by Lilly James
“I’m fine.” I closed my eyes, relishing the feel of his body so close and comforting.
He sighed too, a sound of relief. He moved his hands into my hair so he could hold me close to his chest. I wanted to stay in my safe place forever. Never moving, not allowing anyone to burst our bubble. However, the sound that always interrupted burst it completely. It was Parks’s phone ringing.
Without letting me go, he dug into his trouser pocket and answered the call all formally and clipped as he always did.
“Parks.”
I couldn’t hear what the caller was saying, but I felt him tense as he slowly slipped his hand from my hair. “What?” He moved away from me, cupping his jaw. “Which one? No. I want to sort out the matter myself. I can fly home tomorrow morning.” He pulled back, his expression hard, then he softened when he saw how disappointed I was.
“Sorry,” he mouthed, touching my elbow.
I pulled away from him, mentally cursing whoever called him, and cursing Parks for agreeing to go back.
“Princess.” His voice was hushed as he pushed my hair behind my ear. I couldn’t look at him. I was too angry. My focus was on my aunty trying to feed Mathew chocolate cake, and although I should have laughed when she pushed it into his face, I just stared mindlessly.
“I have to—”
“I know,” I cut him off quickly, my voice volatile. “You have to get back. For work.” I spat the word work, half of me feeling childish, the other half so unexplainably angry.
“Evelyn, I’m sorry. Please don’t be mad.”
My focus remained on Cheryl, my arms crossed and nostrils flaring. “I promised Ella we would do something together tomorrow. And weren’t we meant to be going to the Blue Mountains, and snorkelling in the Great Barrier Reef the next day?” The plans Parks made for our stay had me like a little kid. Since I was a child, Sydney was a place I’d always wanted to visit, and Parks giving me the chance to walk the Blue Mountains and dive in the reef were more reasons why he seemed like my fairy godfather. But dreams didn’t always become reality. Especially when Parks’s work always came first.
“We can come back,” he said.
I couldn’t look at him, but I knew he was desperate to get me to see his point of view. Desperate to stop me getting mad at him. Well, too late.
“It’s not the same though, is it?” I shrugged. “What’s so important at home that you can’t leave?”
He closed his eyes tight for a second, shaking his head. “I don’t want to worry you with business.”
“Course you don’t.” I swiped his hands away from me. “I’m going to bed. I don’t feel too good.” That wasn’t a lie; I didn’t feel too good. I wasn’t sure if the bomb Parks dropped on me was making me so angry it had me feeling sick, or if it was the seafood I’d eaten. It never agreed with me.
He took hold of my arm before I could try and walk off. “We have guests. You have guests who have travelled halfway across the world to be here for our engagement.”
“You travelled halfway across the world too! And you’re still leaving.” I pulled my arm from his hold and made my way over to Cheryl and Steph. “I don’t feel too good. Do you mind if I head to bed?”
Both looked up from their seats and stopped laughing at whatever joke they’d shared beforehand.
“You do look a bit peaky.” Cheryl rose, almost tipping her glass of wine as she did and smoothed my cheek. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“I’ll look after her.”
I turned to the sound of Parks’s stern voice, narrowed my eyes at him, and then turned back to Cheryl, who was fussing.
“I told you not to eat those shellfish,” she said.
“I’ll be fine.” I forced a chuckle, swatting her hands away from me.
“But we’ll see you tomorrow, right?” Steph could be a bimbo sometimes, but she was also very switched on. She glanced behind me, at Parks, who was probably frowning, then looked back at me knowingly. I was about to explain, but Parks beat me to it, stepping forwards and placing his arm around my waist.
“We have to head back. But please, I invite you to enjoy the rest of your stay.” He was a professional at putting up pretences; however, I wasn’t. Steph could see my displeasure even if I didn’t say it.
“It’s your engagement celebration and you’re heading back early? What the hell for?”
“Does it matter?” Mathew piped up after necking back a bottle of beer. “You heard the man, he has to get back.”
