He stops, faces me, and puts both of his hands on my shoulders. “After everything Mom and Dad taught us, isn’t it more than just about paying the bills?”
I think for a second or two. “Well yeah. Of course it is.”
“Then why are you doing it?”
I feel my whole face frowning as I process his question.
“Listen,” Brian says. “I bought myself a ticket for a guided hike up that.” He points to the top of the volcano.
My eyes follow his finger.
“But I want to give it to you. Is that okay?” he says.
I’ve been eyeing that volcano from the moment I arrived on the island. “Sure,” I say.
Brian takes his hands off my shoulders. “Good… Good.”
We start walking again.
“Thanks,” I say.
“You’re welcome, Abs. Just when you make it to the top, I want you to look down at the world below and remember how that feels. Then, I want you take that feeling back to your job—and if your job and your boss don’t make you feel the same way, then you should really consider ditching the both of them.”
* * *
The next morning, I wake up and get ready for my hike. It’s raining, but I’ve decided that nothing is going to stop me from getting to the top of that mountain. I ride my bike into town. Ten minutes later, I arrive at the guide shack. I’m surprised the tour guide is a woman, a female version of GI Joe. She’s sitting in a rusty jeep, drinking a cup of coffee, resting one leg on the dashboard while reading the paper. I knock on her window, and she just about spills her coffee.
“You startled me,” she says, rolling down the window. Her toothy smile is as big as today’s hidden sun. “Didn’t think anyone was going to show up.”
“Well, here I am.” I wave my hands cheerfully.
She looks me up and down. I’m draped in my rain gear, with purple socks sticking out of the top of my hiking boots.
She throws the paper in the back. “Hop in then!”
I get into the passenger seat and fasten my seatbelt, then she starts driving. Before long, we’re off the main road. The path takes us to the base of the volcano, where she parks.
The guide turns to me. “By the way, my name is Theresa.”
“And I’m Abby.”
“Excellent, Abby. I should have checked with you before. I guess I forgot because it’s raining. You do have water, correct?”
I shake my bag so that we can hear the two water bottles inside. “Yep.”
“Couple of rules, Abby.”
Her military tone makes me sit up straight. “Uh-huh?”
“First, stay on the trail. Second, follow my lead. And third…” She smirks. “Enjoy.”
I give her a thumbs-up, and we get out of the car. I look up toward the top of the volcano—it’s shrouded in mystery.
Theresa gazes toward the top and puts her hands on her hips. “Sure you still want to do this?”
I take a deep breath. It’s so far up, and the terrain looks overwhelming, but there’s no backing out. “Absolutely.”
She smiles. “I always like the extra adventurous ones.”
We start off, and the trail is relatively mundane. Soon the rain lets up, and we stop for a drink before heading into dense trees.
“Are there animals in there?” I ask.
“Mostly monkeys. The next leg of the trail is going to get more treacherous. It’ll be slippery. We’re going to have to cross a lot of rocks and roots, some of which are fairly large.” She sounds excited about the whole deal, and believe it or not, so am I.
We hike on. It’s dark and ominous under the forest canopy. Nature surrounds me. My heart pounds while we tackle the trail. I slip here and there, sometimes almost falling flat on my face.
Theresa looks back at me. “You doing okay?”
I look up at her, breathing heavily, and I give her a thumbs-up.
I’m impressed by Theresa’s pace and agility. “How did you start doing this?” I ask.
“My mom was in the military. When we lived in Germany, we’d take trips over to the Swiss Alps, and that’s when I fell in love with hiking.”
That explains so much about her style of guiding me. “How did you get here?”
“Fate, I guess. Followed a man down here. He broke my heart. He left; I never did.”
Ouch, I think, remembering my last encounter with Nolan. “Yeah, I know how that works.”
