“I’ll call Dean Sims.” Anthony started back toward the hallway, but quickly turned around. “Avery?”
Avery looked at her husband, a man with a kind heart, understanding beyond words. “I’ll go pack.”
“Wait.” He rushed to her, helping her up. “What about . . .”
Avery sighed, looking into his eyes. He usually got angry when the subject of Carter came up, but now he seemed concerned. “We’ll have to deal with that later. Daddy is more important.”
“I’m prepared to do this,” he said confidently. “Are you?”
Avery swallowed hard, trying not to think of all the lies. “I can try.”
“We have to think of what’s best for the baby,” he said. “What you need to focus on right now.”
Avery nodded. She couldn’t imagine dealing with Carter, her father, and trying to stay healthy for the baby in these last crucial months all at the same time.
“I’ll call Dr. Kanata. Everything should be in place.”
As she started down the hallway, Avery turned to see Anthony on the phone, dialing in everything that needed to be confirmed. This web of lies was Anthony’s idea in case Carter found Avery. She was reluctant at first, but as she came to care for Anthony, her resistance weakened. She told herself she was going along with it because she felt she owed him for all he had done for her. But now that she was happy and could see a life without battling the Chase family over her baby, she wanted Anthony’s idea to work just as much as he did. She just didn’t think it would.
Avery knew Carter and she wasn’t sure Anthony fully understood what he was up against no matter how much she tried to explain it to him. He’d never met people like the Chases. He was a college statistics professor who had lived a quiet, calm life for thirty-six years. She wondered if he would want anything to do with her after the truth about what he had gotten himself into really hit him.
Kimberly was glued to the local news station as the reporter gave an update on Chief Jackson’s condition. Since being shot yesterday, he had been placed in ICU, had two operations, and was still in very critical condition. All she could think of was Avery, wondering where the girl was and when she would come back. She missed her and although she knew it would mean Carter would probably go nuts, Kimberly wanted Avery back. She had never felt so lonely.
“I’m off.” Marisol, Kimberly’s maid, stood in the doorway to the living room in a pair of three-hundred-dollar jeans and an A&F T-shirt Kimberly had given her. “Do you want your mail or should I leave it on Mr. Michael’s desk?”
Kimberly held her hand out as she kept her eyes on the television. They were showing the throngs of police officers congregating outside the hospital. “I need you to pick the boys up from school.”
“That’s where I’m going.” Marisol sighed, rolling her eyes. “Here.”
“Thanks.” Kimberly took the mail. “What did Michael say he wanted for dinner tonight?”
“No dinner for him,” Marisol said.
This got Kimberly’s attention as she swung around. “Why not?”
“I ask him.” She shrugged. “He said he won’t be home. Has a meeting or something. I’ll make dinner for you and the boys.”
Furious, Kimberly shot up from the sofa. “Where did he say he was going for dinner?”
“What do I know?” she asked, and rushed out of the room.
Kimberly reached for her ever-present cell phone and dialed Michael. When it went to voice mail, she wanted to scream. How could he not take her call? This had to stop. The neglect and disregard, except in order to control, were driving her crazy. Another business dinner without her? What happened to wanting to show off his gorgeous wife to partners and clients?
Kimberly tossed the phone on the sofa and sifted through the mail. Bills, catalogs, invitations, and magazines. At the bottom of the pile, she saw a large, flat envelope addressed to her. Kimberly dumped the rest of the mail and opened the envelope. What slid out was a newspaper cutout picture of her dressed up for a formal benefit of some kind. It was a little unusual. She and Michael had agreed that she would stay out of the limelight, not wanting to take any chances with her past coming back. For that reason, Kimberly was rarely seen in newspapers or magazines in the early years, but as time went on, good fortune allowed them to relax. She no longer bore any resemblance to that fifteen-year-old girl.
