by Kim Karr
Paris shook her head. “That poor woman.”
“Poor, my ass,” I said. “Nothing about that old battle ax is poor.”
Her giggle was music to my ears, and I took a moment to gaze at her happy face.
We were doing this together. I wasn’t going at it alone. Although it was different for me, I didn’t mind it. I might have even liked not going at something alone.
Before I was even aware of what I was doing, I hurried forward. I heard her intake of breath when I wrapped my arms around her. Taking her face in my hands, I pressed my lips to hers.
“What was that for?” she asked when she pulled back, gasping for air.
I shrugged. “Does there have to be a reason?”
“I guess not.” She grinned.
“Come, on, let’s get started.”
We started peeking behind the racks that had been installed so many years ago. Paris took the bottom. I took the top. It was on our third trip around the room that Paris spun on her heels, and all that red hair swishing around her as she did. “Look! I think I found it.” Intrigue rippled across her gorgeous face.
It wrenched through me. Tripping me up. Making me want to beg forgiveness for all of the sins I’d ever committed and then do it again and again.
I wanted to scoop her up and take her right there, but my curiosity had me peering down to where her finger was pointing.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered when I saw it.
In the racks was a gap, a space as if a bottle couldn’t fit snug upon the rung, so it was left empty. I used my phone to illuminate the area and saw an old brass doorknob right where the bottle should have been but couldn’t fit.
“You’re right. That has to be it.”
Disbelief pinched her brows as she looked up and down the rack. “That’s a lot of bottles to move first before we can get to it.”
Peering up, I surveyed how many bottles there were and then dragged my hands down my face. “I’d say at least two hundred.”
She bit her lip. “And then you have to move the rack.”
I raised my arms and flexed my biceps. “If I can move mountains, I can move this little thing.”
Hysterical giggles filled the open space. “Mountains, really?”
I gave her a shrug. “What can I say, I’m a man of many talents.”
When she rolled her eyes at me, I patted her ass. “Hey now, no haters. How about you get us a glass of wine and watch me work.”
Her eyebrows practically kissed her hairline. “Are you sure we should open one? Aren’t they really expensive?”
Shaking my head and laughing, I pointed to the chiller. “Your pick, Love. Who knows, behind that door could be a new beginning. A time to celebrate the demise of Vince Gable.”
Sashaying across the room, I watched her shake her ass on purpose. “Little minx,” I growled.
She pulled out a chilled bottle of rosé and hunted in the cabinet at the bar for an opener.
Carefully unloading the bottles, I set them on the table where Paris and I could check their credentials later to see if any of them were suitable to take to the office for further research.
I admired the way she skillfully tore the foil and then gracefully popped the cork. I had to wonder if she wasn’t celebrating having made it through two weeks without killing me or possibly the fact that she’d been able to draw me out of my dark mood.
I supposed either was acceptable.
Chewing at her bottom lip, she poured the two glasses, and it took all I had not to cross the room and take that lip between my own teeth.
I didn’t.
Instead, I kept working until she started back my way with that sexy little body she’d wrapped so perfectly in jeans and a tight sweater.
She was like a gift I wanted to unwrap all the time, and when she handed me a glass and clinked hers against mine, the words just came out.
“I don’t want to lose you.”
It wasn’t the declaration I should be making, and it definitely wasn’t the right time or the right place or even the right context to say anything.
Then again, I never did follow the rules.
Paris
I TUCKED MY trembling bottom lip between my teeth.
He fisted his hand over his heart and said it one more time. “I don’t want to lose you, Paris, and I’m sorry for always acting like a prick.”
It wasn’t I-love-you, but it was closer than he’d ever gotten.
I was not going to cry.
I was not going to cry.
I was not going to cry.
A tear dripped down my cheek and I felt my spirit take flight in a way it never had. I swore my heart was like a balloon, inflating. Making me feel like I could walk on water, dance on clouds, soar across the bluest sky.
Careful not to spook him, I reached up to caress his handsome face and kept it to what he’d said. “I don’t want to lose you either, Tyler Holiday, but you already know that.”
He grinned at me.
So beautiful.
My broken boy now a man.
Could I heal him as he had me?
I wanted the answer to be yes.
Tyler
I TRIED NOT to grunt as I shoved the wine rack aside, but it was fucking heavy.
With one last push, I had made enough space to open the door. Paris pushed her hot little body against mine and I rather liked the feeling of this together shit.
Nervousness struck when I gripped the knob and turned it. I opened it slowly in case anything was living in there, or dead. Bats. Rats. Skeletons.
Who the fuck knew.
Paris had stepped back, fearing the very same thing and I tried not to laugh.
A light turned on automatically as soon as I did. The string attached to the door had illuminated a long, narrow storage room filled with old boxes, old winery equipment, and even old bottles.
I motioned Paris to my side and together we stepped into the storage room. She took one side, I took the other, and we scanned the boxes slowly.
