Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
Rhett
Present Day
M y cell rang as it sat on top of my desk in my office at the headquarters of Cole and Spade Hotels, Ridge’s name appearing on the screen.
What the fuck? Why won’t everyone just leave me alone?
I held the phone to my ear and barked, “What do you want?”
It was seven thirty in the morning. The last thing I wanted was fucking chatter.
I couldn’t believe I’d even answered.
“I’ve been texting you since you left the strip club on Friday night,” he said. “Since you didn’t write me back, I wanted to make sure you were still alive.”
That felt like a hundred years ago.
My life, since then, had done a one-eighty, leaving me dangling on the edge of a cliff.
“It’s only Monday,” I replied.
He knew the one-week rule when it came to this time every year. Why the fuck had he even expected me to pick up, never mind reply to his text?
“Which is too long to go without hearing from you. Are you doing all right?”
Am I all right? Is he serious?
Even if I hadn’t run into Lainey, my fucking brother knows better than to ask me that.
I wanted to laugh, but the sound wouldn’t generate in my throat.
I no longer found anything funny.
“How about I ask this instead: do you need anything?”
I pounded my fist against my desk. “I need a lot of fucking things.”
“Rhett—”
“Unless you’re a magician, then don’t fucking ask.”
The air from his exhale hit the speaker and caused my ear to tingle.
“How about we meet up for a drink later?—”
“Are you on your way to the office?” I asked, interrupting him.
It would be easy for him to come into my office and shut the door and ask to talk. But at least I wouldn’t have a couple of drinks in me, like he was wanting, where my walls could fall and I’d tell him everything that had recently happened.
At some point soon, I’d have to tell him, especially because I’d assigned our assistant to follow Lainey, but I wanted to hold off having to say anything to him or Rowan for as long as I could.
I just didn’t want to fucking talk about it.
“I’m headed to Jana’s.”
His baby mama. They were no longer together and hadn’t been for a while, but they co-parented like pros for Daisy’s sake.
“To pick up Daisy?” I asked. “What, are you bringing her into the office?”
“We’re bringing her to school together.”
Her first day of first grade.
I’d forgotten.
Fuck.
“Aren’t you just the perfect parents?” I huffed. “It’s too bad she has school. I wouldn’t mind ditching work and spending the day with my girl.”
If there was anything in this world that could get my mind straight, it was Daisy.
“I get her back this weekend. Why don’t you swing by on Saturday morning and take her out for the day?”
I needed far more time than just a day.
“How about I bring her back on Sunday morning? You cool with that?”
“I’m cool with that.”
Relief trickled through my chest.
It only lasted a few seconds, but at least it came.
“I’ll see you when you get to the office.” I hung up.
My phone hadn’t even reached my desk when a text came across the screen.
Trista
She left the house and went to a coffee shop.
Me
Is she alone?
Trista
No.
Trista’s assignment had been to not let Lainey out of her sight. I didn’t care what that meant or what that involved; I wanted my assistant’s eyes on her at all times. And while doing that, she wasn’t allowed to have her cover blown. The last thing I needed was for Lainey to know I was having her followed.
Me
Who is she with?
I held my fucking breath, my thumbs hovering over the letters.
Trista
Another woman.
More relief passed through me. I didn’t know why. She could be dating or married, and I had no right to feel anything if she was. It had been fifteen years since she had been mine. But I had a feeling if she was in something long-term or had gotten hitched, she would have posted a picture of the guy on Instagram. Since she’d opened the account, she’d only ever shared solo photos or ones with other women.
Me
Let me know when she leaves.
Trista
What about work? Don’t you want me in the office today?
Me
I told you what I want you to do.
Trista
Who will assist you and Ridge?
Me
The only thing you need to worry about right now is making sure you don’t lose Lainey and that she doesn’t see you.
Trista
She’s at the mall.
Me
Alone?
Trista
Yes. But before she went to the mall, she had lunch with someone. A guy.
Me
You didn’t tell me …
I need details. Who is he? What does he look like? What’s his fucking name?
Trista
I took a few pictures. That’s all the information I have.
The first photo that came through showed Lainey and him at a table, sitting across from each other. She wasn’t smiling; they weren’t touching either. It looked like they were just talking. The second picture she sent was a much better angle of him. And as I studied him, I realized I recognized him.
He was Benny, her cousin, whom I’d met several times.
Me
Keep me updated. I want a text every time she goes anywhere new and pictures of who she’s with. Got it?
