“No way,” I tell her and grab her hand. “Listen, maybe it’s time to come clean. We get proof that Aria is his and we go public.”
Spencer blanches at this, “I don’t know if I can do that.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. He knows so many people. What if he just pays everyone off? What if I lose Aria forever even by going public?”
“Spencer,” I say more firmly, “Kevin bought our father’s company and uses your daughter against him. I understand being terrified about him. I am too! But we can’t have you living like this.”
“I wouldn’t know what to do. Kevin has everything on Aria. Originally, he said it was to keep her safe but I know now it was to keep me trapped. I have nothing.” She looks at me helplessly. “I have no way to get proof. Even if I collected Aria and went public with her, what would that do? I’ve thought about… about getting her and running away. Going dark. Maybe we can do something like that.” She seems to be warming up to her own idea. “Maybe we can find a way to get Aria and have us go into hiding.”
“What? But the company is still going to stay with Kevin. Plus, he won’t let that go. He’d come after you. Do you think he’d let you go? It’d be a matter of pride to him.”
“Well, what do you propose then?” she snaps at me. “I don’t have an inside source on Kevin and where he keeps his secrets.”
It dawns on me quickly. No. Spencer doesn’t have an inside source on Kevin.
But I do.
***
By the time I get home, it is over two hours later. I am exhausted yet my head is spinning. Trying to wrap my head around everything that Spencer and I have spoken about is giving me the largest headache of my life.
Kevin, someone that my father considered a friend, has tormented Spencer since she got pregnant. It’s not so much the age difference but what kind of creep dates their friend’s daughter… a married creep at that? Even though I suspected Kevin wasn’t as great as he wanted everyone to think he was through my conversations with Bennett, I still never would have expected him to go this far.
Bennett. I have to figure out a way to tell Bennett about this and have him try to help Spencer. I refuse to let my sister be terrified of losing her daughter or feel as if she has to go into hiding just to be safe from him. No, Bennett can help. I just have to figure out how to explain it to him.
For the third time in my life, I find Bennett by my front door when I get home. He is wearing a black t-shirt and jeans. He looks amazing. I see him before he notices me, because he is looking down at his phone. My pulse races at the sight of him. How can someone steadily grow more handsome to me? I have never had that happen before.
“Bennett. What are you doing here?”
Bennett looks up and his blue eyes meet mine. “Hey. You’re here. I was going to text you and tell you I was coming over but… I thought I’d surprise you. I should have texted. I’m not very good at this, am I?”
“Have you been waiting long?”
“No, just like fifteen minutes,” he says. “Sorry. I bought Chinese take-out. Have you eaten?”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t anything big. I can snack on some food.”
I open the front door to my apartment and Bennett trails in after me. Now is the best time to tell him what is going on with his father. Not telling him still feels wrong. He heads to the kitchen and starts to pull out some plates.
“Hey, Bennett,” I begin.
But Bennett is focused on the food. “Listen, do you want the chicken or the beef and broccoli? I couldn’t remember. I got some egg rolls too. Where did you eat?”
“I was having dinner with Spencer,” I reply, although the term dinner is used loosely.
Bennett looks over in surprise. “Wow, really? That’s great. Right?”
“Yeah, it’s great. Oh, before I forget. I got you something,” I tell him and duck off to my bedroom.
I haven’t seen him to give him the wooden figure I bought at the toy shop. I hold it in my hand. I hope he will like it. I run my finger over it slowly and try to think of how I can bring up Kevin to him.
I head back out to the kitchen. Bennett has plates out on the dining room table. I watch him curiously as he serves the food. He has always been surrounded by girlfriends yet he seems to get excited about the smallest things, like surprising me with food. I wonder if the girls are just a distraction.
He looks up at me and I feel that warmth spread out through my body.
“What’s that?”
“It’s for you,” I say and hand it to him.
Bennett looks down at it and then back up at me, “Is this a gift?”
“Yeah, of course.”
He smiles and I feel the butterflies in my stomach. He looks back down at it and inspects it carefully.
“I found it in a store. The lady gave me the man’s contact information too, at his own store. I thought maybe you’d want to talk to him about it.”
“I’m not really working on figures anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Just been busy. I leave next week to go across the country for Dad. But this is great. I’m going to bring it with me so I can remember you when I look at it,” Bennett says and pulls me close.
Our lips touch. I can tell Bennett will forget all about the food if I go along with the kiss. But the fact he is going across country next week alarms me. I need him to look for information before he leaves. Now I have to hurry.
I break away from the kiss and look up at him, “Leaving already?”
“I told you ahead of time. You’re not mad, are you?” Bennett says, brushing a lock of my hair out of my face.
“No, but I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”
“Yeah, of course,” Bennett says as I sit down at the dining room table.
“It’s sort of weird. And complicated.”
“Okay,” Bennett replies, sitting down as well and taking a bite of his egg roll.
I am suddenly not hungry anymore. Maybe it is the reminder of Kevin and everything he has done that has my stomach in knots.
“It’s about your dad.”
“My dad?” he echoes, looking surprised.
