Chapter 24 Duke
I stood outside the car as Solana slipped inside. I walked over toward the driver and pulled my phone from my back pocket. I didn’t want Solana trying to figure out what to do next. I knew all of this was a lot for her to take in, even if she was giving me the brave face.
I knew she had been stalked, but seeing the lengths someone would go to just to get to her was something else entirely. I would have left all of it behind too, without a second thought and without needing anyone to talk me out of it.
“Can you take us here?” I turned my screen toward him.
He glanced at it and nodded, then made his way around to the driver’s side.
“We can head there after she lets us know what she wants to eat.”
“Understood,” he replied.
I pulled open the back door and found Solana leaning against the opposite side with a frown sitting heavy on her face. I had plans to lift all of that tonight, once I got her somewhere that I hoped felt nothing like what we had just walked out of.
“Sweets, come here.” I wagged my finger.
I held my arm out and she slipped beneath it, curling into my side. She laid her head against my chest as I rubbed slow circles up and down her arm.
“I know eating is probably the last thing on your mind after seeing all of that. But we need to grab something before we head to the spot I got for us.”
She shifted to look up at me.
“I could go for In-N-Out.”
I told the driver and we rode the rest of the way in silence.
When we pulled up to the window, she ordered double-doubles and fries for both of us.
I handed the driver my card to cover it and asked if he wanted anything for himself.
He declined, telling us his wife would have something to say if he came home full and uninterested in whatever she had on the stove. I laughed at that.
“I’m not trying to get you put out over a burger.”
Solana laughed too, and the sound of it loosened something in my chest.
The traffic out here was a different kind of madness.
It took us nearly forty minutes to make it to Beverly Hills.
I had the driver pull around to the front entrance so I could go in and handle the check-in myself.
Once I had the directions to our private bungalow, I jogged back to the truck and passed them along.
He followed the path around to the back of the property and parked in the designated spot.
He opened the door, then helped carry our things inside. I made sure to go ahead of Solana so I could hold the door and keep her moving without drawing attention from anyone else on the property. I wanted her to have one quiet and worry-free night. She had earned at least that much.
I pulled a few bills from my pocket for the driver and let him know we would need him for the full weekend. We made arrangements for him to pick us up the following day, since Solana still had things to handle with her property and her bank.
Once everything was inside and the driver had pulled off, I turned to find Solana already sitting at the dining table with a mouthful of burger. I stopped in the doorway and tilted my head with a smirk.
“Damn, you couldn’t wait for me, Sweets?”
She covered her mouth and laughed. I waited for her to finish chewing before she responded.
“I haven’t had this in so long. And it was already getting cold, so I put it in the microwave. You should warm yours up too,” she suggested.
“I’m glad you got your appetite back.”
She gave me a closed-mouth smile and reached for one of her fries. I followed her lead and warmed up my food, then pulled the chair beside her and sat down. Solana watched me with expectancy as I took my first bite.
I wanted to give her a big reaction, but the burger was just all right. If she wanted something that would actually change her life, I needed to take her to this little spot back in the Parks.
I nodded slowly. “It’s cool, Sweets. But I’m going to introduce you to some real good food back home. I don’t think I’ve brought you through the hood enough.”
She batted her eyelashes. “You haven’t. You trying to show me off, sir?”
I grabbed a napkin to clean the corners of my mouth, then reached out and took her hand. Once it was in mine, I turned it over and kissed the top of it, then looked up at her with a wink.
“Hell yeah.”
She smiled wide with a mouthful of burger, then quickly covered her mouth with a giggle.
“You really got me out here acting unladylike,” she said once she swallowed.
I ate a few fries and then leaned back in my seat to just watch her for a moment.
She was a completely different woman in here than the one who had walked through that house earlier.
I loved seeing this side of her come back to the surface.
And if I was being honest with myself, I hadn’t been sure how much of her personality would shift the moment we touched down.
Old stomping grounds had a way of pulling out versions of yourself you thought you had put away.
