by Alison Ryan
Barrett checked the GPS on his phone. “We’re nearly there, just get as close as…oh no. Scarlet, stay here.” Barrett’s voice had a quiver Scarlet wasn’t used to, and she watched as Barrett left the car and jogged towards police tape and a man she recognized as one of the lawyers they’d had lunch with the previous day. Scarlet started to get out, but Barrett turned and ordered her back inside. “Scarlet, stay in the car!”
Scarlet sat back down, panicked, and dialed Melissa’s number again.
Four rings later, Melissa’s cheery voice instructed her to leave a message.
Barrett staggered back towards the town car, collapsing in the grass. Scarlet leapt from her seat and fell into his arms, noticing that all color had drained from his face.
“They’re…Scarlet, I’m…Scarlet, they’re dead. They’re both gone. Melissa and Paul. They’re gone.”
Scarlet screamed, a sound of desperate confusion, and clawed at Barrett’s shoulders. Her attempts to form words failed.
“They had a housekeeper show up this morning and the door was open. She found them in the garage in their car. It was running. Garden hose up the tailpipe.”
“Thisbe! She can’t be…” Sobs choked Scarlet’s voice before she could complete her sentence.
“Thisbe is missing. She wasn’t in the car, she wasn’t in the house. She’s gone, Scarlet. I’m so sorry, oh my God I’m so sorry.”
Scarlet barely heard him over the sound of her own scream.
Fate
Book Five
Chapter One
“How can she not be here?”
Barrett was struggling to stay calm. It was what he was best at; staying cool and collected in the most intense of situations. The ability served him well in the boardroom and he’d been able to somehow keep it together when Scarlet left him all those years ago, but this was completely different.
If anything happened to their Thisbe, he was positive neither he nor Scarlet could ever survive it.
“I don’t know. I just don’t understand.” Holden Greenburg was one of Barrett’s attorneys who’d been instructed to meet him and Scarlet at the Holloways just to ensure Barrett’s best interests weren’t compromised. Barrett hadn’t told Scarlet about it because he didn’t want to upset her. But Holden was one of his most trusted advisors and at the moment he was grateful for his presence.
“Well, we need to fucking find out,” Barrett barked. “Get on this, Holden. I need to check on Scarlet.”
Scarlet was presently in the back of an ambulance suffering from an intense panic attack. After screaming and sobbing inconsolably, she’d collapsed from the shock of what was happening and the paramedics were immediately at her side. Barrett had held her in his arms, trying his best not to break down at the sight of her falling apart in front of him.
He had to be the strong one. Thisbe was still out there.
“Baby,” he said, cradling her head in his hands. “Stay with me, Scarlet. We’re going to find her. I promise. Everything is going to be alright.” Even if he was as scared as she was, he had to be her rock.
Scarlet was catatonic. She stared blankly ahead, only blinking, her mouth closed, the frantic part of shock over and replaced by overwhelming numbness. She held her knees tight to her chest.
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Barrett,” she spoke. “We have no idea where she is. And no way to know.”
“A four year old doesn’t disappear on her own,” he said. “We’re going to find her. I am going to search every corner of this city, this state, this earth. We will not lose her. There is no other option.”
Scarlet looked at him, desperately wanting to believe him. She needed to believe him.
“If anything happens to her,” she said. “I couldn’t…”
“I know,” he said. “Me neither.”
********
Barrett immediately made sure an AMBER alert was issued. He knew it meant there would be a ton of publicity, but, if anything, that worked to their advantage. He didn’t care what anyone thought about his secret child or about him. All he wanted was Thisbe to be okay so Scarlet could be okay.
He desperately needed a happy ending to all of this.
Meanwhile, he’d used Scarlet’s phone to call her friend Vanessa, anxious to find out what he could about the Holloways. From what Scarlet told him, they came from prominent East coast old money families, but he didn’t know much else. The police were attempting to get in contact with their next of kin, but Barrett was hoping maybe he could reach them first, somehow make sense of all that was happening. Maybe find a clue as to what the hell was going on around them. Maybe somehow they would know where Thisbe could be.
Barrett left Holden Greenburg at the scene and returned to The Hermitage with Scarlet, where news crews were already set up outside. He’d arranged to be taken in through a back way with a security detail to help avoid the media and get back upstairs. His head of security, Mark, had stayed behind in San Diego on personal business and was going to be waiting in Las Vegas for Barrett to return, so things seemed disorganized and chaotic. Scarlet and Barrett remained in shock about the morning’s events.
In the suite, Vanessa and her sister Charlotte met with Scarlet, who was lying down on the bed in their room. She’d been given Xanax by the paramedics, which seemed to calm her a bit, but she was still in a trance and lay motionless on the bed as Vanessa rubbed her back.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Vanessa cried. “I’m so sorry, Scar. You don’t deserve this.”
“Yes I do,” Scarlet said. “I deserve every piece of this pain. It’s all my fault this is happening.”
Charlotte shook her head, “No one is to blame, Scarlet. We don’t even know what happened. I can’t imagine what must have been going through Paul and Melissa’s minds… I’m at a loss for words.”
