by Me, Tara Sue
Bri was utterly captivated the entire night. We drank champagne on the deck, ate dinner, and for one evening I granted myself permission to be only the man by Bri’s side. And for the first time I could remember, I felt free.
We finally made our way back to the marina. It was sobering because as soon as I stepped back on land, I felt the weight of my responsibilities and burdens fall back down around my shoulders. I compared it to being forced to wear a weighted scarf in the middle of a heat wave.
“I wish we could stay on the yacht forever,” Bri said with a frown in her voice. A quick look told me she’d been hit with her own responsibilities and burdens.
“Me too,” I whispered.
We’d spent more time on the water than I’d expected. Not that doing so was a big deal. We’d both obviously needed the down time. But it was getting late, and I knew the right thing to do would be to call and have the driver pick us up. Then I could see that Bri made it safely inside her apartment. Alone. But, hell, when had I ever done the right thing?
So instead of giving the driver her address, I slipped him a piece of paper with my downtown penthouse address printed on one side.
“Hungry?” I asked Bri as the car pull into traffic. The night had grown a bit chilly while we’d been on the yacht, and I’d draped my jacket over her shoulders earlier in the evening.
“After all that delicious food? Are you crazy?”
“It’s quite possible I might be,” I said. “One or two people have insinuated as much. Though I have to say I always expected the signs of impeding craziness would amount to more than a lack of good dietary sense.”
“In that case, no, I’m not hungry. I’m so stuffed I may not find it necessary to eat until next week sometime.”
My plan had been to keep her distracted so she wouldn’t notice we were headed in the opposite direction of her apartment. On someone else, it might have been a simple thing to do, but I’d somehow forgotten it appeared she was memorizing the landscape outside her window.
“I think your driver took a wrong turn just now,” she said.
“Only if we’re going to your apartment.”
She looked at me with the strangest expression on her face. “Aren’t we? I thought that was the point of this date.”
“You might have thought that you and I were on the same page, but I never said the point to our date tonight was for you to end up at your apartment.”
“So where are we going?”
“I’d like to take you to my place in the city.”
“Your place in the city? Does that mean you have more than one place?” she asked.
I chuckled. “Yes. I’ll admit it’s a bit of an obsession. Buying property. I blame it on my childhood and never having a place that felt like home.” I reached down to where her hand rested on the space between us, gently putting my hand atop hers. “Will you come by my place? Just to talk. Nothing more.” She raised an eyebrow. “Unless you especially want more,” I added.
“Talking’s a good plan for now,” she said and turned to look out of her window.
Her answer was simple and expected, but there was something she left unsaid in the moment before she turned her head. I wasn’t sure what it was, but for some reason it left me feeling sad.
Chapter 13
Bri
I hadn’t recovered from Piers’s statement on why he had so much property. It made complete sense to me. I’d admit it probably seemed over-the-top the first time someone heard about it. But all you really had to do was listen to why. To be honest, after hearing Piers and watching his expression as he spoke, his reason for having all that property sounded more logical than the Organization’s.
If I brought it up to my handler, he’d say Piers was an outstanding actor and all he was doing was drawing me in. It wouldn’t be a fun discussion, and more likely than not, he’d pull me from the assignment. I couldn’t take that risk.
The deeper and deeper I found myself in the mess that was my life, the more and more it no longer made sense. I needed to buy some time. Time that would allow me to uncover the truth. Which meant I was going to have to step it up and play both sides for now. One problem was I’d never had a reason to stall whenever the Organization asked me to do jobs before, and I wasn’t sure of my ability to pull it off without giving myself away.
I knew, however, that Piers was a distraction. Which was another problem because he was also my target. It wasn’t as if I could solve everything by staying away. I had no choice but to interact with him, but I had a choice about how I interacted with him.
I chewed on the inside of my cheek as the driver pulled up to a high-rise not too far from Bachelor International. While I sat in the back of the car with him, his hand gently cupping mine, I vowed our physical relationship would go no further until I knew what was going on. With that decision made, it probably wasn’t a good idea to be heading to Piers’s apartment. Not that I worried about him trying to force me into something I didn’t want to do. No, I worried that if things got hot and heavy, I wouldn’t be able to stop or to say no.
I glanced up to find Piers watching me through the reflection of the window. He looked to be in deep thought.
“We’re here,” he said, meeting my gaze in the glass. “I’ll understand if you don’t want to come up. I don’t have a problem turning this car around and taking you back to your place. Whether I come inside once we’re there is up to you.”
I tried to see his statement as a chance, an out, a way to ensure nothing physical happened between us. For tonight, at least. I should have told him that was exactly what I wanted and demanded we make our way back to my apartment. But when I looked at him, I saw the man who had arranged this entire evening, from the car and yacht to the dinner and harbor tour. All because he wanted to show me his city. He wanted to give me an opportunity to do something I’d enjoy but wouldn’t plan or arrange to do myself. He’d allowed me to see more of who he really was, and I’d watched that man in real life, his actions, not merely words on a page.
