[Invitation to Eden 24.0] How to Tempt a Tycoon

by Daire StDenis

  What the fuck are you doing here, Tessa? Why are you here with Chase? What the fuck is going on?

  I pause. Hmm. All good questions.

  Somewhere from a murky part of my brain, I remember receiving an invitation...or did I send an invitation?

  Oh God! Why can’t I remember?

  Did I take something for anxiety? I have prescription anxiety pills for my ‘episodes’ but I never use them. I don’t think the seal has even been cracked. I guess I can check when I get back to the room. That might explain my passing out and lack of memory.

  Or maybe you just need some coffee, Tessa.

  Yes. Coffee will help. I come to a gate, it looks oddly familiar and I have the strangest feeling it’s going to be locked but it’s not. I pass through and after hearing the click behind me, continue along the path through some thicker foliage to where I expect to find the main beach for the resort. However, the beach I come upon is deserted too. In fact, it’s not even groomed. Seaweed lines the shoreline, shells and rocks are littered across the beach, and trees and grasses stretch out like fingers sifting through the sand.

  The sun is nearly overhead and I shade my eyes as I search inland for the outline of the castle. It was so monstrous and imposing, it must be visible from nearly everywhere on the island, but I can’t see it.

  Did I get turned around? Yesterday is such a mess in my mind that I’m not surprised if I’ve gone the wrong way. The island didn’t appear very large when we first landed but distance can be deceiving. Deciding I’m probably better off going back to the villa and ordering room service, I retrace my steps to the gate and try the door.

  It’s locked.

  Shit, not again!

  Wait a second.

  I rub my temples. What do I mean, not again? I haven’t been this way before, have I? No. I would remember.

  Wouldn’t I?

  I rattle the knob and call out to see if anyone is around. I consider trying to scale the wall, but I’m less of a climber than I am a runner, so the ten foot stone barrier is not about to be conquered by Tessa Savage today. My only option is to follow the beach. This is an island after all. Logic says if I follow the coastline I’ll eventually find people and the resort.

  So, I wander down to where the tide has hardened the sand to make for easier going and I start walking. And walking. And walking.

  The further I go, the more wild the terrain. In places there is no sand, only volcanic stone outcrops that must be navigated in order to keep going. My feet are sore, my skin is reddening from the sun and I’m suddenly parched.

  That’s when I see the hut.

  I stop in my tracks. It’s a small square cottage with a thatched roof. It’s so fucking familiar I press my hands to my temples, willing memories I know are buried inside to come out of hiding.

  You’ve been here before.

  Snatches of conversation filter through my brain, incomplete phrases and sentences with no context whatsoever.

  Do you believe in magic?

  What is your greatest fear, Tessa?

  You’ve been chosen by the island...

  The decision you are about to make is critical...

  There is no right path, there is no wrong path. There are just different paths...

  “What the fuck...” I say aloud as I step cautiously into the hut.

  I can’t decide if the weird tingling on the back of my neck is from the cool shade of the hut or something else. There is a bottle of water sitting on a small wooden table, sweating as if it had just been pulled from a refrigerator. Without thinking, I snatch it, unscrew the top and guzzle it down. My throat is so dry I feel the cold liquid coating my entire esophagus all the way down to my stomach. So good.

  Hanging from the rafters is a basket full of bananas. I grab one and head back out into the sun, determined to find my way to some semblance of civilization and once outside I notice there’s a footpath—as if by asking for it, I conjured it—leading from the hut into the jungle behind. A path must lead somewhere, right? There was cold water in the hut, someone had to have put it there. Cold water can’t just magically appear. That’s not possible.

  Taking a chance, I follow the path until it eventually turns into cracked blacktop. My feet should be burning on this surface...except they’re not.

  Which is really strange.

  I stop walking and stare down at my feet. Somehow, someway, I’m wearing flip flops. Fucking flip flops.

  I do not have any recollection of ever putting on flip flops, though they are comfortable and have a vaguely familiar feel to them. Like they’ve been worn so often by me that my exact foot imprint is molded into the base. My steps slow as I continue forward, so many questions swirling around my brain as trees give way to buildings and the path opens up to a deserted lot.

  “What the hell is going on?” I whisper, staring at my surroundings in awe and horror. The jungle is gone. The island is...who the fuck knows?! I press the heels of my hands to my eye sockets. I know what this is. I’ve been traveling a lot. Lots of airports, lots of different time zones. I’ve been working non-stop, moving here and there, rarely taking a break. This is what exhaustion looks like. I’m probably lying in a hospital bed somewhere with tubes snaking up my nose, lying in an induced coma so that my exhausted body can recuperate. I’m dreaming, and the dream feels real because I’m in it, but the minute I wake up, the impossibility of it all will become obvious.

  The alternative is that this is a mental break from reality and I am wandering—aimlessly—the streets of New York or Miami or Paris even, while living completely inside of my head.

  A car horn goes off and I look up.

  I catch myself on the brick wall of a building just before I collapse.

