Chapter 35
Thirty-Five
“Ella!” Isla yells.
My antennae go up. My attention is drawn away from my phone, where I’m texting with Joy about her summer dance class.
“Isla!” I shout. “What is it?”
Sorry, gotta run. Talk to you soon?
Joy is quick to respond. L8r!
I set my phone down and listen for Isla. It’s getting late and I thought she had already gone to bed.
Cupping my hands around my mouth, I try again. “Do you need me?”
I’m in the big empty room I found on the second floor, splayed out on the dusty stone. I went for a hike with Isla yesterday and thought I was fine.
But today, my right leg is stiff and beyond sore. So I found a cool, quiet place to stretch it out. I’ll be honest; if Isla needs me to move anywhere right now, it’s going to be tough.
“Ella? Where are you?” she shouts. “I want to show you something before I go to bed!”
“Up here!” I call back. “Can you find me?”
A few seconds later, Isla comes barreling through the doorway. She stops short, looking around at the large room, empty except for a large number of dust bunnies.
“Whoa. Was this room always here?” she wonders aloud.
I give her a wry grin. “I’m pretty sure.”
Keir appears in the doorway, filling it up with his tallness. He looks quite casual at the moment, dark hair mussed and wearing his running clothes. He folds his arms and watches Isla.
“What did you come all the way up here to show me?” I ask. Folding my legs, I try not to grimace.
“Look what I drew!” She shows me a piece of construction paper, with a sort of creature scrawled on it. It’s not a person and probably a bird… I think. It’s also orange and green, which is throwing me off a little.
“Is it… a parrot?” I guess.
She grins, hopping from one foot to the other. “It’s a pterodactyl! I learned all about flying predators at camp today!”
“Oh wow! Is this what they looked like?”
“Yes. Mrs. Fish told us that they ate meat, mainly fish. And there were hundreds of different kinds.”
“That is so cool. Are you going to hang your drawing in your room?”
“I made it just for you.” She offers it to me.
“For me?” I take it from her, squeezing her shoulder softly. My heart swells in my chest. “Thank you so much, Isla.”
“It’s okay.” She bounces off, heading out of the room.
Keir steps back and watches her go. “Brush your teeth! And get ready for bed. I’ll come down and see you off to sleep in a bit.”
He squints after her for a few seconds, then shrugs. “No idea whether she’s actually going to follow through with that or not.”
The corners of my lips lift. “It’s impossible to say.”
He walks in the room, his eyes sparkling with some sort of dark humor.
“Why are you up here?” he asks.
I pull a face. “You have to promise not to laugh.”
Keir lifts three fingers. “I swear.”
Looking at him coyly, I shrug a shoulder.
“Isla took me for a brief hike yesterday. And now my body really aches. There is no decent place to stretch anywhere here. No smooth surfaces. Everything is stone. This is the most level surface I’ve found.”
He doesn’t laugh. Instead, his brows knit.
“You’re hurting?”
“Kind of. I am not used to working those muscles, apparently.” I can feel my cheeks turning red so I look down, resting my hand on my right leg.
“Why didn’t you say anything? I would’ve has a masseuse or a physical therapist brought in. While you’re here, I feel like it’s my duty to see to your physical health.”
I roll my eyes. “It’s not a big deal.”
Keir folds his arms across his chest and glares at me. “It sounds like a big deal. Can I have a look?”
My face is on fire. I swallow and nod, embarrassed that he should see me this way. I’m vulnerable to him in this moment.
Especially if I let him examine my leg.
He kneels down beside me. “This one?”
He points to my right knee. I nod again, suddenly tongue tied.
He runs his hand up my leg, stopping at the kneecap when I wince.
He just barely skimming over my surgical scars but I almost writhe.
His clever fingers trace where I fractured my knee and the plates and screws just under the new scar tissue there.
“This must have really hurt,” he rumbles.
I nod, heaving a sigh when his touch moves upward. Keir probes the ligaments above my knee, then runs his touch up to my quad muscle. My breath catches and I pull away.
“It hurts here?” He asks it lightly, but his gaze is direct and intense.
“Yes,” I say, my teeth clenched.
“Can I try something? I want to massage it for a minute.”
I shake my head. “You’re busy. Isla is waiting—”
“Shh.” He starts rubbing my quad in small, tight circles.
It honestly feels like he’s jabbing me with sharp, hot knives instead of just his hands.
“Ah!” I gasp. “Keir…”
“If it doesn’t help after a minute, I’ll stop.” He presses harder, moving his hands faster. My other leg muscles lock up because it feels like he’s rubbing sharp shards of glass into my knee. Just as I am about to push him off, something shifts.
My quad muscle contracts one final time, then the tension lessens.
I widen my eyes and look at Keir’s hands massaging my flesh.
Incrementally, the muscle grows warmer and loses tone.
I let out a sigh of relief; the muscle is no longer locked up so tightly.
It still hurts, but I can at least bend my knee with ease now.
“Wow. It feels… better.”
His massage style changes to long smoothing strokes and his lips twitch.
“That’s good. I used to get these intense muscle aches when I was running an ultramarathon.
My masseuse told me to try that on myself.
It definitely helped. At least, it made it possible to walk after a particularly intense day of training. ”
His hands keep kneading my flesh. On impulse, I lean close and kiss him, my mouth brushing over his. He seems taken aback by it at first, as though he wasn’t sure how to be kissed as opposed to kissing someone.
But Keir eventually allows me to kiss him. Only for half a minute, though. Then he pulls back, patting my thigh awkwardly.
“I should go. I promised Isla.”
