penthouse and she leaped inside. “Hurry.” She begged the descending floor numbers to go faster.

  The elevator opened onto the lobby and Tiffany skidded across the slick marble floor to the entrance, her vision locked on the flash of scarlet on the sidewalk. Lola was not leaving Dakota with her.

  “Miss Desjardins?” The doorman jumped into step behind her. “Is everything all right?”

  “No!” Tiffany hit the street outside in time to see Lola leap into a cab and slam the door.

  “Drive.” Lola smacked the driver’s seat with her fist.

  The cab moved away from the curb.

  “You are not leaving him here.” Tiffany banged on the roof to stop the cab.

  Lola closed the window, leaving only enough of a gap for Tiffany to hear. She pressed her finger to her lips and winked. “You be good to me, Precious, and I’ll be good to you.”

  Blackmail? Seriously? Tiffany ran as the cab crawled forward. “Stop.”

  “Miss Desjardins?” The doorman hopped off the curb and back on again. His face creased in a frown. “Did you need a cab?”

  Lola made frantic go motions at the driver. Her jewelry flashed in the dim cab interior.

  “You can’t leave him here.” Tiffany tottered after the accelerating cab. Her heel caught on a manhole cover and she almost went ass over teakettle. “Don’t you dare leave him here with me. Where the hell are you going?”

  The cab pulled into the traffic. A horn blared and Tiffany leaped back out of the path of a Jeep full of cruising kids. “Get out of the fucking road, lady.”

  No goddamn way was this happening to her. The town car driver stood beside his car, not even pretending not to enjoy the show. She streaked past the frozen doorman to her building and leaped into the elevator. “You are so not doing this to me.” She glued her glare to the climbing numbers above the door. Her fingers tapped against her thigh, willing it to go faster.

  Dakota stood exactly where she’d left him as she scrabbled through her purse for her phone. He hadn’t even flinched. She jabbed her fingers at the keypad.

  “Hello?” A male voice answered. Thomas Hunter.

  “Shit! Fuck!” Tiffany hung up quickly. She’d hit the wrong buttons. She took a deep breath and dialed Lola’s number.

  “This is Lola. I will be away until the eighteenth. You know what to do, darling.”

  “Lola,” Tiffany bellowed at the voice mail. “Answer your phone. You’re not leaving your son here with me.”

  She hung up and dialed again.

  “This is Lola. I will be away until the eighteenth. You know what to do, darling.”

  “She won’t pick up.” Dakota spoke from behind her.

  “What?” Holy shit. When had his voice gotten so deep? Tiffany blinked at him stupidly.

  He shrugged, done with talking for now.

  “Do you know where she’s gone?”

  Nothing. Tiffany charged over to him. With a start, she realized they were now eyeball to eyeball. Dakota wasn’t a little boy anymore. “Could you answer my question?”

  The contempt in his expression almost made her flinch. “She’s gone on a snip and safari.”

  Tiffany shook her head to clear her hearing. “A what?”

  “A snip and safari.” Dakota drew out each word painstakingly as if she were brain dead.

  Tiffany dragged in a deep breath. Hysteria bubbled up her throat. Her voice rose like a banshee. “What the hell is that?”

  “You go to South Africa, get a face-lift, and go to a private game reserve to recover.”

  Tiffany blinked at Dakota. That was even a thing? She shook her head. Not the most pressing question right now.

  “Miss?” The town car driver stood in the open doorway of her condo. “Am I still driving you to dinner?”

  Dakota looked at her. The driver looked at her. Tiffany wanted to scream and melt into a puddle all over her shining hardwood floors. Ryan. Ryan was waiting for her. Ready to start the night that would launch her new life, while her past life was stuck in her condo. Fuck, how had things gotten so out of control? Her book sat on the kitchen counter and she looked at it. There wasn’t time.

  “Go.” Dakota jerked his head toward the driver. “Because she sure as shit isn’t coming back.”

  “Miss?”

  “Just a minute.” Tiffany glared at the driver. “Could you wait in the car?”

  He sighed and strolled back to the elevator.

  “Don’t you have a friend you can stay with?” It was the best she could manage. She wanted to yell at the teen that he couldn’t stay here, but it didn’t seem fair. His mother had just dumped him, and none of this was his fault.

  Dakota shook his head.