“Yeah. Is there a place he keeps like… I don’t know… confidential documents?”
“What? Why?”
“I was wondering if you could gain access to them.”
Bennett leans forward now, looking confused, “Are you asking me to snoop in my dad’s things?”
“Listen, it’s for Spencer,” I say. “It isn’t anything business related. It has to do with her.”
“Why does Spencer want to go into my father’s things?”
“Bennett, they were involved. Like… physically. They were together.”
I wait for his instant reaction – the shock or disgust. I wait for something. But Bennett doesn’t say anything. My mind is flipping through past images now. I see our last conversation about this in his kitchen and how he suddenly had to go. How quickly he didn’t want to discuss it. It feels as if things are clicking into place. Small, subtle clues I have missed because I have been so focused on Spencer and Kevin in general. Suddenly, the truth dawns on me and my heart feels like it is plummeting out of my chest and onto the floor.
“Oh my God,” I breathe as I stare at him. “You knew. Didn’t you?”
Bennett’s face gives it away before he even says it.
“I knew.”
-To be continued in Book 4-
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I OPEN my eyes and turn my head. 7:20am. I stare at the clock until it turns to 7:21. The sun is trying to peek through my window but cannot break through the blinds. At 7:22 I turn around and close my eyes. Maybe now I can get a couple of hours of sleep before I have to get up for a photo shoot at the park. I need some sleep.
I picture Bennett, settling in his first class seat on the fligh
t across the country. It’s been a week since I found out he knew about his father and Spencer being involved. He told me he had no idea she had even gotten pregnant let alone had a daughter. Even though he didn’t know that, the fact that he knew they were involved and hadn’t told me when I had been wondering aloud about things hurt too much. I hadn’t spoken to him since I told him to get out of my apartment.
Not that he hadn’t tried to contact me. My phone is full of missed calls and pleading texts to talk to him. But I can’t find it in my heart to speak to him yet. I feel stupid. How could he not tell me? I had looked directly at him, musing aloud if Spencer had been involved with his dad and all he had done was usher me out of his new apartment.
Emotion rises in me, making my throat tighten. I close my eyes and cover my head with my pillow. I am determined to get some sleep before my job today. I can’t keep thinking about Bennett on that airplane, traveling far away from me. I don’t want to think about any of it – not Bennett, Kevin nor Spencer and her daughter.
***
Sleep comes but it is full of dreams. In the first one, I am in the car on the night of my accident. I am being moved. I can feel Spencer tugging me across the mud and the rain hitting my skin. I can feel the pain in my leg. I can hear Spencer’s ragged breath in my ear. Behind her, I hear Kevin speaking to someone on the phone.
“Ten-thousand dollars,” he is saying and then sighs, “Fine. Twelve-thousand. And if you say a word about this, I’ll make sure you lose your job, do you understand?”
Dimly, it registers that he is talking to the hospital director. Spencer stops for a moment, trying to catch her breath.
“What are you doing?” Kevin says to her, covering his phone with his hand. “Hurry the fuck up!” He sounds unlike any other time I have heard him – panicked and slightly out of control.
Spencer lets out a choked sob and moves me again. I want to tell her to stop. I want to tell her that I won’t let Kevin do this to her, to us, but the dream is suddenly shifting and changing.
I am now in the guest house on Kevin’s property. I am clutching my camera. I can hear Bennett by the pool, having sex with that girl. The sounds are magnified, as if he is right next to me. I move on my own, opening the door to the inside pool. He isn’t there. The noise stops. I want to call out to him but I suddenly grow afraid.
I turn around and I am staring right at Kevin. He is grinning. Behind him is Bennett. His eyes are blank and expressionless. He has chains around his legs and isn’t looking at me. Kevin’s eyes are full of emotion – victory and a smugness that makes me want to run away.
But I can’t run. I look down and my leg is missing. It is just gone. I am suddenly thrown off balance and I pitch forward. Kevin doesn’t move to stop me from falling. I hit the floor with a solid thud and Bennett just watches…
***
I wake up to the sound of my alarm. I quickly shut it off and rub the dream from my eyes, trying to clear my brain. I guess I did get a couple hours of sleep. I grab my clothes and hop in the shower. The water is hot and scalds my skin. I wish it could remove the thoughts from my brain. I am sick of mulling over the accident, slowly remembering this has been a torture I never wanted to experience.
Even now, as I think about Spencer moving me, my anger has shifted over to Kevin. This is all his doing. What sort of man uses his child against the mother? He threatens Spencer with Aria, telling her that she will never see her if she doesn’t follow his instructions. That is why she moved me and lied. That is why she sold our dad’s company.
At the thought of Dad, I close my eyes. I suddenly want to sob. If he were still here, would things be different? Could I have gone to him with this information? Would he have believed me? I suddenly wish I could see him. Even if it is just for a hug. I feel as if I would feel better if I had my dad hugging me.
Everything feels messy. I press my hands against the shower wall and splay my fingers out, staring at them. Bennett and I, destroyed by the secrets of our family. Spencer and I, torn apart by Kevin. I had thought when I told my dad that I didn’t want anything to do with the company, I wouldn’t be drawn so deep into things like this. Somehow, I’m pulled down even more than I ever thought possible.