Scarlet closed her eyes, willing for this all to be a dream.
She was disappointed to open them a few minutes later and find out that it wasn’t.
Five Years Earlier…
They were a month and a half into the summer when Barrett suggested they take yet another vacation. He was tired of the intense Georgia heat and wanted to be near a breeze and a sleepy little beach town. Besides, seeing Scarlet prance around in a bikini all day didn’t sound like the worst way to spend his time.
He was still dizzy most days over how hard and fast he’d fallen for her. Never in his life had he felt anywhere close to this kind of desire. But it was beyond that. Scarlet represented everything he’d missed out on growing up in the stifling environment of being an Evers. She was innocent, fun, and incredibly kind. There wasn’t an ill-intentioned bone in her beautiful, curvy body. Scarlet loved him like no one else ever had before. She was the promise of something bigger than himself. He’d never thought past the here and now, since growing up and into a future orchestrated by his absentee mother and father only depressed him. Sometimes he envied his younger brother Durham and the freedom being born second afforded him. Barrett was the golden child and had no choice but to be groomed to be a captain of industry, heir to the king, his father Rhett,
But lately he couldn’t help staring at Scarlet’s perfect face and envisioning her as an older woman, sitting in the living room with him watching their children play. And then beyond that; he thought about their grandchildren, their last days on earth together and how he would be able to die a happy man knowing he’d found something like this.
It was unfathomable how he’d turned into such a soft hearted schmuck. But he couldn’t deny that it was the most thrilling thing he’d allowed himself to do.
“We can’t keep going off on trips, Barrett,” Scarlet had said when he mentioned it over dinner. “I’m an intern. I have a job to do. If I don’t work I don’t get credits. Which means I don’t graduate.”
Barrett laughed, “I’m your boss. The one who signs off on your internship. And if I command you to go to Florida with me, then dammit, to Florida you go.”
; She rolled her eyes, “That’s so not okay. I’m going to HR.”
“Oh yeah?” he smirked, sliding his hand up her shirt as she sat next to him. She gasped at his touch. “And what are you going to tell them?”
She stared into his eyes as his hand slipped under her bra and he started pinching her hard nipple, “I’m going to tell them my boss has been sexually aggressive with me all summer. And that this is a hostile work environment.”
He bent down and started kissing her collar bone. She had on a blouse with a plunging neckline, one she knew drove him crazy.
“You have no idea how hostile I can be,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m glad to show you though. So you can give HR a full and accurate report.”
She nodded, smiling as his mouth traveled up her neck, “I think that’s best. I need to be as detailed as possible when I report you. So they can know exactly what you did to my body.”
He lifted her up then and she draped her arms around his neck, “Well, we better start now. Because it might take a while for me to finish what I have planned.”
“I was done eating anyway,” she smiled as their mouths met. God, she wanted him so much. All the time. She couldn’t imagine how she’d ever get out of this lovesick fever she’d been experiencing the last month.
“It’s my turn to have dessert,” he said and she laughed against his shoulder.
“You’re such a dork,” she teased him. “Though I’m more than happy to be your last course. But only for the sake of my report.”
He carried her into the bedroom. Dusk made the room dim and the setting sun looked like fire in the backdrop of his penthouse apartment. He laid her down gently and began unbuttoning his shirt as she slipped out of her pencil skirt and blouse revealing a sexy red thong and an incredibly lacy red strapless bra. Her breasts spilled over the cups and he became painfully hard under his Brooks Brothers pants.
“Jesus,” he whispered. “You’re so fucking sexy, Scarlet.”
She shook her head, “I’m not that great…”
He was naked now and he glided up her body as she threw her head back. He pressed his mouth against her neck and slid his lips down her chest to her flawless and womanly curves. He pulled one large breast out and immediately sucked hard on the turgid nipple, making her cry out and writhe beneath him.
“Your body,” he whispered. “It’s the most beautiful thing that exists. And it’s all for me. Don’t ever say you’re not great, Scarlet. You are beyond words. Nothing exists in any language to describe how perfect you are.”
She sighed as his hands softly traveled up her sides.
“I love you, Barrett,” she said. “More than you could ever know.”
He stopped for a moment, then slid back up her body so that they were face to face.
“I do know,” he said. “Because it’s almost as much as I love you.”
Tears fell down her cheeks and his expression changed to concern. He held her for a moment, “What’s wrong, baby?”
She laughed, “I’m so silly. Nothing is wrong. Not a thing. I’m just so happy, Barrett. I’ve loved you since I was nine years old. Or at least I thought I loved you then. But really, nothing I have ever felt before this summer could possibly equate to this precise moment. It’s overwhelming. This is what people write books about. And songs. And I have it, with you. My Barrett.”
He smiled and they kissed, over and over, for a long time, only pausing to express their affections out loud before kissing again, long and hard, like they couldn’t possibly get closer to each other. They could never be close enough.
“I need you,” he said against her ear. “I need to have you so bad, Scarlet. Does that make me a pig?”