The thing was, they were labeled by years and nothing more descriptive, so chances were good this was going to take a while.
An hour passed of us flipping through old invoices and even recipes when I heaved another box off the top of a wine press and the bottom fell out. “Fuck,” I muttered.
As I crouched down to pick up the papers, my eyes scanned the heading. It read, “Employment Application for Housekeeper Position,” but what really caught my eye was the name, “Wilhelmina Madeline Fox Miller,” hand-written in the applicant square.
Miller.
That’s one surname she never added to her long moniker that I ever knew about.
Miller.
Common enough.
But I knew it wasn’t.
My entire body went taut.
“What is it?” Paris asked, getting on her knees beside me.
“I’m not sure,” I said tightly. “It looks like Wilhelmina worked for my grandparents here, at this house, before my grandmother died.” I drew in a deep breath as I kept scanning down the application, reading each question and every answer.
Unease prickled at my spine and truth stabbed at my gut.
There was a faint echo in my ear to put the fucking paper down, tear it up, shred it, burn it, anything, just don’t keep reading.
Sometimes ignorance is bliss.
I didn’t listen.
I never did.
My eyes shifted further down.
Requested position—live-in housekeeper.
Children—one.
Child’s name—Audrey.
The room spun and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Chaos swirled in the air and I struggled not to suffocate in it.
Paris placed her hand on my shoulder. “What is it, Tyler?”
I looked over at her and there was no missing the spark of fear in her green eyes. I tried to say it.
Once.
Twice.
“Tyler,” she pleaded. “Tell me.”
>
Finally I managed, “Audrey is Wilhelmina’s daughter.”
“Who’s Audrey?” she asked, confusion wrinkling her brow.
My heart felt like a rocket ready to launch. “The woman who gave birth to me.”
“Oh, God, Tyler.”
I dropped the piece of paper and bounded to my feet.
All the air was stolen from my lungs as they squeezed tight and I gasped for breath. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with this information?”
I dared her to say bury it.
She rose to her feet and she was speaking to me, but I couldn’t hear a word she was saying.
“Tyler.”
I tried to focus on her. I really did, but all I felt was the deceit my family had covered up.
Fear spiraled in the depth of her eyes. I knew she saw the destruction slamming into me, howling like a beast to be freed. Spinning through the room on a destructive path. Looking for a way out.
It was who I was, after all.
Bad news.
Trouble.
My teeth ground as confusion battered my rib cage, my chest, my head, my entire being.
Running my hands down my face, I tried to rid the fucked up feeling that something just wasn’t right. Wherever Corky had been, so had trouble. It had been like that for the first seventeen years of my life. And I knew Corky had been here.
“Tyler.” Paris’s voice was soft, pleading.
I looked at her. Saw her. Wanted to crawl inside her and stay there forever, but the floor beneath my feet felt unsteady and I had to get out of there.
Stepping the first step wasn’t easy but the second and third were. And then I kept moving until I was out of that old storage room and back in the wine cellar.
She reached for me. “Tyler.”
The room spun all red and green. Her hair, her eyes, her voice. I wanted to focus on them. On her soothing touch. Knew she was the one truly real thing in my entire fucking life, but this was about Corky.
Corky.
Again.
And I just knew it couldn’t be good.
Audrey. Corky. Wilhelmina. And Tyler Justin Ryan Holiday, the first. They all knew, and not a single one of them told me.
There was a reason.
A bad one.
“Tyler, breathe, there has to be a reasonable explanation for this,” Paris tried to reassure me.
Through unfocused eyes, I looked at her.
Innocent.
Innocent through all the shit she’d been through, and me, I was the total opposite. Tainted. Damaged. Fucking ruined.
Corky had ruined me.
Had he ruined me more than I even knew?
I started pacing with my hands on my head. “I need to get out of here.”
Her expression turned grave. Her chest heaved as her tumultuous green eyes watched me like I was a caged animal. “Where are you going to go?”
“I don’t know, but I need to get the fuck out of here,” I said again.
“You’re upset. You don’t need to get in a car that way. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
I shook my head.
“Then I’ll come with you.”
She was pleading.
Afraid almost.
I was moving before I even allowed myself to consider staying. Sickness roiled in my gut as I tore toward the stairs, taking them two at a time and ignoring her pleas. I had to be alone. To think. To figure out what the fuck my life was really all about.
Bolting into the kitchen, I nabbed my keys and wallet from the counter. I didn’t bother with a coat. I just pounded out the back door, taking all three steps at once.
Twilight was on the horizon, the sky filled with more colors than I cared to define. The land that surrounded me was a dormant corpse waiting for spring to come and make it whole again.
Waiting for me to make it right.
Me.
But why me?
It was all lies.
Lies.
Lies.
And more lies.
My entire fucking life was one big lie.
My step-grandmother turned step-mother for a day, known as my step-monster, was actually my real grandmother and no one ever bothered to tell me.
