Unbelonging

by Sabrina Stark

  Unbelonging

  A New Adult Romance Novel

  Want to hear about special offers and new releases?

  Sign up for my confidential mailing list: eepurl.com/Lf8Ij

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  Some girls might fantasize about being handcuffed in Lawton Rastor's basement.

  I wasn't one of those girls.

  Sure, I thought about it a time or two. Sometimes with handcuffs, sometimes without. In my fantasies, we weren't in some cold, damp basement. Usually, we were on some yacht in the Pacific. With wine. Or maybe dirty martinis.

  I've never actually had a martini, and I don't know what makes one dirty. But I do know you need a special kind of drink when globetrotting with a badass billionaire from the wrong side of town.

  "You need some water?" he asked.

  I stared at him. "Water? Seriously?"

  He shrugged. He was leaning against the opposite wall, arms crossed, eyes flat. He wore faded jeans and a black T-shirt. Tattoos snaked up and down his forearms. He looked harder than the concrete behind him and just as cold.

  "It's water or nothing," he said.

  Fucker. He probably didn't even own a yacht.

  Lawton made his money through prizefighting. Not the kind with padded gloves and some bowtie-wearing referee. He made it through the gritty, back alley kind where sweaty money changed hands over beer and bimbos.

  The billionaire part came after an Internet video led to a reality series which led to all kinds of merchandising and event opportunities. In five years, he'd gone from being a fucked-up nobody to a financial force to be reckoned with.

  And he was only twenty-six.

  That's three years older than me. Except looking at him, I felt like a babe in the woods – a very pissed off babe in the woods.

  "You're an asshole, you know that?"

  If the insult bothered him, he didn't show it. "I let you keep your panties, didn't I?"

  It's true. Compared to what I'd been wearing earlier, I was minus a whole bunch of clothes, but my undergarments weren't among them. Obscenely, stupidly, I was glad they were black and silky with lace trim. If there's one universal truth in this world, it's that no one wants to die in grubby underwear.

  Lawton wasn't the one who attacked me, but he sure did a number on me afterwards, and not in the way you'd think. He hadn't beaten me, raped me, or taken a single obscene picture. At least not yet.

  Mostly, he just stood there with his arms crossed, watching, like he was waiting for me to sprout horns and fangs. It was like Chinese water torture, without the water.

  It still shocked me how quickly he'd gone from being my knight in shining armor to my basement jailer. It's better than what I deserve, he says.

  I'd heard that sort of thing before. Sure, not from him. But did it matter? If I believed half the stuff people told me, I might as well believe in Santa Claus. And I hadn't believed in him for a long, long time. Even when I was little, it's not like he spent a lot of time at my house.

  My wrists ached from the handcuffs, and my lips were so dry I swear I could hear them crack. Screaming all those obscenities probably hadn't helped. How long had I yelled at him? Minutes? Hours? Was it still dark outside? Probably.

  In truth, water would be heavenly, but I wouldn't give the bastard the satisfaction of asking for it, even if he did offer. I looked around the massive basement. I saw windows, or what I guessed were windows, high up near the ceiling. But they were all covered in black plywood.

  I guess that's pretty standard if you're planning to lock someone up in your basement.

  Except it didn't look like any of this was planned. Other than the actual handcuffs, I saw nothing that would have alarmed me if I weren't in my particular predicament.

  The basement was gray and spotless with a painted floor that matched the painted concrete walls. I saw a few cardboard boxes, a weight bench, and some skis leaning against a far wall. If the basement weren't so massive, I'd have no idea it sat beneath a multi-million dollar mansion in Rochester Hills, one of Detroit's most exclusive suburbs.

  Yeah, such a place exists, as hard as that may be to believe.

  I didn't want to talk to him, but there was something I had to know. "The guys who attacked me, where are they now?"

  "Trust me," he said, "It's better if you don’t know."

  "Trust you?" I rattled the handcuffs. "You're joking, right?"