If I knew Mathew, he didn’t care why we were leaving as long as he got a free holiday, the tight sod.
“Well, give your aunty a hug, then.” Cheryl took me in her arms, so I glanced over her shoulder and mouthed “work” to Steph. She rolled her eyes, so I shook my head, warning her not to say anything.
I got dressed for bed on my own, choosing not to wear the sexy lingerie Parks had out for me but one of his shirts instead. The white cotton smelt of him, and it was soft and extremely comforting. When I was done, I walked into the bedroom to see Parks on the desk, laptop open and that scowl he wore when he wasn’t just concentrating but was furious.
He didn’t glance up until I’d climbed under the bedsheets. He stopped typing, a sigh escaped his mouth, and he bowed his head. “Evelyn, please don’t be mad.”
“I’m not,” I squeaked. My voice broke as I threw the blankets over my head. Why on earth was I starting to cry?
“Baby?” I felt him nearing even under the huge duvet, then felt the bed dip as he rested his hand on my backside. “Are you crying?”
“No,” I muttered, swiping tears from my eyes. Seriously? What was wrong with me?
Parks pulled the duvet back, so I planted my face into the pillow so he couldn’t see me. He brought his hand down onto the back of my head and gently ran his fingers through my hair as he played with it. “Talk to me. This isn’t like you.”
Getting upset over the fact Parks cut our engagement holiday short was understandable, but getting ridiculously moody and crying over it was extremely out of character for me.
“I’m fine,” I lied, and a sob got caught within my words.
“No, you’re not. I’m learning that when you say ‘fine,’ it means there are a thousand things wrong, but you don’t want to inform me about what they are.”
He tried to pull me over to my front, but I clung on to the sheets even more, refusing to show him my tears. “I just don’t feel well,” I told him, almost hiccupping over my words as they blasted out of me, loud and pathetic.
“Come here. That’s an order.”
His order wasn’t what made me shift to crawl into his lap and wrap my arms around his neck, sobbing into his chest. I did it because I craved the comfort of being in his arms.
“Shh.” He tried to soothe me by holding me close, stroking my hair as I wailed, tears coming and not showing signs of stopping. I didn’t want to tell him I hated sharing him with his number-one love—work. I didn’t want to tell him I hated it when it couldn’t just be me and him against the world. Me and him, together. Myself being the only thing occupying his attention. I didn’t want to tell him I wanted to be taken care of like a child who craved attention, craved love.
“Get some sleep, Princess. We have a long flight tomorrow.”
I rested my head on his chest, not allowing him to move an inch from me. He was by my side, and that’s where I wanted him to stay. It wasn’t until I was drifting off to sleep that I felt him move. He was shifting beneath me, trying his best not to disturb me as he climbed off. I kept my eyes closed, pretending to stay asleep. When I felt Parks leave the bed, he gently kissed my forehead. I waited with my eyes closed, wondering what he was doing. The noise of his laptop keys told me, then his hushed voice told me he was on the phone, still furious and giving out threating orders. I wondered what the hell he was doing, who he was talking about. All I could make out was him telling somebody to get the EGC Magazine shut down or he would take them for every penny they had. Magazine?
EGC? Where the hell had I heard that before? I willed my forgetful brain to remember, then it hit me. Shit. It was Nadia’s magazine.
I heard Parks stalk out of the room and quietly close the door. I launched myself out of bed and almost ran to the laptop. The lid was down, and my heart was racing as my eyes darted back and forth from the door and laptop lid in case Parks would reenter and find me snooping. With an unsteady hand, I lifted up the lid and saw a couple of windows open. I minimized three documents that looked like spreadsheets of some sort, and as the third one closed, a magazine cover popped up. My heart stopped, and my hand paused on the mouse when I saw a picture of me and Parks together with a headline that read:
The Shocking Truth about His Beauty.
Page 13–18.
I gulped. My heart suddenly fired up and beat fast and hard in my chest. My fingertips went cold as I took the mouse and clicked until I got to page thirteen.
