Legal Action - Box Set

by Kimball Lee

  Billy held his gun on the woman who stood in front of Charlotte laughing hysterically, the infamous Natalie, he was certain.

  At that moment, the police broke down the front door and poured into the house and Natalie seized the distraction to dash out the back door.

  Charlotte chased her as she ran out onto the frozen river, and when she was nearly to the middle she stopped on the ice and turned to face Charlotte. She held a pistol pointed at Charlotte’s heart and on her face was a lunatic’s grin.

  “We’ll go together then, princess, but I feel bad for that pretty little baby of yours. He’ll be motherless just like you were, such a shame. Of course, if I survive I’ll sit in jail and know I took your life and caused your son a lifetime of sorrow, and I’ll be happy at last,” she said.

  Charlotte lowered her gun and a look of surprise crossed Natalie’s face. In that split second Charlotte fired round after round into the ice beneath Natalie’s feet, and with a great cracking noise the ice gave way and they both fell through.

  Billy had been standing behind Charlotte, his gun trained on Natalie. He shouted for the police to grab a ladder that leaned against the deck, and he plunged into the freezing water after Charlotte. His coat was dragging him down and he shrugged out of it quickly and felt in all directions in the murky water until his hand touched hair. He grabbed a handful and kicked toward the surface, numb with cold and he prayed it was the right woman.

  The ladder was laid flat across the gap in the ice, and as he surfaced he grabbed onto it and pulled the limp body up beside him. Her long black hair covered her face and he yelled at the waiting policeman to pull her out as he prepared to go back under just in case.

  Billy was never so glad to see a blue face in his life when the policemen pulled Charlotte onto the ice and wrapped her in their coats.

  Maddie had been watching from the bedroom where she’d moved Bly onto the bed and swaddled him in blankets. She’d forced him to drink water, even as tears streaked her face while she watched Charlotte and the crazy woman on the ice. She ran down the back steps and walked next to Charlotte as the police carried her to a cruiser to take her to a clinic in the village. The closest hospital was eighty miles away in Prague, and an ambulance was on the way.

  “Charlotte, Mr. Bly is coming around and he’s asking for you, hold on please. Your little boy needs his mommy, Charlotte, fight dammit!” Maddie said, squeezing her hand and Charlotte’s eyes fluttered open. “That’s it, you’ve gotta stay with us, you want to see your husband and baby, don’t you? I’m taking care of Mr. Bly.”

  “Bly’s alive. I lost Finn’s nice phone,” Charlotte’s voice was barely a whisper, “in my coat, in the cold river.”

  Billy walked beside Maddie, and they both started laughing, and they knew that it would all be okay as Maddie handed Billy her coat.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The ambassador’s helicopter sat off to the side of the Grandhotel Pupp, and Georgina and Henrietta and Charles Tremont watched as police cars went screaming by. When they stopped at the little minor-emergency clinic just up the road, Georgina handed the baby to Henrietta and ran toward them. She grabbed Charlotte’s hand as the men carried her inside the clinic, and although Charlotte was wet and shaking uncontrollably she looked questioningly into Georgina’s face.

  “Finn?” her mouth formed the name without making a sound.

  “He’s coming down off the mountain now, I talked to the head of the ski-patrol and the forest rangers. Shh, no need to worry anymore,” Georgina said.

  “Charlotte darlin’,” Charles Tremont had followed Georgina and was at Charlotte’s side, holding her hand. “We’ll have you in a good hospital in no time, hang on,” he said.

  “How’s Bly?” she whispered to Tremont, who stayed at her side as nurses and two doctors scurried around.

  Tremont looked at the doctor who was working on Bly and he nodded his head, “He’s good, honey,” he told Charlotte, and she closed her eyes and drifted off.

  *

  “Where is my son? Move please, let me see my son! Alexander, oh dear God, Amanda get me some tissue immediately, I’ll ruin my make-up with these tears. Oh my dear boy! Who is in charge here, is this the best medical facility that’s available?” Evangeline Bly held her son’s hand to her cheek while she dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.

