The Unblocked Collection

by Marni Mann

  “I’m happy she’s meeting your expectations, Derek. As our top agent, I trust you’re in the best possible hands.”

  If he only knew how capable those hands and those lips were. After our talk, I was scared to fucking death neither would ever touch me again. As fragile as she had been about making things work between us, I didn’t want her to end our relationship because I’d kept her in the dark. She was the first woman I’d wanted to actually be with since Taylor, and it had only been a few days since she’d fully given herself to me. I couldn’t lose her now.

  “She’s more than met my expectations,” I confirmed. “She’s exceeded them. You should be proud of her. You’ve raised quite a daughter, and quite a gifted agent.”

  Frankie smiled awkwardly at her father and stood from her chair, resting behind it with her hands on the wooden frame. “Derek’s a busy man,” she said. “I don’t want to keep him longer than we have to.”

  “Thanks for stopping in, Derek.” Garrett went to shake my hand, this time just reaching across his desk. “I’m glad we finally got the opportunity to meet. Should you need my help, don’t be afraid to reach out.”

  I moved next to Frankie. “If you find yourself in the area, you should stop by Timber Towers. I’d like to show you the building.”

  “I might just do that.”

  I followed Frankie into the hallway and we began walking back toward her wing. I could feel the emotion coming off her body, and I knew she sensed mine. I didn’t know what would happen once she closed the door to her office, but I knew she would finally hear the truth. What she did with it was something I couldn’t control.

  “He knows what he has in me,” she whispered.

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Do you think your comment is going to change the way he thinks?”

  I didn’t have time to give her an answer. We had arrived at Brea’s desk and she was handing Frankie a piece of paper.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” Brea said, “but this just came in, and it requires your immediate attention.”

  Frankie read the sheet, which looked like a client’s closing statement. “He’s changing the price? Now? We’re minutes from going into escrow.”

  “I know.” Brea nodded. “When I tried to discuss it with the agent, it didn’t go over well.”

  “Has Giovanni seen this?”

  “Yup. It’s been an ugly few minutes.”

  “Oh God.” Frankie turned around, her arms folded over her stomach. We both needed her…and she didn’t know what to do.

  This was the balance she had to establish, and she had to know I supported it. “Come by my place tonight. We’ll talk there.”

  “You’re staying in the city?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know what time I’ll be finished. This could take a while and—”

  “Take as long as you need. I’ll be there waiting for you.”

  Seconds passed as we stared at each other. I wanted to pull her into my arms, to feel her again, to smell her hair and the perfume on her cheeks before I walked out. But I couldn’t do that here—not in her office, and not until I was honest with her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  I nodded at her, then at Brea, and continued walking to the elevator.

  FOURTEEN.

  FRANKIE

  IT WAS AFTER SEVEN by the time I returned to the office. It had taken hours of negotiation, but the seller, the agent, and Giovanni had finally settled on a price…for the second time. The sales floor was quiet, except for the humming of the computers and the ringing of unanswered phones. A single light shone over Brea’s desk; she was the only one still here on this side of the building. The rest of the area was dark.

  She appeared deep in thought as I approached. “You look like you could use a glass of wine.” I sat in the seat in front of her desk, lifting my feet out of my heels so I could rub my toes. They were killing me from all the walking I’d done today…and all the pacing.

  She slowly looked up. I didn’t like the expression on her face. “I could use more than one. You will too when you see this…” She reached inside her desk, removed a folder, and placed it in front of me. “I got what you asked for.” My brows rose, unsure what she was referring to. “The information on Taylor,” she clarified.

  It had been such a long day, I’d forgotten. And I’d only sent Brea that text two days ago. I didn’t expect her to get the information so quickly. “What did you find out?” I lifted the top of the folder.

  “Don’t read it now,” she told me. “Go home, pour yourself a glass of wine, and take your time with it.”

  I released the folder, searching her eyes for an answer. I had a feeling that whatever was waiting for me on those papers was going to surprise me. “This day is about to get worse…isn’t it?”

  She shrugged. “Derek did say he’s staying in the city tonight, so maybe there’s hope.”

  She had a point. But there was something bothering him, and I had a feeling it had to do with me. All I wanted was to strip off my clothes in the entryway of his townhouse and have him fuck every bit of stress out of me. I was pretty sure that wasn’t going to happen now. Instead, tonight was going to be full of talking—and when Derek finally shared his feelings, something was going to change between us. I just knew it; I could feel it. My hope was that it would bring us closer, but that wasn’t guaranteed.

  I pulled Giovanni’s paperwork out of my bag and exchanged it for the folder. “Do I want to know how you got all the information on her?”

  Her lips spread wide and her nose scrunched. That was her guilty grin. “Definitely not. And most of what I gave you is off the books. So…you know…be careful with it.” I put my heels back on, draped my bag over my shoulder and stood. “Call me if you need me. I’m going to head home now too,” she said. She rounded her desk and hugged me. “I know this has been a bit rocky, but I think things are about to clear up.”

