“I’m sorry they’re dragging you into this,” she said as she took a step back.
He let his hand drop or risk looking as if he was holding her.
“I’m hardly a hostile witness,” he said.
“Still, I’m sure you have better things to do.”
“Not really.” Why had he admitted that?
“Oh? You seemed to be in a hurry to leave Florida.” She sucked in her lip, as if wishing she hadn’t uttered her words. “I thought you’d say good-bye.”
Was that pain in her eyes?
“I tried.”
She pinched her brow together.
“I went to the ICU. Your fiancé was there.” He’d gone over their conversations so many times. Remembered her saying that she didn’t mess around with two guys at the same time. Yet when faced with a man claiming her as his, Trent stepped aside.
Her face went white. “M-my what?”
He swallowed. “Never mind.”
“Never mind? What are you talking about? I don’t have a fiancé.” Her voice was elevated now and her pale skin turned pink with what Trent assumed was anger.
“The guy in the ICU told me he was—”
“John? John told you we were engaged?”
“Yes.”
“And you believed him?” She was enraged now and controlling her words as they left her mouth slowly.
Maybe not now. Damn, could he have been wrong?
The ding from the elevator kept him from answering the question. Out of it walked a tall, slender blonde with dark sunglasses over her eyes. “There you are,” the blonde said. “I thought I was meeting you outside.”
Monica blinked and dismissed him. “Sorry, Katie. I was detained.” Monica stepped toward the woman she called Katie with an obvious limp.
Trent reached for her again.
Monica snapped out of his grip as soon as he touched her. Her glare kept him from reaching for her again. “I have it, Trent!”
His insides twisted. Could he have spent the last two months accusing her of being just like Connie only to find out he was wrong?
Katie removed her glasses and stepped to Monica’s side. “Trent Fairchild?”
Monica nodded. “C’mon Katie. I’ve had a shitty day and can’t wait to get home.”
Katie glared in Trent’s direction as she helped Monica walk away.
“Monica?” Trent walked between the two of them and the elevator. “We should talk.”
“Why? So you can pretend to listen and then think the worst of me later? I don’t have anything to say to you.”
The door behind them opened. “Mr. Fairchild? We’re ready for you.”
He glanced away when he heard his name. Dammit, he’d screwed up. So completely screwed up.
“Monica, please.”
Monica gripped Katie’s arm. “Let’s get out of here.”
Trent had no choice but to let her go. As they stepped into the elevator, Monica studied the floor and Katie dug a hole into him with her glare, and buried him six feet under.
Jessie held the phone to her ear and tried to make out what Katie was saying.
“I don’t know what I interrupted. Monica looked as if she were about to commit a serious crime when I stepped out of the elevator.”
“And you said Trent was there?” Jessie asked.
“Yeah, looking like someone had just taken his puppy. I don’t care what anyone thinks, there was some serious vibes going between them.”
Jessie smiled. “Good vibes?”
“Deadly ones. At least from Monica. Trent looked like he wanted to throw up.”
“And Monica hasn’t told you what happened?”
“Said she didn’t want to talk about it.”
Sounded like her sister. When something really bugged her, she clammed up. “She’s mad?”
“At first. Then I heard her in the bathroom sniffling, and she doesn’t have a cold.”
“Crying? She was crying?” Now Jessie was worried. “Monica doesn’t cry over anything.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t leave her alone did you?”
“I’m on my way back with wine… and ice cream. I told Dean I was staying over so she won’t be home alone tonight.”
Jessie sighed. “I’ll fly in tomorrow.”
“Good. I’m pulling into the parking lot now.”
Katie hung up and Jessie called their pilot.
Trent’s head was still spinning as he sat next to Monica’s lawyers. Across from the sharks trying to paint her as something other than the angel he knew.
Dammit, what had he done? How could he have thought of her as anything but an angel?
Mr. Goldstein had told him this wouldn’t take long. But that it was imperative he do this face-to-face.
What Trent really wanted to do was find Monica and make sure she was all right. Explain.
Explain what? What an asshole I am?
“Mr. Fairchild can you tell us, for the record, where you’re currently living.”
Trent told them his brother’s address since he had yet to set up his own residence since leaving Jamaica.
“You do own a home in Jamaica?”
“That’s right. I left the island after the quake.”
The woman, Leslie something or other, smiled and asked, “And you fly helicopters for tourists?”
“That’s right.”
“When did you meet Monica Mann?”
“Two days after the first quake. We were flying the medical staffs back and forth to the hospital.”
“You’d never met her before?” the fat lawyer asked.
“No.”
They paused. “Are you sure?”
Trent felt a smile on his lips. “She’s a beautiful woman, I would have remembered seeing her before.”
“Assuming what you say is correct, when did you start sleeping with her?”
“Objection!” Mr. Goldstein sounded just as pissed as Trent felt. “If you’re going to call my witness a liar then we will end this now and you can find out what he has to say in court.”
Leslie held up her hands in retreat. “When did you and Miss Mann become intimate?”
“I don’t see how that is anyone’s business.” He’d left high school and bragging about girls a long time ago.