I froze. My body felt like it was shattering inside, but my outside fell numb. There was a picture of me and Gabe from the time he followed me and told me he was out of prison and that Trevor was coming for me. Although what the caption said was far from the truth. ‘Drug deal?’ I questioned. They thought it was a drug deal? I gulped, tears forming in my eyes and falling heavily down my cheeks. I swiped them away, but the more I read, the more they came.
The column knew everything about me—my abusive past, my addict parents, and my own addiction. My squandered inheritance. Threesomes. They even had a picture of my bedroom back at my mother’s house, telling readers it was where I was beaten as a young child by drug-addict parents.
“What the fuck,” I shrieked, falling to my knees. The shock and dread paralysed me.
Parks must have heard me, because he came running through the door. He halted in fear when he saw the state I was in, knowing what I’d just read.
“How do they know all this?” I shrieked again, so angry, so confused, and sobbing so hard my bones hurt.
All those secrets, all those demons, my past and everything I was trying to let go of, trying to forget, kept coming back to haunt me. I felt trapped in a nightmare where nobody inside it wanted to see me happy.
Parks rushed to my side, throwing aside whatever papers he had in his hand, and crouched down with me. “Princess, it’s okay.”
“It’s not okay.” I thumped his chest in anger. “How is this okay? Everyone is going to know about me, and you’re going to be a laughingstock because of me. Just like David the Dick said.” I gasped. “Was it him? Your publicist? I got him fired. He must hate me—”
“No,” Parks said firmly. “David would be at death’s door right now if he was behind this.”
“Then who was it?” I sobbed, clawing at his jacket as I held him to me. “Who would want to do this to me? And how the fuck did they get those photos?”
Parks pulled me into his lap, trying to soothe me, stroking my hair. “I promise you, by the morning, there will be no trace of that article. Neither will there be a trace of that fucking magazine.”
“It’s Nadia’s column, isn’t it?” I sniffed, tears still flowing. “Wait ’til I see that fucking bitch.” I was killing her in my head for publishing it, but I was killing the person who sold the story even more. “Wait.” Something came to me. “Travie said a woman asked him questions about me.” I clenched my fists. “I fucking told him it was a reporter. But who told her the rest?” I sobbed. “It was probably my own fucking mother.” I cried into his chest. “How else would they get a picture of my bedroom? I have to go and see her when we get back.”
“Stay away from your mother, Evelyn. I will find out everything myself. Please don’t worry, Princess.”
“Don’t worry?” I yelled, pushing away from him and getting to my feet. “How can you go ahead and marry someone like me? All my past is ever going to do is try and find a way of revealing itself and ruining us. Over and over again.”
Parks took firm hold of my shoulders. I tried to wriggle free, but he wouldn’t let me go. “Listen,” he demanded. But I wouldn’t. I slapped his hands away, only for him to hold on to me tighter. “Evelyn,” he persisted, fighting to pull me against him.
“No.” I tried pushing his hands away. “Get off me. I have to leave.”
Parks grabbed hold of my cheeks firmly so I couldn’t move, leaned in, and smacked a hard and passionate kiss across my lips. I wanted to push him off, but the longer he kissed me, the more my body relaxed. The longing I felt for him overpowered my irrational state, and my shoulders sagged as his kiss melted me. Parks slowly released my lips but kept hold of my cheeks.
“I love you, okay? I fucking love you. No amount of shit that anyone publishes or says or does to try and break us up will work. Ever. Understand? Because if you don’t, Evelyn, I don’t think you will ever understand the lengths I will go to, to protect you and have you standing by my side for the rest of my fucking life. Got it?”
I sniffed and stopped crying, staring at the man who had already proved to me that he would protect me from anything that stood in our way. My worry and deep panic were suddenly obliterated.
“I will fight until all those motherfuckers who are against us are begging for forgiveness. Now, I will ask you again—” he straightened out, pulled his tie from around his neck, and glared at me, “—do you understand?”
