by Megyn Ward
We cook and drink and they all got more boisterous and rowdy. After we downed the shrimp and finished the champagne and beer, I start to relax, too. Between the alcohol and everyone else’s good mood, my defenses weaken and soon I’m joking and teasing with them.
We move to the front porch and since we only have the two kitchen chairs, sit on the floor. Zach and Blake propped on two of the poles that hold up the porch cover. Liesa flat on her back while I sit cross-legged.
“I’m still hungry.” Liesa nudges Zach with her foot. “Go get us some tacos or burgers or something.”
Zach laughs. “Hungry? You ate one shrimp at dinner last night and called yourself stuffed.”
Everyone laughs along with him.
Everyone except me.
I watch Zach, waiting for him to realize what he just said. What he just admitted.
That he hadn’t gotten caught up at work last night like he told me.
He’d been on a date with Liesa.
His gaze flies to mine, so dark and blue I feel my heart stop but I don’t look away. Not until he looks away first.
“What about night diving?”
Liesa’s question draws Zach’s attention. “I love it. That’s the best time to find octopus.”
She sits up and nods like her mind is made up. “I want to do that.”
“I don’t think you’re ready.” I shake my head and frown. “Night diving can be kind of scary the first time and you haven’t even completed your open water certification.”
“That’s what you and Zach are for.” Liesa pats my knee like we’re old friends because according to her, we are. “You saved me today. You’ll take care of me at night.”
“The shop does close tomorrow night...” Blake’s grin emerges. “I can sneak us in and we can dive over by the resort. I saw octopus there last week. Plus, there’s a ton of lobsters and they’re super cool at night.”
“Then it’s settled.” Liesa leans back on her arms to put a foot on Zach’s knee and shoves him again. “Go get food. I’m starving!”
Blake jumps up. “Come on, I’ll go with you.”
I scramble to my feet. “Let me get you some cash.” I didn’t want to embarrass Blake but I knew after the splurge on shrimp and champagne, he wouldn’t be eating much for a week. Before he can protest, I dart into the house. The unexpected shift last night had paid unusually well.
Yeah. You worked last night because Zach stood you up. And he stood you up because he was on a date with Liesa.
“Let me explain.”
I look from counting my crumpled dollar bills to find Zach standing in my bedroom doorway, his broad shoulders inside its frame, completely blocking out my view of the living room.
I have this self-destructive urge to drag him inside my bedroom, shut and lock the door and get him naked. Because even after everything he’s done to me, my stupid ass still wants him.
“Don’t you mean make it up to me?” I say, and I have the perverse satisfaction of watching the color drain out of his face. Counting out enough money to pay for everyone’s second dinner, I cross the room to stand in front of him. “I held up my end of the deal,” I whisper, pressing the wad of bills into his hand. “I got you in with Celebutant Barbie. Now I want what you promised me.” I squeeze my hand around his before letting go. “I want Jonas Knightly.”
Chapter 30
Kylie
I step out onto the porch just in time to see Zach slip into the drivers’ seat of his Mercedes, with Blake riding shotgun.
Within seconds, they’re gone.
Irritated, I step out to the scruffy grass in the front yard.
She follows me. “You’re pretty tense.”
“What? Did you read my aura?”
She bends over in uttanasana. Another advantage of growing up in the snooty sorority house where they had a yoga instructor teach classes three nights a week. I know the pose she struck to stretch. She grunts. “You should encourage inner peace.”
“Right. Like the inner peace you demonstrated when your mother dated that hockey player?”
She jerks upright. “What an asshole. Do you know how much he was paid to make that creepy comment to me?”
It had been creepy. “He got paid to be on your show?”
“Seriously?” She looks at me like I’m brain damaged. “Do you think everything that happens on TV is real?”
I stare at her. “It isn’t?”
“The only real thing on that show is my mother.” Liesa raises her arms over her head in urdhva hastasana, upward salute.
“So you’re not the totally spoiled bitch you are on TV?”
She inhales and the words sound like she’s toked on a joint. “What do you think?”
“Well,” I say, stacking my hands on my hips. “You just let the three of us chip in for food you asked for, without so much as digging in your purse for loose change.”
She lowers her arms and holds my gaze. “That’s because I don’t have any.”
“Any what?”
“Money.”
“What, you only use credit cards?”
“No.” She stares at the night sky. I don’t have any of those either.”
“But you’re rich.”
“The show has made Jonas and my mother rich.” Her mouth turns up in a snarl. “But I don’t have anything.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
She sighed. “Jonas and Mother both hold producer and consultant credits on the show, so the network basically pays them twice. I get paid per episode—and it’s a lot—but by the time I pay all the expenses and Mother and Jonas take their cut, there isn’t much left.
“Wait.” I shake my head, trying to wrap it around what she’s telling me. “The network pays your mother and Jonas and then you pay them too?”
“Mother is my manager and Jonas is my financial advisor.” She ran through a vinyasa complete with sun salutation and cobra pose.
“So you pay all the bills and your mom and Jonas just stand around and collect the cash.”
“Pretty much.”
