“When will I see you again?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “It’s too hard for me to plan.”
He reached across the table and covered my free hand with his. I stared at the contrast in our skin. Though I doubted he spent much time in the sun, mine paled in comparison.
“You know I’ll do whatever I can. Just let me know.”
I nodded as the familiar sense of dread bubbled up from my toes, filling me with trepidation at my return home. “I know. I also know this isn’t fair of me to ask of you.”
“It isn’t fair of me to ask you to give up your life.” His cheeks rose. “But I’ll do it until you agree.”
“Alexandria…”
“Would get along well with Lennox. I’m certain of it.”
I scoffed. “Oh please. She already has one arranged marriage in her future.”
“That’s not what I meant. She sounds like a strong-willed little girl. It would do Lennox good to learn he isn’t always the top dog.”
“If only she had a brother.”
“She could.”
I stood, taking the cup of coffee with me. “I can wish, but that’s all it will ever be. If you can’t agree to that—”
Oren’s strong arm encircled my waist from behind and pulled my back against his chest. Closing my eyes, I lingered in his embrace, allowing his aftershave to mark my senses and fill me with his scent.
“You won’t get rid of me that easily. I just worry about you… with him.”
Spinning, I lifted my chin to see into his blue eyes. “That’s why I need to go home today. He won’t be back until the day after tomorrow. There’s a chance he won’t even know that I left the manor.”
“But if he does?”
“If he does, I have my story. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a new El Greco exhibit. As a member of the Savannah Art League, I volunteered to preview it. There’s talk of part of the exhibit traveling. We’re in the process of submitting a grant to have some of it showcased at the Telfair.”
“When do you have to leave?”
“Later tonight. I was going to go to the Met first.”
“May I accompany you?”
It was New York City. The museum would be filled with thousands of people. Would anyone know me?
Oren’s expression darkened. “I understand if you don’t—”
Lifting myself up onto my toes, I kissed his lips, quieting his words. “Mr. Demetri, I hesitated for no other reason than I never took you for the art type.”
“And why is that? I’ve lived in and around New York my entire life. I’ve learned to appreciate the finer things.” He pulled me closer. “And with each taste, I want more.”
“If you’re sure you don’t have work and won’t be bored.”
“I have work, but it can wait. And bored, with you? I don’t think that’s even possible.”
“I’M GOING TO lift you. You need to change positions.”
Who’s lifting me? Where?
“Let me go back,” I said. The request came out before I could censor my response. Maybe this isn’t purgatory, not if I can go back to Oren. Maybe this is heaven.
“Ma’am, you can go home when the doctor thinks you’re ready.”
I blinked as light and unfamiliar scenery filled my field of vision. “W-where am I?”
“Magnolia Woods. You’ve been here for almost a day.”
“A day?” That didn’t make sense. I looked from the round face of an unfamiliar young man to the pinch in my right arm and assessed a multitude of clear tubes and various long needles unsuccessfully hidden behind lines of tape. “What is that? I don’t want it.” I reached for the tubes. “Take them out.”
The man in blue scrubs reached for my hand. “Don’t touch those.”
“But I don’t want it.”
“You don’t know what it is.”
“Whatever it is, it’s made a whole day go away. I don’t want that. Where’s my husband? Where’s my doctor?”
“Dr. Miller will be in later today.”
“Dr. Miller?” My mind was fuzzy, but I wouldn’t forget my doctor. He’d been my doctor for most of my life. “Not Miller. My doctor is Dr. Beck.”
The man painfully squeezed my hand that he still held. “If I let go of your hand, will you leave your IV alone or do I need to restrain you?”
“Restrain me? Do you know who I am?”
“I think the real question is if you know who you are.”
“Of course I know who I am. I’m Adelaide Montague Fitzgerald.”
“Well, Adelaide Montague Fitzgerald, your doctor’s name isn’t Beck, it’s Miller, and if you so much as pick at the tape covering those needles, I won’t think twice about restraining your hands to the sides of your bed. Is that clear?”
“Who do you—?”
“My name is Mack. I’m one of your nurses here at Magnolia Woods and you’ll learn to listen to me. I don’t make idle threats.”
I turned away from Mack and back toward the IV. “What’s in there?”
“Whatever Dr. Miller says.”
“I need to get up.”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s why I sat you up. You can’t get out of bed yet, but they want you sitting.”
“What do you mean I can’t? I can get out.” I reached for the railing.
Mack pushed my shoulder back. “No. You can’t. You’re restricted to your bed until they get your tests back.”
“What tests?” With each statement, my mind seemed to clear.
“Mrs. Adelaide Montague Fitzgerald,” he repeated my name with an unnecessarily patronizing tone, “our job is to get you clean. We don’t care how many names you have. You’re the one who filled your body with all kinds of chemicals. It’ll take some time, but we’ll get you clean.”
“I-I haven’t…” Or had I? Did I finally take those pills, the ones Jane took away from me? There were so many blank spots in my recent memory. “No, this isn’t right.”
“Tell me what pills you’ve been taking.”
“I haven’t taken any pills except my migraine prevention.”
“Don’t lie to me. We’ll have the results soon.”