She tried to remember when this photo was taken, as whoever had sent it cut off the caption. From the dress, a Versace, it had to be last fall. Opening the envelope a bit more, Kimberly noticed a small piece of paper stuck to the edges. Reaching in, she pulled it out and read it.
You clean up well, Paige
Kimberly gasped, dropping the envelope to the floor. Another picture slid halfway out and with shaky fingers, she reached down to pick it up. As she looked at the photo, her knees went weak and she dropped to the floor.
It was her all right, only her from about ten years ago. With seventeen-year-old eyes mixing innocence with damage, she was sitting at a bar stool, her tongue in the process of licking her upper lip while staring into the camera. There was a can of beer in one hand and the other was squeezing her right breast. There were too-drunk, half-naked people in the background. She remembered the girl, but couldn’t place her name.
Kimberly ran to the half bath outside the foyer and threw up as fear swept over her, crippling fear. Paige was the name she used when she was a teenaged prostitute in Detroit. It had finally happened. Someone had recognized her, and the world she had come to live and love was about to fall apart. At the worst possible time.
She thought of her boys and sobbed uncontrollably. She thought of Janet and what she would do when she found out and threw up again. Most of all, she thought of Michael and was scared to death. He had gone through painstaking efforts to make her past disappear, telling her that she didn’t want to know the details of what he’d done. She didn’t. She was glad for the chance to pretend that world never existed.
What would happen to him if the family found out he had married a whore? Right now only Carter knew and Kimberly trusted his bond with Michael. Beyond the family, what would happen if this got public? Would Michael stay with her? Not after everything she had done, already jeopardizing his status within the family. Then the boys; what about the boys?
“No.” Kimberly lifted herself from the floor and stumbled back to the family room.
She picked up the envelope to see who it was from, but there was no return address. There was nothing on the slip of paper but one line. Whoever it was didn’t want her to know who they were. At least, not yet.
She tried to compose herself, tried to get her mind around what this could mean. It could mean a disaster worse than death. Or she could fix it. She could fix it herself and Michael would never have to know. Just as he did when he thought he had erased her past, Kimberly would do whatever it took and make sure it was really erased this time. She wouldn’t let whoever this was destroy her life, destroy everything.
Leigh thanked Maya for the fruit plate she offered before digging in.
“You’re certainly hungry,” Janet acknowledged, sitting across from her at the kitchen table.
Leigh nodded, swallowing the pineapple before speaking. “I missed dinner last night. Working late at the clinic.”
Despite the security, paid for by Chase Beauty, Janet didn’t like Leigh working late at the clinic at all. “You’re supposed to close at nine, but you never do.”
“We don’t like turning people away.” Leigh reached for the copy of the L.A. Times already worked through by her father. She noticed her mother’s angry stare. “Don’t look at me like that. We’re never open one second without security.”
“Maya would have made you something if you were hungry.”
“I’m not waking her up late at night. She works hard enough. I can get something out of the fridge myself. I was just too tired.”
“With the twins gone, Maya has more free time than any of us.”
“Still,” Leigh protested.
“Well, you have to find some free time, Leigh. I haven’t heard the piano in days.”
“I practiced yesterday,” Leigh said. “You can’t hear it all the way from your bedroom. It’s like a mile.”
Janet sipped her coffee. “The benefit is only a month away. You have to be sharp.”
Leigh focused on the paper, trying to ignore her mother’s pushing. She had agreed to play the piano, which she had learned as a child, as part of a benefit the Chase Foundation was holding for music programs at L.A.’s public schools. She had been a little rusty, with all her time spent at the clinic, but felt confident she could pull it off.
“Are you bringing anyone?” Janet asked.
Leigh shook her head. “And don’t start with me.”
Janet wouldn’t do that. She had interfered with Leigh’s love life hundreds of times, but the last time almost got her daughter killed. Janet would always have to live with the fact that she was the one who introduced Leigh to Leo Bridges and guilted her into dating him.