“Why are you staring at me instead of eating your own food?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I’m just watching you, love.”
She rolled her eyes and looked away, then slowly brought her attention back to the food in front of her with a small smile she was trying not to show.
We finished eating, then decided to shower and wind down in the living room with some music playing low in the background.
Solana wanted to go through the trunk she had left behind to see what was worth bringing all the way back to Rose Haven.
Before she touched it, I found some cleaning products under the kitchen sink and wiped the whole thing down myself.
She chose to sit on the floor beside it, so I sat next to her after I got the lock open. She went up on her knees and leaned in to look inside. There were a few letters, notebooks packed with recipes, and old photographs of her mother.
Her mother was a carbon copy of her. There were pictures of Solana as a little girl grinning wide at the camera, completely unbothered by the world.
As I shuffled through the Polaroids, I kept thinking about what our kids would look like.
I glanced over at her and felt something settle in my chest, a quiet certainty that this woman was already my wife whether the paperwork said so or not.
“You were a pretty little girl, Sweets. You ever seen these pictures before?” I asked.
She turned and took the photo from my outstretched hand to look at it. A smile came over her face slowly, like she was trying to reach for a memory that was just out of range.
“No, I don’t think so. At least I don’t remember seeing them.
These things were given to me along with a check from the government after my mother passed.
I didn’t have much time to sit and go through anything back then.
That’s actually how I got into acting. I was auditioning for commercials and small movie roles just to bring in money. Whatever I could get.”
I leaned back against the couch and listened without interrupting.
“So how did you land your first big role?” I asked.
Solana never talked about her career, so I was open to hearing whatever she was willing to share.
“Honestly, Henderson found me. He saw me on the set of a commercial and walked straight over. Told me all I needed was a hair color change and to dress differently.” She shivered slightly and let out a playful gag. “That’s how I became whatever kind of sex symbol I was apparently supposed to be.”
I chuckled.
“You know damn well you have a natural sex appeal, Sweets. I don’t like the man, but that was an easy sell with you. I think you would have gotten those roles eventually regardless of the hair or the clothes.”
She placed both hands over her heart with an exaggerated smile. “Do you really mean that?”
I leaned forward and she met me halfway. I kissed her lips a few times before pulling back.
“Hell yeah.”
She giggled and began placing the pictures back into the trunk along with the letters.
“You don’t want to read what’s in those letters?” I asked.
She looked back at the trunk, then back at me, and shook her head.
“I’ll save them for the ride back home.”
I helped her put the rest of the items away just as “Slow Jam” by Usher and Monica came through the speaker. I stood and held my hand out to her.
“Dance with me, Sweets.”
She smiled so wide she couldn’t contain it, all teeth and gums. I pulled her to her feet, stepped us away from the couch and into the open space in the center of the room, then drew her into my chest. We two-stepped to the beat while she laid her head against me, one arm around my waist and her other hand in mine.
I pressed a kiss to the top of her forehead and we moved slowly around the living room like we had nowhere else to be and nothing else to think about.
I lifted her arm and spun her. She took the invitation fully, winding her hips before stepping back into my chest. I dipped her, kissed her, then pulled her back upright as the song drifted into the next one.
“I love you, Sweets.”
“I love you too, sir,” she said, then kissed me once more.
I lifted her and she wrapped her legs around my waist without hesitation. She raised her arms and I pulled her graphic tee over her head, tossing it somewhere behind me as I walked us down the hall toward the back room of the bungalow.
I had every intention of bringing a little Rose Haven to California tonight.
TWO DAYS LATER…
I sat in the back of the SUV with Solana as we made our way to a talk show studio in Burbank.
The day after everything with her house, Henderson called talking about how he felt it best that she go on some woman named Simone's talk show.
In his words, it would be the smoothest way to address Solana's disappearance from the public eye.
I kept my thoughts to myself. I knew Sweets wanted to get in front of an audience and say her piece. But I didn't think ol' boy was on the same page she was on. All he cared about was getting her back in front of a camera.