I nodded, but before I could say anything further one of his hands slipped down to touch it. His long fingers wrapped around my shoe and pulled it off.
My hand shot out to hold his wrist. “What are you doing?”
Ignoring my grip, he set my shoe aside and slid my sock off.
“Where does it hurt?”
He had been frowning down at my foot but when I didn’t answer his eyes slid up to my face. “Andi? When I ask a question, I would like an answer.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, it just hurts to stand on it.”
He nodded. “Okay, well, let’s put some ice on it.”
I smiled sarcastically at him. “Great, so you’ll be sending me back down to my apartment then? Because I would really like to rest it, then call the hairdresser and make an appointment. While I’m at it, I have some calls I need to make to Kate and Julia. I also need my schedule for tomorrow, which I was going to get earlier if you hadn’t interrupted me.”
He was nodding the entire time I was talking like he was hearing me but humoring me. When he smiled but gave me a blank look, I growled.
“Brock—”
He interrupted me. “You didn’t name one thing that you can’t do from up here.”
I pushed his leg again. “What is wrong with you? Were you dropped on your head as a child? I want to go home.”
“I should have threatened to fuck some manners into you every time you used that hand. I’m now amending my threat and that hand will be tied to the nearest piece of furniture while I do it.”
I let out a loud growl and looked at the ceiling. “You are the most frustrating, idiotic, stubborn man I’ve ever met!”
He flashed a huge smile at me. “I know but I’m extremely good-looking so it’s hard to stay mad at me for long. It’s a gift.”
I glared at him and felt my eye start to twitch.
He slid his hands under me suddenly and I was lifted into his arms in one smooth motion. I struggled against him when he stood up.
“I’m going to start screaming if you don’t put me down!”
He rolled his eyes and twisted me up over his shoulder so that it was digging into my stomach. My hands braced against his lower back but kept sliding down closer to his ass.
Damn. Even from this angle it was nice.
“BROCK! LET ME DOWN!”
He walked out of the elevator whistling and headed down a hallway.
My hair band fell out onto the floor. The entirety of my long hair streamed out and hung loose as he continued to carry me. As it fell around my head and face, it hindered my ability to see where we were going.
I growled.
“Tempted to hit me yet? Go ahead and start screaming sweetheart, no one would hear you up here. It’s sound proofed. In fact, you can’t even get off this floor without a code, so you might as well get comfortable.”
He spanked me on my ass with a sharp swat.
“Ouch!”
I felt him chuckle before I heard him.
“You can make your calls up here, while I get you some ice.”
“I don’t have my phone!”
He jostled me as we went through a door.
“You can use one of mine and I can get the hairdresser to come up here if you want. As for your schedule, it’s been changed by management as of a few minutes ago. You’ll be working with me on that little project for a few days. Today though, you’ll be lounging around. You can go swimming, read a book, bend over the desk, sleep, whatever.”
“I am NOT bending over your desk. At all. EVER.”
“Okay, tomorrow then.”
I huffed, “I officially hate you.”
“Hmm, well that will make things interesting when you’re bent over my desk, won’t it?”
“YOU. ARE. INSANE.”
He laughed and the deep timbre of it shook my body.
We stopped moving and his waist bent to slide me off his shoulder. I landed on something soft but I couldn’t see it because my hair was covering my face.
I blew at it and tried to move it away but felt Brock’s hands moving it back into my face. He wasn’t helping at all.
“Stop it, you brute!”
He laughed again while moving away and I quickly swept all of it over my head. I probably looked like I had just finished skydiving without a helmet.
I heard a snap and looked over to find Brock smirking with his cell phone out. “Great picture.”
“What the hell?” I growled at him as he moved through the room smiling.
“Keeping that one. Think I’ll make it my screen saver.”
He had deposited me on a huge half-moon black leather couch. It faced a fireplace with a gigantic TV mounted to a grey brick wall. Everything in the room was white, grey or black as I started scanning for the door to make my escape.
There was a hallway on one side of the fireplace that looked like it had several doors.
I heard some clinking noises and I turned in the direction that Brock had gone. I saw him standing with his back to me at the open door of a refrigerator. The rest of the kitchen was partially in view. It looked like it had a long breakfast bar and an island with a stove.
I twisted around to look behind me and saw a dining room that could easily accommodate twenty people.
“Brock, where are we?” I called out.
He was doing something on the counter and turned to look at me. “Penthouse. Nice huh? Aiden wanted it to be feel very private so that he and Liv would have someplace to stay if they needed to attend an event at the hotel. Three-thousand dollars a night for anyone that wants to rent it.”
I shifted uncomfortably. The suite was extremely nice and not something that I could ever dream of affording. My hands ran across the leather seat feeling the smooth texture. I didn’t want to mess it up.
Brock walked back from the kitchen and around the end of the couch. I watched his long legs carry him to stand in front of me. He had taken his shoes off at some point and I could see the tanned tops of his perfect feet.
I wondered if there was anything that wasn’t attractive about him. He carried himself confidently, in the way that men sometimes did when they knew they were being watched by a woman. In Brock’s case, it was likely all the time.
