“Oh my god! Oh my god! We have to visit there. Please, Kendra. Take me there.”
“Why are you so excited about a library?” I asked amused at her excitement.
“Are you serious? Don’t you watch Sex and the City?”
“I tried once, but the title is very misleading.”
“If I didn’t know you, I would think you were joking,” Olivia admitted.
Olivia and I both laughed, knowing I wasn’t joking. The show didn’t show sex at all. I liked seeing her happy. I liked seeing people happy. I watched Olivia, watching the newness around her, thinking about what that old lady on the beach told me when she was knocked down.
“Sometimes you need to be knocked off your feet to know what’s important in life. I’m a firm believer in that.” I could still hear the advice in her frail old voice. I think I might be a believer in that, too. Maybe I wasn’t meant to be with Sam at all. Maybe Sam was brought in to my life for me to see that. I would have been annoyed as hell at Olivia pre-Sam, now it brightened my day. Maybe Garrison couldn’t give me the baby I was supposed to have until now. Maybe Sam was just meant to teach me how to smile again, how to live in the now and not yesterday, and how to let go and love. For the first time in my life, I wanted to love someone.
I wanted to make breakfast in my guy’s shirt while we kissed and flirted. I wanted to fall asleep tangled like a pretzel. I wanted my baby to have a daddy that loved her as much as Sam loved Savannah. I wanted the family, a real family.
The closer we got to the courthouse the more Olivia’s nerves wanted her to chicken out. I made her practice her speech one more time. She had to start over three times. She was going to blow this, I would look as crazy as my mother thought I was, and Olivia would go to prison for impersonating a lawyer. We were doomed.
“Who are you?” I coached, trailing right behind her.
“Silvia B. Taylor,” Olivia said, stopping.
“Stop, stopping. Square your shoulders and stand up tall,” I ordered for the second time.
“I can’t help it. I don’t like walking in front of people. It’s rude.”
“You’re acting. Show your power. I’m not following you, you’re leading me. You don’t follow anyone. You’re Sylvia, Fucking B Taylor. You’re a hardcore attorney from Hartford, specializing in political law. You’ve got this, Silvia. She’s going to shit her pants.
Olivia and I waited in the hall right outside the courtroom, waiting for the Mandel case to adjourn for the day. Olivia and I knew the case like the back of hand, we knew everything there was to know about Jimmy Mandel. The chief of a state of the art medical facility, Mandel squandered millions of dollars over fifteen years from the hospital. Not only did we know about the trial going on right through those doors, we knew it was going to end, Right. About. Now.
“Hello, could you let Judge Davis know that her daughter is here to see her,” Olivia said from behind her costume glasses. Her tight pencil skirt with matching Denzel Nova jacket fit her new role perfectly. My mother would know the jacket instantly. She was the one that told me about Denzel Nova. Denzel Nova made the most powerful business fashions out there. If you’re going to be powerful, you have to wear it, my mother used to say. Everyone who was anyone only wore Denzel Nova inside a courtroom.
I stood right behind Olivia and smiled. “Um, Judge Davis is very busy. Did she know you were coming? I don’t have it down,” the scared middle-aged woman worried. I knew why she was worried. My mom was a bitch. She was afraid of letting us in and my mother being mad at her for it.
“Maybe you should call her,” Olivia said, strongly, yet nicely.
The lady nodded and picked up her desk phone. “I know. I’m sorry Judge, but it’s your daughter. She’s here to see you. I didn’t know if I should bother you for her, or send her away. Yes, Ma’am. I can pencil her in for Tuesday morning,” the lady continued. Dammit. I wasn’t waiting four more days.
“Excuse me,” Olivia said taking the phone right out of the girl’s hand. I had to cover my mouth to keep a straight face. Yeah! Go Olivia. “Hello Judge, Davis. My name is Sylvia B Taylor. I’m an attorney from Connecticut, maybe you’ve heard the name. I come from a long line of political lawyers. I’m thinking you would be making a huge mistake if you don’t see us now. I’ve got a television crew on standby, just waiting for the go ahead.” Holy shit. Olivia was a badass. “That’s why you need to see us. Give me ten minutes and I can explain it.”