Call me a greedy little bitch—I’d agree wholeheartedly—but I wanted more.
I gave him my best smile. “I’d love to see inside one of your homes.”
Thirty minutes later, Piers had finished giving me the tour of his penthouse. He said he stayed at this location during the week when he had a lot of meetings downtown. I asked if he ever spent the weekend in the city, and he looked at me as if I were mad. I took that as a no.
“If you don’t stay here over the weekend, where do you go?” I asked.
I’d thought it was a simple question, but to see his reaction, it was nowhere near being simple.
He took a deep breath. “Where I stay on weekends depends on what my plans are and how I’m feeling.”
I nodded. That made sense, and it must be nice to have so much money you actually had to stop and ask yourself to pick which house you wanted to stay at. As far as homes went, his penthouse wasn’t bad.
It seemed to fit him. Dark wood. Rich leather. Deep jewel tones. Yet when I looked deeper, something was off. Though the space seemed to fit him, it really didn’t. Instead it reminded me of hemming your pants because they were too long. They fit everywhere else and if you didn’t look too closely, you’d never see the modifications. But that didn’t change the fact that the fit had to be manipulated in order to work properly.
“You didn’t decorate this place, did you?” I asked as we stood in front of a large window overlooking the city.
It obviously wasn’t a question anyone had asked very often because it appeared to leave him momentarily flustered.
“No,” he finally said. “I didn’t. I helped an interior decorator a few years ago. She wanted to decorate for me as a thank-you for helping get her business back after her ex-husband attempted to take it away.”
I nodded, still looking around, trying to put a finger on what it was exactly that seemed off. But whatever it was evaded me.
“What made you ask that question s
pecifically, if you don’t mind me asking?” he asked.
“I didn’t mean anything negative with my comment,” I tried to explain. “But when I look around, it’s almost as if I’m seeing what you think your penthouse should look like as opposed to how you really want it to look.”
It was a horrible explanation even in my head, and I was sure it didn’t come across better when voiced out loud. I glanced around, trying to find an example. My gaze fell on a long wall where several paintings were displayed.
I tried to explain. “Imagine you’re looking at art to decorate with and you decide to go with Salvador Dali. There’s nothing wrong with his work. He was very talented and his paintings are incredible. However, secretly you prefer Johannes Vermeer. For some reason though, you believe people would expect to find a Dali in your house as opposed to a Vermeer.”
His forehead wrinkled, as if he had to process what I’d said. Then just as quickly, his expression changed, and he broke into a huge grin. “You were always like that, weren’t you? I’d forgotten until right now how you never looked at things quite the same way as anyone else. Yet you almost always could read situations and people better than most. Good to know how little you have changed.”
But I have, I wanted to tell him. I didn’t know how much until right that minute. It struck me how very far I’d traveled from the person I thought I’d be. Plus, I was so confused because I thought I had been working on the right side. Now, it wasn’t so clear, and I wasn’t so certain. How could destroying Mia and Tenor be the right thing? Even if it was to get to Piers. Who day by day I was believing less and less had done any of the wrong I’d been told.
I didn’t know how to respond to his words, so I didn’t, and in the end, it didn’t matter because the next words he spoke upended my entire world.
“I keep meaning to ask and keep forgetting,” he said, oblivious to the turmoil I was experiencing inside at the moment. “How is your grandmother doing?”
Chapter 14
Piers
I hadn’t lied to her. I had been meaning to ask how her grandmother was doing. Frankly, I thought it was a bit strange Bri had yet to bring up the woman. Seriously? We’d spent years together thinking we had no family, and one day her grandmother shows up out of the blue and sweeps her away before she can say goodbye to anyone, and she never mentions her? Not even once?
But to see Bri’s face after I asked how the lady’s doing, you’d have thought she’d never heard of her. It seemed fruitless to repeat the question—she’d obviously heard it the first time—so I waited for her response.
“What grandmother?” she finally asked, her expression completely blank.
Her reply pissed me off. What grandmother? That was her answer to me after leaving me all those years ago?
“What grandmother?” I repeated back to her. “I was only aware of one. Have you been reunited with both of them?”
Her blank expression crumbled into grief. “What kind of game are you playing with me? You know I have no family.”
Something was wrong. Neither her expression nor her words made sense within the parameters of our current conversation. The room seemed to vibrate with a low-level buzz—or perhaps it was my brain; I wasn’t able to tell which. All I knew was that something was very, very wrong.
I took a deep breath. I’d dealt with a lot of shit in this world during my life. A little more wouldn’t kill me.
Making myself act far calmer than I felt, I started from the beginning. “When we were at that last children’s house, the day you left. I decided to wait for you to finish and walk home with you. Newsome drove by while I was waiting and said your grandmother had picked you up earlier.” I blinked back the wetness threatening to gather behind my eyes. Fucking bloody hell. I hadn’t cried in twenty-five years, and I for damn sure wouldn’t start now. Especially in front of the cause for the tears. “That’s the grandmother I was asking about, but if you have an answer for your other one, I’ll extend the question to her as well.”