I think about my own mother. How hard she worked for me. Yes, I worked too but that was because we were a team. She’d never have used and exploited me the way Liesa’s mother does her.
She exhales. “Ratings weren’t so good last season. Mother’s worried. I told her I want to quit. She’s threatening to kick me out of the house if I do. Which, who cares?”
“But it’s your house.” I can feel myself becoming irrationally angry for this girl. “You pay for it.”
“It’s in her name.” She twists her mouth into a grimace and shrugs. “Everything is. She keeps a pretty tight leash on me.”
“But she let you come here on your own?”
“Jonas Knightly is a dear friend of Mother’s”. She extends her arms up again and bends to the right. “That’s Mother Code for lover.”
“They’re having an affair?”
“Not anymore.” She straightens and bends to the left. “No way. Jonas likes them young. I’ll bet he’s every bit as perverted as the writers made that poor hockey player out to be.”
Nothing I heard about Jonas Knightly recommended him as a role model. He’s greedy and self-serving. I’m his daughter. Did I inherit any of his ruthless tendencies? I hope so. I hope I have enough of his blood in my veins to make him pay for Mom’s suffering. “If you quit, you’ll be broke?”
She did uttanasana again. “Yep.”
“What would you do?”
She struck warrior two, then bent into trikonasana. “I don’t know. Get a job, like you. You’re surviving.”
“Barely.” Now it’s my turn to laugh. “You can’t live like this. You have no skills. You couldn’t even be a waitress.”
She moves through a vinyasa and while I wait, struck warrior two on the other side. “You’ll help me.”
“Me?” I gulp. “Why would I help you?”
She collapses into child’s pose. Her face pressed into the gr
ass and her voice came out muffled. “I told you we’re soul sisters. We both have secrets and we’re meant to help each other with that. So I’m going to help you and you are going to help me.”
I plop down beside her. The light from the house cast a soft shadow on her compact form in the grass. “You can’t help me.”
She comes out of the pose and sits cross-legged in front of me. “The first thing you have to do is trust me enough to tell me your secret.”
“I don’t have a secret.”
She smiles in a calm way I can’t reconcile with the girl on TV. “I am your destiny.”
We stare at each other in silence and then both crack up at the same time. “Seriously?” I say.
She wheezes through another laugh and waves her hand. “Okay, that was over the top. But you do have to tell me.”
I don’t know why I feel tempted to do just that. I only met her a couple of days ago. Her life and mine have no similarities. I don’t have any close girlfriends and besides Diana, I never really have—but I don’t even tell her everything there is to know about me.
There’s no way I can just trust this girl because she says it’s in our stars.
I don’t even like her.
“Jonas Knightly is my father.”
She leans back and considers me with a half-smile. “That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“Everything.” She shrugs, pointing her chipped red toenails at me and grins. “Why you grew up without a father. Why you were there the day we met. Why he threw you out.”
I forgot she ran a security check on me. She probably knows things about me I don’t even know. “He doesn’t know I’m his daughter.”
She sobered. “The plot thickens. Spill.”
“My mother met him when she was my age, here on Cayman. She came here to live and dive. She met Jonas and got knocked up instead.”
Liesa clicks her tongue. “Rough.”
I pull some grass and rubs it between my fingers. “Yeah.”
“Jonas didn’t help?”
“Nope.” I toss the grass. “He doesn’t know about me, remember? I gaze out at the dark road in front of the house. “Even if he did know about me, I’m not sure he would have. I think the real reason Mom didn’t tell him about me is because she was afraid he’d reject me. She didn’t want me to feel bad.”
Liesa studies me. “So you’re not here in Cayman just to dive?”
I shake my head.
“You’re going to confront Jonas.” She doesn’t ask.
I nod. “Mom would’ve had so much better care if she’d had his resources. At the very least, she wouldn’t have worried about me, which tortured her at the end.” I swallow hard. “There’d been an experimental treatment we couldn’t do because insurance wouldn’t cover it.”
“What are you waiting for?” She furrows her brow. “Why haven’t you confronted him yet?”
“I need to have proof of paternity first.” I lean closer to her. “DNA evidence.”
“How do you get that?”
Zach was supposed to help me but I have a feeling he’s not going to. When I demanded payment for services rendered earlier he told me he’d take care if but I don’t know if I believe him. Don’t know if I can trust him after...
“I need to get something from him. Hair or gum that he’s chewed. Something that has his DNA on it.” For the first time since Mom died, I feel easy confiding in someone. “Then I can send it to a lab. For a hundred and fifty dollars and two to three business days, I can have results.”
Her eyes widen. “You’re kidding?”
I shake my head.
“I can get your sample.”
My hopes soared. “How?”
“He’s Mother’s dear friend and I’m his cash cow.” She rolls her eyes. “I’ll make some excuse to see him and get your evidence.”
“You would do that for me?” I can barely squeeze the words past the lump in my throat.
“Of course I would.” She looks at me like she doesn’t understand the question. “Look, I know I come off as weird and crazy most of the time but I’m completely serious—you and I are meant to be... more. I knew it the moment I saw you.” She shrugs helplessly. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”
I don’t know what to say so I don’t say anything and we settle to sitting in the dark. “I have to ask you something else,” she says.
