Chapter 7 Megan
MEGAN
It feels as if we have always been here in Gio’s apartment.
A week ago, if someone had told me that I’d be living in a penthouse, God only knows how many feet above a Manhattan sidewalk, I’d have told them that they were deluded.
And now, here I am, making waffles for Amber’s breakfast in a kitchen that belongs in a glossy home magazine, and watching the fish swimming around inside a cylindrical aquarium that I have no idea how to clean.
Gio was gone when I woke up this morning on the blankets piled in front of the living room windows, the imprint of his lips still on my shoulder.
He didn’t tell me what business he has in Sicily, and I didn’t press for information.
I suspect that there’s much I don’t know about him; he’ll tell me in his own sweet time.
Or maybe he won’t.
But I refuse to give into the thoughts that have plagued me for the past five years. I believe Gio when he says that Amber’s father won’t find us here. I only have to press a button, and Ric will appear as if by magic to make sure that we’re alright.
“Where are we going today?” Amber asks when I slide her breakfast across the counter towards her.
She looks tiny sitting behind the breakfast island on a tall stool that was obviously designed with demi-gods and Amazonian warriors in mind. My feet don’t even touch the floor when I sit on them.
“I thought we’d stay here today. We could go swimming?”
“Is Gio coming?” The innocent question tugs at my heartstrings.
“No, Gio has gone away for a couple of days. But he’ll be back,” I quickly add, as much for my benefit as hers.
Tell the universe what you want, and it will listen. Right?
“Can we go back to the zoo?”
They say that children are resilient, and Amber is proof of that.
Our flight to LA was the first time she’d set foot inside an airplane, and now she has crossed the United States on a private jet and is munching on waffles and bananas in a Manhattan penthouse, as if it is the most natural thing in the world.
“We don’t have to go out every day.”
I’m worried that, when we don’t go back to London in a couple of days, she’ll start to think that this is real life. No school. No set bedtime. Her own private rooftop pool.
“We can ask someone to tell us the way. Ric will take us.” She barely glances up from her half-eaten waffles. The sunshine and sightseeing have given her an insatiable appetite.
“It isn’t that, Amber.”
She wrinkles her nose, and I notice a few freckles on her face. “What is it then? We’re on vacation. You promised we would go out every day.”
She’s right; I did.
“Maybe I’ll ask Ric then.”
“Yay!” She doesn’t miss a beat. She climbs off the stool and presses a small red button underneath the counter.
Within moments, the elevator door slides open, and Ric bounds in, one hand on a holster that I never noticed before strapped to his waist.
Is he armed?
The thought makes my breath stick inside my chest. How have I been so blind? How else did I think that Gio’s bodyguards would protect him? With a few harsh words and a promise to call the cops?
Jeez, I’ve been so busy wondering how I ended up in the arms of the most perfect man on earth, that I failed to see what’s right in front of me.
Ric, the other bodyguards who I wouldn’t even recognize if they walked straight into me, maybe even Gio …
they’re dangerous people. They became bodyguards for a reason—they’ll kill to protect someone.
I will protect you and Amber with my life, Meggie.
Would Gio kill for us? Is that what he really meant?
“Everything okay?” Ric’s eyes narrow and finally settle on the waffles on the counter.
“Yes.” I don’t trust myself to speak.
“Will you take us to the zoo?” Amber asks.
Ric lowers his hand by his side and smiles at her. She has that effect on people. “Sure, if Meg’s okay with that.” He raises an eyebrow in my direction.
They’re both watching me, so I force the weapon out of my mind and smile.
I need to keep our life as normal as possible, because there’s still no guarantee that it won’t come crashing down around us in the very near future.
We are not Gio’s responsibility. We don’t belong here. This is not real life.
“Okay, thanks Ric.” I offer him coffee and breakfast.
Gio trusts him to keep us safe, therefore I should trust him too. But the niggling doubts are starting to creep back under my skin in Gio’s absence. Can I really trust anyone? What is there to stop Ric from handing Amber over to her father if his own life is threatened?
I must never forget that this is our problem. No one else cares about Amber the way I do, and ultimately, I’m the one who must keep her safe.
A dog runs over to us as we step out of the penthouse elevator and into the private underground parking lot.
A champagne-colored chihuahua with a gem-studded collar.
Amber drops to her knees, and the dog reflexively climbs into her lap and settles there, turning three-sixty and resting its head on its front paws.