Trista
Yep.
Me
And if, at any point, you get the sense she’s heading to the airport, I need you to get ahold of me. I don’t care what you have to do—find me.
Trista
She just left the rental office of an apartment building, and there was a key in her hand. Pretty sure the key wasn’t for her car.
Me
Where?
Trista
West Hollywood.
Me
Send me the address.
Where is she headed now?
Trista
Looks like she’s on her way to her parents’ house.
Trista
She picked up a few empty boxes, and she’s carrying them into her parents’ house. All signs point to her moving from their house to the apartment building in West Hollywood.
Me
When she does, I need to know.
Trista
You still don’t want me at the office?
Me
I need you doing exactly what you’re doing.
Trista
I just got an email from HR. Every day I’ve spent away from the office as your private PI, they’ve deducted it from my vacation time. Rhett, please do something.
Me
I’ll take care of it.
Trista
Maybe I should just come back to the office? And start working my real gig instead of this?
Me
Trista, you’re the only one I can trust with this. Don’t fail me now. I need you.
Trista
I just don’t want to get in trouble with HR.
Me
I’m one of the owners of the company. HR is not going to argue with me when I tell them to reinstate your vacation time. Stop worrying.
Trista
I got an email from HR. Thank you, Rhett. I feel a lot better now.
Me
Any updates on Lainey?
Trista
She’s with a friend for happy hour. I’m sending a pic in a second.
Me
Male? Female?
Trista
It’s a woman who looks so much like her that they could be twins. They even smile the same, it’s wild.
My stomach churned as I read her last message, my hands balling into fists. There was a burning in my chest, like someone had dropped a lit match in a pool of gasoline and the flames caused the acid to rise from my gut and rush to my throat.
With my closed fingers, I pounded on the center of the fire, telling the food I had inside of me to stay in.
My eyes were closed when my phone vibrated with another message, telling me the picture Trista sent had come through.
I couldn’t look at it.
I couldn’t even be around it.
I left my phone on the desk, rolled back my chair, and walked out of my office.
As I passed Ridge’s door, I heard, “Hey, Rhett, are you leaving? I need to talk to?—”
I didn’t turn around.
I didn’t answer.
If he said anything more, I stopped listening.
I just kept going until I reached my car and slid into the driver’s seat. I shifted into first gear, and I peeled out of the parking lot.
Trista
She just finished moving into her apartment. Her cousin and dad helped carry all the boxes into the building. Now, she’s at a furniture store.
Me
Keep following her.
Trista
Even though you know where she’s living now?
Me
Keep following her.
Trista
For my own sanity, I need to ask … how much longer are you going to have me on this job?
Me
Until I tell you to stop.
“Uncle ’Ett,” Daisy said, turning her upper body toward me while she sat in the pedicure chair, “you need pink sparkly toes, just like me. I want to be twinsies.”
Her feet were in the water, and flowers were floating around her ankles while the nail tech wrapped her shins and knees in something gold and leafy.
Daisy only got the best.
I made sure of that.
“You want my toes to be pink?”
Every time I hung out with my niece, which was as often as Ridge would let me have her, she somehow convinced me to get my toes done. When I tried to just be a spectator and not participate, that wasn’t good enough. If Daisy was getting a pedicure, she wanted me to get one too.
“Not just pink. Sparkly pink.” She smiled and giggled.
I looked at the chick who was sawing my heels with a stone. “We’ll have matching toes.”
She whispered something I couldn’t hear to the woman doing Daisy’s feet, and the two of them laughed.
I didn’t blame them. I didn’t exactly give off pink-toe vibes.
While Daisy sipped her strawberry milkshake that was left over from lunch, I said to her, “I can’t believe you started first grade. You’re growing up way too fast, my girl.”
She pulled back from the straw, and a smear of pink ice cream was somehow above her top lip. “I’m so old.”
I wiped it off, dunking my hand in the soapy water after. “Yes, you are. Don’t get any older on me, all right?”
“I want to be a big girl, Uncle ’Ett, so Daddy can buy me a car, and I can go to the beach whenever I want.”
“You’re never driving—do you hear me? You’re also never going to the beach without your father or me. Or dating. Or—” I cut myself off, positive I’d made my point.
But it wasn’t enough because the thought of my little one being around dudes—dudes like me—was something I couldn’t fucking handle.