  “Mother, they’re working on him, move out of the way so they can do what needs to be done,” Amanda pleaded, pulling her away from Bly so that Evangeline began to cry in earnest.

  “Mrs. Bly? I’m Ambassador Tremont, I have a helicopter waiting to take these young folks straight to a hospital in Prague. You’re welcome to come along with your son if you’d care to. I truly hate to see you so upset.”

  “You are most gracious, Ambassador, I’ll gladly accept. My nerves have almost sent me to the hospital since I got word yesterday that my son had been abducted by a madwoman,” she said, drying her tears and offering her hand and honoring him with a beguiling smile.

  The ambulance could be heard close by, then it passed the clinic and went on the Grandhotel entrance. The radios of the policemen who were standing around began to squawk and they left quickly, racing toward the hotel.

  “What’s happening?” Evangeline asked, and Maddie Newland came in from the cold and told them.

  Housekeeping had gone to clean Bly and Natalie’s room, and discovered the police guard shot in the head and lying in a pool of blood. He was unconscious but the maid heard him groaning and held a towel to the wound and called the hotel operator to send help. The guard regained consciousness, it seemed the bullet had simply grazed his temple and knocked him out. He said Natalie had lured him into the room saying someone was on the phone asking for ransom, then she shot him when his back was turned. The wound bled profusely at first, and she left him for dead. Thankfully it was just a flesh wound, and the officer was going to be fine.

  “I want that woman found and arrested, she should get the death penalty, she meant to kill my son and a police officer,” Evangeline ranted.

  “She is dead,” Billy Kipling said from the back of the room. “She tried to kill Charlotte and I had my weapon pointed right between her eyes, but Charlotte shot into the ice they were standing on, and they both fell into the river. I jumped in and caught a handful of hair. I wasn’t sure who I’d saved at first, I just saw long black hair. Thank God it was Charlotte.”

  *

  Charlotte spent only one night in the hospital and when she opened her eyes in the darkening room, she was still hooked up to several monitors and Finn was sitting on the edge of the bed. She tugged on his shirt and scooted over in bed, and he lay down beside her and whispered, “my love my love” again and again, until she pressed her lips to his to quiet him.

  Her voice had suffered the most from her fall into the icy river, the doctors said she must have screamed so loud and long under water, her vocal chords were damaged. They would heal, but for the time being she could barely whisper, otherwise she was perfectly fine.

  “No, my love,” Finn whispered against her lips as her hand expertly unfastened his jeans. “Charlotte, you were nearly killed this morning, you have no voice and we’re in a hospital.”

  She smiled and held a finger to her lips, signaling for him to hush, and she moved one of his hands between her legs and watched as his eyes turn smoky.

  “You really are incorrigible,” he whispered, “isn’t there a saying of some sort? Something like, “a lady in public and unbelievable in the hospital bed!””

  His fingers slipped between her legs and she moaned a silent moan as he found the wet folds and clit that seemed to vibrate under his touch. She pushed his jeans down and freed his pulsing cock and it was so hot and hard in her hand that she drew in her breath, and no sound came from her wounded throat. She moved her free hand to push his shirt up and off of him, and an alarm began to sound on a machine by the bed. Before he could spring away from her, she wrapped her legs tightly around him and pulled his wond
erful mouth back down to hers.

  A heavy-set nurse entered the room and stopped dead in her tracks, and Charlotte smiled at her and put her finger to her lips once again.

  “Excuse me,” the nurse said, planting her hands on her ample hips, “the Ambassador asked to be notified as soon as the young lady was awake. I don’t believe he’ll care for this at all,” she said in heavily accented English.

  Charlotte gave Finn a sly look and moved her hand to his bare ass so that the nurse looked horrified.

  “Then you’d better wait a little while before you tell him she’s awake,” Finn said, and his lips moved to Charlotte’s neck as she shook with silent laughter, and the nurse turned off the beeping alarm and stormed out.

  “I love you,” Charlotte’s mouth formed the words as her hand guided him inside her, and they both closed their eyes at the hot, wet, ecstasy of that first moment. Then they moved together, their mouths and hands everywhere, tasting, and touching. Until she shuddered silently, and he cried out loudly, and they were happy and didn’t have a care, because they were alive and together.