  Tiffany fumed at his back as he slunk over to the deck. What the hell was she going to do now? She dialed Lola again. And got voice mail. With a growing sense of futility, she left another message. “I have a date,” she said to Dakota’s back. “I can’t miss it.”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. She could call Ryan and cancel, but he’d want to know why. Panic whipped the wine in h
er stomach into acid. This was Luke’s brother. Luke, who she was still married to. Luke, who Ryan thought was a part of her past. Dakota had bits of metal stuck to the back of his T-shirt. What if Ryan found out about Luke? Breathe. God, she was going to throw up. Breathe in and breathe out.

  Simple. Ryan couldn’t find out. She would have to get rid of Dakota somehow. There had to be someone else who could take him. He could stay here for the night. Then in the morning, she would find the solution. “I have to go out.”

  Dakota examined the furnishings of the deck, his hands jammed in his pockets.

  “I have a date.” It sounded so lame. “A very important date that I can’t miss. We can sort this out when I get back.”

  “So, go.” Dakota sniffed and threw himself onto her daybed. The legs screeched across her beautiful hardwood floors.

  She grabbed her purse, strode for the door, stopped, and came back. It didn’t seem right to leave him here. She briefly imagined taking him to dinner with her. Oh, God, that would go down so well. He was too old for a babysitter. Tiffany clutched her purse to her middle. “Will you be okay, on your own?”

  Horrible things happened to teens when they were left on their own. Her mind cycled. Odds. What were the odds of something happening to Dakota? She factored in his age, the area, crime statistics. She stopped. There were too many variables to be reliable.

  “Go.” He put his head back and shut his eyes. “You have an important date, remember?”

  “It is important.” God, she wished she knew her neighbors, she could ask one of them to watch him. Watch him? He was seventeen, not seven. She reached for her book.

  “Miss?” The driver stood with his arms folded by the elevator. “I don’t wish to concern you, but we’re running late and I was given explicit instructions.”

  “I know.” Ryan always gave explicit instructions. She pulled her hand back from the book and a touch of sanity. “Give me your cell number,” she said to Dakota.

  He must have one. All teens had one. If she had his cell number she could sneak off to the bathroom during dinner and check on him. Her proposal dinner! Damn, when she got her hands on Lola …

  “Why?”

  “So I can check you’re all right.”

  “Fuck.” He cut his hostile gaze in her direction. “I’m not in fucking day care.”

  She swallowed, hard. All the black definitely worked to make him more intimidating. But he was seventeen. She was the adult in charge. In charge? She almost started laughing hysterically. “Cell number.”

  Dakota snorted and fired off his number as rapidly as his mouth could move.

  Tiffany opened her contacts and entered them, number for number. She hit Dial. Dakota’s pocket rang and she ended the call. Okay, what next? “Have you eaten?”

  Up and down went his shoulders.

  “Well, there’s food in the fridge.” Tiffany waved in the direction of her hulking Sub-Zero. “There’s some salad, some yogurt, fruit.” It didn’t sound all that appealing when she said it out loud. “Eat what you like.” She clutched her purse tighter. He wouldn’t want any of that. “Or you could order pizza?” She found her wallet, grabbed a handful of twenties, and held the money out to Dakota. “Here.”

  He kept his eyes shut.

  Tiffany contemplated marching over there and stuffing the money into the pocket of his baggy pants. She slapped the notes on the counter instead. “Order yourself a pizza if you get hungry.”

  He yawned in a wide flash of teeth.

  “I won’t be late.” Not anymore, anyway. Shit, Ryan might want to come up after dinner. One problem at a time, Tiffany. First dinner and then … whatever. “Okay, I’m going now.”

  Nothing.

  Chapter Four

  Thomas shook his head. He’d become an honest-to-God stalker. Sitting in his car outside Tiffany Desjardins’s swanky condo building—address courtesy of Luke’s stepmother—enjoying the soap opera going on for the last ten minutes. Glamorous women running out of expensive condo buildings in heels and yelling at each other wasn’t a thing you got to see every day. Something big was going on, and his gut was telling him it had to do with Luke.

  His gaze tracked Tiffany’s tight ass as it sashayed back into the building. Damn, she was fine. He’d expected as much from what Luke had told him, but the reality exceeded even that. He’d almost swallowed his tongue that morning when she’d started stripping him in the studio. Under different circumstances he would have been up for it. But he was knee-deep in a pile of shit, and Tiffany was the branch to pull him out.

  Screw Luke, anyway. He should have left the son of a bitch to sweat out his malaria on his own. Probably would have if he hadn’t recognized Luke as a hometown acquaintance when he’d stumbled on him in the middle of Zambia. He’d done what any right-minded person would have done and helped him. He liked the guy—Luke was funny as all hell and, it turned out, they knew a few of the same people from college days. Bosbefok! That’s what the South Africans on his exploration team called it—fucked in the head by the African bush.