She shook her head, “No. I need you too. Please. Have me. Fuck me, love me, take me to the beach, to the mountains, to the end of the world. Just always be here. Close enough for me to touch, so I can always make sure you’re real.”
********
There will always be those times in a man’s life when a certain sexual conquest will stand out. And of all the incredible times Barrett would have with Scarlet, that night was one of the top ones he’d always remember. It would be the memory that would haunt him later after she left him, the night he would look back and think about how on earth she could have ever broken his heart when they’d shared the things they did that night.
He’d made love to her for an hour, thrusting into her core, making her cry out into the balmy night, begging him for more, never tiring of his girth plummeting in and out of her. Sometimes he was fast and hard, other times he took it slow, gazing down into her eyes, watching her face change as she came. She came so easily for him and was so eager for more, it made it impossible to stop. As much as her body drove him to the brink of his own release, he would resist. Just for her. He needed to give her as much pleasure as she could take.
Bending her over the massive footboard of his California King was when it was most difficult not to give her a primal pounding so he could mark her with his seed. He resisted and took it slow, enjoying the feel of her plump, luscious ass as he gave her what she needed and begged for.
“You feel incredible,” she turned her head to look at him. “Don’t stop fucking me.”
“I don’t plan on it,” he said, a sheen of sweat now forming on his chiseled abdomen as his large hands held her hips. “I don’t care how sore you get, Scarlet. I’m taking what’s mine.”
She moaned as he started to thrust harder. She threw her head back as she climaxed, her wild blonde hair fanning against the smoothness of her back. He reached out and tugged it, like a bridle, and she came violently against him, her screams filling the night.
But Barrett wasn’t even close to being done with her body. She was panting now, overtaken by the orgasm that had just shattered her.
“Mount me,” he commanded. “I want to watch you.”
She straddled him and he could smell the sex between them, something that practically split him open, he was so aroused. Her hair was wild, her eyes glistening with lust, and she began to ride him, her hips bucking as she took all of him inside of her.
“God you’re so fucking tight, Scarlet,” he said. “You’re going to make me come so hard, baby.”
“That’s all I want,” she said, moving her hips more quickly now. “I want to be the best you’ve ever had. That you will ever have.”
Her curves. Her small waist and her enviable ass drove him to the edge of his sanity. They were smooth and tan and accentuated by the most amazing breasts he had ever seen. They were large yet defied gravity and he slid his hands up her torso to grab them and pull her forward so he could put them in his mouth.
Her body bent over him as he fucked her, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before he’d need to unload himself inside of her. He sucked her nipples and she groaned on top of him.
“God I’m coming again!” she called to him. “Baby, come with me!”
So he did. He yelled out as he climaxed, her pussy wrapped tightly around his hardness, coaxing every drop from his exhausted body. It lasted forever, his orgasm, and he held her tight against him as he finished, not wanting to let her go even for a moment.
They lay there together, panting and basking in the exertion of their lovemaking.
“Fuck, Scarlet,” he said. “You’re incredible. That was possibly the best sex of my life.”
“Possibly?” she teased him as she kissed the stubble on his rough cheek.
“You’re right,” he laughed. “Definitely, I should say. But the top ten times are all different times with you, so you’re only competing with yourself.”
She laughed and touched his face, “I love you so much.”
“God, Scarlet,” he replied. “I love you doesn’t even seem adequate enough at this point. I worship you, baby.”
********
After a long shower and the consumption of cheesecake out on his terrace, the two were finally in bed again, clean and full in so many ways.
“
So, the beach?” Scarlet asked, tracing his jawline with her manicured fingers. “That sounds pretty nice.”
He chuckled, “I knew I could get you on board. We’ll mix business with a lot of pleasure.”
“Don’t we always?” she laughed. “Barrett, can I ask you something? And it won’t scare you?”
“That depends,” he said, sitting up to look at her. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said, smiling. “I was wondering if you’d like to meet my family. I mean, you’ve already met them through work but I meant outside of work. Like you would…”
“Like I would if I was your boyfriend?” he finished. “Of course. I would love that.”
She grinned. It was what she hoped he’d say.
“I love them,” he continued. “I mean, Nancy is everything to me. She’s so much more than an assistant. She’s my family. I wouldn’t be who I am without her.”
Scarlet didn’t say anything. She felt like she was on the edge of him sharing something with her that was beyond what they shared in bed. She was holding her breath, waiting for what he’d say next.
“My mother,” he continued. “She isn’t a mother at all. You know? Not like your mom is to you. My mother is practically a stranger in a sense. Like a distant Aunt I hear about and sometimes see, when important events are happening. But we don’t have any sort of bond, her and I. We probably never will.”
Scarlet’s heart sank. She put her hand on his cheek, waiting for him to tell her more.
“I’ve always had the sense,” he said. “That my brother, my sister, and I were just props to her. Something to check off her rich lady list. Just like she has to have her Birkin purse, and her brand new leased Range Rover every spring, she also had to have her children. To prove something, I guess. But it was never about us. Nothing is ever about anything but her and the Evers name.”