My eyes slid up his body until I reached his face. The corner of his mouth tweaked up slightly before he squatted down to my level.
“Let’s see that ankle.”
I lifted it up for him and he set it on one of his knees.
His long fingers started feeling around on it until I sucked in a breath at a particularly sore spot. He massaged that area for a moment and looked back up at me.
His black designer glasses made him look young in a way. If I didn’t know him well, I would say they made him look less devilish. But I did know him, and the glint he got in his eye, like the one he had right now, always hinted at trouble.
He opened his perfectly formed mouth and licked his bottom lip. His eyes slid up my legs.
I interrupted. “Whatever you’re thinking the answer is no.”
His eyes swung up to my face.
“I was just going to suggest that you turn to the side so I can put this ice-pack on your ankle,” he said with a chuckle.
Sure he was. I didn’t believe it for a minute.
Chapter Four
After a brief non-verbal standoff that consisted of narrowly eyeing each other and jaw clenching, I conceded to laying on the couch with my foot elevated on a pillow. At least I think I agreed to it.
I didn’t have much choice in the end because he manhandled me into position after a minute, then dropped the freezing pack on my foot.
I nearly fell off the couch when I yelped.
My hand shot out to remove it but it was caught and held as Brock adjusted the bag.
“I think you twisted it a little but it isn’t sprained or broken. Just keep the bag there for a little while and it should feel better in about an hour. If it doesn’t, I’ll have Logan drive out and
look at it for you.”
Having Dr. Logan Matthews drive out to the hotel was a little ridiculous but I wasn’t opposed since he was married to my best friend Kate. Kate was due any week now though and it would be terribly selfish of me to take her husband away from her right now. Even if I knew Logan of all people would get Brock to let me out of this place.
I tried to remove my hand from his but the more I pulled the tighter his grip became.
“I could do this at home, just as easily as staying here.”
“Yes, but it’s the penthouse. I mean, if you’re going to be flat on your back recovering, why not do it in luxury?”
I frowned at him. “Because it’s not my room and I’m afraid of messing something up. Who says I like luxury anyway? Maybe I prefer sitting on rocks and eating oatmeal with a piece of tree bark. Which reminds me that I should probably be laying on the floor doing this if we’re going to stay here. I don’t want to mess up the leather.”
“Fuck the leather. They can bill me if it gets messed up. You’re beautiful right where you are. You will not sit on the floor or eat oatmeal with a piece of tree bark. Where did you even come up with that?”
“I have stuff to do Brock,” I said, ignoring him.
He was still squatting beside me and I could feel his breath along my arm. He shifted and took a long look up my body. The hand that held mine twisted around effortlessly and slid around my wrist. He lifted it up and held it for a moment, then placed it beside my face on the couch.
His other hand came up and I felt his fingers graze over the line of my jaw. I jerked in reaction and moved my face away.
“Andi, how old are you?” he asked, as his fingers found my jaw again and started skating along the edge.
“Twenty-five, just like my license says,” I lied. “I’m sure you found it.”
He stopped touching my jaw but his hand moved to gently hold my throat. His thumb skimmed up and down on my windpipe while his fingers wrapped around the back of my neck. His other hand still held my wrist in place, his fingers pressing into the underside of it.
“Bullshit. I’ve known twenty-five-year-old women. You look like you’re nineteen, if that.”
I shook my head. “Nope. Twenty-five. I use a combination of daily moisturizer and night cream. Plus, I always make sure to use something extra under my eyes. Prevents bags and wrinkling. Which is another reason why I need to go home. I forgot to put some on after I showered.”
I was twenty-two but only Drew and I knew that. When I had paid for our new identities I had asked for three years to be added to my age so that I would look a little more hirable on paper to potential employers and look like I might be old enough to escort an eight-year old when we travelled.
It wasn’t too much of a stretch and people hadn’t questioned it on our journey across the country. Maybe looking at my face at the time had shut those questions down. A split lip and a bruise on my cheek should have raised a lot of questions at the time but no one had wanted to know the truth of it.
When we landed in Lakefield I had told people that Drew was my brother. The counterfeit papers I had paid for, included a legal custody document due to the death of my fake parents. On paper, we were legit.
His smooth jaw clenched. “Where did you go to high school at?”
I swallowed. “We were abroad. Homeschool.”
“On a teacher and mechanic’s income?’
I blinked. “Hmm?”
“Your parents. Teacher and mechanic or is that something you’ve forgotten in your twenty-five-year-old brain? I take it you weren’t close.”
My eyes flashed at him, then looked away. “I didn’t like my parents.”
“Hmm, well that’s one honest answer. Want to tell me another one?”
“Drew and I inherited some money from my uncle Stan and we went to school in England on an exchange program. That was after some homeschooling.”
“That was a lie.”
I glared at him. “You don’t know anything!”
“I know that you aren’t telling me the truth! That’s the least convincing lie I’ve ever heard and it doesn’t make sense. I also know you can’t look me in the eye when you tell it.”
