With at least ten minutes to spare before the cab was to arrive, I had all that I needed in my suitcase, and I decided to wait for the driver out front. It was a warm and lively late afternoon. Cars raced up and down the road, and people shuffled along the sidewalks on both sides of the street.
But none of the activity distracted me from my thoughts about Jake. Maybe he had left Gina without ever officially breaking up with her. Anyone who was running from the law and would go through the effort of changing their identity was not only fickle, but also content with being the type of person no one could rely on. Jake and I had chemistry, that was for sure, but the more I learned that he was not the sort of person I could trust, the more I felt our connection fading.
I’d concluded that Gina was one jilted girlfriend too many when my suitcase and I plopped into the back seat of the taxi. It was time to focus on the new subject of my heartache—my mother. Aunt Christine wanted to meet me at the airport, but since I would be arriving in Tampa after ten p.m., I told her I would catch a cab and meet her at the hotel where she’d booked a room for the both of us.
“A real cab and not one of those services where you’re putting your safety into the hands of an unvetted average Joe?” she asked.
Even though my tears were still rolling, I smiled a little. “Yes, a real taxicab.”
The thought of not being alone made me happy, and I was excited about seeing her. My aunt was odd, but she was family. In her own way, she loved me very much.
The hustle and bustle of the airport was as miserable as I remembered it. I’d had no idea so many people wanted to fly to Florida at eight thirty at night. I had never been a happy traveler. It was the getting there that made me irritable.
I was still scowling once I made it to my window seat. By the time the last person boarded, I realized how lucky I’d been. The seat between me and the nice lady who smelled like gardenias and was knitting remained empty. The extra space in the middle and the fact that I was seated beside the perfect traveling companion relaxed me.
I pressed my head against the window, remembering a story Aunt Christine had told me once about my first Christmas. She said she was so happy that I was in the world, and she bought me everything under the sun. Oddly, that was the end of the story. She never said what happened next—at least I didn’t think so—and since I was only eight months old at the time, I couldn’t remember the toys or whatever happened to them. But it was memories like that that made Christine weird. I always felt there was a lot about Mom and our past she wasn’t sharing with me. However, I never pressed her for answers because deep down, I didn’t want to lose hope that one day Mary Louise Ross would rise to the occasion and become better than some of the greatest moms in TV history. Of course, I knew those women didn’t exist in real life, which meant my mother was more of the real thing than they were, but still, I kept hoping.
At some point during the flight, I fell asleep so hard that when the flight attendant shook me awake, the plane was nearly empty.
“Holy shit,” I said, springing to life, spurred by a sudden hit of adrenaline.
It hadn’t taken long after two days of getting too much rest to become completely exhausted again. Becoming a happy and successful surgeon required a work-life balance, and though I hadn’t achieved it yet, I was determined to one day find the key and unlock the answer.
I grabbed my purse out of the bin and disembarked the aircraft as fast as I could.
My neck was stiff, my head throbbed, and my body was jerky as I walked to baggage claim and grabbed my luggage. Instead of a cab, I caught a shuttle to the hotel. It was even warmer and more humid in Tampa than it was in New Orleans.
All the thoughts about Jake were back with a vengeance. I pinched my lower lip, remembering his delicious mouth on mine. I could somehow smell his skin, hear his voice, and picture his infrequent smile. I’d turned off my cell phone for the flight and chose to keep it off afterward, knowing he would be calling me by then. I couldn’t deal with trying to figure out whether he could be trusted. My eyelids grew heavier by the moment, and I couldn’t stop yawning. I had to force myself to put Jake in a box and deal with him when I was emotionally able to. The next morning, Christine and I would drive over to the coroner’s office together. Our appointment to identify the body of Mary Louise Ross was at ten a.m.
I tried to remember what my mom looked like. It was almost as if over the years, she’d become a faceless and bodyless aberration. My mom had been hooked on drugs, but which ones, I didn’t know. A daughter should’ve known, but not me. I never knew much about her—where she grew up, how she met my father, nothing. I’d been sent to boarding school at the age of thirteen. My aunt Christine had paid for it. But before then, my mom used to drag me around the smallest and poorest towns in Southern California. I never knew why we moved so much. She never worked a real job.
Suddenly, my mind fed me snapshots of Mary and certain men. I remembered one guy her age who stared at me as if he wanted to cart me off and never bring me back. Mary had slapped him, pulled a gun on him, and told him to leave and never come back. Once he was gone, she gathered me into her arms. Later, we took a long bus ride to somewhere else, and she hugged me close as I slept on the way to our next destination. Or maybe she didn’t hug me so close. I couldn’t remember.
My sinuses tightened, and I squeezed the bridge of my nose as tears slid down my cheeks. Then I swiped my face, though I was the only passenger on the shuttle, so I didn’t have to worry about sparking a fellow rider’s curiosity.
