by Kira Blakely
Mom shook her head, as best as she could manage with all the tubes on. “Baby, you didn’t do anything, and you’re here now.”
I nodded and sat down at her side. “I just should have been here anyway.”
Mom looked back to my dad and smiled. “Honey, can you see if they have any more of the apple juice I like? I want to catch up with Belle privately. Is that okay?”
“Of course, darling,” he said, kissing her cheek.
It was a gesture so gentle that it almost broke my heart. My parents lived for each other, always had. I thought for a moment I could have had that with Drake, but that was gone now. Dad paused just a moment longer to give her shoulder a squeeze before walking out the door.
Mom turned to me then and sighed. “Sweet girl, what am I going to do with you?”
“I don’t know what you mean? I just got back from doing business for over three weeks. My head is full of figures and I’m beat, but there’s nothing more exciting going on. Wait… did Carol say there was?”
My mom chuckled. “Baby, I can see everything written on your face. I was worried when you went off with Drake McManus. I might have been sick these last few years, but I have the news and I know his reputation. I was scared about what you were even thinking of doing for me because I would never ask that.”
“Mom, we didn’t…”
“But I can see how sad you are right now. You’re trying hard and maybe your father is too out of it to see it, but he’s always been a little obtuse with certain things. I can see you now, and something happened. Did he hurt you?”
I shook my head and curled up in the chair, drawing my knees into my chest like I was a little girl all over again. “Mom, I think I made a huge mistake. We weren’t supposed to fall in love, and maybe we didn’t, but we were so close. Then I did things and said awful stuff to him. If he never calls me again, I can hardly blame him.”
“Sweetie.”
“Mom, I shouldn’t have even been gone. You needed me. For three years, I’ve been here because you needed me. Then you have one of the biggest health scares of your life, and I’m off playing in the Bahamas, well, a lot more than I should be. I swear I did business.”
Mom squeezed my hand tightly. “But you had fun. I haven’t seen you smile in so long, but if you went off with him and really enjoyed your life, then that means something, too. Sweetie, I am going to beat this, but you’ve put your life on hold for me for too long. It’s not fair to you, and I’d never want you to do that. You have to understand.”
“The only thing I understand is that you all need me, and I promise never to leave again. Besides, you weren’t there. I said horrible things… did horrible things. He’s never going to forgive me,” I said.
Then the tears seemed to fall their own accord.
Shaking, I put my head on my Mom’s shoulder and let her comfort me, barely noticing when Dad and Carol came back into the room.
***
“You’re doing great!” I said, sitting down next to my sister at Mom’s therapy appointment. I kept my focus on Mom and grinned wide. “You’re blowing them away. I swear next week we’re getting you into one of those walk-run 3ks. You’re unstoppable.”
Mom chuckled and gripped the beams harder to keep herself from falling. The tech braced her back with his hands. “I think I’d settle for just walking around the department without my walker. I’m so sick of going to the bathroom for two, me and my walker buddy.”
“Well, keep kicking ass like this and you will be!” I said, grinning and setting my basket of blueberry muffins down by my feet. “So,” I continued, turning my attention to Carol as Mom worked on her next round of exercises. “How’s she really doing?”
“The specialist from UCLA, well, the oncologist one, thinks that she does have a medication that she’ll be responsive to without the side effects. Once the neurologist clears her, Mom will be starting on that.” Carol shook her head. “I don’t know what you did to Drake to reform such a famous bad boy.”
“I think we both have an idea.”
Carol waved her hand and lowered her voice. “I’m not talking about that. You must have done something more than the usual.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said, feeling my heart break when I thought about how much more experience Drake had than me. I had been the blushing virgin under his tutelage. The dreamy-eyed girl who had no idea what I was doing. Had he resented my naiveté? “We were there and, well, you can guess much of it,” I said, my fingers coming to my neck almost on their own. It was as if they expected to feel the diamonds and stones of my collar under them still. Maybe in some ways, it felt as if I could never truly take it off. “I don’t think I was anything special.”
Yes, I’d left it very badly. Torn his heart out and run, but he must not have cared that much. In the almost ten days since I’d left for L.A., he’d sent envoys to my father and sister. He’d even started orienting my dad about all the ins and outs of the kids’ charity. But he hadn’t called. There’d been no texts or emails. There’d been nothing.
I’d done it to myself with my own big mouth, but he hadn’t fought for me either so maybe he was glad I was gone. Maybe what we had wasn’t built to last back in the real world and off a tropical island.
“I think that you must have mattered to him,” Carol said, pulling out her phone. “He’s really pulling out every stop he can think of for Mom, and I’m glad he is. I don’t understand why you don’t call him.”
This was the most casual conversation that Carol and I had had in years. We’d fallen so long into the roles of caring for our parents. When we spoke, it was about Mom’s medication schedule or fourth-quarter profits. I didn’t remember the last time we’d felt like sisters gossiping, let alone friends. It was nice to feel an easier rhythm between us.
She was trying.