I stared straight into his green eyes. “I’m twenty- five. How old are you? Ninety?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re avoiding the other questions. I’m thirty-three.”
“Gawd, you’re on death’s door. I’m not avoiding the questions. I just told you all about my life.”
He pursed his lips and looked annoyed. “The key to any good lie is details Andi. If you’re going to tell one then you should develop a backstory that sounds legitimate with the finer points. For instance, if you want to say you went abroad, you should say something like, you enjoyed the countryside and lived in a quaint town on the outskirts of London. You were very happy there, living with an old relative in a farmhouse that afforded you some nice country air and long walks down country lanes.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes but kept my mouth shut.
“Besides, your pulse spikes every time you lie and your throat constricts just slightly.”
I looked over at my wrist and realized he had his fingers dug into my vein.
My other hand came up and pushed at his chest feebly.
“Let me go.”
“No. Are you a runaway?”
I felt like telling him I wasn’t exactly a runaway. Just a brother kidnapper trying to forget my past and build a life without worrying about my parents or their associates. I was kind of a runaway in a sense just not the way he thought.
It would be nice to tell someone the truth for once. To have it all out with just one person, because it was a lonely life when you had to become someone else.
But I couldn’t.
“Drew and I are here because we’re family and my parents are gone. I’m building a life for us and we’re happy.”
“You deflect well. Are you in some kind of trouble?” he asked, frowning down at me.
I looked up at him and clenched my jaw, trying not to lose it. I needed him to stop asking questions. It was too much and I didn’t like to lie to him or anyone else. It’s just that no one else seemed to care about the little details so I hadn’t had to lie this much to one person.
“Please stop,” I pleaded. “I can’t do this.”
“Do you know how many secrets I keep, Andi? Thousands and thousands. If you’re in trouble, let me help. Just tell me the truth. I don’t want to have to dig. Not with you. But you’re making me chase down all these little things that don’t make sense and you’re lying to me. Don’t lie to me. I promise I’ll help.”
Although I held it together enough not to let out a sob of frustration, I felt a warm tear slide down my cheek. I needed him to stop asking.
He loosened his grip on my neck and bent forward to kiss the tear. My eyes widened and another tear slid out. Again, he kissed it.
“Tell me one truth and I’ll give you something,” he whispered. “You can stay here and I won’t ask any more questions for now.”
I sucked in a breath as his lips moved to my ear. My eyes closed when I felt his hot breath against my neck. He hadn’t let go of my wrist yet. He didn’t trust me to tell him the truth which was definitely the right instinct on his part. Had he not been holding my wrist I would have told him anything.
His lips hit the spot right beside my ear that I liked so much and my back arched slightly.
“Tell me, Andi.”
“What do you want to know?” I whispered.
“Anything. Everything.”
“I had a horse when I was growing up. Her name was Charlotte. She was a nice chestnut color and I learned to ride her when I was ten. My parents let me take riding lessons so I spent a lot of time with her. Drew was born and sometimes our nanny would bring him along to my practice. I remember that he squealed once when I was coming around in a trot beside the fence and it made me laugh. So, all I did that day was ride around several ti
mes trying to make him squeal again.”
He leaned back and blinked at me while frowning. “That’s a true story. You had a nanny?”
I nodded. “You asked for one true thing and that story was honest.”
“Sounds like a happy memory for you.”
I gave him a bitter smile remembering the first twelve years of my life. It was one of many happy memories back then.
“Drew was and still is my world. He was born and he was just so perfect. Little hands and feet. He always liked to be held. Our nanny had been with us for a while at that point. She was good with him and I enjoyed her company. We used to take Drew out with us walking, to the playground and just about every place we went. He was always a good kid even when he got older.”
Brock kissed the side of my face. “You sound like a parent when they talk about their kids.”
I shrugged. “He’s my brother but I would do anything to take care of him. I guess I do sound like a parent but I just want him to have a happy life.”
Unlike the one I had in my past. One where someone you loved didn’t hit you or yell at you because you simply existed and weren’t living up to what they expected.
I ran over the memories in my mind of protecting him. Confessing to things he had made a mess of just to protect him. Spilled cereal on the carpet, a crayon left on the sidewalk.
I had known eventually that my parents would turn their wrath on him after I left for college. Which was why I had purposely failed some placement tests in school. I had planned on going to a local college and checking in frequently if not living at home for a while to keep an eye on things.
Love was a funny thing. Sometimes you sacrificed everything for it. Gave everything you could give to the point of emptying yourself so that the object of your love could know happiness. That was Drew for me. I would do anything for him, unconditionally. I didn’t know if that was a healthy thing or not but he meant that much to me. Maybe he really was like my kid in some ways.
Brock cleared his throat. “You went away there for a minute. Lost in thought. What were you thinking about?”
I shook my head. “Nothing much. I was wondering if the hairdresser has some of that brush in dye that men use. You’re getting grey hair around your temples old man.”
Chase (Lakefield Book 4) Page 4