“Uncle ’Ett, but I want to have matching cars with you. I’m going to paint mine pink, and you’re going to paint yours pink, and we’re going to go everywhere together.”
“A pink car?”
I hoped to hell she never asked for that. As much as I’d like to think I wouldn’t drive a car that was that color, she could convince me to do just about anything.
“Pink everything.” She giggled again.
There were curls—in her eyes, bouncing on her forehead, sticking to her cheeks.
God, she was adorable.
“Do you think, someday, pink won’t be your favorite color?”
“Nope.”
“What about purple?”
“Ack.”
“Green?”
“Ugh.”
I shook my head. “I give up. Tell me about school. How’s your teacher? How are your classmates? No one’s giving you a hard time, are they?”
“School”—she wiggled in her seat with a huge smile—“it’s all kinds of awesome-blossom. My teacher is named Miss Lark, and I love her. She’s extra pretty.”
“Yeah?”
“And she also loves the color pink, and she listens to Taylor. Like, how cool is that?”
“Taylor?”
“Swift, Uncle ’Ett. You knooow who Taylor is.”
I laughed. “I was just testing you.” I glanced down at the nail tech as she wiped my toes with cotton, getting ready to paint them. “Do you have a best friend in your class?”
“Yep. We eat lunch together, and she gives me her sandwiches sometimes, like on the days Daddy makes me lunch.” Her eyes went big, and she cupped her hands around her mouth, whispering, “Don’t tell him, okay?”
“Your secret is safe with me.”
“His sandwiches aren’t like Mommy’s. They’re … jiggly.”
“Jiggly?”
She nodded, more curls bobbing into her eyes. “I don’t know what he does, but ewww .” Her nose scrunched, and her little lips curled.
“So, your bestie gives you her sandwich?”
“They’re so yummy, like the ones we get at that sandwich place you sometimes take me to.”
“That’s a really good bestie to have, Daisy. Whatever you do, don’t lose her.”
“She hates bread.” She held up her hands. “She’s a weirdo like that, but I love her to pieces. I give her my crackers. The ones Daddy packs me have these spices on them, and they make my tongue stinky.”
My brother tried his hardest, and he was one hell of a parent, but it sounded like he needed improvement in the packing-lunch department. Which didn’t make much sense, considering we shared a private chef.
“She doesn’t mind having a stinky tongue?” I asked.
She shrugged. “But I hate talking to her for the rest of the day ’cause I can smell the crackers, and”—her jaw dropped further—“it’s so bad that I cringe.”
“Maybe you need to bring your bestie a piece of gum.”
“ Ohhh . I didn’t even think of that! One of those big balls from the gumball machine in your theater room. That’s what I’m going to do.” She paused. “Uncle ’Ett, why aren’t there more pink balls in the gumball machine?”
“You ate them all.”
A devilish look came across her face. “I did not!”
“I pulled the camera feed from a few weeks back, and I saw you reaching into the glass and sneaking out all the pink balls. Caught you red-handed, girlie.”
Her lips formed an O. “You saaaw ?”
“I saw.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“You’re in all the trouble. You’re going to bubblegum jail.”
She laughed as though that was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. “Uncle ’Ett, I want you to have a baby.”
My head snapped back, and my eyebrows went so fucking high that they hurt. “A baby?”
“I want you to have one like Auntie Rowan and Uncle Cooper so I can play with it and dress it up and do its hair in cute little bows if it’s a girl.”
I couldn’t believe this kid.
Sure, I was the only one in the family who didn’t have a child now that my sister was with Cooper Spade and they’d had their daughter, Rayner.
But being the single one out meant nothing.
I wanted children. I wanted them more than anything.
But there was only one person I wanted them with.
And that woman wasn’t mine.
“You have a better chance of convincing your father to give you a sibling than for me to give you a cousin.”
Given that Ridge was as unattached as me, that was going to be almost impossible.
“I asked Daddy for a sister or a brother before you came to pick me up, and you know what he said?”
“What?”
“That I should ask you for a baby.”
I reached across the small space between our chairs and held her chin. “Tell your father he needs to stop encouraging me to have a baby.”
“Why, Uncle ’Ett?”
“Because people like me don’t have kids.”
Her tiny eyebrows pushed together. “Why would you say something silly like that? You’re the best uncle ever, and that means you’d make the best daddy ever.”
There was nothing I worked at harder in my life than being good to this girl. And once Rayner was a little bit older and able to hang like Daisy, I’d do the same with her.