I wondered why, after so many years, I had remembered that. Then another memory I always tried not to think about came to me. My mom used to always make me sit here or there, usually somewhere in public, while she ran an errand that took her away for hours. How a child could sit in one place for that long, I had no idea, but that was exactly what I had done. Her instructions were to never talk to or go anywhere with anyone unless that person was Aunt Christine. I must’ve asked her about a police officer, because she advised me to run away from them too. If she didn’t return at the time she showed me on my watch, then I was to go into a store she had identified for me and tell the nice lady behind the cash register that I needed help and then give her an envelope.
She always made me keep that envelope folded and in my pocket, and I still had it. I had no idea why I’d kept it for so many years, but it was in my closet, inside a banker’s box where my birth certificate, social security card, old report cards, and stuff like that were stored. I had never opened the letter. Just thinking about it made my scalp prickle. I took a deep breath in through my nostrils and let the air clear my brain. Maybe I was ready to read it. As I released the breath, I decided to open the soiled and ragged envelope and read the contents as soon as I returned to New Orleans—or maybe not.
When the shuttle was driving among rows of hotels and busy multiple-lane streets, I knew the hotel was not far away, so I turned on my cell phone to call Christine. My device dinged and vibrated, letting me know I had several messages from Jake, but I purposely avoided looking for or listening to them. As soon as I saw that he had reached out to me several times, my heart and soul wanted me to forgive him. Forgive him for what, exactly? I didn’t know. Perhaps I wanted contention in our relationship.
The appearance of Gina had complicated things in ways I never saw coming. My mind kept trying to convince me that he wanted to pick her over me. See how she was dressed. See how put together she was from head to toe. I wore comfortable doctor clothes on a daily basis. I’d shrunk in her presence earlier that day. I didn’t think I owned a dress that could compete with the one she had on. Asher Christmas was a billionaire, and those kinds of guys lived in a different universe from mine.
Christine met me in the wide-open and well-lit lobby. The décor was gaudy with a lot of glass trying to pass for crystal chandeliers. As usual, when I first saw my aunt, I marveled at how stunning she was. Her skin was like fine porcelain, and her eyes were dark and mysterious. She
had wavy brunette hair, and she was about two inches taller than I was. Basically, my aunt had the DNA of a 1980s supermodel. My mom had also been taller than I was. I wasn’t short, standing at five feet eight, but I must have gotten my height from the man who gave my mother the sperm that made me. With looks like hers, one would think my aunt would flaunt them, but she never did. It was as if Aunt Christine didn’t notice or care that she was a goddess.
When she saw me, she waved, then crossed and uncrossed her arms. “How are you?” she asked when I reached her.
I didn’t know whether to initiate a hug or not. “I’m fine, and you?” As soon as the question left my mouth, I noticed her puffy red eyes and splotchy skin. Her day-old mascara was smudged as well. I’d seen too many faces that looked like hers not to know she’d been crying. So I initiated a hug, and she instantly wrapped her arms around me, holding me tighter than I had held her.
“You’re shaking.” Her voice broke. “You must be tired.”
I nodded. “I am exhausted.”
“Come on, let’s get you to bed.”
We walked side by side to the elevator. I was probably better at small talk than she was, but whenever I spent time with her, I always struggled with it. I had some questions, but most of them had to do with what the coroner’s office had said. I also wasn’t clear about whether she’d seen my mother’s body. I wanted to know if there were signs of trauma. Even though the last time I’d seen my mom was at my high school graduation, I couldn’t bear it if she had suffered a painful death.
“How are you feeling about all of this?” Christine asked as the metal doors of the elevator slid open.
I leaned against the handrail once we were securely inside. Then I frowned, mainly because of the waft of cheap cologne someone had left behind. “Do you know how she died?”
She sighed and cast her gaze on the scuffed-up floor. “No, I do not. They’ll tell us everything after we identify the body.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Then you haven’t seen her yet?”
She shook her head then whimpered in a way someone did to keep themselves from crying. “But they explained how she looked. She was also wearing our mother’s locket. She never took it off.” By the last sentence, her voice had cracked.
Truthfully, I didn’t know how to respond. I always thought that Christine was more pragmatic and stonier than how she was acting. I’d pictured her consoling me, not the other way around. Suddenly, the reason why my aunt would make sure she had my new address and phone number every time I moved made sense. Also, a handful of times a year, she would email me an article about new developments in neurology or something. I’d gotten a sense that relationships were hard for her and that was why she was an exotically beautiful, ultra-smart, and kind, but single woman. My aunt, like my mother, had some damage. However, regardless of her inner issues, she maintained a relationship with her niece because she loved her sister. The fact that my mom and her sister could’ve had a real relationship never occurred to me until then.
When I was thirteen years old, my aunt had saved my life and ensured a solid future for me when she put me in boarding school. Before then, even though my mom would go missing for days at a time, my attendance was pretty good. School had been my best babysitter. I had learned to wake myself up in the morning, get dressed, and walk to the bus stop. I didn’t have to worry about food either. Every school I attended in California had free breakfast and lunch programs, and since my mom was never employed, I always qualified.
