by Selena Kitt
“You’re her friend,” Erich reminded her. “She’ll listen to you even if she doesn’t listen to me.”
“You want me to play mediator?” She wasn’t so sure that was a good idea.
“Yes!” Erich sounded excited about the idea now. “We’ll both go over there and talk to her. If you knock, she’ll answer the door for sure.”
“Well…” Tilly chewed absently on her thumbnail. What a relief it would be if Frankie really was just hiding out at her parents and avoiding Erich. She remembered the message, Frankie’s mention of a “he,” and then, “help me.” Help her what? Her voice had been slurred, strange.
Drunk, Tilly realized suddenly nodding to herself.
Now she was sure of it. Frankie was having a bar raid at her parents’ place, trying to forget whatever she and Erich had fought about. That thought brought such a flood of relief to her, she was nearly overwhelmed by it. But that “help me” still poked at her. Had Frankie fallen down? Or…
A chill swept through her when she remembered Miles going off to swim by himself. It was always dangerous, letting a child be unsupervised near a body of water, but even adults could drown. That fact had been drilled into her head since she was small.
Frankie’s parents had a pool in their backyard. It was smaller than hers—that’s why Frankie liked coming over to Tilly’s in the summer—but still. It had been a very hot day—that was one of the reasons Beast had decided to swim laps instead of going running, she remembered—and although the air conditioning was on in the house now, Tilly knew, outside as dusk fell, it was probably still nearly eighty degrees.
Had Frankie been drinking and decided to go for a swim? Had the phone call been her last-ditch effort to reach out? The thought made Tilly go cold with fear.
You’re letting your imagination run away with you, Mathilda.
Okay, maybe she was. But still… the phone call. Frankie’s phone and purse still at her house. The fight with Erich. Frankie was in trouble, somewhere, even if she was just mad and drinking by herself somewhere. Her parents’ house seemed like the likeliest place to start looking.
“Please, Tilly,” Erich urged. “I’d do anything for her. I just need to talk to her.”
“Okay,” Tilly agreed, the prospect of resolving one of today’s pressing issues far too tempting to resist. Besides, if something had happened to Frankie, they needed to get over there, as fast as they possibly could.
“Great!” Erich sounded relieved, too. “I’ll come pick you up and we’ll head over.”
He hung up and Tilly did, too.
And that’s when she remembered her promise to Beast.
Stay here. No matter what happens, even if you hear from Frankie again, I want you to go into the house, set the alarm, and don’t answer the door to anyone but me.
She hadn’t heard from Frankie, exactly—but Tilly now had some pretty compelling evidence that she was getting drunk at her parents’ house. And that was only ten minutes away. What harm could it do, just to run out and check? Erich would be with her—and he had served with Beast. She’d be with a former Marine, how much safer could she be?
Besides—what in the world was Beast worried was going to happen?
Tilly’s mind raced, but she couldn’t come up with anything.
And he hadn’t exactly been forthcoming, had he? Maybe he was jumping to conclusions, heading off like some hero, half-cocked, in the wrong direction, while Frankie was just, well… being Frankie. Actually, she thought, a slow realization dawning—she didn’t have any evidence that Beast’s sudden departure had anything to do with her best friend’s phone call at all.
Trust me.
She did trust him. But goddamnit, he kept so many secrets! If he would just tell her…
But he hadn’t told her, had he?
She tried to remember everything Beast had said. Something about her not knowing everything about him. Yeah, that was an understatement. But when she’d asked him about him being in danger, about Frankie being in danger, he’d been silent.
He hadn’t ever confirmed to Tilly that his retreat had anything to do with Frankie at all. He had gotten a call right after he’d listened to Frankie’s message, and that’s when he said he had to go. And what about those strange phone calls he’d made in the car? They certainly hadn’t sounded like they had anything to do with Frankie. They sounded more like Beast barking military orders to his troops.
The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that Beast’s mission, whatever it was, had nothing to do with Frankie’s phone call. And Frankie—Tilly was sure she’d find her friend alone in her parents’ house in front of the TV with a half-empty bottle of liquor by her side. It probably wasn’t the best time to try to mediate between her and Erich, Tilly thought, but at least she’d know Frankie was safe and sound, just on her way to a hell of a hangover.
She put her phone in her purse and slung it over her shoulder before she went back downstairs to sit on the sofa to wait for Erich.
Chapter 17
It wasn’t long before she heard his car outside. She went to the front door, setting the alarm before she stepped out onto the porch. He was in the circle drive, just getting out of the car. She waved, giving him a half-smile as she went down the steps. When she got to the passenger door, she found it locked. Peering in, she saw a bunch of stuff on the seat.
“Sorry about the mess,” he apologized, coming around the car. “There’s been so much going on lately, I just haven’t had time to get rid of that crap. We’ve been moving some stock this week and the truck didn’t arrive, and... well, I won’t bore you with details. You mind sitting in the back?”
He opened the back door for her and Tilly hesitated just a moment before getting in. She was hearing Beast’s voice in her head. I want you to go into the house, set the alarm, and don’t answer the door to anyone but me.