But hearing this come from my Daisy, shit, my fucking heart was melting.
“Uncle ’Ett?”
“Yes, baby?”
“Promise me something?”
“All right, I’ll make you a promise.”
“One day, you’ll give me a little cousin to play with, even if it’s a hundred years from now?”
“A hundred? I don’t think I’ll be alive to have any kids in a hundred years.”
“ Okaaay , then fifty.”
“Fifty years is a stretch too, Daisy.”
She gave me the widest smile, followed by the sweetest giggle. “Whenever it happens and if it’s a girl—and I really, really hope it is—then she’d better make you take her for pedis and have you paint your toes pink.”
I couldn’t help the grin that pulled at my lips. “Yeah?”
“You know why?”
“Why?”
“’Cause I wouldn’t ask just anyone to take me for a pedicure and to paint their toes pink. I only ask people I love extra much. Like you.”
As soon as my phone started to ring, I turned it to silent and quietly held the cell up to my ear, hearing Ridge say, “How’s my girl?” the moment the call connected.
“Are you really checking up on us?”
I kept my voice down even though I didn’t have to. Daisy could sleep through a goddamn hurricane.
“Checking up? No. If that were the case, I would have called a lot earlier than nine at night. But am I inquiring? Yes. I fucking miss her, all right? Jana had her all week, and you have her tonight. I feel like I haven’t seen my baby in months.”
“We had a hell of a good time today. She kicked my ass in Putt-Putt and somehow convinced me to go for pedicures because she simply couldn’t survive another minute unless her toes were pink and sparkly?—”
“Hold on. You got a pedicure?”
“Do you honestly think she gave me a choice?”
He laughed. “Man, she has you whipped. Keep going.”
“Dinnertime hit, and the princess demanded tacos, so that was what we had, followed by a movie. She made it a solid ten minutes before she fell asleep in my theater room, and that’s where she currently is, passed out on my chest.”
I popped a red Starburst into my mouth since Daisy had eaten all the pink ones. My home theater was stocked with all her favorite candy since, apparently, this was as much her house as it was mine.
“Don’t tell me you made the tacos?”
“Fuck no. You know me better than that.” As her head lay on me, her tiny snores vibrating against my chest, I gently brushed the curls off her cheek.
“Wait until she asks for an egg burrito for breakfast—that’s been her favorite lately. Or French toast—her second choice with warmed-up syrup and cinnamon butter.”
“Jesus,” I groaned. “Tell me you’re fucking kidding.”
“The kid likes good food. What can I say? She has my palate.”
I thought about the conversation I’d had with Daisy over pedicures, when she’d called my brother’s sandwiches jiggly.
What the fuck is jiggly?
“It’s a good thing our chef will be here in the morning,” I said, reminding myself to have a talk with him and make sure he was the one who took over lunch-making duty. “That’s a project he can tackle, not me.”
“What time do you want me to pick her up?”
I paused the movie since this conversation was lasting longer than I’d thought it would. “I can drop her off. I’ll text you in the morning and figure out a time. It won’t be early. Daisy and I will be sleeping in.”
“If you can get her to sleep past seven, it’ll be a miracle.”
“You don’t know the power of Uncle ’Ett.”
He laughed.
But there was other noise in the background, sounds that told me he was on the road.
“Where are you?” I asked. “I can tell you’re driving somewhere.”
“A place I probably shouldn’t be.”
A place he shouldn’t be?
I thought about a conversation we’d had at work not too long ago, when he told me about the woman he’d met at the strip club the night of the bachelor and bachelorette party.
That motherfucker was going back for round two—I would bet my life on it.
“Are you at the fucking strip club?”
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said and ended the call.
Trista
She’s at a bar, sitting at the bar top, having what looks like a vodka tonic.
Me
Who’s she with?
Trista
She’s alone.
Fuck.
I glanced down at the top of Daisy’s head; she’d been asleep on my chest for a couple of hours now. I wouldn’t wake her up, nor could I exactly bring her to a bar. Although I’d probably have a better chance of Lainey talking to me if I showed up with a cutie like Daisy.
Me
Let me know if she leaves.
As I hit Send, I almost regretted it.
Because if Trista told me a guy joined Lainey or bought her a drink, I’d fucking lose it.
And if she told me she went home with one?
Shit.
I wouldn’t be able to control my jealousy.
A jealousy that would turn to rage.