“I-I’m not lying.”
“And wine. How much wine have you been drinking?”
“What?” I reached again for the railing. “I want out of here. I want Dr. Beck. Where’s my family?”
Shaking his head, Mack walked to the boxes that created a wall of monitor-looking things near the IV. “Just relax. You’re getting upset. I’ll up your dosage and you’ll be all happy again.”
“I don’t want…” I reached for my arm. “S-stop…”
Warmth filled my veins, weighing down my limbs and stopping my rebuttal.
“That’s it. You sleep.”
As the room began to fade, my left arm was lifted and a cold bracelet closed over my wrist.
ONLY BRIEFLY DID the slam of the shutting door echo in the waiting SUV as Isaac secured his seatbelt. Seconds later he spoke, “Sir, I have GPS that’ll take us directly to Miss Collins.”
There wasn’t any need to fill him in. He’d been with me since we took off for Savannah. He’d witnessed my tirade and the subsequent return to my senses.
Shedding my suit jacket, I settled against the backseat. The damn Georgia heat only added to my angst, each degree pushing my temper higher and nerves tighter.
“Just a minute. I’m getting Deloris on speakerphone. Let’s find out if there’re any new developments.” It was wishful thinking, but that’s what had happened since I learned of Charli’s decision to enter her stepfather’s car—I’d wished. I’d wished she’d waited for me. I’d wished she wouldn’t have done it. I’d wished I’d find her waiting in our hotel suite, a silky nightgown covering her petite body, with a glass of whiskey awaiting my arrival.
However, according to the blue dot on my app, none of those wishes would come true. I’d told Charli once that life wasn’t a fairytale and I wasn’t Prince Charmin
g, but in my wishes, I imagined storming the castle and freeing the princess. That’s what she was to me: my princess.
“Yes, sir,” Isaac answered, keeping the SUV idling in place.
As we waited, the hum of the air conditioning created a cooling breeze, slowly changing the interior from stuffy and unbearable to merely uncomfortable. Deloris’s phone began to ring over the artificial cool, its chime coming not from the speakers but from my phone.
Her voice came through loud and clear. “Lennox, you’ve landed.”
“We have. Now I want to get Charli. I see on the app that she’s still there.”
“She is,” Deloris admitted. “I still can’t reach her by phone. It appears to be turned off. As I told you, the house has a gated entrance. I was told in very specific terms that we wouldn’t be admitted onto the grounds. The guard even knew our names. He mentioned you and said he had orders not to allow your entrance either.”
My chest tightened as she continued to speak.
“Is there another way onto the property? Surely everyone doesn’t use the front gate.”
“Yes. I’ve been studying the maps and satellite images. I’d assume that every entrance is at the least monitored and at the most, guarded or gated.”
“Damn it. If nothing else, I need to get word to her, let her know we’re working on this, that we haven’t abandoned her.”
“Lennox, I’ve tried to reach Chelsea. Her phone is off too.”
I hadn’t thought of her. “Do you think she’s there? Why would she be there?”
“I don’t know if she is. She’s the one who sent Alex the text message about her mother. I figured if I reached her, we could confirm Alex’s safety. Right now, all I can tell you with one-hundred-percent certainty is that according to the necklace, she’s inside the manor, her pulse is still elevated, and her respirations are quick.”
Fuck! Fuck!
“Send Isaac your location,” I said, “We’ll meet you after we go to the manor. Just that word, manor, sounds like a fucking horror movie. I don’t like it.”
“Lennox—”
“Don’t tell me not to go.” I nodded to Isaac as he put the car in gear. “I have to make an attempt. I have to try. If I don’t get in, then at least I can tell her I tried. I can’t look her in the eyes if I don’t.”
Her golden eyes.
Deloris sighed. “I understand. I just sent Isaac the location of the hotel. You have a suite. I hope you bring her back with you.”
I hoped that too, maybe even wished it. How long had it been since I’d put my faith in things like hope and wishes? Those words had faded from my vocabulary after Jo. Now that they were back, they were anything but encouraging. They were a carrot dangling at the end of a stick, perpetually out of reach yet just visible enough to make me try. They were words of uncertainty and words I despised. Yet for Charli, I did hope. I did wish. But I knew that wouldn’t be enough.
If the positions were reversed—if I were the one who had Charli—I wouldn’t let her stepfather within fifty feet of her. I hadn’t. For the last few months I’d done everything possible to keep her safe and away from that asshole who was capable of casting unwanted shadows in her beautiful golden eyes.
I had to think about a plan, about the future. “In the meantime, what are you doing?” I asked, not allowing myself to think of Charli stuck in a place she loathed as much as she hated her childhood home.
“I went back to Magnolia Woods,” Deloris explained. “The staff was unusually uncooperative, but that wasn’t why I was there. I was there to infiltrate their internal database.”
“Tell me that you were successful.”
“I was. I had to manually extract information; firewalls prevented it from being accessed online. Now that I’ve breached those, I can see everything, including all of Mrs. Fitzgerald’s records.”
“And?”
“I’m sifting through it all as we speak. I’ll tell you more in person.”
“So this wasn’t a ruse just to get Charli here? Her mother really is sick?”
