My jaw drops and my eyes go wide. “She did what?” I gasp.
He shakes his head, looking down. Finally, his eyes come up to meet mine. “Well, you know that isn’t true.”
“I don’t know. I mean, why didn’t you tell me this before?”
He throws his hands in the air. “Alyssa, you know damn well I didn’t do that. Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve shown you how much you mean to me. I would never have jeopardized us. Not on purpose anyway.”
“So her dad, he’s a psycho or what?”
“Well, I didn’t realize he was this bad,” he says as he sits down next to me. “He came to see my parents after his daughter told him that about me. He was upset. I thought he believed me and my parents when we told him there was no truth to it. You see, the date to the prom was completely chaperoned by them. My father was in the game room with us whenever she came over. There was not a single time we were ever left alone.”
I shake my head. “Eden, this is so much to take in. I wonder what this man is thinking.”
“He’s thinking about money, Alyssa,” he says as he wraps his hand around mine. “Because that’s what he wanted from us before. Of course, we refused to give him any as nothing wrong was done to her. Far from it. What she was doing was wrong.”
“How much money did he want?”
“He asked for a million dollars. How do you like that? He would’ve given his daughters virginity away for a million dollars.”
Mostly to myself, I mumble, “This is a crazy place. We should probably move away.”
Eden kisses the hand he holds, then says, “There are crazy people everywhere, Alyssa.”
A knock comes at the door. “Open up son. It’s Papa,” Lyle calls out to us.
Eden opens the door and Lyle reaches in, quickly pulling him into his arms, hugging him tightly. He lets him go, finally, then grabs me, hugging me too.
“You kids, okay?” he asks as he finally lets me go.
“Yes, sir,” Eden tells him.
I walk out, only to get snatched up by Eden’s mother. “Oh, my babies, I was so worried.”
Eden helps me get out of her grip, only to find he’s caught up by her. “Mom, it's okay,” he says, soothingly to her.
As we walk past our open bedroom door, we see the glass on the floor as the sunlight shines through the broken pane, reflecting the light on the numerous pieces.
My parents are in the living room. They both rush at us, taking turns hugging us.
“Gee, guys, really? So much fuss? We’re fine,” I tell them.
With a serious tone to his voice, my father tells us, “Sit down, please, both of you.”
I’m shaken by his demeanor. Eden and I sit down as the four of them stand in front of us. Mom comes to sit next to me as Eden’s mother comes to sit next to him.
“The man who was here is very dangerous,” my mother says as she pats me on the back. “He’s done some horrible things, it would seem. When Lyle called the police to let them know there was an intruder and that he got away, they responded immediately. They saw the surveillance footage from the security cameras and they recognized him as he’s being sought after for a prior crime.”
My father puts his hand on my mother’s shoulder and says, “His daughter, Karen, was found in an alley in downtown New Orleans last night. She was badly beaten. Luckily, she was found and taken to the hospital. There she told the doctors her father had been sexually abusing her for years. She tried to stop him from doing it again, but he beat her, then took her, dropping her off in a deserted alleyway. He thought she was dead. They sent police to his house only to find it was burned down.”
I look at my mother in shock and disbelief as I reach my hand out to Eden. “I should’ve never opened that door. I put us at such risk, Eden,” I say despondently, upset with myself.
Eden holds my hand. “No, don’t blame yourself.”
I turn to look at Eden. “I’m so sorry, Eden. You should go see her.”
Eden’s father stops me. “Going to see her is out of the question. We’ve already sent someone to look after her there. She’ll be well taken care of. She will have the finest medical care, both physically and mentally. We’ll take care of her, don’t worry. She’s been told you’re aware of her condition, but you cannot come to see her for safety reasons. She’s fine with that. We’re trying to locate an aunt who she says is the only relative she’s ever heard anything about.”
My head is spinning at this information. What an animal that man is and I let him into our home. Then I’m reminded he was in the mansion way before he got to my door.
How did that happen?
“Did you find out how he got into the mansion in the first place?” I ask.
“He walked right through the front door. He somehow knew the correct code to gain entry at the gates. The code has already been changed,” Lyle says, as he shakes his head almost sadly.
“We do know he’s not on the premises anymore though,” my father says, turning our attention to him. “While his car is still here, he was seen climbing over the fence. Just to be safe, though, you’re all coming to stay at our new house until he’s caught.”
“How is there any safer than here?” I ask.
“The house is smaller, with a safe room built into each bedroom,” Lyle says. “The closets are all safe rooms there. The security system is state of the art, even better than what we have here. Also, I don’t think he’s figured out your parents live here in New Orleans now. So I hope he won’t be looking for you there.”
Eden rises, pulling me up with him. “Then I’ll finish getting dressed and we will leave.”
When we walk into our room, the glass on the floor brings a thought to my mind. “Eden, I wonder what he threw to break the window. Look, the hole is small. It can’t be more than three inches around or so.”
Eden studies the hole in the glass. “I don’t know. I just know he had a sling shot in his hand when I saw him,” he says, then turns to me. “Alyssa, I’m sorry about this. I had no idea she was from such a messed-up situation.”
