Chapter Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Seven
Hannah
It was one thing to agree not to let his father get to me, it was another to block out the voice that whispered in my ear whenever Simon wasn’t by my side.
It was needy and gross and I hated it, but as I trimmed the overgrown azaleas that lined the garden bed in front of the porch, I kept hearing his father’s words.
I don’t care if you have to fuck that woman into signing it over to you. You’ll do it or I’ll come after you and have you removed from the conservatorship of your brother.
It was so vulgar and nasty. It made my skin crawl.
It made me feel as vulnerable as I’d felt the day I discovered my husband had impregnated his assistant.
That had been such a cliché, it should have been laughable, but it had devastated me.
And my husband displaying my inadequacies at divorce court had broken me completely.
Did I believe Simon had started a relationship with me to romance the house out from under me?
No. But was I completely certain? Also, no.
How could I be when I knew that he’d tossed away his dream career as an artist to provide for his brother?
He was toiling in a job he hated for a steady paycheck so that Charlie received the care he needed and so that Lorelei had been able to get her career underway.
Sleeping with me to woo me into selling my share of the house to him was a small sacrifice compared to the artistic career he’d given up.
And if Simon wasn’t using me, if he meant it when he said not to worry that his father would cause him problems, well, that was equally disturbing. I’d done an information deep dive on Robert O’Malley Jr. He was, to put it mildly, a piece of work.
Judging by the simple internet search I did, Robert O’Malley Jr. was a litigious nightmare.
He sued everyone from his dog groomer for a bad haircut on his dog to his local dry cleaner for missing pants and even the town council of his Florida hometown for not raising the speed limit after he got a ticket.
Given that only 5 percent of civil cases go to trial, and that most of Robert’s did go and he lost, I was amazed he had enough money to threaten to sue Simon.
But perhaps his financial hardship was why he was so hungry to get his hands on our house and on Charlie’s conservatorship.
I wasn’t even family and I would fight this guy with my last nickel to protect Charlie and my home.
I stood and pressed my fist into my lower back.
Being hunkered over the bushes had tightened my muscles.
I glanced at the hydrangeas in the pots on each side of the front door.
The cheerful sight of the blue blossoms lifted my spirits a bit.
I’d been touched when Simon had given me the plants last week and told me that the blue reminded him of my eyes.
Also, he’d known the dead plants in the pots had bothered me and the fact that he’d bought something for the house felt like a positive sign.
It was that sort of thoughtfulness that made the insecure part of me shut up.
Simon was a good guy. He wasn’t like my ex. I was sure of it.
Except, he’d been disappearing every morning before I woke up and returning hours later only to jump into the shower right away. Suspicious, right? When I casually asked him where he’d been, he always said he was working on a project. When I asked what sort of project, he changed the subject.
We were well past my self-imposed limit of two weeks for being involved.
The smart thing to do would be to break things off now before one of us—meaning me—got hurt.
But I wasn’t feeling smart at the moment.
I was feeling stupidly head over heels in love with Simon O’Malley and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
I wiped the sweat off my brow and decided to shower and then take a walk over to Bebe’s to visit her and baby Ava.
Luke had returned to work and Bebe was beginning to get her rhythm with motherhood, taking to it like a bird to flight.
It had become our habit to get together in the morning and let Dude and Frank run around while we visited over sweet tea with baked Brie and fig jam bruschetta.
I hurried through my shower and threw on a sundress and sandals. I wanted loose clothing to let the heavy humid air flow through. Dude waited patiently on the couch for me and the minute I said, “Let’s go see Frank,” he let out a woof and trotted to the door.
I pulled it open and almost crashed into Charlie, who stood there with wide eyes, hugging his middle. He looked terrified.
“Charlie, hi, how are you?” I asked.
“I’m in trouble, Hannah, big trouble.” His soft brown eyes, so like Simon’s, were huge, and I felt my nerves flutter in my stomach. He started to pace the length of the porch, so I stepped outside with Dude to join him. “I need Simon.”
“Have you tried to call him?” I asked.
“I don’t have my phone.”
“Okay, I’ll try.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket.
Simon and I had exchanged numbers at his insistence the first time I went out to work on my online content.
He’d said he’d be my in-case-of-emergency contact if anything happened to me.
I’d never needed to call him, we generally just texted, and I hoped it wasn’t weird now.
His phone went to voicemail on the fifth ring.
I left a message asking him to call me and ended the call.
Charlie sat on the porch steps where Dude plopped down beside him and put his head in Charlie’s lap. Charlie absently stroked Dude’s ears while staring out at the front yard.
“I left Simon a message.” I leaned against the porch railing. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I ran away.” Charlie stared at the toes of his shoes, not meeting my eyes.
“What? Why?” I cried. “What did Julian say?”
“He wasn’t there.” Charlie glanced at me. “Bob, the night counselor, was there and he’s a stickler. The police were there, too, so I had to go.”
I took a long steadying breath. I didn’t want to cause Charlie any more distress than he was already feeling but I needed more information. “Can you tell me why you ran away?”
Charlie shook his head. I saw tears well up in his eyes and his face flushed a deep shade of red. This expression was one I knew all too well. Shame.
I sat down beside Charlie so that he was nestled between me and Dude. “Charlie, there is nothing that you can tell me that will make me not like you. You’re safe with me.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.” I really hoped I wasn’t lying.
“Okay. Well, I wanted to show Diana how much I like her,” he said.
I waited, letting him choose his words, even as I felt my stomach constrict. What if he had done something inappropriate or offensive or worse? Where the hell was Simon?
“So, I bought her flowers,” he said.
I waited a beat. “Well, that’s nice.”
“And I snuck into her room to surprise her with them.”
“Oh.” That wasn’t good.
“But she wasn’t there.”