We’re getting close to the top, and it looks like the clouds are breaking. I look at myself. Half wet from sweat and half wet from rain, I’m practically standing at the edge of this volcano already. The base of it is hundreds of feet below me. My heart races with the idea of looking out over the top of the island, staring at an endless sea in all directions. We maneuver more bends and more gigantic roots. Then, for the first time, we break the forest’s canopy.
We’ve made it. I conquered a storm, a jungle, and a volcano to get here. I look out into the distance. In front of me are miles and miles of sea, and I’ve got the best view in the house. I feel as though I’m standing on top of the world.
“Wow… Brian was right.” This is what I came here for, and I didn’t even know it.
5
Nolan
Monday, December 28
* * *
11:43 a.m.
I gaze out the front window and across the snow-covered lawn. I just called Abby, and I’m waiting for her to answer. I wonder if she had a good Christmas. Since Bill died, the Patricks skipped the whole tradition of exchanging gifts, trimming the tree, and having the Christmas roast. My mother tried to convince me to drive to Madison, Wisconsin, to have dinner with her, Sam, my stepfather, and his four kids, but I declined. I’m not in a festive mood. It’s difficult to get over the fact that, for the first time in my life, my father and I do not live in the same world, and that realization makes me feel like shit.
Yesterday was the reading of the will. To my surprise, my father left just about everything he wanted me to have to me and Kelsey, even though she and I have been divorced for almost a year. Kelsey remained an angel in Bill’s eyes, and I loved him too much to shatter that illusion. She cheated on me twice before I filed for divorce. I’m positive that if I had revealed that to him, he would’ve seen through the good-wife and want-to-be-a-mother image she portrayed in front of him.
This call to Abby, like the others, goes to voicemail. “Shit.” I stop myself from lobbing the phone at the wall and chartering a flight directly to St. Kitts.
A navy-blue sedan pulls up into my driveway. “Liza,” I whisper and stuff my cell phone into my pocket.
Wearing a heavy coat, she gets out of the car then opens the back door to fiddle with a child’s car seat. She’s brought the baby, Aiden.
Since it’s so cold out, I dash to the closet, take out my coat, put it on, and rush out to help her. When I open the front door, Liza is standing in front of me, a bag in one hand, clutching the car seat with warm blankets covering the baby in the other.
“I was coming to help.” I step back to let her in.
She walks past me. “I know you were, but ever since Dad died, I’ve had to take Aiden here and there and everywhere with me. So I’ve become a pro at getting him and myself in and out of the car in record time.”
I follow Liza, who moves through my house as if she owns the place.
“How have you been?” she says.
“I’ve been okay.”
“Then why are you scratching your head?”
I realize what I’m doing and stop scratching my scalp. Liza sits down on the sofa. The blinds are open. She looks out over Lake Calhoun. She takes off her coat and pulls the blanket from over the car seat.
She looks up at me, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “Cute, huh?”
Aiden is cute, as well as little and red.
I smile. “Yeah…” I sit on the chair across from her. “So what’s going on, Liza?”
“I was worried about you. You’re here in this b
ig house by yourself, plus”—she takes a bottle out of the baby’s bag—“I think it’s about time this gets consumed. Remember this?”
I squint at the label. “Is that Dad’s cognac?”
Her face lights up. “Yes, it is. Remember what he said to us?”
“Unfortunately, my memory is foggy.”
Liza looks at me as if she’s worried. “He called this one bottle of cognac ‘the fixer,’ and if we ever needed a fixing when he’s not around, to go get it, drink it, and when we’re finished…”
Suddenly, I can see our father holding the bottle and talking to Liza and me. “Forget all the shit that made us want to have a drink in the first place. But he called it ‘the elixir,’ not ‘the fixer.’”
Liza scrunches one side of her face. “Humph, I’m pretty sure you’re wrong, but never mind—elixir, fixer—go get a glass, and I’ll watch you drink. I’m breastfeeding.”
“Humph. I’m don’t think it works that way,” I say.