Too late for that, Tilly thought, sliding in. Erich closed the door behind her and trotted around to the driver’s side, getting in and putting the car in gear.
The first thing Tilly noticed was a Plexiglas screen in between the front and back seats. She knocked on it, smiling as Erich glanced at her in the rearview mirror. He pulled the car around, heading back down the driveway.
“Oh that.” He called back, shrugging. “Used to be a cab. I had my own cab business back in the day. Had trouble getting rid of the fleet when I liquidated it. People don’t want to buy cabs. Too many miles, too much abuse. So I kept this one. Never got around to getting rid of the shield.”
“Oh.” It was all the comment she could think of to make. “You’ll want to turn left at the end of the driveway.”
“I know.” Erich gave her another smile and glance in the rear view mirror. “I’ve been there.”
So Frankie had brought Erich home to meet her parents, Tilly thought. And Frankie hadn’t told her best friend that fact. Hurt, Tilly sat back, crossing her arms over her chest, and wondering just how close Erich and Frankie had grown, while Tilly hadn’t been paying attention.
Erich remained a bit of a mystery to her. She looked at him as he drove—always expensively dressed in suits, well-groomed, a very good-looking guy—noting the gold rings on his fingers, a flashy show of wealth. He had money—Frankie said his place was huge, and he owned lots of expensive, showy cars. So why in the world was he driving an old cab?
She and Frankie had been born into money. Tilly came from a long lineage of money, while Frankie’s father’s grandfather had first started the law firm he’d inherited, but neither of their families thought much about money. It wasn’t something they had to think about. They owned nice houses—several of them, including summer homes—and they drove Bentleys and Mercedes and Rolls Royce cars, they had staff and drivers, and all of that was just part of the landscape they’d grown up in.
But they weren’t ostentatious. That was the difference, Tilly realized. Erich liked to show off his wealth in a way that Tilly found both strange and distasteful. But maybe th
at’s what had attracted Frankie, Tilly thought. Erich liked having and spending money, that much was clear. And then there was the BDSM connection. That was whole other layer. Not that Tilly didn’t understand that part of things.
“So what did you fight about?” Tilly had to speak up for Erich to hear her, and she repeated her question, leaning forward to ask it again.
“I guess I was moving too fast for her.” Erich shrugged one shoulder, making a turn.
Tilly waited for him to go on. That could mean anything.
Erich sighed. “I don’t think she was ready for me to propose.”
“What?” Tilly exclaimed, her jaw dropping. “You didn’t!”
“I’m afraid I did,” he said ruefully, shrugging again. “I think I scared her.”
“Uhhh… yeah.” She blinked at him, still disbelieving. They hadn’t known each other that long! And Frankie was just coming off her break-up with Dante. No wonder she was so freaked out. Poor Frankie.
This news just made Tilly more nervous, because it indicated that Frankie likely wasn’t angry. She was scared. And probably sad. Kicking herself for her knee-jerk reaction to Erich’s proposal, wondering if she’d screwed everything with him up by telling him no.
“She’s on the rebound,” she explained to Erich. She hated having to practically yell to be heard. “Is there any way to roll this window down?”
“Sorry.” Erich shook his head. “Just the little money slot. It was safer for drivers that way. You wouldn’t believe the type of people we picked up after the bars closed.”
She glanced at the little tray that could be moved forward and back. It was a smaller version of the kind they used at the bank or when she occasionally stopped to pick up her mother’s prescriptions at the drive-thru window at Walgreens.
Erich’s phone rang and he apologized, answering it. Because of the Plexiglas, she couldn't hear much anyway. Once she realized it wasn’t Frankie, she sat back against the seat, giving him his privacy. She stared out at the world going by, houses and streetlights, parked cars and strip malls, and prayed Frankie was at her parents’ house.
She didn’t care if Frankie was drunk and ornery, if she was puking and crying, if she had gone on a rampage and upended all the furniture—all real possibilities—as long as she was safe. Tilly would “mediate” for hours if she had to—or even send Erich home, if it came to that, so she could be alone with Frankie. Girl time, she’d tell him. He’d understand, as long as he knew Frankie was safe and would talk to him when she wasn’t drunk—or hungover.
Tilly’s stomach twisted in knots. It had been a hell of a day, and it wasn’t over yet. The thought of finding Frankie, putting her arms around her, and both of them having a good, long cry was about the best thing she could think of. Except, maybe, the thought of Beast offering her his shoulder to cry on.
Where was he? What was he up to?
Whatever it was, she hoped it wasn’t too dangerous, and she prayed it kept him too busy to think too much. The man had just found out he was a father—had been a father for years—and no one had told him. She wanted his forgiveness, his understanding. His love. She couldn’t even begin to let herself think about the possibility of a future. They’d been living day to day, moment to moment, most of them spent naked, hot, sweaty and panting, in a little private room on The Bottom Floor.