  "Believe what you want." His eyes were the color of coal, the same as his hair. His heart was probably a couple shades darker. There was a time I'd thought differently. God, I'd been such an idiot.

  His calm demeanor grated on me. "How long are you going to stand there?" I asked.

  "As long as you're here," he said.

  My tone was brittle. "And how long will that be, exactly?"

  He glanced at his wrist. "Another half-hour should do it."

  "Do what?"

  "Again," he said, "better if you don't know."

  My stomach dropped. What was he saying? I forced down the panic. Stay calm, Chloe. Tone neutral, eyes up, jaw set. Never let them see your fear. It worked with your stepmom. It can work with this guy. I kept my tone neutral. "So you're saying you'll let me go in a half hour?"

  At this, he glanced away. "Probably."

  Shit.

  Chapter 2

  Full disclosure – this wasn't the first time Lawton saw me in my undergarments. But it was definitely going to be the last.

  Okay, make that probably.

  I can't help it. The guy is obviously insane. To do everything he's done, he'd have to be. But when I was around him, I guess I went a little crazy myself. Excluding my stepmom, who gives crazy a whole new meaning, it had been way too long since I'd had any crazy in my life.

  To understand, I guess I should go back to the beginning.

  I'd seen Lawton for the first time a few weeks earlier when I was walking the Parkers' Yorkie during my get-acquainted visit.

  The Parkers own a massive house just down the street from Lawton's estate. They have a little Yorkshire terrier named Chucky and a whole bunch of house plants that need custom attention. Seriously.

  The Parkers also like to travel, which is why I'm staying in a neighborhood that's literally thousands of times beyond my reach or comfort zone. But no one wants a pauper in their mansion, so I've learned to fake it a lot better than you'd think.

  I'm the house sitter, dog-walker, plant-waterer, and truth be told, broke college graduate. When I answered the Parkers' ad, I approached it the only way I thought they'd hire me. I acted like I didn't need the money.

  It helped that I had a ton of references, a spotless college transcript, and a fairly respectable wardrobe thanks to countless afternoons in thrift shops and consignment stores. Just about the only clothes I own firsthand are my undergarments, because even a poor girl from Hamtramck isn't going to wear panties that covered the hoo-ha of the richer, luckier girl before her.

  Plus, I like lacy things. What's a girl to do?

  The first time I saw Lawton Rastor, it was in the Parkers' neighborhood. Instantly, I knew he didn't belong there. He wasn't a surgeon, CEO, or remotely civilized.

  I was on the sidewalk, just around the corner from the Parkers' two-story Tudor when I spotted him, leaning against the gate of the biggest mansion in the neighborhood. Ever wary, I slowed my pace. Chucky didn't. He was straining at his leash, trying to catch a bug or a squirrel or something. Chucky's kind of a spaz, so it's hard to be sure.

  Tattooed and shirtless, the guy wor
e faded jeans and not much else. He was lounging, barefoot, against the thick iron fencing that surrounded the massive estate, a brick and stone monstrosity that covered at least three acres of prime Rochester Hills real estate.

  If I weren't so stubborn, I'd have crossed the street to avoid him. But I was stubborn. And I'd learned the hard way that showing fear is the quickest way to bring on more of whatever it is that's scaring you.

  So Chucky bounded forward, and I followed, like I wasn't all-too-aware of him. Like I'd miss some strange, shirtless guy hanging out where he shouldn't, and in weather that was already showing more than a hint of the upcoming winter's chill.

  I passed the guy within an arm's reach. As I did, he stood, motionless, letting me stride past without moving so much as a muscle. I wanted to look. Who wouldn't? Instead, I kept my eyes straight ahead, acting like he utterly invisible. I swear I heard him chuckle, but the sound was so low, I couldn't be sure. I made a note to tell Mrs. Parker about him the moment I returned.

  If there was one thing I learned from housesitting for the wealthy, it was that they didn't like seeing someone there who didn't belong. I know it's practical, and probably smart too, because it wasn't their own neighbors who would assault them in broad daylight.