“Meggie, can we keep it?” She raises wide innocent eyes my way.
“No, sweetie, the dog must belong to someone.”
Just then, a middle-aged woman with dyed blond hair wearing a pantsuit so crisp and white it must’ve come straight out of a designer carrier bag, comes over in a mist of equally expensive perfume.
“Orion, you naughty boy.”
She tries to take the dog from Amber’s lap, and it snarls at her, exposing tiny lethal teeth. The woman snatches her hand away and inspects the dots of blood on her finger.
“Are you alright?” I ask.
She shakes her head at the dog, who promptly closes his eyes and turns his back on his human. “You’d think that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, wouldn’t you?”
I can’t help smiling. Something about her looks familiar, but I can’t place where I might’ve seen her before. The diamonds in her ears sparkle, and her hair looks as if she has just stepped out of a salon.
“Are you staying here?” I ask.
“Only for tonight. I’m flying to the UK tomorrow morning.” She narrows her eyes. “Is that a British accent? Where are you from?”
Before I can respond, Ric steps in. “We should be going.” He flashes me a warning glance, reminding me that he’s my bodyguard, and this woman is a stranger.
He tries to take the chihuahua from Amber, and the dog latches onto Ric’s finger, top lip curled away from his gums, a low snarl rumbling from somewhere deep inside his tiny chest.
I laugh at Ric’s face as he tries to yank his finger from the dog’s jaws. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t laugh.” I suck my lips in to quell the giggles threatening to keep right on coming.
The woman grimaces. “I’m sorry, I usually warn people not to get too close.” Hands on hips, she studies the chihuahua who has once again settled in Amber’s lap like a prince on his royal cushion. “Would you mind if your daughter carries him up to my suite? You can come too, of course.”
I’m too busy scouring my mind for a memory jogged by the woman’s voice to correct her.
“I promise I won’t try to kidnap her. My agent will vouch for me—” she rummages in her purse for her phone “—here, you can speak to her yourself. I’m Roma Fielding… The actor?”
Roma Fielding!
No wonder she looked so familiar. I’ve watched some of her movies on Netflix. Most of her movies. She was one of my mom’s favorite actors.
“Oh my God,” I blurt out before I can stop myself. “I thought I recognized you.”
She smiles. Despite the designer labels and the hair groomed to within an inch of its life, she seems … normal. “I would risk losing a finger to take my dog back, but he seems to like your little girl.”
She’s still waiting for me to agree to her unusual request, only I’m fangirling so badly, I can’t even remember what she wanted us to do.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Fielding,” Ric says, “but I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
Amber stands up then, with the dog cradled against her chest, and nuzzles him between his large, pointed ears. “I think he likes me.”
“It’s fine, Ric.” Amber loves animals, and it makes me sad that I can’t afford to get her a pet. “It’ll only take five minutes.”
He holds my gaze, indecision playing out behind his dark eyes. Finally, he says, “I’ll have to make a call first.”
While he turns his back and speaks in hushed tones to someone on his cell phone, Roma eyes me coolly. “You’re not a member of the British royal family, are you? Is this going to be one of those embarrassing moments that will come back to haunt me every time I give an interview on TV?”
I smile. “No, nothing that glamorous.”
I’m just being protected from the fucking psychopath who murdered our mom.
“I’m coming with you.” Ric rejoins us. “Five minutes, and then we’re on our way.”
We talk to Roma Fielding in her hotel room until midday.
She’s easy to get along with. She drops the names of famous actors into the conversation the way other people drop cuss words.
She isn’t trying to impress us. This is simply the world she lives in.
She talks about falling in love with Alan Rickman on the set of a movie they made together, early in her career.
She tells us that she often visits George and Amal Clooney, she once had a brief fling with Adam Ant and chats to Nicole Kidman on the phone whenever she needs some woman-to-woman advice.
I’m fascinated. I could talk to her all day, and even Ric relaxes a little in her company although he remains standing by the window where he also has an unobstructed view of the door to Roma’s suite.
I catch her glancing at the weapon strapped around his waist a couple of times and find myself wishing that I could talk to her about Gio. I miss Nikki.
Finally, Orion, the chihuahua, climbs off Amber’s lap, stretches his fragile back legs and curls up again in his bed as if we’ve kept him awake with our incessant talking.
Roma shakes my hand when we leave and ruffles Amber’s hair. “I’ll be sure to come and find you the next time I’m in New York.”