  The street that I find myself on is not just any street. It is the Main Street of Chelsea, Texas, where I spent my teen years. I know it’s Chelsea because I can see the sign for McGraw’s Hardware store and the last four letters are still scratched out—God, you’d think after all these years they’d have fixed it by now—so that it reads McGraw’s Hard—. Slowly I make my way down the street, looking this way and that, so baffled, so confused my brain has ceased to question but is simply absorbing.

  Yep, there’s the post office, the Walgreen’s, the library, the Blockbuster.

  Wait.

  I pause outside the video store, peering in through the window. What the hell? Blockbuster went out of business years ago. No one rents videos anymore.

  That’s when I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window. Not only am I wearing flip flops, I’m also wearing cut-offs and a tank top. My limbs are long and slender. My tummy, super flat. My hair longer than I’ve worn it in years.

  “Holy fuck!” The words explode out of me as I look down at myself, unable to stop from running my hands up and down my body. A couple of people glance sideways at me, as if I’m a perv—which I totally am—but not because I’m feeling myself up at the moment but because I have the body of a teenager. My teenaged body.

  By the way, you would feel yourself up too if you suddenly realized you’ve got your teenaged body back.

  A habit I kicked a decade and half ago—biting my baby finger—shows up and I find my smallest digit clamped between my teeth as I stare hard at my reflection.

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  “Watch your language!”

  I turn to find a mother scowling at me with two little kids in tow. “Teenagers,” she mutters as if it’s a dirty word. As if her kids will never grow up into such horrible creatures.

  She pisses me off because she has no idea what I’m going through right now. Still, I open my mouth to apologize, but instead of an apology, I say, “Fuck you.”

  She snatches her kids’ arms and tugs them along while they stare wide-eyed, about to cry as if I’m the boogieman their mother warned them about.

  I have no idea why I do it, but I flip them the bird.

  The little girl bursts into tears.

  The little
boy flips one right back.

  I laugh.

  Wait a second!

  What is wrong with me?

  “Tessa Savage. Get into this car right now.”

  My head whips around and there is a sight I didn’t think I’d ever see again, the old familiar Parisian Safari station wagon that belonged to my foster mother, Marcy. Worse, hanging out the driver’s window is a dude who is my nemesis, the bane of my existence, the object of all my teenaged angst.

  My sort of foster brother.

  Chase-I’m-fucking-perfect-Walker.

  Chapter Fourteen – Past (Chase)

  As if I’m getting into the car. In his fucking dreams.

  Holy shit, Tess, you have one helluva potty mouth on you.

  I squeeze my temples and do the only thing that makes sense. I keep walking, ignoring the car that moves slowly beside me, driving me insane, making me angrier and angrier with every thwapping step I take.

  “Tessa,” Chase says in that overly patient voice that makes me want to punch him in the face. “Mom is worried sick.”

  I stop. My closed fists fit perfectly against my bony hipbones. “She’s not my mom. She’s yours. An important detail we should not forget.”

  He puts the car in park and turns it off. My reaction is to keep walking—faster—my flip-flops thwacking even more sharply against my heels in the heat. Chase’s heavy footsteps lope closer and closer behind me. Goddammit, I hate him. The anger bubbles up inside of me and fills every nook and cranny so that when he grabs my arm and twists me around, I punch him in the sternum.

  Unfortunately my reaction makes him tighten his grip.

  “Take your fucking hands off of me.”

  “Stop being such a little shit.”

  “I will if you stop being the poster boy for perfection.”

  “Give it a rest.” While my wrist is firmly shackled in his fist, he turns and starts to drag me toward the car. “Let’s go.”

  Digging my heels in—not very effective in flip-flops—I say, “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  This is all bravado because the guy is twice my size and three times as strong. All he has to do is tug and I have no choice but to stumble after him. So, I resort to lunatic tactics, something my seventeen year old self was pretty adept at.

  “Pervert!” I cry, trying to tug my arm out of his grasp. “Rapist fucking pervert!”

  The only indication that Chase is upset by my behavior is the deep flush creeping up from beneath the collar of his shirt.

  “Let go of me, you sicko!”

  “She’s my little sister,” he explains patiently to a curious on-looker. “Dramatic little sister.”

  “I’m not your fucking sister,” I shout as he hauls me around to the passenger door of the car, opens it, pushes me inside and buckles me in.

  Apparently he’s not taking any chances because he doesn’t go around to his door, rather he climbs right in over me. He’s so big and there’s honestly not enough room in the car for both of us that his whole body brushes against mine, forcing me to feel the heat emanating off him, making the clean, male scent of him—like he’d just gotten out of the shower before being sent by Marcy to find me—so strong I can taste him.

  Not that I hadn’t noticed his scent before. Of course I’ve noticed how Chase smells. He’s fucking delicious.

  I hate it so much that I spend a good hour in the bathroom after he’s done showering just so I can revel—in dislike and hatred—in his scent while I rub his wet towel against my cheek, using his shaving cream and razor to shave my legs.

  He pauses for a second while he’s directly in front of me, his chocolate eyes flashing with patient annoyance, his lips grim.

  I’m so mad at him I feel like kissing him just so I can force a reaction out of him. I hate how stoic he is. How good he is. How fucking strong he is. I hate that I can see the muscles stand out along his forearms as he tries to maneuver around me. I hate that my fingers twitch with wanting to touch those muscles to see how hard they are.