  No, if their neighbors were prone to crime, it was the other kind, the kind that involved Ponzi schemes and multi-level marketing scams. Their crimes might be just as devastating, but a whole lot more civilized.

  When I'd gone a block past the guy, I resisted the urge to look back. But that soft chuckle, if I'd heard it at all, echoed through my brain in a way I found unsettling. It might've been fear. It might've been something else. Either way, I hadn't felt that unsettled in a long, long time.

  I kept on walking and never did look back.

  Chapter 3

  Mrs. Parker glanced in the general direction of where I'd seen the guy. Even though I'd only met the woman a few weeks earlier, I felt a lot more at ease with her than I normally did, especially during these get-acquainted visits.

  She was a couple decades older than me, but there was a freshness about her I almost envied.

  Her long brown hair was tied in a loose knot at the nape of her neck, and she was wearing dark jeans and a Detroit Redwings T-shirt. But even if she had been wearing some of the designer stuff that no doubt filled her closets, there was something about her demeanor that made me feel surprisingly at home.

  When had I ever felt that comfortable in my own skin? Then again, when had I ever had the chance? If she weren't so likeable, I might've hated her.

  We were sitting at the counter of her designer kitchen, where we had gone over the plant-watering schedule just an hour earlier, before I'd taken Chucky out for his get-acquainted walk.

  "He's a sneaky one," Mrs. Parker had warned me, ruffling the fur around Chucky's collar. "You've got to watch him every second, or he'll be out of your sight before you know it."

  "Don't worry," I assured her. "I'll be careful."

  "We're counting on it." Her tone grew earnest. "That's why we picked you for this job. Looking at your references, we had every confidence you'd take this seriously." She glanced down at Chucky. "If he ever got out on his own, or if something ever happened to him – " She shook her head. "We'd never get over it."

  "I'll watch him like a hawk," I told her. And I would. I liked dogs, and more to the point, I liked what they were paying for my services – and my discretion. It was a classic win-win. I agreed to keep it confidential that they were out of town, and they agreed to let me live there while I took care of things.

  As far as the plant-watering instructions, I'd never seen anything like it. She had a special measuring cup, custom-created plant food, and notations on the exact amount of water each plant needed.

  The whole thing was kind of odd. The dog, I got. The plants, I didn't. If Mrs. Parker didn't seem so easygoing in every other way, I'd have pegged her as a massive control freak. But the more I thought about it, the more I decided it was probably her husband, the surgeon, who was the control freak. She was probably just the messenger.

  A very comfortable messenger.

  I glanced around, taking in my rich surroundings. If her only job was to obsess over the houseplants, she didn't have it too bad.

  "Some like to drink in the morning, and some like to drink at night," she had told me when she first pulled out the list.

  Drinking in the morning, drinking at night. Yeah, it was like that in my Mom's house too. Except it was Jack Daniels, not filtered rainwater.

  But Mrs. Parker and I weren't talking about plants now. Returning from the walk with Chucky, I'd just finished telling her about the guy with the tattoos.

  I'd given her a brief rundown, looking for some indication on whether I should call the police or simply ignore him until he found a different neighborhood to loiter in. How she responded would tell me a lot, not just about what I should do now, but how I should handle future encounters.

  I was going to be living in the Parkers' house for most of the winter. I knew from experience, it's better to let the homeowner dictate what to do in cases like this.

  If I called the police and the owners didn't want a scene, they wouldn't be hiring me the next time they went out of town. If I didn't call the police and something bad happened, I'd get the blame.

  If it were up to me, I'd do something. What, I don't know. But I definitely wouldn't just look away and hope for the best. If there was one thing I had learned the hard way, it was that problems don’t just go away on their own. They only get bigger.

  This guy was a problem. I knew that as sure as I knew that the Parkers' exotic houseplants were getting a lot more TLC than I'd ever gotten, even as a kid.