  I leaned back so I could look at her face. “What makes you think that?”

  “I just have a hunch. And usually my hunches are right.”

  God, I hoped she was right.

  ***

  I placed a glass of wine on the coffee table in my living room, set a full bottle near it so I wouldn’t have to get up for a refill and dropped the folder between them. Then I sat on the floor and crossed my legs with all of it in front of me. I didn’t know how else to prepare, so I wrapped my fingers around the stem of the glass, held it to my lips, and lifted the top of the folder.

  I sipped while I read the first sheet. It was a brief bio, listing Taylor’s marital status, date of birth and her social security number. It didn’t surprise me Brea could find this information, since she seemed to have connections all over the city. What surprised me was how accessible all the information was—accessible and somewhat scary, knowing someone could find this information about me, too. As I read it over, the page explained that she wasn’t currently employed, but had an affiliation to White Construction…

  White Construction?

  I repeated the name in my head again, trying to figure out why it sounded so familiar. A quick search on my phone brought me to the company’s website and a list of developments it had built along with their locations. I’d heard of only one project they had done in Boston. It had been a small build-out, less than thirty units. It wasn’t of the best quality, according to my standards, it had still sold out rather quickly. I hadn’t taken any of my clients there, but one of the agency’s buyers had purchased a unit.

  She’d said her company was transferring her to Boston where they were opening an office, yet this showed she was unemployed. I wondered about her affiliation to White Construction, and what it entailed. Maybe she really did marketing for them and it was off the books, but she certainly didn’t work for an agency like she had said. And a construction company wouldn’t be selling T-shirts and fun pens, as she’d suggested.

  I flipped the page, where a detailed list of her job hi
story was broken down by year and employer. She’d worked as a waitress in Miami, a short-term admin at a dentist office in Denver, and several more waitressing jobs in Phoenix. Her last job was at an Italian restaurant and had ended several months ago. There were no marketing agencies listed, and definitely no titles that would give her the experience. The only thing that had been truthful so far were the states she had mentioned living in.

  If her affiliation to White Construction were a paid position, it couldn’t have had anything to do with her marketing experience; she clearly didn’t have any. And if she’d been unemployed for the past few months, how was she affording an apartment that cost five thousand a month?

  The third page showed all the addresses where she had lived over the years. In each of the cities, she had moved multiple times, never staying in a place longer than a year. She had evictions on her record, collection agencies after her for unpaid utilities.

  Something wasn’t right.

  I pulled out my phone again and logged into my company’s network. I scrolled through the leasing database, searching for Taylor’s name. One of the agents had taken her to look at several units today, which meant we must have her application on record. Sifting through her file, it showed her background and credit check hadn’t yet cleared, but she had passed the financial inspection. A picture of her bank statement had been scanned into the system, showing a sum of over twenty thousand in her checking account, proving she could afford the five thousand dollar rental payment.

  This didn’t make any sense.

  I returned to the folder and flipped to the next page where her finances were broken down. Her tax return from the previous year showed she had made less than twenty-five thousand the whole year. How had she so suddenly received such a large increase in pay?

  My phone started to ring from somewhere on the floor. Once my fingers found it, I automatically swiped the screen and held it up to my ear. “Hello?” I moved on to the tax return from the previous year where about the same income was listed. “This is Frankie.”

  “It’s me…”

  The sound of his voice made me freeze. It was too late to hang up. Why hadn’t I checked the caller ID before I answered? “Reed. What can I do for you?”

  “I’ve been calling and texting you for days. Jesus, Frankie, what the hell does it take to get you to pick up the phone?”

  Why wouldn’t he just leave me alone? I didn’t want to talk; I didn’t want to text. I didn’t want to be relentlessly pursued. There was nothing to pursue, nothing to salvage. We were done. I didn’t think I could make that any more obvious.

  “I’m hanging up.”

  “No,” he yelled. “You need to listen to me.”

  “I don’t need to do anything.”

  “Please at least hear me out. It’s about Derek.”

  Anger was building inside me—not just from my lack of patience when it came to Reed, but at the mention of Derek’s name. How dare he speak to me about him! For all the pain Reed had put me through, he had no right to talk about someone I actually cared about.

  “Do you know that Hayden and Derek have different last names, but they were born from the same parents?”

  I didn’t recall Derek ever mentioning Hayden’s last name. There was no reason for him to and all this time I had just assumed it was Block.

  “I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation—”

  “Reasonable?” he said as he laughed. “Your boyfriend is a fucking psycho, and he had to change his name. I wouldn’t call that reasonable.”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Then why, when I search the internet for Derek Block, are the results only related to his business? There aren’t any mentions of him in high school or college, nothing from his personal life. Before he started his company, Derek Block didn’t exist.”