“Eden, don’t do that,” I say as I follow him to his closet. “You saw a girl who had no friends. She just wanted to do what everybody else was doing. You know, be normal and go to her senior prom. The poor girl was enduring so much at home it made her unable to make real relationships. I’m glad you did that for her. Please don’t apologize for it again. I admit I was angry at first, but you didn’t do anything wrong. My heart aches for that poor girl.”
Eden pulls on a white shirt, buttoning it as he walks to me, then pulls me to him. “You’re so kind-hearted, Alyssa. I love you so much. You have no idea how much,” Eden tells me with added warmth to his soft, velvety voice.
“I love you too, Eden,” I tell him as he rocks me slowly back and forth, kissing the top of my head.
When we walk outside, I see a black suburban parked in the driveway. “Is that the man’s?” I ask.
“No, sweetie, it’s mine. Your mother and I found it at our new house when we moved in. Pretty cool, huh? The Phoenix Foundation always does so well by us,” Dad says.
He opens the car door for us. “I don’t see our cars anywhere. Where are they?” I ask.
Lyle turns to look at me as I climb into the seat behind him, and says, “We had them put into the garage and locked them up tight so that maniac can’t get to them. They’ll also be gone over with a fine-tooth comb to be sure he’s not done anything to them.”
I look over at Eden. “I hope he hasn’t done anything to mess them up.”
He smiles at me. “Even if he has, they’ll be fixed up good as new. You can count on that, Alyssa.”
As we come to the gate, there’s an old, ratty-looking, brown Buick. “So this must be his,” I say.
Lyle answers me, “Yes, it is. I’m very disappointed he was able to get through the gates. That means someone gave him the code or buzzed him in. Someone in our home.”
I hadn’t even thought about that. I cannot
imagine who would want us hurt. Everyone who works at the mansion seems so nice and genuine. The thought there’s someone in the house who’s against us is frightening. Why would anyone be against us?
Eden buckles his seat belt, then mine, which I neglected to do. His constant attentiveness has me forgetting to do the most basic things for myself. “I cannot believe someone in our organization would be a part of this,” he says. He looks at me and smiles, then sends me, ‘I’ll try to control myself, princess. I don’t wish for you to become so reliant on me you forget to buckle your own safety belt.’
I smile back and kiss his cheek.
He’s so adorable!
“Unfortunately, son, it’s impossible to be certain that every person has good intentions,” Lyle says. “That’s why we have to do the things we do to keep you safe. It takes many people to be sure of that, and sometimes we have to fight our own to keep the Phoenix couples safe.”
Eden asks, “Do you think this person or people changed the way they thought about this organization because of us?”
Lyle looks back at him. “People can change for many reasons. Maybe the person started out with good intentions and then something happened to make them fall away from what we’re doing. Hopefully we’ll find out soon, as not only do we have the New Orleans’s police department investigating, but also our own team of investigators. They should find something soon. This guy didn’t just disappear.”
Eden looks down at me. “Promise me you’ll be good and do everything we’re told to do, even if it doesn’t make sense to you at the time, princess.”
What? What is he talking about?
“Eden, I don’t understand.”
His arm slides around my shoulders and he pulls me into his chest. “Just promise me, please,” he not so much asks as demands.
I nod my head, but internally I’m freaking out. I mean, come on, just do whatever I’m told to, without questioning anything? I don’t know if I can do that. What if someone I don’t completely trust tells me to do something I’m not comfortable doing?
“Eden, what if the person who helped this guy get into the house tells us to do something we question? I mean, we have no idea who it is, right?”
He smiles at me. “Okay, I see. Just do what I ask, or what anyone else who you trust asks, okay baby?”
I smile back at him. “Okay,” I promise him and I feel a little bit better about it now.
The gates open up at my parents’ new house. As we drive up to it I’m speechless. It’s gorgeous. It’s not nearly as large as the mansion we just came from, but it’s a mansion as well. Even though its brand new, it’s still full of the southern charm Louisiana is known for.
Four large columns hold up an enormous balcony overlooking the front entrance area, which is spectacular. There’s a large area of pink flowers blooming up the middle of two stairways, leading up to a porch. It’s a shade of white, but has a slightly pink hue to it. Dad pulls up and we all get out.
“This is beautiful, Toni. I haven’t seen it finished. It turned out so nice,” Sierra tells my mother.
“It really did. They always do such a fantastic job, don’t they?” Mom asks.
“That they do,” Sierra agrees.
As we enter the house, we walk right into the main living area. I can tell my mother had her hand in decorating because I see several paintings which came from our house in Cloudcroft. The painting over the sofa is one that my mother’s father painted when she was a little girl. It’s of her and her little sister at the beach in California.
“Come Ally and Eden, let me show you to your room,” Mom calls to us as she heads towards a gorgeous staircase that spirals up just off the living area.
We follow her up the stairs. “This place is so nice, Mom.”
She turns to me and smiles. “The first door to the right is yours. Make yourself at home, dears. You will find that, as usual, your closets are already filled with clothes, as are the dressers. Come down whenever you are ready to,” she tells us, then turns to go back down the stairs.