  Mrs. Parker bit her lower lip and thought about it.

  I waited, keeping my expression studiously neutral. This was her decision, not mine. I'm completely capable of handling my own decisions. But I needed this job, more than I was willing to admit, even to myself.

  If she told me to run through the neighborhood screaming that some tattooed stranger was on the loose, well, I guess I wouldn't exactly do it. But I'd still be kicking myself later if I ended up at my Dad's house, sleeping on the couch in his basement.

  The couch was orange, lumpy, and smelled vaguely of sour milk. It was the one piece of furniture in his entire place that wasn't new, designer, or some priceless antique, which is why it was the one place I was actually allowed to sleep.

  I hated that couch.

  I was contemplating just how much when Mrs. Parker finally smiled. With her index finger, she gave a single tap to the counter and said, "I think I know who that guy is."

  "You do?" Just how long had he been hanging around there anyway? "So you've seen him before?"

  "Not in person," she said, "but I think I know who you're talking about. You said you saw him in front of that big stone house? The one with the iron gate?"

  "That's the one," I said.

  She nodded, looking oddly pleased. "He lives there. Just moved in last week."

  "Really?" I said, trying to keep the shock out of my voice. "Is he like the owner's son or something?"

  She shook her head. "Guess again."

  I threw out my second-best guess. "The gardener?" Sure, I'd never seen a gardener who looked like that, but hey, you never know.

  This time, she laughed. "Hardly."

  I gave it some thought. Trophy husband? No, too many tattoos. Gigolo? He certainly had the body for it, but that was too ridiculous for words. Gigolos didn't loiter outside the front gate after giving someone a nooner. They'd take their money and run. Drug dealer? Possible, but somehow, I didn't think so. He looked tough, but not slimy.

  I didn't speak any of these guesses out loud. I couldn't – not if I wanted to keep up the sheltered rich-girl act.

  "Cable guy?" I finally said.

  Mrs. Parker gave me a strange look, like she was trying to decide if I was kidding or clueless.

  "Just kidding," I laughed. "Bu
t honestly, I'm out of guesses."

  "Hang on," Mrs. Parker said. She strode out of the room and came back a minute later. She was holding a magazine. She plopped it on the counter in front of me.

  And there he was, gracing the front of Celebrity Watch. I felt my jaw drop. The image was oddly familiar. He stood, leaning against some brick wall, shirtless and tattooed, his six-pack glistening with what I guessed was sweat. He had that same half smile, that same dark hair, those same dangerous eyes.

  My eyes drifted back to his abs. Absolute perfection. I swallowed, and then caught myself. Didn't the guy own a shirt?

  Pulling my gaze from the image, I glanced at Mrs. Parker.

  She was grinning. "So that's the guy, huh?"

  Boy was it ever.

  Chapter 4

  I'd been living in the Parkers' house for just over a week.

  I never did meet the husband, although I'd seen a bunch of framed photos here and there throughout the house. The Parkers in Paris. The Parkers skiing. The Parkers on some sailboat.

  In some of the photos, it was just the two of them, looking for all the world like second-honeymooners. In others, it was the Parkers with their son – a cute kid who'd apparently grown up and moved to Chicago.

  The husband was noticeably older than the wife, and it was pretty obvious it wasn't the guy's looks that had gotten him the house – or the wife for that matter. But they looked happy, at least from what I could tell.

  And now, they were in Costa Rica for the winter.

  And I was living in their house, along with Chucky, the plants, and my growing obsession with Lawton Rastor.

  While walking Chucky, I saw him almost every day, sometimes outside his fence, sometimes inside. Sometimes, the gate to his estate was open. Sometimes, it was shut. I continued to act like he was invisible. He continued to act like he owned the place, which, well, I guess he did.

  After that first time, he always wore a shirt, normally a simple T-shirt, sometimes gray, sometimes black. They were never tight, but didn't matter. Thanks to my Internet-fueled obsession, I knew exactly what was underneath them.