My plan was to talk to Bennett about his father and see if he could gather some evidence against Kevin… something either to prove he is Aria’s father or to blackmail him. But after discovering that Bennett already knew Spencer and Kevin were involved, that plan died. I haven’t spoken to Spencer about Bennett knowing about the two of them yet either. I’ve felt frozen, unwilling to speak to Bennett and unsure how to approach Spencer with more questions.
Spencer lives in fear of Kevin taking Aria away from her somehow. Even though she has an open adoption, she is afraid Kevin will pay the family off and have Aria moved away without telling Spencer where they went. I wanted Bennett to help find a way to get rid of that fear for Spencer. I wanted her to be with her daughter and not worry about Kevin using Aria against her. But without Bennett’s help, I feel lost at what to do.
I get out of the shower. The apartment is so quiet that I could hear a pin drop. It is strange to be without Emily. It is almost lonely, especially now that Bennett is out of the picture. I wander into the kitchen, feeling as if the silence is closing in on me. I feel ragged. My head hurts. I feel exhausted. I miss Bennett, even though I am furious at him. I miss my father.
I make some coffee, determined to ignore my problems to make sure I do a good job today with my client. It seems as my personal life grows messier and messier, my work life improves. My clientele is building and my word of mouth is positive. When I am at work, all of this mess dims to the background.
“At least I have that,” I say aloud but the words fall at my feet when there is no one here to listen to them.
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I STEP into my steam shower, seal the door behind me, and turn on the spray. As the hot water falls over my aching muscles, the enclosed walls trap the relaxing steam in the stall. I reach for one of my fancy new aromatherapy body washes and marvel at the way my life has changed in the last month.
I’d arrived in New York City four and a half weeks ago, shell shocked and numbed by Jenny’s revelation: Robbs was the father of her unborn child, not Paul. I tried to tell myself that the news didn’t change anything, but deep down I knew the truth. If Jenny had been honest from the beginning, Paul and I would still be together. I’ve been thinking about that a lot since I arrived in the city, and I still can’t decide if that would have been a good thing or a bad thing.
The flight landed at JFK Airport at ten p.m. on a cold March night. Having had to take care of myself since the age of sixteen, I’d never had the money to visit Dallas, much less somewhere as far away as New York City. James O’Toole, my new boss, had arranged for a car to pick me up from the airport and take me to The Plaza, where I’d be staying until I found an apartment. I’d told James that I’d be happy to stay somewhere more affordable, but he’d laughed off the suggestion and insisted that I have the best. That was my first sign that life in New York would be unlike anything I’d ever experienced.
As the Town Car carried me through the city, I became so absorbed in my new hometown that I completely forgot about Paul, Jenny, and all of the drama I’d just left behind. New York had an amazing energy, and I was ready to be a part of it. As we crossed the bridge into Manhattan, I pulled out my cell phone and blocked Paul and Jenny’s numbers. I wanted to cut all ties with my old life so I could fully experience my new one. All ties that is, except for Chase.
When I arrived at the hotel that first night, a package was waiting for me at the front desk. I waited until I was alone in my elegant room before opening it. The box contained a subway pass, individual maps of each borough, an electronic planner, and an envelope. I broke the seal and found a letter and a Platinum card.
The letter was from James, telling me that he’d be out of town for the next month filming the overseas finale of Kitchen Wars.
You’ve got a lot of work to get done before I get back. I’ve listed forty of the greatest restaurants in the city in the enclosed planner. I expect you to visit all of them and have critiques ready when I return home. I’ve also made several appointments for you. They are listed in the planner as well. The real estate agent will show you apartments within the budget I authorized. Use the credit card for your meals and to pay everyone else.
I’d immediately scanned through the planner; not only would I be meeting with the real estate agent, I also had meetings scheduled with a hairstylist, a personal shopper, and my new faculty advisor at The Culinary Institute of New York.
My first week in the city was an absolute nightmare. Between making it to all of my appointments and fitting in one of my assigned restaurants, I barely had time to take a breath. But on my third day, I met with the amazing Myra Owens, who showed me my dream home. It was the third apartment I looked at, and I immediately knew that I had to have it. I now live in a spacious studio; it’s modern and elegant, with hardwood floors and quartz countertops. It’s only a one bedroom, but it’s more than enough space for me. I still haven’t recovered from the shock of learning just how much James O’Toole was willing to spend to keep me happy in the city.
I lather the citrusy soap over my body and reach for the shampoo that was custom blended for my hair. Frankie, the stylist James had sent me to, was a genius blend of chemist and artist. He’d given me highlights and lowlights and then whipped up several products for me to take home. When I’d pulled out my Platinum card, he’d shaken his head.
“Mr. O’Toole has already taken care of it,” he’d told me.
Each of the personal shoppers I’d met with had said the same thing. When I’d called James and insisted that I couldn’t accept any more gifts or favors from him, he’d simply laughed.
Torrid Exposure Page 10