“Just answer, Trent. Monica has already told them,” Mr. Goldstein said.
“The day the cave collapsed, trapping us inside.”
“But you spent nearly every day with Miss Mann.”
“So?”
“You said yourself she’s a beautiful woman.”
“Is there a question?”
The oldest attorney opened his mouth. “Isn’t it true that you frequently flew in and out of Florida while living in Jamaica?”
“The tour company has a base there. It wasn’t uncommon for me to fly into Miami or Fort Lauderdale.”
“Were you there a year and a half ago?”
Trent shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“That’s convenient.”
Mr. Goldstein shook his head.
Trent stared at Monica’s attorney. “What are they getting at?”
Mr. Goldstein turned to the court reporter. “We’ll take this part off the record.”
The tiny woman rested her hands in her lap and waited.
“Monica was in Florida a year and a half ago for training. They believe you two met then.”
“That’s ridiculous. Even if we had,” he turned toward the trio of shitheads, “what of it?”
“They think Monica took the assignment to Jamaica to obtain a free ticket to meet you.”
Trent couldn’t help it. He laughed. He laughed until his insides started to cramp. Mr. Goldstein chuckled alongside him.
Trent waved a hand at the court reporter once he got himself under control. “Can you get this?”
“Now that you’re finished,” Leslie said. “What—”
“Ask me what I do for a living,” Trent demanded.
“You already told us you flew helicopters for a tour company.”
Trent’s smile fell. He slammed his hand on the table. Everyone jumped. “Ask.”
“OK, Mr. Fairchild, what do you do for a living?”
He leveled his eyes with the older silent lawyer, the one who seemed to ask a minimum of questions but who appeared to be in charge of these two. “Nothing. I don’t have to work.”
“You said you flew—”
“The company I fly for is one my brothers and I own, Fairchild Vacation and Charter Tours. We have twenty-five locations worldwide in seven different countries. In addition to helicopters, which just happen to be my favorite to fly, we have executive jets that hold anything from four passengers to sixty.” The other lawyers were listening now and Mr. Goldstein sat with a smug look of contentment. “If I wanted to hook up with Miss Mann she wouldn’t have needed a free ticket. I’d have sent the Lear, that is worth more than any of you sharks will make collectively in your lives, to pick her up.”
The vein in the fat man’s face started to bulge.
Trent could have heard an ant crossing the room in the silence.
The older attorney recovered first. “Nice performance, Mr. Fairchild. But we’re here not only to determine what nefarious reasons Miss Mann had in going to Jamaica, but to determine if she in fact abandoned her post both here and on the island. The fact is, she did take a lover, left her patients to do so—”
“Objection!”
“—and worked outside her license.”
Mr. Goldstein stood and slammed his hand down this time. “Objection.”
The lawyers faced each other.
“We’re done,” the opposing lawyer managed.
The court reporter was the first one to move as she gathered her things. Trent reeled in his anger and understood how drained Monica must have been after hours of this. Trent had only been there for one.
Each one of them stood and started to leave the room. Before the other team made it to the door, Mr. Goldstein stopped them.
“Mr. Richardson?”
So that was the old guy’s name.
“Yes, counselor?”
Mr. Goldstein handed a stack of papers to the other attorney. “You’ll get these through the proper channels of course, but I couldn’t help but hand-deliver them myself.”
Mr. Richardson opened the file. A flicker of doubt flashed so quickly Trent would have missed it had he blinked. Then the others walked away.
Once alone, Trent asked, “What was that?”
“Monica’s suing.”
That made him smile. “Good.”
Mr. Goldstein gathered his papers, stacked them in his briefcase. The two other lawyers on his team shook Trent’s hand and left the office.
“I’m hoping that after today they drop the case and settle the suit quietly.”
“There’s no possible way they’d win.”
“They won’t win. But the longer it draws out, the harder it will be for Monica. She’s a lot more vulnerable than she looks.”
Trent remembered her in the cave, the fear in her voice when he tried to scale the unscalable wall. “She’s tough.”
“Maybe the woman you knew on the island was. The one I know is fragile. If this draws out, she’s going to need every penny we can squeeze out of these people. Talk about no good deed going unpunished.”
“You’re not kidding.” If Monica ever decided to help others again, she’d do it with gloves and body armor.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“You see, Trent, I’ve gotten mighty attached to my balls over the years, and if I plan on keeping them, I can’t go telling you where my wife’s sister is. She’s downright protective of her baby sister.”
Trent gripped his cell phone while sitting in the parking lot of the law offices of Old, Fat, and Uptight. He hadn’t even twisted the key in the ignition before he called Jack Morrison to learn Monica’s address.
“I dropped everything and rushed down here—”
“Which I’m sure you understand now was important,” Jack interrupted.
“I need to talk to her, Jack.”
“Hold on.”
Trent heard Jack over the line talking to Jessie.
“Jessie, darlin’, Trent’s on the phone asking for Monica’s address.”
Trent envisioned Jack holding the phone up making it clear that Jessie knew Trent was waiting on the phone.
“If you know what’s good for you, you’d hang up that phone and help me pack.”