I open the door to find a large four poster bed with a dark maroon-colored bedspread on it. The room only has one closet, but it’s huge. Eden’s things are on one side and mine on the other. I notice that in the back of the closet there are supplies such as gallon jugs of water and canned foods.
“Eden, why are there supplies like this I here, do you think?”
“This is a place where hurricanes come in on occasion, baby. Most homes have these things in them somewhere. You know, just in case. Once it’s known a hurricane is coming in, the stores get crazy and run out of things quickly.”
Eden opens the only other door in the room to find a decent sized bathroom with a stand up tiled shower. It’s not nearly what we have back at our place, but it’s nice. My parents, as usual, scale back on things they find pretentious. I, on the other hand, love having a huge bathroom with all the bells and whistles.
“Think you can be comfortable here?” I ask Eden.
Suddenly, he picks me up off the ground, holding me in his arms and spinning me around. Taking me back into the bedroom, he lays me down on the bed. He reaches down, taking my sandals off and running his hand up my leg. My heart is pounding in my chest. His eyes are full of desire.
He begins to unbutton his shirt. “Baby, as long as I’m with you, I can be comfortable anywhere. Now let’s break this sucker in.”
CHAPTER 44
EDEN
He’s drugged her! I can’t find her!
I run through the dark alley behind Bourbon Street.
She has to be near here. This is where I last saw her thoughts!
Alyssa sent the words, ‘I love you, Eden. My time has come, unless you stop this. I’ll see you on the other side, my love.’
With those words, she also sent the view she was looking at. The dark grey stone walls of the back of one of the many clubs along Bourbon Street.
I search as one of our doctors struggles to keep up with me. I know I’ll need his help once I find her.
This is all my fault. Why did I have to get involved with that family?
A dark mass looms in the distance. My heart pounds as I race to it. And there she is.
The doctor shouts, “Eden, let me see to her first.”
The look on his face as he turns back to me after he’s looked at her tells me all I need to know.
He rises and looks away as I dive to my princess’s side.
My body is shaking. It’s as if I’m being shaken. “Eden! Wake up!”
It’s Alyssa’s voice, but how can it be?
The smell of barbecue fills my nostrils as I blink my eyes open. The room is cloaked in orange light and a figure moves in front of me, the sun’s light behind it, making it hard to make out.
“Eden,” she says.
It’s my mate! She’s alive! It was all a dream!
I sit up. “There’s still time.”
Alyssa looks at me quizzically. “Still time for what?”
I shake my head to clear it before I grab her and pull her to my bare chest. Burying my face in her honeysuckle-scented curls, I breathe her in. “Alyssa, you’re in danger. We need Kyle here to help keep you safe. Laura, too. She’s key in keeping you safe as well.”
Alyssa frowns. “Laura? She doesn’t even know what we are, Eden. How can she help? And about Kyle. Well, things have been so much easier to take since he left. Unless it’s absolutely necessary, I don’t want him around. It’s just too hard,” she says as she drops her head.
She’s been doing that a lot since Kyle went back to Cloudcroft. The inner confidence she gained when we first transformed into the Phoenixes seems to have left her.
I reach out and take her delicate chin in my hand, making her look at me. “They love you, Alyssa. It would devastate them both if something happened to you. With their help, nothing will.”
“Eden, you need to show me your dream. I can’t make a decision like that without knowing what might happen to me.”
Now it’s my head which drops. “Alyssa, it’s hard for me to talk about it without getting upset. I don’t think it’s a good thing for you to see. That’s why I took so long in the shower this morning. I had a hard time getting control over my emotions. The idea of losing you is …” I trail off.
I can’t let myself think like that!
Alyssa walks to the chair where I threw her little summer dress right before I devoured her. “I’ve heard enough, as you’ve been talking in your sleep and even sleep walking, to know something happens to me. There’s a doctor you talk to, so it’s not good.” She pulls it over her head, then makes her way to the dresser.
Finding my shorts on the floor, I pick them up and put them back on. “More than hurt, Alyssa. You don’t make it.”
She stops looking through the drawer she opened and looks back at me. “I don’t make it? What could happen to me? It just has to be a dream, not a premonition. It can’t be my death. Not so soon. Longevity was promised to me. What about that?”
“Alyssa, the dream is too real, too vivid. It continues when I fall back asleep.” I explain.
She turns back to the drawer, pulling out a lacy pair of white panties. “What if you’re wrong and we get Kyle and Laura over here for nothing?”
I give her a frown. “I hope I am wrong, but I have to follow my heart on this. I can’t just do nothing and let this happen to you. I have an idea that might help you to come to grips with this. If you die, Alyssa, you know I’ll be dead within a day of you. Kyle may follow as well. We’ve never understood how his connection to you will be affected if you pass before he does. Is that what you want, for us to leave this earth, never having accomplished more than one task on this planet?”
She pulls on her panties and I nearly lose my train of thought. Her voice makes me look up at her eyes. “How do Kyle and Laura fit into stopping whatever it is that’s going to happen?”
This is where she’ll really fight me!
“Okay, here it goes. I’ve dreaded telling you this, Alyssa, because the answer is …I don’t know.”
Nobody's Girl: A Billionaire Romance Novel Page 73