My mother’s eyes darted right to the D/V cufflinks on Olivia’s sleeves. Score. “Kendra, what a pleasant surprise. You should have called, dear. I’m awfully busy today,” she flakily smiled. The look on her face was priceless, she was worried. Why on earth would her daughter who she hadn’t seen in almost two years be standing in her chambers with a big time attorney?
“This really couldn’t wait,” Olivia began. I didn’t have to say a word. Olivia was the bomb. She merely stumbled once, and only took a second to step back in line. Olivia opened her briefcase and laid it all out. “This here is the statement from Dr. Delgado. It seems the papers you have signed and notarized from him weren’t from him at all. He’s only seen Kendra once. He is not, and never has been licensed to diagnose a mental illness.
“This here’s the original living will of Daron Brannigan, your ex-husband,” Olivia explained, never missing a beat. “I’ve been through it like a fine tooth comb. Nowhere do I see where Dianna Davis should have anything to do with the family fortune. Daron wanted it to go to his two daughters, divided equally. Because Garrison Ashby is an attorney, Mr. Brannigan left it in his control. It seems you had power of attorney moved from Garrison to yourself in a matter of weeks, proceeding the death of Mr. Brannigan.
“This here is the monthly deposits, going into the very mentally capable Mrs. Ashby here. If you’ll look right here, Judge Davis, you’ll see that number is supposed to be ten thousand per month.”
“None of this is proves anything?”
“Oh, I think you may be just a little bit wrong there,” Olivia suggested, holding her thumb and finger, signifying the little bit she was talking about. “This one right here will show where you moved twelve thousand, five hundred, and twenty-one dollars over from the Brannigan account. Now you see, the coincidental thing about that is, you paid Sucrose Travel Agency that exact amount the very next day.”
My mother’s eyes went from Olivia and her fucking, amazing as hell attempt at being an attorney to mine. I sat with the biggest smirk I could rally, enjoying every single second of the strong, powerful, leader behind the desk, crumble in fear.
“How much of your daughter’s money did you spend, Judge Davis? Who forged Javier Delgado’s signature for the past five years? Don’t answer that. Let’s wait for the experts to get back with me with the signature analysis.”
“What do you want?” My mother asked, losing the tough bitch act. Had I not been enjoying the expression change, I may have felt a little bit sorry for her.
“You know what we want. We want every last penny of the Brannigan money, including the thousands that you embezzled for your own self-indulgence.”
“I don’t have that kind of money,” my mother informed my fire-breathing attorney. Olivia was smoking.
“Yes, I did see that rather large payment to the casino. I guess the saying, what happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay in Vegas. From what I have gathered so far, you’re in to your daughter here for about twenty-three million. That’s a lot of money to spend in a few short years. How long do you think it will take to pay it back?” Olivia asked, turning back to my mother.
“Kendra, I don’t know what you think you’re doing here, but it’s not going to work,” my threatening, mother assured me, turning her attention back to me. Olivia wasn’t backing down, time for her to shift gears.
“Oh, it’s going to work,” I said, standing. Olivia did an awesome job at portraying my attorney, now it was my turn. “It’s going to work, because you have nowhere to go but down. You don’
t have a leg to stand on. I hope you have to sell everything you own to pay back everything you took from me, and it still wouldn’t be enough. I know exactly where I’m going to donate the money.”
“Donate?” she questioned.
“I don’t need it. I just don’t want you to have it. I don’t want you to have anything. I want you to pay for everything you didn’t do for me. This isn’t about the money. It has nothing to do with money.”
“I’m calling security,” my mother threatened, standing with her desk phone in hand.
“Go ahead, Sylvia here just needs to hit send on the email that will send every bit of this incriminating evidence right to the New York Times. It is election year, right? Didn’t I see a, reelect Judge Davis, billboard?”