“I did,” I admitted, my voice low and mournful. “I’ve tried talking to him a few times, leaving voice messages. I stopped calling after the third try because I didn’t want to seem like a pathetic stalker. I mean, the merger went through better than we could have ever hoped for. Mom has the pick of any treatment she wants. Hell, Dad’s in better shape. He doesn’t get Tweets and Instagram posts, but he loves working one-on-one with people, and he loves kids. I think being CEO there is going to be just the second career he’s been looking for.”
“Then it’s all happily-ever-after, then?” Carol asked.
I traced my fingers over my bare throat. My collar was still here. I’d brought it with me back to the States and hidden it under my pillow at home. At night, like the pathetic loser I was, I’d pull it out and hug it to my chest and cry. Drake was right. For right now, it was the only piece I had left of him, almost the only proof that anything that had happened in the Bahamas had been real at all and not just a fairy tale.
Of course, it wasn’t a fairy tale, right?
Those ended in everyone being happy. Well, I mean, not the Grimm original ones. More like a Disney one where the bad guys were always vanquished and everything ended in a song and dance number. The curtains closed on a kiss. That kind of fairy tale was the furthest thing for my life.
“I think it ended up as well as it could,” I said, focusing on Mom, who was making her next lap, her steps seeming stronger with every pass. So much was changing, so much hope after years of pain. It should have been enough. It wasn’t. “This is right, you know? I’ll find someone else.”
Carol shrugged. “You could still call him and… oh, my God! No way!”
I frowned and craned my neck to her so quickly I almost got a case of whiplash. “Whoa, that was a fast change of tune. And what?” I asked, my tone growing frantic.
My sister looked at me and handed her phone into my hands. “Don’t shoot the messenger, sis. I was just trolling the usual industry sites to keep up with the news of the day and I came on this.”
My heart was in my throat as I scrolled down her phone screen. It wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t. It was Drake from last night
’s opening of a club downtown. He had a reed-thin blonde on his arm, some girl barely out of her teens who was the lead on the latest Freeform show, some vampire drama. She was leaning in close to him and whispering in his ear, her hand firmly on his chest.
“‘Rose Pearson steps out after her wrap party with PR Guru Drake McManus for a steamy night!’ Ugh, I hate TMZ,” I said, handing the phone back to my sister and fighting my first inclination to throw the thing across the room as hard as I could.
Only the fact that I didn’t want to spend eight hundred dollars on a new one kept me from doing something totally nuts.
Carol slipped the phone into her purse and took my hand. “Sis, forget about him. You can do better anyway.”
“I wish that were true.”
Chapter Seventeen
Belle
The next week passed in a blur. I tried not to pay attention to anything Drake McManus did. It was easy when I was at the hospital, but once Mom was released home into round-the-clock professional nursing care, my excuse for staying home and not helping with some of the key points in the merger fell apart, since she had professional care and support long enough for me to get a few hours at the company. I knew the company better than anyone, except maybe Carol, so I needed to make sure everything dovetailed. But after that, I was out of here. I could go back to my life and plans from before the company started to die. I could apply to graduate school and get out of L.A., where I felt so trapped. I could leave the world of false glamor behind and do something real in my life; something that mattered. Instead of handling PR four-alarm fires, I could help save the environment or get an advanced degree in conservation like I’d always planned.
Hell, maybe I’d get it in Oregon, Maine, or England. Who cared? I could get as far away from The City of Angels as possible. I didn’t want to be in the town Drake McManus owned. It was too painful.
He wasn’t set to come into the offices today. He and Dad were working cheek by jowl to rehab the charity so I’d only have to worry about bumping into vice presidents and turning over financial records to help smooth through the transition.
Good.
If I’d had to see him, I’d have fallen apart.
Still, the one thing I didn’t expect as I opened my office up at six a.m. was to find George Peters slipping through my door.
I groaned, figuring the universe was having a field day. Drake seemed to be dating the hottest starlet in L.A. and the human pest was back to hovering over me again like my own personal Steve Urkel.
“George, it’s super early.”
“Like I’m not a VP as well. I knew that his team was coming in to set everything up. I figured you’d need an extra hand,” he said, pulling up the other rolling chair in my office and bringing it closer to me than he had to.
George didn’t seem to think that “personal space” applied to him.
“You haven’t talked to me much since you got back,” he said, placing his hand over mine on my mouse.
I jerked back like I’d been scalded. “Please don’t.”
“Don’t what?” he asked. “You didn’t have to go at all. I tried to stop you. Hell, I’d have gone with you. I can see how upset you’ve been since you got back, how depressed. Do you think I’m blind?” His deep hazel eyes peered into mine.
“I think you pay a creepy amount of attention to me,” I snarked back.
“Maybe,” he said, standing and looming over me. He wasn’t as broad as Drake—who was?—but he was wiry and muscular, far stronger than I was. For a crazy moment, I regretted that I wasn’t near my purse where I kept my pepper spray. “But he did something to you. I knew if you left he’d tear you apart, play his mind games, and he did.”
“He didn’t do anything, and you should apologize for that stunt you pulled on the tarmac. You nearly jeopardized all the negotiations before they started. You did that alpha male crap and could have cost us everything!”
George chuckled and placed his hand on my thigh. “I think we know exactly the kind of negotiations you two were up to.” He pushed his hand up further and I grabbed it then, pushing it away.