“Okay.” Maybe he left them behind and this was a nothingburger.
“I left them in her room with a note.”
“Well, that seems thoughtful.”
“But I really wanted to know if she liked them.”
“Understandable.” I started to sweat.
“So, I waited until it was dark and I climbed up the side of her house.”
“Oh, dear.”
“And knocked on her window.”
“Oh, boy.”
“Except I got confused and it wasn’t her window.”
“Oh?”
“It was the night counselor’s window.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“She screamed and hit me with a shoe.”
“Are you okay?” I put my hand on his arm.
“I’m fine. It was a slipper.”
“Oh.” My voice sounded faint even to my own ears.
“I ran all the way back to my house but the cops were waiting for me,” he said. “So, I ran away…to here.”
“Charlie, Raleigh is three and a half hours away,” I cried. “How did you get all the way here?”
“I hitchhiked.”
A wave of dizziness washed over me. So many horrible things could have happened to him. I reached over and hugged him, reassuring myself that he was okay.
“Charlie, listen to me,” I said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Certainly nothing that would warrant the police. It was just a misunderstanding.”
“Really?” I felt the tension in his shoulders ease.
“Absolutely. Simon will be home soon and I’ll bet he can get this all sorted and everything will be fine.” I hugged him again.
“You should be careful not to make promises you can’t keep, Ms. Spencer.”
I glanced up to see Simon’s father standing there. Dude left Charlie’s side to move down the steps in front of us. He started to growl and I put my hand on his back to calm him. He’d always been an excellent judge of people.
“Dad!” Charlie cried, and jumped to his feet.
“Sit down, Charlie.” A look of disgust passed over his father’s face. Charlie sat down, looking chastised, and I felt a visceral need to punch his father right in the face.
“What do you want, Mr. O’Malley?” I used his last name just as dismissively as he’d used mine.
“You know what I want,” he snapped. Then his eyes narrowed. “You care for Simon, don’t you?”
I didn’t answer as it was none of his business, besides “care for” was an anemic way to describe what I felt for Simon.
“Don’t bother denying it. I saw it on your face the other day when you looked at him.” He took a deep breath and said, “Charlie, I need to speak with Ms. Spencer. Go wait in the car.”
“But I want to see Simon,” Charlie said.
“I’m here to take you back to the group home, you don’t need Simon,” Mr. O’Malley said. Charlie sat frozen. “Now, Charlie.”
“Bye, Hannah.” Charlie stood and I did, too, giving him a quick hug.
“Call Simon the minute you get home,” I said. I was feeling very ill at ease. I didn’t like anything about this, and I had questions, lots of questions.
“I will.” Charlie climbed into the back of his father’s car as if he knew he wasn’t allowed to sit in front with his father.
I turned to Mr. O’Malley. “If he doesn’t call…”
“He’ll call.” He waved a dismissive hand at me. “I’m taking him home. What could I do with him?”
“How did you know he was here?” I asked.
“Where else would he go?” he countered. “The home called me when he ran off because they said they couldn’t get in touch with Simon or Lorelei—not very good care of their brother, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask. You’re not here for Charlie,” I said. “What do you really want?”
“This cottage, for starters,” he said. “I’m tired of Florida and ready for a change.”
“It’s unfortunate that the cottage belongs to me and Simon.”
“Does it? It belonged to my father and the right of succession…”
“Is irrelevant because it also belonged to my grandfather.”
Mr. O’Malley began to pace, clearly not wanting to acknowledge my point.
“I’ll make this simple, Ms. Spencer. You can either have Simon or this house but you can’t have both.
Because if you keep your half of the house, I’ll be forced to use this incident with Charlie—stalking a defenseless woman, attempting a break-in, committing assault on a caregiver, and running from the law—to petition the court to take his conservatorship from Simon and turn it over to me. ”
“They won’t do it,” I said.
“Of course they will,” he argued. “I’m Charlie’s father and when he got himself into trouble, who was there to make things right? Me. Who failed him? Simon.”
Dread began to thrum its cold fingers in my belly.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This man, who had abandoned his children as teens, actually thought a judge would put him in charge of Charlie’s health and well-being because he was his father and he happened to field one call?
A tiny voice inside of me whispered that it could happen, and I was immediately terrified.
“You’re beginning to get it.” Mr. O’Malley continued pacing.
I glanced at the car and saw Charlie watching us with an anxious expression.
I forced a smile that felt brittle and turned back to Mr. O’Malley.
I was about to argue with his assessment of the situation when he said, “How do you think Simon would feel about you if he knew you had the means to stop my takeover of the conservatorship but chose not to? Spoiler: It won’t go well for you. ”
“I think it’s time for you to leave,” I said.
“I’m going. Think about what I said. All you have to do is sign your half of the house over to me, for a fair market price of course, and Charlie will go back to his safe little life and I won’t challenge Simon for the conservatorship.
” He pulled a folded packet of papers out of the inside pocket of his suit coat.
“You can’t be serious,” I said. “You’re actually going to leverage my feelings for your son to steal his inheritance right out from under him?”
Mr. O’Malley stared at me as if I were the stupidest person he’d ever encountered. “I can assure you that to get what I want I would do much worse.”
“Fine.” I held out my hand. I had no idea what I was going to do, but it had to be something brilliant to get us all out of this mess.
“I thought you’d see it that way.” Mr. O’Malley handed me the sheaf of papers. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
What a bastard. Simon had hypothesized that his father was either a narcissist or an asshole. At the moment, I was certain it was the latter.
Charlie rolled his window down as I approached. I leaned in and said, “Don’t you worry. Simon and I will take care of everything. I promise.”
As I watched them speed away, I was consumed with a fury I had never felt before. This man was not going to win. I didn’t know how but I was not going to let him hurt his children ever again.