It would have been funny if wasn’t so fucking tragic.
Paris
I STUBBORNLY SWALLOWED the tears that clogged my throat.
Everything we’d worked so hard for was being flushed down the drain as Tyler Holiday once again took the road to self-destruction.
This time, though, I didn’t think I could follow him down that dark path.
I just didn’t.
Paris
I GOT THE call I knew would come.
My father had had another stroke and this time he didn’t recover. It was four in the morning and not only did I not have a car, I didn’t have a shoulder to cry on.
Tyler hadn’t come home.
Hadn’t called.
I tried to call him, but he didn’t pick up. I didn’t know where he’d gone or even if he was alive.
Fingering his dog tags around my neck, I felt so alone. I needed him in a way I couldn’t understand. I’d hated my father for most of my life and yet his death had my emotions spinning in chaos.
Hate.
Love.
The line was so blurred.
Calling Tabitha was my last resort. “Hello.” She sounded sleepy.
Trying to keep my voice even, I said, “Hi, Tabitha, it’s Paris. I’m so sorry to call so early, but I need your help.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know where Tyler is and I need to talk to him.”
“Hang on.” There was some rustling like she was leaving the room, and then she said, “I know Grayson spoke to him late last night. He was at some club in San Francisco. We thought you were with him.”
“No, I wasn’t.” I kept it at that.
“He probably crashed at his place in the city. Do you want me to come get you and drive you down there?”
“No, I’m good,” I said. “Thanks. I’ll call you later.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Sorry I woke you.”
“It’s fine.”
“Go back to sleep,” I said, and hung up.
I didn’t tell her about my father or Tyler’s mother. I just couldn’t. Not then.
Not yet.
Everything was too raw.
I needed my husband.
And he needed me.
My father’s vintage Jaguar was at home, safely tucked away in the garage. He’d gotten rid of the Tahoe years ago and gone to using a driver when his eyesight had gotten too bad.
Still, he never sold the thing. It was my mother’s and he refused to part with it, even when things at the winery were headed south.
Before I left, I had never been allowed to drive it. When I returned, I never asked.
I knew where the keys were though, and since it was going to have to be my ride for a while, I dialed a cab to take me back there.
Wearing a long sweater, leggings, and my faux fur coat, I got to San Francisco just as the dawn was approaching. Purple and gray played with the horizon giving a hint of a beautiful day.
After parking on the street, I glanced up at Tyler’s penthouse with the bridge long and bold framing it in the most magical way and sighed.
Here I was following him again.
Oh, Tyler.
Tyler
I FELT SOMETHING nudging me.
Slowly, I blinked my eyes open. My lovely wife was kicking my thigh with her boot.
What the fuck?
I lifted my aching head only to discover I was laying on the floor in my boxers in the entry bathroom.
“Why are you kicking me?” I asked, reaching for the toilet to help pull me to a sitting position.
She made some kind of snarling noise that I think sounded like, “To wake you the hell up?”
Groggy, I leaned against the wall. “Shit, how did I end up in here?�
��
I thought hard.
Right.
Corky. The need to numb my mind too much to fight, so I left Calistoga.
Drove to the city.
Went out.
Drank.
Forgot.
Fought the memory.
Drank some more.
Forgot even more.
The booze.
All the booze.
Him. Everywhere. Him. Him. Him.
The cold.
The spinning.
The air around Paris crackled dangerously. “I don’t know, but it’s the right place for you.”
She was in a mood.
I humored her. “Why is that?” I managed, running my hand over my jaw, not in any right head space for this back and forth shit today.
“Because dogs sleep on the floor.”
I really couldn’t deal with this today. “Well, I’m not a dog.”
“Right now I’m not sure about that.”
The innuendo was clear as day and I didn’t appreciate it. My nostrils flared with misplaced contempt. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”
She glared at me and I swore those green eyes turned deadly. Yeah, she was pissed as hell at me and I got it. Once again, I’d fucked up. Took a drive and never came home. Yeah, so I took it down a notch and tried to be rational. “Look, don’t be mad. I fucked up. I get it, but I needed to sort things out in my head.”
“You were gone all night. You should have called me.”
“You’re right, I should have and I would have but I lost my phone.”
She clenched her hands into fists like she doubted it. “You want to know what’s bullshit, Tyler?”
Great, we were back to the bullshit.
“The way you’re acting!”
My cool started to fade. I glared up at her. “And how is that?”
“Like a party boy with a huge chip on his shoulder. Grow up, already, will you!”
My laugh was wicked. “You really are the fucking devil.”
Outrage flared in her features. “Don’t you dare speak to me like that. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Wrong with me?” I sneered. “You don’t seem to think there’s a problem here, so what’s wrong with you?”
Her eyes turned into two flaming balls of green. “Well excuse me for wanting to leave the past where it belongs—in the past.”