I swallowed, watching my alpha male in all his alpha glory. Fuck the article. The only thing that was running through my mind was how I wanted to make love to Parks so hard and fast. The pressure pooling in my stomach almost hurt. Sex was how we coped. Intimacy was how we forgot. Orgasms were just a bonus.
“Yes.” I nodded. “I understand.”
“Good.” Parks unbuttoned his white shirt and pulled it off his arms in a way that had all his stomach muscles flexing. “Now come fuck me, because I can see in your eyes that you’re dying to.”
“God,” I whimpered, so turned on by his words I had to force my body to put on the brakes to stop it from pummelling him. “No.” I shook my head, turning away from him. “Sex isn’t always the answer. The answers I need are all stored in your head.”
Parks cleared his throat. Maybe his ego felt a little bruised that I rejected him for the first time in forever, but rejection wasn’t the issue; it was him keeping secrets from me.
Eventually, I turned back to him, and he was staring at me, confusion in his eyes. “I need to know everything. You can’t keep me in the dark, because it’s a place I’m trying to stay out of.”
Parks sighed in frustration as he turned on his heel, yanking his hands through his hair. I knew he didn’t hold things back from me out of spite but to protect me, but I didn’t need protecting from the truth.
After composing himself, he looked at me and turned up his palm like an offering. “What do you want to know? Why I beat Lowry? Why I demoted Carla? Why I fired David’s ass and made sure he wouldn’t work in the world of publicity again?” His eyes were burning with resentment towards all those he mentioned. “Do you want to know why I poured acid onto Trevor’s dick, making sure his chance of having kids is zero?” He pointed to me with both hands. “It was all for you, Evelyn. I can’t stand the thought of someone hurting you or attempting to hurt you, Princess, and the way I deal with things is the way I will always deal with things if it means you are protected.”
I was wide-eyed in shock from his admission, but how could I hate him for doing all those things for me? His behaviour may have been erratic, but it was his way of showing how protective he was. How deep his love was for me.
I still wanted to know more, and all at once. “What about Gabe?”
He frowned deeply but kept his focus on me. “I got Nixon to kidnap and torture him until he swore he would leave you alone. When Trevor turned up in the club that night, I knew he wasn’t sent by Gabe. That worries me.”
I put my hand to my mouth and turned my head away. I couldn’t think of my lovable alpha paying someone to torture another person. But Gabe deserved it, didn�
�t he? “So where is Gabe now?”
Parks looked away from me, tilted his head back, and let out a sigh. “I don’t know.”
“Who sent me those intimate photographs of you and that woman? The ones that landed on my office desk?”
He rubbed his jaw. He was still clearly angry over me seeing him and that woman and didn’t want to talk about it. “I’m thinking it’s the same person who sold that article about you.”
I fell numb for a second, my lips pressed in a hard line. The fear began to return as I ruled out my mother. There was no way she would have got hold of those sexual photographs. But she could have taken the picture of my bedroom, told the reporter about my life, taken that photo of me and Gabe, and sold them for her fix.
“How do they know all this stuff about me? How did they get into my house? How did they get those photographs of you if the woman in them is dead?”
“I don’t know,” Parks snapped, then apologized as I winced. “Evelyn.” He strode towards me, brought his hands around the back of my neck, and pressed his lips into my forehead when he embraced me. “I’m trying everything to find out, but whoever it is, is fucking good at what they’re doing.”
I breathed in, inhaling his scent, relaxing against his arms. “What about the person you’re trying to find?”
His body tensed as he stopped kissing my forehead. “How do you know about that?”
I shrugged. “I heard you talking to your mum and Jasmine at your mum’s house. I’ve heard you talking on the phone.” I pulled back and placed one hand on his chest, the other on his cheek to make him look at me. “I can cope with knowing things. Please don’t underestimate me.”
Parks wrapped his arms around me tighter, moving his lips back to my forehead. “I would never underestimate you.”
I pulled back again, stopping him from trying to sway my mind with his arms and kisses. “So who are you and your family trying to find?”