“She is. They have her on some strong medications. I’m trying to learn more about them and some of their other notations as we speak. I’m much better with hacking than I am with these medical terms.”
I nodded as the scenes outside the windows changed. As the large trees and Spanish moss grew thicker along the side of the road, I imagined having Charli beside me, the two of us, together, on the way to visit her mother. That’s how it should have been. If only she’d have waited.
Imagining.
Wishing.
Hoping.
This wasn’t me. I was a man of action.
Clenching my fists, I vowed not to stop until those words were replaced with the reality of Charli Collins being where she belonged.
“SIR, WE’RE GETTING close. Mrs. Witt sent a few alternative entrances. Do you want to try those or go to the front gate?”
“Front gate.” I almost said that I don’t do things through backdoors, that I’m too open and upfront for that. I almost asked if Isaac had me confused with my father, but before I could say any of that, I realized that for Charli, I’d fucking climb a fence or maneuver under a gate.
Could that be the difference between Oren and me? Could it be that I’d never had the motivation to sneak around and do backdoor shit? I’d been too hung up on appearing better than him, when in reality I wasn’t. As the SUV moved forward, I knew without a doubt, there was nothing I wouldn’t do to get Charli back in my arms.
Nothing.
If that made me like Oren Demetri, then fuck it.
The SUV slowed as we turned onto a lane lined with oak trees draped in Spanish moss. The house—or fucking manor—wasn’t visible, only trees and a tall wrought-iron fence with a guard building beside the gate.
Of course, it wasn’t just a speaker. Alton fucking Fitzgerald had an actual guard at his gate. What the hell? Did he think he was like the King of Savannah?
Suddenly, I recalled introducing Charli to Oren. I remembered him saying that Charli was royalty, genuine American blue-blooded royalty. I’d had no idea. Even after I’d learned that about her lineage, I never imagined this type of money or home.
The reality set my blood to boil. How the fuck did someone from this heritage end up at Infidelity?
Because of Alton Fitzgerald, that was how.
As the SUV approached, an unfamiliar churning began in the pit of my stomach. Royalty. Fuck. Charli wasn’t someone who should have been at Infidelity. She was someone who deserved the best. My bloodstream filled with a sense of inferiority I hadn’t felt in years. It was the memories of Jo’s parents and their low opinion of me.
If I was no better than Oren’s son, hailing from a family of dockworkers, then who the hell did I think I was demanding Charli’s release?
Before I could consider my answer, the SUV rolled to a stop as it pulled up to the gate.
“Mr. Demetri?”
Isaac’s simple use of my name was exactly what I needed. I wasn’t the simple son of a dockworker. I was Mr. Demetri, Lennox Demetri. I’d worked hard to get where I was. Fuck, even my father had worked hard. We may not have come from generations of money, but we earned ours. I’d paid for it with hard work and sacrifice, and I sure as hell wasn’t sacrificing Charli.
I nodded in the rearview mirror toward Isaac as my window lowered and a man stepped from the small guardhouse with a tablet in his hand.
“Do you have an appointment?” he asked.
“No. I’m here to see Char-Alexandria Collins.”
“Your name, sir?”
“Lennox Demetri.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Demetri, Miss Collins is not accepting guests at this time.”
“At this time?” I asked. “When do you anticipate she’ll be accepting guests?”
He looked down at his tablet. “Your name again?”
Motherfucker knew my name. Nevertheless, I kept my raging emotions in check. “Demetri, Lennox Demetri.”
/> His eyes opened wide in recognition. “Sir, she left a letter for you should you come by.”
I took a deep breath. “I haven’t just come by. I’m here for her, to get her.”
The man stepped back into the guardhouse and came out with an envelope. On the outside penned in female handwriting was one word: Lennox.
My brow lengthened. “You say that this is from Miss Collins?”
“Yes, sir. She gave it to me herself. She also asked me to tell you not to return. She said the letter would explain everything.”
Lennox.
There’s no fucking way that Charli would write a note or letter to Lennox. Hell, even Mr. Demetri would have been more plausible. “When Miss Collins handed this to you herself,” I asked, “what was she wearing?”
“Excuse me?”
“What was Miss Collins wearing?” I’d left before she was up and dressed for class. However, I knew her closet, her clothes. I knew how her dresses hung in all the right places, how fucking sexy she was in soft pants and a sweatshirt. I’d know if he were lying.
The man’s head shook as he looked back at the tablet. “Um, it’s not my job to notice her attire. It’s actually inappropriate.”
“Her hair? How was she wearing it?”
“Sir, your questions are inappropriate.”
“Are you an employee of the Fitzgeralds?” I asked.
“Yes, sir. Obviously.”
“And your job is in security?”
“Yes.”
“Yet you’re unobservant?”
“No,” he replied. “That’s not what I mean. I mean that looking at Miss Collins like that, paying attention to her clothes and her hair could…”
“Could what? Get you fired?”
“Sir, Miss Collins would like you to leave and not attempt to return. Mr. Fitzgerald has also stated the same wishes.”
I bet he had.
I nodded toward the guardhouse. “Do you have the ability to call the house?”