Her mistake had cost too many too much, including Leigh cutting Janet out of her life. It was the impetus to her prescription drug dependency. It was such an ugly, difficult time, made worse by Kimberly’s scheming. Fortunately, Leigh had forgiven her and moved back home, but Janet knew there was now a line that, if crossed again, there would be no forgiveness for.
Turning the page, Leigh was drawn to the picture of Sean Jackson with his arms around his mother, Nikki, leading her out of the hospital. “What’s the latest on Chief Jackson?”
“Nothing new,” Janet said thoughtfully.
“Should we do something?” Leigh asked. “I mean, they were almost family.”
“It’s complicated,” Janet said. “Besides, what would we do? Raise money? I don’t know if that family would take money from us. Not after the way Carter has behaved.”
“I thought he was over that . . . crazy period.” Leigh had been out of touch of late, but she knew enough to know that Carter hadn’t taken Avery’s leaving him well. “He seems to be dating again.”
“Dating isn’t really the right word for what’s he doing,” Janet said. “But at least he isn’t stalking the Jacksons anymore.”
“Avery should be coming back,” Leigh said. “What do you think will happen?”
Janet was very worried, but ultimately she knew what she wanted to happen. “Maybe it will be good. It’s been six months. She should be over her anger. If this means anything, it will show her what really matters.”
Leigh wasn’t sure what her mother was getting at. “You don’t think they’ll get back together, do you?”
“Why not?” Janet asked.
Avery was an unlikely choice for her son because Janet had wanted both Michael and Carter to marry someone from the family’s social circles. A young woman, well educated with social standing, professional, with a family that had history and substance. But Avery was a wonderful person and Janet couldn’t help but warm to her from the second she met her. It would be a lot of work making Avery suitable for the world the Chases lived in, but Janet always thought she would be worth it. She had an inborn sense of class and character. She held herself better than many of the best-bred young society women these days and she loved Carter to death. At least she had.
“I don’t think that will happen,” Leigh said. “And if Carter goes back to wrapping his car around trees . . .”
“Don’t talk about that,” Janet said.
“I guess he’ll just get away with it. He is a Chase.”
Janet put her cup down, staring at the one child who had never really come to grips with her last name. “Would you rather your brother, a lawyer, get a DUI?”
Leigh sighed. “No, but . . . I don’t know. It’s just if he gets away with it, what’s to keep him from doing it again? He could have killed himself or someone else.”
“That’s enough, Leigh.” Janet tried to shake off the suspicion she’d had that it hadn’t really been an accident.
“You have to do this!” Haley said as she rushed into the kitchen, still dressed in her pajamas. She plopped the inch-thick script titled BEDPANS & BILLIONAIRES, in front of Leigh on the table.
“When is your class?” Janet looked at her watch.
“Ten.” Haley reached for what was left of her mother’s croissant and stuffed it in her mouth. “But I’m not going. I have someone taking notes.”
“I want you to go,” Janet said. “What is that?”
“How did you get this?” Leigh was flipping through the script, peppered with notes in the margins. “Is this . . . Is this Lyndon’s script?”
Haley nodded. “It’s the movie he wants to shadow you for. It’s full of morals and all those everyone-has-value ideals. Complete lies, but you love that crap.”
“Someone want to explain this to me?” Janet asked.
Leigh filled her mother in on Lyndon’s request, before closing the pages of the script and looking up at Haley. “How did you get this?”
“A courier dropped it off for you yesterday,” Haley answered. “Maya! Where is she? I’m hungry.”
“You’re getting dressed, Haley.” Janet gestured for her youngest to leave, but she didn’t move. “I’m serious, Haley. You’re going to class.”
Haley’s hands clenched into fists as she groaned out loud. “Leave me alone.”
“What were you doing with it?” Leigh asked.
“I was reading it.”
“It was addressed to me, so you stole it?”
Haley just shrugged. “I want to meet him. So you have to do it.”