“George, stop this. We’re not an ‘us.’ We’ve never been an ‘us,’ and even if Drake never existed, we’d still never be a couple. I can’t stand you, and if you don’t get your goddamn hand off my thigh, I’m going to claw your eyes out and then have Dad fire and blacklist your ass. Actually, I’m going to have those second two things happen anyway. Do you want to keep your eyes?”
“That’s cute,” he said. “That’s why I love that spunk of yours.” He leaned down and kissed me, his bulk pinning me for one panic-raging moment.
Fear lanced through me but so did rage. How dare he? I brought my knees up as hard as I could into his stomach. He let out a breath and staggered back as I grabbed the desk phone and slammed it down hard on his head. George groaned and fell to the carpet, giving me time to rush out and to the café across the street.
I couldn’t dial 911 fast enough.
***
“I can’t believe this!” my father screamed into his cell. “Neil, you can’t be serious. We have video footage of the attack. There’s his hair jammed in the phone base. The cops came to court and testified to what they saw on scene and the judge still let him post bail?”
My stomach turned days later and only a few hours post George’s arraignment. Daddy had pulled every string he still had to speed George to justice, but now there’d been bail.
Mom’s mouth fell open in concern but she tried to school her features to neutral. “Maybe he won’t be able to afford it.”
“It’s only set at one hundred thousand. George has that or has enough friends to do it. He’ll be out by morning,” Dad said, covering the end of the line. “I’m trying to see what else we can do before his trial.”
I stood and rubbed at the back of my neck. “It doesn’t even matter. When the date comes, I’m going to throw everything I have at that creep in my testimony.” I shuddered, my mind flashing back to those three monsters at the bar in the Bahamas. If Drake hadn’t been there, I didn’t even want to know what would have happened to me. I’d been able to save myself this time, but I wished he’d swept in to save me. I wish I could tell him what was happening, but it was too embarrassing to say. “I’m just gonna go upstairs and get some sleep. Tell Carol I’m sorry, but I just need to get some rest. I know she worked on dinner, but…”
Mom gathered me into her arms and squeezed tightly. It pained me to feel how thin she was. She might be out of danger as far as her aneurysm went, but she was also struggling with the cancer still eating through her, and was still all skin and bones.
“Don’t worry, baby. We’re here for you.”
“I know you are,” I said, kissing her forehead and hugging Dad, too. “I know you’re trying. I just need a minute.”
Dad snorted. “I need a crowbar and five minutes alone with George’s kneecaps.”
“The law will get him, but I just need to rest,” I said.
My legs felt heavy, as if they’d been made of iron as I trudged up the stairs. Then I crossed slowly into my bedroom and flung myself down on the mattress. Like always, my fingers snaked under my pillows and pulled out the collar. The diamonds were cold and hard against my fingertips, offering none of the warmth or comfort that Drake would have.
I curled up into a ball and held the collar to my chest, letting the memories of all our times together wash over me.
“I was wrong,” I said, my voice small and cold. “You weren’t a distraction, Drake. You were the only thing that was real.”
***
“Sis,” Carol said as she turned off the lights in her office across the hall. “You don’t have to burn the candle at two ends like this. Four days ago, George almost… I don’t even want to think about what he did. You don’t have to work. We’ll get the transition handled. With two companies this big, it won’t all happen overnight.”
“I have to work,” I said.
It was t
rue. By day, I kept flashing back to what happened with George, with what he’d tried to do. At night, I’d hold my collar and toss and turn, pleasant memories of my time in the playroom with Drake haunting me. The only thing that seemed to help at all was to have something else to focus on, to have the details of the merger working through my brain. Besides, this morning I’d found something unusual. An account no one from our company seemed to have authorized. It looked like a slush fund of several million dollars, and it made absolutely no sense.
“I just… there’s something weird with the books is all.”
Carol snorted. “You run our books. There’s no one on Earth who’s sharper with them. I doubt there’s even a penny out of place.”
“Maybe,” I said, biting at my lower lip. “I’m just finding this weird pattern. I dunno. It’s like a few million dollars just got moved off the books. I can’t quite figure it out.”
“That has to be a glitch. No way that’d get past you,” Carol said in a cloying tone. Sighing, she threw her arm over my shoulder and gave me a tight hug. “All right, Nancy Drew, just don’t miss dinner, okay? Mom wanted to try something simple. It’s just spaghetti, but she wanted a celebratory dinner for how much better she’s been feeling.”
I chuckled. “As long as Dad didn’t make it. He’s the worst.”
“Agreed. Seriously, leave the accounting mystery to the CPAs. I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. Just keep taking care of you, okay?”
“An hour more, I promise,” I said as she shut the door to my office.
With my head down and my vision focused on the computer screen, I was hot on the trail of the missing funds. Well, the almost four million dollars of spare cash that clearly was in a slush fund that no one seemed to have authorized.
“The hell?” I blurted out loud, confused by everything.
The knob turned, and I quirked my head back, expecting it to be Carol checking up on me. Shit, had I missed dinner? Except my heart sank when I saw who was at the door.