“I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”
“Of course you don’t, Mother. You didn’t understand it when I was five, begging you to take me out of that house, either. You didn’t understand it when I tried to tell you about the abuse I endured every day of my life. You didn’t understand when I tried to tell you I was never in counseling. I never did any of those things. Dr. Delgado is Adriana’s brother. She forced him to falsify those documents, but you didn’t care enough about me to check the truth behind it. You believed everything that witch told you.”
“Kendra, I couldn’t handle you. You were acting out and being so difficult. I was right in the middle of my career,” my mentally deranged mother cried.
“Did you not hear a word I said? I NEVER did those things. Not only did you believe her over me, you told her the things I confided in you about. You made me not want to come to your house because I was going to have to pay for it when I got home.”
“But, all that stopped when you were, what, around ten?”
“They didn’t stop. They never stopped. I stopped. I stopped begging for you to listen to me. You never heard me.”
“You’ve always been like this, Kendra. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.”
It was pointless. She still wasn’t hearing me. I had planned to tell her how she was the one that hired Adriana to take care of me, and how it was all part of a well thought out plan. Adriana was there to take her husband. I wanted her to know my childhood would always follow me. It was all pointless. She wouldn’t hear me anyway.
“My lawyer will email you the details about the money you owe me. I think a month is plenty long enough. Sylvia,” I spoke, giving up. The only thing that was going to hurt my mother was taking what was rightfully mine, the money.
“If you’ll sign right here, Judge Davis,” Olivia stepped in with the relinquishing of her rights. “This states that your name will no longer be on anything to do with the Brannigan fortune. Kendra will be in charge of her own money from here on out.”
“I need time. I can’t just sign this. I don’t work that way,” my mother stated, trying hard to recover her dignity, long drowned out by fact. She was finished and she knew it.
“Go ahead take all the time you need. I would like the attorney’s name you plan on working with however,” Olivia said, squashing the dignity for the last time. “I’m sure this will be hot off the press in a matter of hours.”
I didn’t even try to hold in the smile while Olivia placed her papers back to her professional briefcase. My mother took the pen and scribbled her name with a look of pure hatred and vengeance. That was enough. That was all the closure I needed from my mother. I could move on with that. I was never expecting a reunion anyway, and she just boldly stated what was more important to her. It wasn’t me.
“Oh my god. I need a bathroom. Where’s the bathroom?” Olivia exclaimed as soon as the judge’s chambers were behind us. I followed her into the public restroom and waited for her to get sick.
“You were amazing. You were a freaking rock in there. Damn, Olivia. You made me proud,” I boasted.
Olivia rinsed her mouth, splashed water on her face, and stared at me through the mirror. “I thought I was going to pass out.”
“It didn’t show. You were fucking awesome. I’m going to take you out and show you New York tonight. You’re my hero.”
That’s exactly what I did. I took Olivia to the stupid library, and to five hundred other places she just had to see. I say that like it was the worst thing ever, but it was really the best. I needed a night out like that to stop thinking about Sam. The Sam that had already given up on me.
Olivia and I ended our night by crawling into our amazing, comfortable, five-star, hotel beds. I was exhausted, but not too exhausted to take care of business. I wasn’t even going to try. Olivia moaned a, relieving groan when she laid in her bed three feet from me. Yes, that was intentional. We could have had separate rooms. I didn’t want them. My perversion was looking forward to playing with my pussy right across from Olivia.
“I’m going to masturbate,” I warned with my fingers already sliding through the elastic of my panties.”
“And you have to do it out here?”
“Yeah, you can do it, too, if you want. I know you have to be getting frustrated.”
“Actually, I’m fine,” Olivia said turning her head away from me.
“I need you to watch, Olivia.”
“What? Why?”
“It turns me on. I don’t want to do anything with you. I just want you to watch.”