  There was a reason for all this, I was sure of it. Derek was private, closed in, protective of his emotions, but I didn’t get the sense he was a liar.

  “I’m sure there aren’t any articles about my younger years either, Reed.”

  I wasn’t an athlete; I didn’t receive top honors. I worked. And I blended in as a child and young adult; until I got my real estate license, there was no reason for there to be any articles about me. The same could have been true for Derek.

  “I knew you were going to say something like that. I’m looking at one right now, your name listed in the newspaper when your Girl Scout troop sold the most cookies in the country. You broke national records.”

  “I was seven when that happened.”

  “So you see my point, then? Everyone has a past that can be tracked, Frankie—everyone, except your Derek Block or Derek White, or whatever the fuck his name is…”

  “What did you call him?”

  “Hayden’s last name is White. I made the connection and searched, and found an article on a Derek White having been at the scene of a construction accident. No pictures to confirm it, but enough of a connection to come to a pretty solid conclusion.

  Derek White?

  “I have to go.”

  “Frankie—”

  “Good-bye, Reed.” I hung up, but continued to hold my phone, once again pulling up the website for White Construction. I searched through the different pages until I found the one that outlined the company’s history. It had been founded over twenty-five years ago by Randy White.

  Randy…

  It had to be him…the man Derek despised.

  I needed to figure this all out so I began summarizing the points I knew to be true: Taylor’s employment history wasn’t consistent with what she had said; her financial records showed she barely scraped by. Somehow she was able to afford a high-end apartment in the city. She was affiliated to White Construction, which was owned by Randy White.

  Hayden’s last name was White.

  Derek’s last name was…White, too?

  His tattoo. The one that ran from his armpit to his waist. White. He had told me it was his favorite color and I didn’t believe him. Your favorite color is in the beige family…or whatever color lingerie I happen to be wearing when you take it off with your teeth. But it’s definitely not white.

  Why had Taylor come back to the city? It wasn’t for the so-called job she talked about. Maybe it was for a different job…one with Randy White, and one that was off the books.

  Was it Randy she was talking to in the bathroom at the restaurant? I’ll stay on him, don’t worry, she had said. I’ll get everything you need, but you’ve got to give me a few more days.

  My head started to spin all the details together: Taylor was working for Derek’s enemy. She wanted something from Derek, something she could give to Randy.

  Still, none of that explained why Derek’s last name wasn’t really Block, or why he hadn’t told me the truth. As his agent, I understood why he wouldn’t share that information. But as his girlfriend, that was something important enough to mention. He had opened up so much during our weekend in Portsmouth, but not enough to tell me who he really was.

  And if he hadn’t told me who he really was…what else had he lied about?

  I picked up my phone again and called him. After four rings, I was sent to voicemail. I called again as I tucked all the papers back into the folder, stuck it into my bag and grabbed a jacket. I had to get to the bottom of this.

  I just hoped his answer wasn’t going to signal the end of us.

  FIFTEEN.

  DEREK

  A KNOCK at the front door woke me. I had been asleep on the couch, my feet resting on the coffee table, the remote still in my hand and a movie playing on the TV. The clock on the cable box showed it was a quarter past eight. Frankie had finished with work earlier than I thought she would.

  I walked to the front door, checking the peephole before I opened it. It was dark outside; the streetlamps barely lit the space in front of the door, and I’d forgotten to turn on the light. There was still enough of a glow to show the bright blond hair a
nd plump lips of Taylor Hall.

  Son of a bitch.

  I cracked the door. “Don’t tell me my mom gave you this address, too?”

  She laughed and held up a bottle of wine. “It’s the same one you ordered at the restaurant. Let me in for a minute so we can talk.”

  “I’m not in the mood to talk to you, Taylor.” She was the last person I wanted to see standing there. And why the hell was she here, anyway? Her fucking balls kept getting bigger.

  “Your mom would be pissed if she knew you kept a lady standing in the cold.”

  “My mom isn’t here. You shouldn’t be either.”

  “Two minutes.” Her whining was becoming obnoxious. “Derek, don’t make me beg.”

  “What do you want?”

  She reached inside her jacket and removed a stack of papers. “I was hoping you could help me pick a place?” She smiled. “Unless you want me to rent the unit two doors down from you. According to this list, it’s still available.”

  I knew it hadn’t been rented out yet. And I knew I should have bought that damn place when the owner had told me he was putting it up for sale. Some out of state investor had snagged it, rehabbed the whole unit and turned it into a rental.

  “I don’t want you living next door.” I hadn’t even bothered to hide my true feelings.

  “Then let me in so you can pick where you want me to live.”

  It wouldn’t hurt to choose a location for her that was on the other side of the city. Then she wouldn’t need anything else from me, and I’d be able to get rid of her. That was the theory, anyway.

  I lifted my arm as I opened the door a little wider. “Five minutes, then you’re out of here.”