However, whenever the office started asking deeper questions about my home life, Mary would pull me out of that school and put me in another one, using fake addresses to enroll me in brand new districts. From the ages of seven to thirteen, I had attended so many schools that it made me sick in the stomach to count them. I would always remember the day Aunt Christine visited and saw that I was sleeping on a dirty mattress in the corner of a studio apartment and rotating three sets of clothes as my entire wardrobe. She and my mom never argued in front of me. They went out for a chat. That was what Christine called it—a chat. When they came back, I packed my things and went to a hotel with my aunt.
I would never forget how I felt, sitting in the front seat of her rental car. I was exhausted, mentally and physically. When I slept in a real bed that night, it was as if the cavalry had arrived.
The next morning, on our way to the mall to shop for clothes, I asked Christine if my mother would be joining us that day. I was used to Christine taking me out to spend time alone whenever she came to town.
“Sweetheart, you’re flying back to the East Coast with me. You’re going to attend the best boarding school in the world. They’re excited to have you, and I know the principal, a lot of the teachers, and the guidance counselors personally.” Her voice cracked when she said, “They’re going to take of you, babe. I promise.” Then she cleared her throat.
That was the first time I truly perceived how sad my mom had made my aunt by choosing to raise me the way she had. I imagined they had fought the night they went out to talk. And Christine was right—Heart of Grace Academy wasn’t one of those miserable boarding schools with abusive nuns, teachers, and classmates. I went to school in a nurturing environment where the administration was quite aware of the way we girls, living away from our parents, would suffer. I owed my aunt everything.
So, seeing how devastated she was about my mom’s death, I consoled her by rubbing her arm. “One step at a time, right?”
She watched me with watery eyes, smiling tightly. We would’ve hugged again, but the doors slid open.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Penina Ross
We were staying in a two-bedroom suite. Each room was on either side of a step-down living room space and a small dining area with a table, a microwave, a Keurig coffee setup, and a case with snacks that could be charged to the room if either of us decided to treat ourselves.
Christine gave me time alone to unpack and shower the stickiness off my skin from the long day. As the water soaked my hair and poured down my face, it took my tears and the last scents of Jake I had left on me down the drain with it. I didn’t know whether to be brokenhearted about Jake or my mother. Also, never had I felt as though family was something I could rely on until observing my aunt’s grief.
Then there was my mom. I looked at the wall, wanting to punch it. I wasn’t angry with my mom, though. I was infuriated with myself for not trying to find her. She might not have been perfect, but I was a doctor who was very capable of meeting my mom where she was. I was so willing to give her the grace and space to be human. The fact that she’d died without me being able to offer the unconditional love she deserved was on me.
I understood why people slapped themselves in grief or banged their heads against the wall. It was my fault, all my fault. I broke down and wept, shrinking against the corner of the shower, letting the water spray me in the face.
Finally, at some point, I picked myself up off the floor, feeling drained by the pain, and moved on with my night.
I blow-dried my hair then tied my tresses in a bun for sleeping. When I went into the comfortably lit living room to say good night to Christine, she was sitting on the sofa, marking what appeared to be a manuscript.
“Good night, Christine.” My tone was apprehensive.
She looked up at me with a gentle smile. “You’ve been crying.”
If I had spoken, I would’ve cried some more, so I nodded stiffly.
She patted the sofa beside her. “Could you sit for a while?”
I was so happy she had offered that I didn’t hesitate before walking in front of the large piece of furniture and sitting. I let my shoulders slump and my chest cave in.
Smiling, Christine sat her manuscript on the coffee table. “You have a hefty job there, surgeon.”
“Yes, I do.”
“I heard you’re the top resident at your hospital,” she said.
My mouth fell open. “You checked on me?”
“All the time
. You’re my niece. I love you.” Her smile caressed me again. “You used to be so exhausted during our visits while you were in college. Half the time, I didn’t think you knew whether you were coming or going.”
I smiled as I gazed down at my lap, sniffing and chuckling. “Those were hellish days.”
“Yeah, well … You’re in a very important profession. Not everyone is built to cut open a skull and tinker with a brain.”
She was still beaming at me, which was a refreshing reversal from earlier. I was the one who was bent out of shape.
“Sorry about earlier,” she said with a sigh. “Seeing you again brought back so many memories. I’m just so happy you’re here.”
“Me too.” I flicked my wrist. “And no apology necessary.”
Christine nodded thoughtfully then hiked her legs up on the sofa cushion and crossed them, making herself comfortable. “You never asked about your mother. Why?”
My eyes grew wide as I sat up straight, taking a few moments to come up with the right answer. “I don’t know. But …” I sighed. “I didn’t know much about her, that’s for sure. Like, where did you both grow up?”
Suddenly, Christine threw her hands up, palms facing me. “Then we’re really doing this?”
I jerked my head back slightly. “Doing what, per se?”
“You’re finally inquiring about your mother. Because I made a vow to myself to never tell you anything until you asked.”
Something within me shot up like a glowing stop sign. It also shouted, “Do not proceed,” “Turn back,” and “Enter at your own risk.”
Seduction (The Secret Billionaire Asher Christmas Duet Book 1) Page 16