  The doors swung open and Tiffany strutted out wearing a scrap of blue material that made his eyes pop out of his head. Those shoes were the stuff of wet dreams. She couldn’t be wearing a whole hell of a lot under that dress. She slithered into the black town car, her face locked in a don’t even think about it scowl. Tough shit. She had to talk to him and tell him where her bastard of a husband was hiding. He’d turned over every other rock he could find, and the son of a bitch was still MIA.

  The town car holding his last shot at finding Luke drove away. Maybe he should follow? Nah. Dressed like that, she was off on a date. And she wouldn’t want him butting into her date any more than she liked him showing up at her work. Thomas laughed softly to himself. Date? That girl should not be dating, not with the mess she had on her plate. He couldn’t believe she and Luke were still legally married. The Luke he’d met had spoken about Tiffany as if she were a nasty piece of his past, best left way, way behind.

  A hot mess—his brother Josh’s specialty. Not him, though. He didn’t like hassle in any area of his life, which brought him right back to sitting there like a stalker waiting for her to get back so he could talk to her. The clock in his head went right on ticking. He eased his neck, but the tension crept back up his muscles.

  He liked his life ordered. Compartmentalized. Neatly stacked into bundles that he could deal with one at a time. Girls like Tiffany were a whole lot of scattered mayhem. If one of his bundles wasn’t threatening to topple over and crush everything, he wouldn’t even be here. He made a creaking, falling sound effect in his head and realized he’d made it out loud. You could take the boy out of Star Wars …

  Except this wasn’t about taking over the world or defeating the Death Star. This wasn’t even about gold or diamonds. It was all about rare earth, seventeen little chemical elements that were so hard to find and wanted by just about everybody. Only a geologist could get excited about rare earth, or maybe a geek like him.

  Still, he’d found a rich deposit and Luke, the miserable son of a bitch, had the proof. They needed those results, or one of the big mining and mineral boys would be in there making a deal with the Zambian government before a small player could catch a whiff. The small player, in this case, being him and his partners.

  Thomas rammed the heel of his hand against the steering wheel in frustration. Dammit, what had Luke been thinking? Actually, he had a fair guess what Luke had been thinking. Luke, the self-proclaimed eco-warrior, was determined not to let anyone mine that little portion of Africa. Too late, Thomas wanted to yell at him. The deal would be made. Nobody was going to walk away from a deposit like that, and no African government was going to turn its back on that kind of revenue. Except Luke wasn’t there to be yelled at. He’d disappeared as effectively as smoke.

  Thomas had tracked him back to Chicago, and his stepmother. She’d handed over Tiffany on a platter. One of these women had to know where Luke was. Luke loved his kid bro
ther, he must have let his family know how to reach him. And Thomas was gonna stay right on their heels until they handed him over. He needed those results and he needed them now. His fledgling company stood poised and ready to make this happen. They also stood poised on the edge of going under if it didn’t.

  A car pulled up with a pizza delivery logo along the side.

  His stomach growled in envy. How much money would it take to get the delivery guy to sell him the pizza instead? He leaned forward and peered up at the glass-and-metal tower of the condo building. He didn’t have that kind of money.

  Why had he thought he was so clever in keeping those results as secret as he could? Why hadn’t he made another copy? Because another copy would only increase the risk of those results finding their way into other hands. Christ, he should have made a copy. Basic stuff, computing 101.

  The pizza delivery guy got out and strolled through the double glass doors. Not even the super rich turned their noses up at pizza.

  Thomas checked his watch. Tiffany wouldn’t be back any time soon. She showed up looking like that on a date with him, he wouldn’t let her go home in a hurry. Point being, he had time to get himself something to eat. His stomach growled its agreement. He hadn’t eaten since lunch. He’d picked up one of those bagels from the table at the studio. The low-fat cream cheese had done next to nothing to meet his craving for protein. He started his truck. He’d spotted a small Mexican place down the road.

  The doors opened and Luke’s kid brother came out. The kid had the pizza with him.

  Thomas locked on the pizza box. Surely the kid couldn’t have scarfed the entire thing already? Digestive power like that would be nothing short of legendary. Something about the kid’s manner made him wait.

  The kid stopped and grabbed a slice out of the box. He folded it in half and took a bite. Saliva flooded the inside of Thomas’s mouth.

  The kid had a backpack over one shoulder as he headed off down Oak Avenue, threading his way through the late shoppers. He lifted the set of Beats from around his neck and put them to his ears. Those must have set Hot Mommy back a few hundred. But then, according to Luke, Mommy could afford it just fine.