“You’re a freak. Just so you know that,” Olivia accused, pulling herself to her elbow to watch me play with my pussy. I could tell by the expressions on her face that she was sort of into it. I tossed back my covers and removed my panties, needing her to see me. Olivia stayed to the side of me. She couldn’t really see anything, but she knew what was going on, not to mention you could hear my wetness.
Of course, being the sex freak that I was, that wasn’t good enough for me. I waited until I was ready to come and came to my knees. I turned toward Olivia and spread my lips with my fingers while three fingers on my other hand, frantically rubbed my coming nub. I slowed when I witnessed her hand moving beneath the covers.
“Let me see, Olivia,” I coaxed.
“No, I’m too embarrassed. We’re not even gay.”
“So what, we’re both aroused. I want to watch you. I’ll pretend you’re Sylvia,” I teased.
Olivia tossed her own covers and showed me her bald pussy. “Do what I do,” I directed, wanting her in the same position. I wanted to see what she was seeing. Olivia and I faced each other and rubbed our pussies to orgasm. It was hot as hell. She didn’t take her eyes from my fingers dancing on my clit, but I did. The erotic pleasure on her face was enough to tell me she was going to come. And once again, she surprised me.
Olivia dropped to her ass and rubbed her pink little nub, calling out in pure ecstasy while I did the same. It was exactly what I needed after the day I had, and she owed it to me for dragging me all over the city.
After going to the bathroom, all was back to normal between Olivia and me. She was reading and asked me if I had read Benevolent yet? And then went on, swooning over some guy, Link. I downloaded it, too, and we read in quiet, only I couldn’t keep my mind on the book. Sam wouldn’t leave my mind long enough to know what the hell I was reading. He gave up. He did exactly what I expected him to do, exactly what I wanted. Sam gave up on me.
“Oh my god, Olivia. What is that?” I asked, snarling my nose as soon as we unlocked the beach house.
“I’m going to say it’s the trash. Did you take the trash out before you left? I told you there was seafood scraps in it.”
“Don’t blame it on me. You work for me, remember?”
“Yes, I remember. I should have taken care of it myself.”
“I liked it better when you were kissing my ass,” I assured her. Olivia would have never spoken to me like that before.
“I liked you better then, too.” My heart stopped when I heard his voice.
“Sam,” I exclaimed, turning to him standing in the opened door.
“I’ll just leave you two alone,” Olivia offered, h
eading to the beach.
“You promised you wouldn’t go to the prison without me,” Sam alleged, sliding his hands in his pockets. My hands scanned his tanned body, down his leisure, gray shorts, and to his flip flops. Damn.
“Yeah, well I’m sure we both said things we didn’t mean,” I smartly replied, crossing my arms over my breasts.
“What the hell happened, Kendra?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are we really going to do that?”
“Do what? We had an amazing summer together, you’re going to be back in school in another week or so, and I’m going to stay here for a while.”
“Here in Malibu?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Come with me.”
“No, I’m good,” I said, turning to take care of the stinky trash. I couldn’t stand it anymore. It had to go.
“Kendra, you can at least tell me what I did. One minute you were fine, and the next you just left and won’t talk to me. What the hell did I do?”
“You know damn well what you did, Sam, but I’m glad you did it. I don’t want to be with someone like you,” I said, pulling the smelly trash from the can. Sam moved me with his body and took over my trash duty while I let it all flow. “Do you know why I don’t watch the news, Sam? I’m scared to death of seeing a story about a little girl being sexually abused. I can’t handle it, my heart breaks for them like you wouldn’t believe, and I think it about it for days and days. I don’t read the newspaper for the same reason.”
“I’m sorry,” Sam said, dropping the trash bag. “I am so sorry, Kendra. I’m such an ass. I didn’t mean to make you feel like that. I’m not going to lie, the thought crossed my mind. Not that I don’t trust you. It wasn’t that. It was my daddy shield kicking in. My protected barrier over her. I knew as soon as we hit the sidewalk what I had done. I’m sorry, of course I trust you with my daughter. I trust you fully, Kendra. Please give me another chance. I was an idiot, an ass. I love you. Will you just talk to me?”