  “Two more months, Tess. That’s it.” His chocolate gaze drills into my forehead. “After that there are no more social workers. No more foster homes. You’re on your own. You can go where you want, do what you want.” He shakes his head at me before finally settling into his seat, starting the car and driving off before I have a chance to bolt.

  Once we’re moving, he glances at me. “Mom would love for you to stay, but you can leave, if that’s what you want. All you have to do is turn eighteen and you can do whatever the hell you want. Is it really so hard to be decent for a couple more months?”

  “Yes,” I say like some petulant five year old. I know I’m acting like a little bitch but I can’t help it. Chase brings it out in me. The truth is, I actually really like Marcy. Out of all the foster homes I’ve been forced to live in, she’s my favorite foster mom. She doesn’t try to be my friend, she doesn’t try to be my mother. She just is who she is. She tells me what she expects from me and she means it.

  For example, she expects me to come home in the evening, which apparently I didn’t do last night, not that I can remember where I was, probably sitting under the bridge, throwing rocks in the river, counting the seconds until I can get out of this claustrophobic, small-minded town. I figure Marcy thinks I was out partying, drinking and doing drugs with all the other riffraff that she thinks I hang out with.

  Which I don’t, but I don’t do anything to persuade her from thinking otherwise. I gave up a long time ago trying to get people to see me for who I really am instead of who they believe me to be. Now I just accept the immediate judgments people make of me. I’m a promiscuous little terror, that’s what people decide within the first five seconds of meeting me.

  But with Marcy, things were actually pretty good between us. I mean, I still think she expects the worst from me, but she seems to like me despite that. I thought I could manage living with her until I came of age...until Chase moved back home. Ever since he came back from college, he’s been in my face, in my thoughts, in my dreams. Trying to ‘get through to me’, I guess.

  I fucking hate it.

  Crossing my arms over my chest, because that’s what petulant five year olds do, I ride back to the house in silence. Once he parks in the drive of the modest bungalow, I get out and storm in through the gate, not holding it for him, letting it crash behind me. Stomping into the house, I let the screen door crash behind me too.

  Marcy is sitting at the kitchen table, looking pale, dark circles under her eyes, a cup of untouched coffee in front of her. By the way the cream has gone greasy, I’m pretty sure it’s been there a while.

  She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t need to.

  Whereas Chase brings out the fire in me, Marcy makes me repentant. I sit across from her. “I’m sorry.”

  “We had a deal, Tessa. Home by midnight.”

  “I know. I lost track of time.”

  Her hand moves toward me and stops. Not because she’s having second thoughts about touching me but because this is what she does. She expects me to meet her half way. For whatever reason, I do. I pretty much always do. Our fingertips touch and for a second, a nano-second, really, I feel like a true daughter. Like she is my mom and she is touching me not because the state guidebooks on fostering say it’s important, but because she really wants to.

  She squeezes and then says, “Don’t do it again, please.”

  “I won’t.”

  The door opens and shuts and I cringe, pulling my hand from Marcy’s. I do not want Chase to see me holding his mom’s hand.

  Chase flops into the chair beside me. “Found her walking up and down Main Street in a trance.”

  “I wasn’t in a trance,” I counter.

  He drums his fingers on the table. Chase is way harder on me than Marcy. “You get high last night?”

  “Yeah Chase. I got high,” I snarl. “High enough to fuck the whole football team without having to feel a thing.”

  He cringes like I’ve s
lapped him.

  For some reason, this makes me feel bad.

  Marcy gets up and puts her hands on Chase’s way-too-fucking broad shoulders. “Leave her alone. She’s safe now.”

  Guilt washes over me. I honestly didn’t mean for Marcy to wait up all night for me.

  “You hungry, baby?” Just like that, her anger toward me is gone and my anger toward Chase melts because his mom is so good to me.

  The growling of my stomach won’t let me lie even if I wanted to. I nod.

  “Bacon and eggs?”

  “Yes please.”

  By the way Chase is watching me, I know he’s going to say something, but the silence is interrupted by the sound of cries from the nursery.

  “That’s DJ. Tessa, do you mind?”

  “Course not.”

  I walk down the hall, the thwacking of my flip flops on the linoleum is now a penitent sound.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  The door on the left is the nursery. In the two years I’ve lived with Marcy, there have been numerous babies that have come and gone through these doors, but Dillon James has lasted the longest. He’s the only one staying in the room right now; the other crib and child cot remain empty until the state apprehends another baby from some fucked-up parent. DJ is standing in his crib, his arms outstretched for me, his face flushed from sleep.

  “Hey buddy,” I say quietly. “How you doing? Did you have a good sleep?”

  “Nessie!” He cries, jumping up and down, not sure whether to laugh or cry and ending up with the hiccups.

  I pick him up. Shit, the kid is getting heavy. Lifting his butt to my nose—like I’ve seen Marcy do a million times—I say, “Phew! You did a big one, didn’t you?”

  “Biggun, biggun,” he chants.

  I take him to the change table in the corner of the room and get started on changing the squirming twenty-month-old.