“Did you hear that?” Jack asked when he got back on the phone. “You know what they say, happy wife, happy life.”
“I’m not leaving LA until I have a chance to talk to her.”
“Suit yourself. You staying at our hotel?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll make sure the girls know where to find you.”
“The girls?”
“Yeah, Jessie’s on her way there, and Katie, my sister, lives there.”
“Great!” Trent hissed between his teeth.
Jack chuckled. “Good luck.”
And he hung up, leaving Trent to stare at his phone.
“Wine is the answer to heartbreak. That and ice cream,” said Katie as she shoved a spoonful of mint chip between her lips and followed it with a swig of Chardonnay.
“I’m not heartbroken!”
Katie topped off Monica’s glass. “Bless your heart, why don’t you have another glass and tell me how unheartbroken you are.”
Monica sipped from her second glass and felt some of the tension in her shoulders dissipate. “He thought I was engaged. Me? Engaged! Stupid man.”
“Trent?”
Monica took another drink. “How could he think I was messing around with him and have someone back home? Who does that?”
Katie lifted a knowing brow. “Well, actually… a lot of—”
“But this is me we’re talking about! I don’t fly that way.” Monica thought about the lawyers, their accusations. “They treated me like I was a slut.”
Katie nearly spit out her wine. “Trent?”
“No, not Trent. The lawyers. Kept calling him my lover. Said I’d purposely agreed to go to Jamaica for a free plane ride to the island. Acted as if I needed a fucking booty call.”
Katie laughed.
Monica glared at her. “It’s not funny.”
“It will be when they find out who Trent Fairchild is.”
Monica dipped her spoon in the double Dutch chocolate and asked, “What do you mean who he is?”
“A Fairchild.”
Maybe it was the wine, but she wasn’t following Katie’s line of thought. “I don’t get it.”
“Fairchild Charters… Fairchild Vacations.” Katie dropped her spoon. “You don’t know who he is?”
“Well, of course I know who he is. He owns the helicopter tours on the island. But he’s not going to be booking tours there anytime soon.” She sipped more wine.
“Oh, bless your heart, you have no idea who he really is.”
“I do, and stop with that bless your heart crap. I may not be from the South but even I know that’s your way of calling me an idiot.”
“If the shoe fits.”
Monica tossed a pillow at her friend. “I liked it better when you were trying hard not to have an accent and southern roots.”
“I can’t help it. Dean’s family is so down home. When we all get to drinking and shooting the shit, the South in me just comes out. I’ll blame the wine.” Katie’s cheeks were rosy with wine and the twang in her voice became more apparent.
“Well, my southern belle, why don’t you tell me why I’m an idiot.”
Katie set her glass on the table, but only to add more liquid to the glass. “I think we need popcorn.”
“Katie!”
She stood and followed Katie into the kitchen as she pulled out the microwave variety of uncooked kernels, removed the plastic wrap, and tossed it in to cook. Where’s your tablet?”
“Well go get it and look up Fairchild Charters.”
Monica grabbed her Kindle Fire and accessed the Internet. She typed in Fairchild Charters and the website popped up. At first glance, she thought she typed in the wrong IP address. Then she looked closer. The page was sleek and featured a rotating banner of jets available to charter. Monica dropped in the chair at the kitchen counter and clicked through a few pages. When she found the About Us page there was one group shot, and then three individual pictures of the co-owners. Jason Fairchild, Owner & CEO Fairchild Charters & Fairchild Vacation Tours, Glen Fairchild, Owner & CFO Fairchild Charters, and Trent Fairchild, Owner & CFO of Fairchild Vacation Tours.
She blinked. The picture of Trent and his brothers had been taken on a sunny tarmac in front of the largest private jet Monica had ever seen. The Fairchild men were all the same height, with bright smiles and sunglasses hiding what Monica knew were laughing eyes. What a hunk of trouble they must have been in school. She thought of the story Trent told her about hijacking his father’s chopper.
The individual pictures had the guys wearing those hats that pilots were fond of. Jason, the oldest brother according to the bio, lived close to their headquarters and ran the company. Glen, the middle son from what Monica could tell, looked like a player of the highest order. His smirk in the photo reminded her of Trent. He ran the financials and coordinated the jet charter end of the company. Monica found her mouth hanging open when she noticed the number of locations their planes flew out of. Then there was Trent. He had his jacket tossed over his shoulder as he posed for the picture in front of a huge helicopter. His smile played on her hot buttons and reminded her of his smooth voice and unforgettable kiss.
“He’s rich,” she all but whispered to her tablet as she clicked around to learn more about him.
“Ah, yeah! Daddy’s worked with the Fairchilds for years.”
Monica glanced at Katie. “You know them?”
“Never met ’em.” Katie retrieved Monica’s glass and set it in front of her. “My dad knew their dad.”
“Before he died?”
“Yeah.”
Another link took her to island tours. There she found a more recent picture of Trent wearing the clothes she associated with him. Shorts, a company pullover short-sleeved shirt, and flip-flops. “How come he didn’t tell me he was all this?”
Not Quite Enough (Not Quite series) Page 22