“Anything.” I mean it. I didn’t necessarily believe her woo-woo bullshit about soul mates, but I do feel unusually close to her.
She hesitates. “Do you...” She clears her throat. “Do you think Zach likes me?”
My heart clenches like a fist and I ignore it. “Yeah... he seems to really be into you.”
“He’s so cute and sweet and...” She falls back into the grass and stares up at the stars. “I think I’m going to sleep with him.”
My heart clenches again. So does my stomach but I smile because against all odds, I like her. “You think?”
She pauses and in a tiny voice said. “I’m a virgin.”
Holy shit. The one thing I was sure was fake on her show turns out to be the only thing that’s real.
“Do you think I’m a freak?”
“Yes, I think you’re a total freak.” I smile at her and it’s not nearly as hard as I want to be. “But not because you’re a virgin.”
“My Mother’s been pressuring me to lose my V-card on the show.” She holds her hand up, turning it to block out the moon. “She says it’s the kind of thing we need to give our ratings a boost.”
I feel it again. That irrational rush of anger toward her mother. “But you don’t want to?”
She drops her hand and turns her head to look at me. “She has this 3-ring binder full of potential deflowerers.” She makes air quotes with her fingers before dropping her hands onto her stomach. “She keeps trying to get me to pick one.”
“Gross.” It is gross. Her mother is basically a pimp.
“Tell me about it.” She looks away from me again, aiming her gaze at the stars. “At least if I lose my virginity to Zach, it’ll be on my terms, you know?”
“And if you do it off camera, they’ll be no big stunt to save the show.” It’s not a question.
“See?” She grins up at the sky. “Told you we were soul sisters.”
Before I can say anything else, the boys return with a feast of burgers and fries.
Chapter 31
Zach
Since we’d made plans to meet at the resort next to the shop for the night dive at nine, I’m surprised to get a call from Liesa waking me up at noon. She has a late lunch date with Jonas and he’s suggested I join them.
Under the circumstances, I don’t see how I can get out of it. I’ll make a big deal out of Liesa and I being friends and maybe more, and hopefully that’ll appease Jonas. Maybe even buy me some more time to figure out what I’m going to do about the fact that there’s no way I’m going to be able to do what my father signed me up for.
I pick her up and we drive to one of the trendy places close to JK Investment’s office.
I don’t have to make much of an effort since Liesa grabs my hand on the way in and tucks herself close to me. I keep seeing Kylie’s face. Her blonde hair blowing in the ocean breeze, a rare smile lighting up her face.
The hostess seats us in a booth. Liesa slides next to me so our thighs are mash together. We order margaritas and wait for Jonas.
“I’m so pumped to dive tonight,” she says.
“Me, too.” I’m excited, but mainly because I want to see Kylie again. Because I’m a glutton for punishment.
Jonas’s boisterous boom hit us. “We scored a touchdown with that one, buddy!” He was pounding some suit-clad nerd on the back, pumping his hand up and down with the other. “Let’s team up again, soon.”
Jesus Christ. Again with the sports analogies.
The guy looks as enthusiastic as Jonas. A real prep team union. That’s the future Mom and Niles pro
bably had in mind for me.
I’d rather throw myself into traffic.
Jonas turns away from the guy and holds out his arm. A stately woman with snowy hair, a face more wrinkled than smooth, elegantly dressed in flowing pastels, rests a hand heavy with diamonds on his arm. They made their way to the table.
I stand as they approach because, for all her children need to be free ridiculousness, my mother is a stickler for manners.
Jonas flashes me an approving smile. “Mother, this is my newest associate, Niles Lowery’s son, Zach. Zach, my mother, Mrs. Knightly.”
I feel like maybe I’m supposed to kiss her rings like the Queen or the Pope but I shake her offered hand instead. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Knightly.”
Jonas introduces her to Liesa, and we all settle back, linen napkins on our laps, ice water in fine crystal in front of us. Without asking, the waiter brings a martini for Jonas and a white wine for Mrs. Knightly along with our margaritas.
After ordering seafood that will be served in tiny portions, decorated with drips and swirls of reductions and sauces, which will leave me starving, Mrs. Knightly addresses Liesa. “I hope you don’t mind my intrusion, dear.”
Liesa’s smile is open and friendly. “Of course not. Jonas speaks so highly of you and I know he’s devoted. It’s wonderful to finally meet you.”
Jonas leans over and kisses his mother’s cheek. “I am blessed to have such a terrific cheerleader.” He notices someone at the bar. “Please excuse me for a moment. I need to work the room a little before the food arrives.”
Mrs. Knightly beams. “This is why you’re so successful. You go right along, but don’t take too long.”
He deposits his napkin next to his bread plate and hurries off, his loud greeting leaped ahead of him.
Mrs. Knightly lowers her eyebrows and scowls at Liesa. “This is exactly why I insisted Jonas bring me to your luncheon today.” She includes me with a wrinkled finger pointed at my chest. “You too, young man.”
My stomach flips. It doesn’t matter that she isn’t my mother or grandmother, I feel an unpleasant lecture coming on.