“I thought you were seeing someone,” Janet said, wondering if Steven had yet done the background check on Haley’s latest diversion. “One of your classmates.”
“I’m not married to him,” Haley answered.
“Hollywood is nothing to get involved with,” Janet said. “Not for us.”
Leigh nodded in agreement. “It’s more trouble than it’s worth. I have to get to the clinic.”
As she stood up, with Haley quickly taking her place, Janet noticed that Leigh still had the script in her hand. “You can leave that. Maya will toss it for you. Or should we send it back?”
Leigh looked down at the script. “No, I’ll . . . I’d like to read it actually, just to see. Even if I don’t want him following me around, I might be able to give him some pointers.”
Janet painted a smile on her face, but she had a bad feeling about this. Who was Lyndon Prior anyway?
Michael was in the middle of signing off on yet another expense for the marketing group when his father grabbed him by the arm and pulled.
“Hey,” Michael protested. “I actually need this arm, you know.”
“Where is he?” Steven asked, ready to explode. The board was convening and there was no sign of Carter.
Michael reached down and grabbed his phone from the clip. “I can call him again, but he isn’t picking up.”
“Did you send—”
“Yes, I have all the little minions out looking for him. He’s not in his office or the condo.” Michael looked down at his watch. “Patricia says he’ll be here.”
“This meeting starts in ten minutes,” Steven said. Why . . . How could he do this? “This board put their faith in me by voting Carter in.”
“Like they had a choice,” Michael said. “It’s your company. I’ll just say he was in a car accident or one of his clients was arrested.”
“Is this funny to you?” Steven asked in that tone that quickly erased the smirk from Michael’s face. “I gave you the responsibility of finding him. If he doesn’t show up, I’ll blame you.”
“Well, that certainly seems fair,” Michael said sarcastically before turning away from his father’s threatening glare.
Michael was always jealous of Carter’s ability to stand up to their father. No one won against Steven, but Carter came the closest to making him crazy and Michael didn’t have the guts. He worshipped the man
and feared him too much.
Carter’s absence assured Michael that Steven would know that he could only count on him to put Chase Beauty first. In that sense, this worked in his favor. On the other hand, where in the hell was he? As defiant as Carter was, even he knew that you could only push their father so far before hell came down on you. He had a feeling he knew what was keeping him, and Michael feared that his brother was about to make a bad situation much, much worse.
Carter was across the street from the hospital parking lot and could barely see the entrance. He saw nothing but uniformed cops and assumed the other men and women were probably detectives. Then there was all the equipment from the news stations blocking his view. He couldn’t go anywhere else. This was the main entrance and the only entrance visible from the street.
He was annoyed by the ringing of his cell phone lying on the passenger seat of his car. It was Michael’s ring tone again. He knew he was late, but he couldn’t help it. He had to . . .
“Hey.” Matt Tustin, a longtime private investigator for the family, seemed to come from nowhere to the driver’s-side window. He was a bland, invisible type of man, which made his job as a P.I. all the easier.
“Where in the hell have you been?” Carter asked.
“You see that hospital, man? There are cops everywhere.”
“I thought you were in with the cops,” Carter said. “It would be no problem getting past them were your exact words.”
“Do you want the pictures or not?” Matt said.
It was Matt that Carter called the second he realized Avery had run away. He was willing to do anything to find her, but Matt had proved just as useless as the other investigators.
“Give them to me.” Carter held out one hand, offering an envelope with cash in the other.
“This wasn’t easy. I hope you know.”
“I don’t care.” Carter opened the envelope and the first photo he pulled out was of Avery sitting in a chair next to the hospital bed.
Carter felt something odd come over him at the sight of her. It was more than relief, but God, how he missed her. She was beautiful even though her eyes were red and she looked tired. She wasn’t looking at her father, but at someone standing next to her, who wasn’t visible in the picture. She looked as if she needed help, needed a strong arm around her. She needed him.
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