  *

  After Finn had gone to the bathroom and brought a warm damp cloth and watched her eyes as he moved it over those sensitive parts of her body that he loved so well, there was a knock on the door.

  “I’m not interrupting am I?” Maddie said, poking her head in the room.

  Then Amanda and JP practically waltzed through the door, and JP said, “I’m pretty sure they’re finished from the sound of it all the way down the hall!”

  “Sorry about that, you know my wife, she wants what she wants when she wants it,” Finn said, putting his shirt on as his face turned red.

  Charlotte smiled and smoothed her hospital gown contentedly.

  “Thought you’d get right back to the baby making, huh?” Amanda asked.

  “Bly?’ Charlotte whispered, her eyes suddenly serious.

  “He’s good, he’s going to be fine,” Amanda told her, sitting on the edge of the bed and holding her hand. “That witch tried to kill him, and she shot a policeman and left him for dead. She meant to kill you too, Charlotte, do you remember falling in the river?”

  Charlotte shook her head and closed her eyes, and JP said, “Let’s not go there right now, you get to leave the hospital tomorrow Char, so we’re told. Most likely to keep from scaring the nurses and setting off all the alarms and shit.”

  Charlotte looked past her husband and her friends to her new friend Maddie, and with tears coursing down her face she motioned for her to come closer. She hugged Maddie and her body shook with silent sobs. Maddie cried too, and they held each other for a long while, then Charlotte leaned back a little and mouthed the words very slowly.

  “It was you. You figured out about the sequined dress. You saved us!”

  Maddie shrugged and blushed and said, “Then we’re friends forever?” and Charlotte nodded and pulled Finn into a group hug and Amanda joined them, and JP rolled his eyes and said he was going to find a pub.

  “Where is Atticus?” Charlotte asked Finn, her lips forming the silent words, and he told her the baby was at the Ambassadors hotel suite, safe and sound. So she motioned for him to go with JP, and then she waved her hands wildly for a moment, and reached for a pen and pad of paper and wrote that she wanted to thank Billy Kipling.

  “He’s gone, my love,” Finn told her, “he has a little girl in the middle of America somewhere that he’s never seen, he called his ex-girlfriend and told her he wants to get to know his daughter.”

  “He’s gone home to Kansas,” Charlotte wanted to say, and Finn handed her a thin envelope from the Grandhotel Pupp.

  “He said you were very brave and he was glad it was you that he pulled out of the water,” Finn said, and leaned down to kiss her, then he left to have a beer with JP.

  She laid the note aside and then wrote on the pad, “Take me to Bly.”

  *

  “Alexander Bly wake up,” she whispered with her mouth as close to his ear as possible.

  His eyes blinked open and it took a minute for him to focus on the three women standing beside his bed. They were very beautiful, he thought, one tall with darker than dark hair, one small with auburn hair, and one just the right height, with blonde hair that fell softly around her face and the most alive look in her enormous brown eyes.

  Charlotte sat on the edge of his bed and scribbled on her pad of paper while Bly watched. Then she reached for Maddie’s hand and pulled her close and handed the note to her. Maddie read it to herself and shook her head and tried to step away, but Charlotte held her hand and gave Bly a look, so that he said, “Read the note, please.”

  Maddie cleared her throat and had to start over again several times. “Hi Alex, I’m Madison Newland, but you can call me Maddie. I saved your life and Charlotte’s, and I don’t want to be reading this right now but Charlotte is such a bossy-flossy.” She turned red, and Bly smiled for the first time, “Charlotte wants you to be as happy as she is, and she loves you as her dearest friend, and she wants you to take me out on a date.” Maddie’s eyes shot up to Bly, who was smiling, then to Charlotte, who was resting her chin in her hand smiling, then to Amanda who was examining her fingernails and thinking about JP.

  “Charlotte gets what she wants, its one date, what can it hurt?” Amanda said, and looking up from her nails for a minute, she tilted her head and smiled too.