“I can’t think of a way to reply to any of that garbage you just spewed.” She took a breath, probably to gear up for her next comeback. I beat her to it.
“No, the real garbage was you leaving to go off on your merry way and not to have the basic kindness to let me know.” I gritted my teeth. “Not one word.”
She didn’t reply, rather she stood there, obviously shocked that I called her out on her actions. She shook her head. “I don’t understand how you can make up all this stuff. That’s not the way it happened. Did you have a traumatic head injury you didn’t tell me about? Were you unconscious for months, living in an alternate universe where this grandmother of mine supposedly resides?”
Unbelievable. Yes, people lied. It was a given. But normally they’d come around and admit their deceit or at least try to joke about it when confronted.
No problem. Obviously, my current approach wasn’t working out the way I’d thought it would. Irksome, yes, but not the end of the world. I crossed my arms, straightened my shoulders to take advantage of my full height, and spoke in the calm voice I used while in the middle of high-stakes negotiations. “Let’s go about this another way. You tell me your recollection of that day’s events.”
I truly thought she’d give up at that point and concede she’d left with her grandmother. As it turned out, I couldn’t remember a time I’d been more wrong. Not only did she not give up or concede, but she squared her shoulders and gave me that look. The one all women have. The one designed to make your balls shrivel up into raisins. Normally, I held my own against the Look, but I struggled with the one she gave me. Probably because the low-level buzz in my brain hadn’t stopped yet.
“You are an ass for making me relive this, but fine.” The way she spoke left me no doubt she was anything but fine. “I finished my tutoring that day, and when I made it to the house, Mr. Newsome was waiting to tell me you had left. He said you were on your way to the school that had offered you the scholarship. I asked if you mentioned me at all, and he laughed. Then he told me the only thing you’d said was how glad you were to be leaving behind the burdens of your past.”
Completely gobsmacked, I couldn’t get my mouth to form any words. But I noticed the buzzing sound had increased.
“I never knew you considered me a burden.” She blinked, and a tear rolled down her cheek. All the rage she’d displayed earlier was gone. In its place were hurt and heartbreak. “Why didn’t you say anything? I thought you wanted me to go with you to that school. I felt like such an idiot when I learned the truth.”
“No.” I shook my head. “That’s not how it happened. I never said you were a burden. I never even thought it.”
She shrugged. My words wouldn’t convince her. I wasn’t one hundred percent certain what happened that day so long ago, but it was clear something had. She believed her side was correct as much as I believed my own. I remembered hearing once that there were, in fact, three sides to every story: his side, her side, and what actually happened.
With only two sides, we needed one more. There were probably several ways to get the full story, but in that moment, knowing the third side felt unimportant when compared to proving to Bri I had never considered her a burden.
“I know my words alone aren’t enough to convince you otherwise,” I said in reply to her shrug. “But I have something that might.”
Bri said nothing. Rather, her eyes followed my hand as I reached for my wallet. Inside and nestled alone was a worn sheet of folded paper. Before this conversation, I wasn’t sure why I’d kept it all these years. But as I slipped the paper out and gave it to Bri, I was pretty sure it was for this exact moment in time.
“What is it?” she asked.
I nodded toward it. “Open and see.”
Her fingers trembled, working to unfold the square. Though I’d carried it with me for years, I very rarely opened it. There was no need for me to see the paper because I knew how it looked and word for word what it said.
When it
was unfolded completely, she looked up at me.
“Read it,” I told her. “That’s what I wanted to show that day. That’s why I was waiting for you to come out.”
Her eyes dropped back to the letter. Simply stated, it informed me that Bri had also been selected to receive a scholarship. As it turned out, she’d applied shortly after I had, and they had made the decision to award her the scholarship for her grade level before my ultimatum that I would not attend without her.
“I don’t understand,” she said, her eyes once more watery as more tears threatened.
“You were supposed to go with me,” I said. “There’s no way I would have left without you. But I had to because you left me first. You didn’t even wait to see if you got in.”
“I assumed when Mr. Newsome told me you were going, they had turned me down. That’s what he insinuated to me anyway.”
Our gazes met, and at that moment we both realized the same thing. We’d been lied to and had never questioned that lie.
“Why would he do that to us?” she asked. “Why? What would have been so horrible about you and me moving out of the home and going to school together?”
“I can’t think of any reason he’d care,” I said. “You would think he’d be happy with the way he was always complaining about how much we all cost him. Hell, he could have gotten rid of two of us at one time. That should have been akin to winning the lotto.”
“We have to find him.” A settled look had come over her face, and she no longer appeared to be close to tears. No, if anything, she looked mad as hell. “I wonder if he’s still alive.”
I had a vision of Bri dressed in all black. A cat burglar, sneaking into his house to get the truth out of him once and for all, one way or another. She’d be damn hot.
“I’m not sure,” I said, telling myself now was not the time to be thinking of such things. “I remember him being old as dirt when we were kids. If he’s still alive, no doubt he’s at least one hundred and three. And I bet he’s still in London.”