She looks at Aiden. “It has to work that way, unless you want to make your new nephew a winebibber.”
I chuckle, and it feels damn good. I haven’t wanted to do that since the morning I kissed Abby before hearing that my father had taken a turn for the worse. I head to the kitchen to take a brandy snifter out of the cabinet. When I make it back to the den, Aiden is still asleep in the carry seat, and Liza is staring listlessly out the window. It’s apparent that she’s here because we’ve both been left awfully lonely and heartbroken by Bill’s death.
She feels my presence and quickly turns her gaze on me. I half smile as I sit on the sofa beside her and pull the diamond-shaped glass cork off the cognac. I pour myself a healthy dose, cup my hand around the base of the glass to warm the liquid, and make myself comfortable.
“How the hell did this happen?” I ask.
“You mean Dad dying?”
“Yeah. I didn’t even know he was that sick.”
“That’s because he didn’t want us to know,” Liza says.
I shake my head. “No shit.”
Liza looks at me then at my glass. “Are you going to drink that?”
I take a sip and let the flavors coat my tongue. “Whoa.”
She lifts her eyebrows curiously. “Is it good?”
“It’s good.”
“Great. It’s just that he should’ve said something. Don’t you think he should’ve said something?”
I sigh and put my glass in my left hand then put my right arm around Liza’s shoulders. After a moment, she’s crying into my armpit. I want to bawl, too, but this is the part where I’m supposed to stay strong for her.
Finally, Liza stops the tears, and I go get a box of tissue so that she can dry her face. We end up talking about how Bill made sure we remained close no matter what.
“Our mothers abhor each other.” Liza smiles. “But we love each other, and that’s all because of Dad.” Her sigh is tinted with a whimper.
“Yeah. He wanted us to be close.”
I can feel Liza thinking during this moment of silence. “My mother’s still alive, but why do I feel as though you’re all I have left?”
I scoff. “Because our mothers are our mothers.”
Liza’s scoff mirrors mine as she shifts in her seat. “Boy, did Dad have bad taste in women.”
We laugh at the absurdity that is our mothers. They both married our father for his money. Liza and I were merely pawns in their quest to keep dollars in their pockets long after Bill divorced them.
“Listen, Lizzie. We’re growing our family. We’ve got Aiden there.”
Right on cue, Aiden squirms and whines but doesn’t wake up.
Liza gazes at her child with stars in her eyes. “Yes… he’s the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
I finish my cognac and have another.
“So when are you going to start seriously working on making a family of your own?” Liza asks.
I cough to keep myself from choking. That question always jumbles my thoughts. It’s not the first time Liza has asked me about my plans to start my own family. She used to try to convince me that having a baby would make Kelsey and me happier. She said that a baby would give us both something to love about each other again. I always believed bringing a child into a messed-up situation would compound the problem, but I never said that to Liza. I don’t like making her unhappy, which is why I haven’t told her all the shit I know about John.
“You know I was at my cabin the week before last,” I say.
“Oh, yeah. What for? Isn’t it buried in snow?”
“I, um, brought someone with me.”
Liza’s eyes shine as she makes herself even more comfortable. “Really? Who?”
I hesitate, wondering if I should tell her. “Abby.”
She feigns shivering, which was caused by being hit by shocking news. “My assistant? Your assistant?”
I shrug.
“Now that I think about it, she’s totally your type,” she says.
I tilt my head and press my lips together. “Why do you say that?”
The baby squirms and moans again, but this time, he opens his eyes and starts crying. Liza takes him out of the seat and unbuttons her shirt.
“Abby has a subtlety to her that you can appreciate,” she says.
I watch her unclamp the middle of her bra cup as if she were a speeding car racing out of control and the only thing left to do is crash and burn.
Liza snaps her finger. “Nolan, don’t worry. It’s almost over.” The baby latches on to her nipple. “There… see. You survived.”
I chuckle. “Sorry, I’ve never seen it up close like this. It’s effortless, though. Take tit out. Baby drinks.”