That made her remember Erich and she glanced up front, seeing he was still on the phone, nodding, listening. Tilly pulled her own phone out of her purse, checking for messages or texts, but there was nothing. No Frankie, no Beast, no hospital. Not even a call from her Aunt Meg, which she’d been kind of half-hoping, half-expecting, once Miles was in bed.
She put her phone back, her mind drifting to sweet little Miles. Her momentary lapse in watching him that afternoon still haunted her. Meg hadn’t overreacted, not really. Tilly might have done the same thing, if he’d been hers.
He is yours.
Was it true? Could it really be true? She’d wondered about it from the beginning, but as Miles grew, so did her suspicions. He looked so much like Beast. His body type, broad and brawny. His thick, dark, curly hair. Eyes so dark they were almost black. He had Tilly’s delicate, little snub nose instead of Beast’s straight, aquiline one—but he had the square set of Beast’s jaw. She could see it, even though Miles hadn’t lost his round, baby face yet. There was very little of Tilly in him. He was all Beast, and he reminded her of him every time she saw him, reminded her of the nine months she’d spent carrying him.
She’d spent the last five months of her pregnancy “studying abroad.” An opportunity of a lifetime, Liv said, when she spoke about it to her friends in social circle. In truth, Tilly hadn’t gone anywhere. She’d been stuck in the house, up on the third floor—her mother and stepfather’s old room. Liv had moved out of it after Tilly’s stepfather committed suicide. She couldn’t bear to sleep in their bed after he was gone.
But it had been the perfect place for Tilly to hide and gestate. Even Frankie hadn’t known where she was, and Tilly had never told her. Tilly hadn’t been bored, though. Liv had made arrangements for her to keep up with her first year at Mt. Holyoke from her bedroom at home via email, Skype and phone. She’d managed to keep in touch with Frankie that year, hearing all about her exploits, her roommate, and Tilly made up things about her own “education abroad.” Aside from not being able to go outside—Liv was too afraid someone might see her—Tilly hadn’t minded it all that much. The staff brought her meals, she had her own bathroom, a little refrigerator that held snacks, and a connection to the Internet.
The days had all run together. Her mother came up to say goodnight at the end of every day. Tilly didn’t ask her about Beast, although she desperately wanted to hear news of him. Liv chattered about her charities and managing the business managers and the board who ran most of Tilly’s maternal grandfather’s businesses, and Tilly was honestly grateful for the company. The staff were instructed to speak to her as little as possible—and after Miles was born and Tilly moved back down to her room, most of them were dismissed.
Liv hired the “new staff”—she still called them “new” even though they’d now been over three years in their employ—in order to make a fresh start. And to make sure no one ever talked about the five months Tilly spent on the third floor.
And no one did. Tilly’s mother never talked about it. Meg and Kate referred to it as Tilly’s “time away,” and she wondered if they knew where she’d been, but she didn’t ask them. There was no one else who knew, and Tilly didn’t tell a soul. Not even Frankie. Saying it out loud would have ruined them all—at least, that’s what her mother had finally convinced her of.
She didn’t remember much about the day she gave birth to Miles. Her contractions had started early in the morning and she’d been in labor all day by the time her mother came up to see her. Tilly could have used to call button for the staff, but she wasn’t exactly sure what was happening, although she’d Googled plenty and read everything she could on the Internet.
It was the first time since Tilly was a small child that Liv had held her hand and touched her forehead and offered her some modicum of comfort. She remembered that very clearly. But the rest—maybe there was something to that idea of “birth amnesia,” that once a baby is born, new mothers forgot all about the pain of labor. She’d spent all night in a private corner room of the hospital, nurses and doctors coming in and out. Someone put a needle in her spine, and that was a relief. She slept for a while.
Then Miles was born. She remembered being very tired, and people yelling at her to “push” and screaming, “Harder, you have to push harder,” and she wasn’t sure what they wanted from her. Tilly wished they would leave her alone so she could sleep. But her body did what it needed to do, and then Miles was there.
Her seeing him had been a mistake.
Liv had been called away from the hospital for a few hours, and wasn’t there when her grandson was born. She’d left explicit instructions—Tilly found
this out later, when she heard her mother berating doctors and nurses in the hallway—that the baby not be given to its mother under any circumstances. Tilly didn’t know if the doctor had forgotten, or simply ignored Liv’s warning, but he let Tilly cut the umbilical cord with shaky hands and she would never forget the words he said to her.
“You have a son.”
She called him Conrad, after his father, and his father’s father, and his grandfather. But he wasn’t with her long enough for it to stick. She held him and rocked him and looked at every part of her perfect boy, and wondered if this was what Beast had looked like when he was a baby. She felt as if she was holding him, in perfect miniature, in her arms, and wondered at it.
The doctor was doing things between her legs still, and the nurses took the baby—they said they wanted to weigh and measure him and give him a bath, which Tilly thought was a good idea, because he was a mess, and she needed one, too—and the last time she remembered seeing him, he was naked, arms and legs flailing as the nurses put him on the scale, hands clenched into fists. Already a fighter. Nine pounds, four ounces, the nurse announced.