  *

  “I want you to come home with me to Paris, Alexander, where I can take care of you,” Evangeline said, as she stared into the mirror over the sink next to her son’s hospital bed. She lifted the sides of her mouth and then felt the skin under her chin, testing for signs of sagging, or the dreaded skin droop that happened as a woman aged. She didn’t have those problems thanks to Dr. Henri Battelle, she trusted him with more than her life, she trusted him with her face and body. He nipped, he tucked, he injected, and although she was fifty six, she was eternally young.

  “Mother, what happened to the gigolo you were on the cruise with, won’t he be waiting for you to return? Anyway, Isadora takes care of you when you’re home, if I went with you the poor old thing would have twice the work to do. Not to mention she’d be cooking for West all the time,” Bly said, as he refused the wheelchair the nurse rolled into the room. “No,” he said, shooing her away, they might enforce that rule in the states, but in Prague it wasn’t how he intended to leave the hospital.

  West took the wheelchair and parked it down the hall with the nurse giving him hell about it in rapid-fire Czech. He didn’t want to stay in the room and hear Evangeline bitch at Alex or go on and on about how she was losing her looks. She had to be fifty-something, he guessed, and she still had that glamorous super-model look about her. She was fucking hot and she made his dick hard with her ‘oh so entitled’ Marie Antoinette attitude.

  When she swept into the hospital room the night before and stood next to Charlotte, he almost laughed. Their personalities were completely opposite (Evangeline was a total bitch, and he hated to admit it, but Charlotte was kind and thoughtful) yet they looked enough alike to be mother and daughter. It wasn’t really a likeness of features, but of body type and stance. Both were tall and thin, but with dangerously sexy curves, they had black hair and startling blue eyes in smooth alabaster faces. The quality they shared was an unbridled allure and seductiveness. He wondered if Alex could see how alike they were physically, and he also wondered if it was part of Alex’s unshakeable obsession with Charlotte. Evangeline was probably as warm as an ice cube to Alex all his life, maybe unknowingly he was substituting Charlotte’s love for Evangeline’s.

  West leaned against the wall outside the hospital room and waited, he still couldn’t believe what had happened in the last few days. Bly International had assembled a team to investigate the details of “Natasha’s” deadly scheme. At Alex’s discretion they would bring criminal charges against anyone who had aided in his abduction with intent to cause harm. The girl West had been seeing admitted that she�
�d been hired by Natalie to “distract” West, and that she’d supplied some of the drugs used on Bly. It made him sick that she was a cold-hearted gold-digger, but she was, so he turned her over to the authorities to be taken to jail in California.

  “Fine, be like that, and he wasn’t a gigolo, really Alexander, do you have to be vulgar?” Evangeline said, as she draped her arm through his and they walked down the hall. “You were always a petulant child and Isadora will probably breathe a sigh of relief when I tell her she won’t have to wait on you hand and foot. Now let’s get going, my darling, I can’t miss my flight, I have the spring couture previews and of course my touch-up appointment with Henri,” she said, and West stared after her, all five feet eleven inches of statuesque beauty.

  “Are you over her at last?” she asked her son as they rode down in the elevator.

  “Of course I am Mother, although I don’t know why it concerns you.”

  “Well, it’s probably best that you aren’t her child’s father, I’m not at all ready to be a grandmother. Not that your sister seems to understand that, she’s already a bit overweight, and the way she carries on with that… muscle-bound barbarian, is disturbing. I fear she’ll be… expecting before she ever makes it to the altar. It is rather a shame about your Charlotte in a way, who knew her father was that tall, gorgeous, blue-eyed ambassador,” Evangeline rambled on.

  “She isn’t my Charlotte any longer, and please don’t disgrace yourself with the ambassador, he’s a married man,” Bly said, kissing her cheek lightly as West held the door of the Mercedes for her and told the driver to take her to the airport.

  “You’re not coming with me to the airport, Alexander? Well, I’m sure West will take care of you. By the way, you’re very handsome West, have I ever told you that? Oh darling, here’s a little something for your birthday,” she handed Bly a small Cartier box from the depths of her purse, then examined her face in a gold compact mirror without ever looking up, as the car drove away.