“Well, big brother…” Liza shifts so that she can feed Aiden more comfortably. “This is what the breasts were designed for—feeding babies, not for men to lust after and suck on.”
I think about how I delighted in the taste and suppleness of Abby’s nipples. “I beg to differ. I think the female breasts are multifunctional.”
Liza rolls her eyes and sighs. “Whatever. Let’s not voyage too far off subject. So you and Abby, huh?”
I fidget. “I don’t know. I like her. I like her a lot.”
“Nolan and Abby…” She nods thoughtfully. “Come to think of it, I like her, too. She’d make a far better sister-in-law than Kelsey. Humph…”
“What do you mean by ‘humph’?”
“Now Kelsey’s behavior at the funeral makes sense. She was all over you, and I wondered why. Now that I think about it, she was all touchy-feely in front of Abby!”
My frown deepens. “I didn’t notice. Do you think Abby thinks I was with Kelsey?” I’m confused about how she could ever come to that conclusion. Kelsey is not the kind of woman that anyone would go back to get a double dose of.
“I did see Abby nearly run out of the church. I was going to run after her and ask if she would like to come to the private gathering.” Liza squints.
“Shit,” I say under my breath.
“What?”
“Abby hasn’t been taking my calls. Maybe she thinks I’m back with Kelsey?” I tilt my head curiously, waiting to hear a female’s perspective.
Liza takes Aiden off the nipple. “I don’t know, Nolan. If you’re referring to Abby’s calls going straight to voicemail, that used to happen when she worked for me. She has one of those old cell phones, and her service provider sucks.”
I sigh with relief. “I’ll try her again.”
Liza winks at me. “I think you should.”
Having her blessing feels good. Abby and I don’t have something serious between us, but I can see us getting closer. I have another drink, then Liza insists that I hold Aiden for a little while. She wants me to get used to having a baby in my arms because some psychic at a Tupperware party she went to said that her brother, which would be me, is going to get remarried and have a baby within the next two years.
“You know that’s hogwash,” I say.
> She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Just get used to having a baby in your arms.”
Despite wanting to give Aiden back to her, I hold him. He’s my first real nephew, and what I feel for him is instant love. Two hours later, we’ve shared some great memories of our dad, I’ve put down a couple glasses of Bill’s fine cognac, and there is plenty left for when Liza is no longer breastfeeding. She packs up Aiden, we hug, and she leaves. Less than five minutes after Liza’s gone, my doorbell rings. I shuffle to the foyer, thinking it’s probably Liza. Maybe she left something.
I open the door, and I’m surprised to see Pete Johnson, the family attorney. It’s not like him to show up without calling. “Hey, Pete. What’s going on?”
His expression is grave. “Do you have a minute? We have to talk.”
* * *
3:23 p.m.
Pete and I are in my study. He’s sitting across from me. “Do you know anything about Bill deeding certain properties to Liza and John?” he asks.
I narrow my eyes and look at him. “Highly unlikely. You were there when the will was read. Bill left half of everything he’s given to me to Kelsey, but nothing he gave Liza to John. That’s pretty telling, don’t you think? My father knew John was a snake in the grass.”
“That’s a great point, Nolan. Maybe that’s something we can use.”
I frown so hard that my brain aches. “What do you mean ‘something we can use’?”
“John’s lawyer presented me with documents.”
“What sort of documents?”
“Supposedly, Bill had submitted warranty deed documents, signing ownership over to John for a number of Liza’s land assets.”
I scoff. “That’s fucking nonsense.” I shake my head as I remember something. “So that’s why he took the acquisition files out of the basement. Dad kept personal and business deeds at the office. He was a one-place-for-everything kind of guy.”
“Right…” Pete lifts a finger pointedly. “But wait, are you telling me John had files taken out of the basement?”
The Sexy Boss - Sedition: Book Two Page 4