I arch a brow. Have I embarrassed him? The thought makes me grin.
“Should I come to your room later?” I suggest.
He blinks. “That would… be welcome.”
“Thanks for the massage.”
He turns away, waving the words back toward me as he heads out the door. It’s funny, but I’ve never seen Keir without a barb or a quip prepared.
My phone chirps. I pick it up, expecting a text from Kaia or Joy. But instead, I find a text from a weird international number.
Hey! It’s Saffron. Got a minute to video chat?
I call the number, insanely curious how she got my number. She picks up, beaming from ear to ear.
“Hello! I hope I’m not interrupting your bedtime. I know people have rituals to follow before they go to sleep.”
“You’re not cutting into anything. I’m still up stretching. I haven’t even wrapped my hair yet.”
“Okay, great. Because I have some serious gossip to tell you. Not actually even gossip… verifiable facts.”
I squint at her. “All right. Well, lay it on me.”
“I dug into our friend Natasha’s past.” She narrows her eyes, her lips curving. “Natasha Simon? She doesn’t exist.”
I tilt my head, trying to puzzle it out.
“Are you sure? Maybe Natasha used to go by another name. Like she used to be married or something.”
Saffron lifts a finger, tapping her own nose.
“So Natasha Simon? Like I said before, she doesn’t exist. No record of her more than three years old.
No history of any Natasha Simons that are from where she claims to be from and are also around her age.
I checked the entire country. But there are plenty of records for two related names. Natasha Smith and Ellen Simon.”
I scrunch my face up. “Those could be totally different people.”
“They’re not. Look.” She holds up her phone’s video camera to her tablet screen. I see the name Natasha Smith, followed by a work ID that is clearly Natasha. My eyebrows rise.
“That’s her,” I agree.
“Look at the other one.” Saffron swipes her finger across her tablet.
Again, I’m faced with a work ID. But this time, there is a matching driver’s license. The picture in both shows a young Natasha, her hair cropped and bleach blonde. But the kicker has to be the name.
Ellen Simon.
“That’s her too!” I say. “Where did you find all of that out?”
Saffron looks at the camera again, shrugging. “It was actually really easy. I hired a private investigator. Within like thirty minutes, he found a lot of dirt.”
My eyes widen. “Like what? I mean, the fake names thing is weird, but it could be for a reason…”
She shakes her head solemnly.
“So Natasha’s alter egos? They were also personal assistants to two CEOs. Both of them had torrid affairs with the men that they worked for. Both of them later sued and settled, leaving behind broken families and CEOs that had to leave their companies.”
My jaw drops. “What the fuck? Natasha is a gold digger and a life ruiner?”
“She definitely is. There’s absolutely zero doubt about it. And Keiran is an easy target. He’s the front man for a very public company. He’s undergone a private divorce. Our family stands to lose a lot if Keir’s supposed affair or sexual harassment were thrown into the spotlight.”
“I don’t even know what to say! What a sneaky bitch!” I put a hand to my forehead. “God, I have to tell Keir.”
“Whoa, whoa. Not so fast.” Saffron frowns. “Listen to me. As Keiran’s sister, I need you to be aware of something. He has a tendency to react to bad news… well, badly.”
I put my hands out. “What do you mean?”
“Keiran takes it personally. Like, he had a guy that worked as his personal accountant for years. His name was Mike. Keiran liked him a lot. He even invited Mike to join his yacht club, which is sort of a big deal. Anyway, long story short… Mike was embezzling money from Keiran. Like hundreds of thousands of pounds. And when my Dad told Keiran…” She shakes her head.
I crane my neck, impatient. “What?”
“Keiran didn’t believe him! He almost split our family apart because he spent a small fortune dragging bankers and forensic accountants and private investigators through all our family accounts.
It was ridiculous. All because Keiran said that Mike claimed he was innocent.
” She rolls her eyes and shakes her head emphatically.
“Like the accountant would tell him the truth after he stole so much from Keiran’s accounts. ”
She scoffs. I try to figure out what Saffron is saying, in her roundabout way.
“So… you think we should just let Keir be blindsided by Natasha?” I ask, my brow furrows. “That doesn’t sound great.”
“No, no. I think that there is definitely a way to make Keiran think that he just accidentally stumbled across it.”
“You mean… lie?”
Saffron pulls a face. “Not lie. Just… arrange the truth in a different way so that my brother believes that he found out this information on his own.”
I bite my lip. “I… don’t know. That sounds pretty extreme.”
She looks thoughtful. “Okay. I’ll make a deal with you.
You sit on the information for a few days.
In the meantime, I will figure out how to slip Natasha’s record into a stack of papers that he’s sure to come across.
Or maybe her old documents will get forwarded to Keiran from an unknown source.
Either way, our hands would stay perfectly clean. ”
Pursing my lips, I give Saffron a hard look. “I really don’t want to lie to Keir.”
“On my honor. I swear you won’t. You will just sit back and let me present the evidence in the best way possible. It’s for his own good.”
Releasing a breath, I shrug. “You’ve known him for your whole life. He’s your big brother. If you say that it’s handled, then I guess I can keep my lips zipped for a week.”
A male voice says something in the background on Saffron’s end. She rolls her eyes and nods to whoever is talking.
“I have to go. But I’m glad we talked! I’m going to dig into all of this in the morning.”
I give her a weak smile. “Talk soon.”
Saffron ends the call. I’m left sitting on the floor, full of misgivings.
How am I supposed to lie to Keir?
Blowing out a breath, I push the entire situation out of my mind and focus on stretching my leg.