Chapter 13
I didn’t even listen to my podcast during my run because I was wracking my brain to figure out why Olivia was still so hell-bent on saving money. Why was she not satisfied with what I had given her? Was abundance not enough for her?
Desperate for a key to unlock the female mind, I called Mom and asked her.
“It isn’t about money, it’s about control,” Mom said through the phone. “She thinks the more she depends on you to survive, the more control you have over her.”
I set the ingredients for my post-run water on the marble bartop in the media room. “Doubt it. No one can control Olivia Adams, you don’t know her.”
“And you don’t know women,” she argued. “Your endless money pit isn’t impressing her, it’s freaking her out.”
I mixed my water and scoffed. “How would you know that? A month ago, you were calling her a gold digger.”
“So she’s a different type of dangerous, then,” she said dismissively. “A tiger has stripes and a leopard has spots, but both will still maul you.”
I took a slug from my water and walked toward the study. Might as well spend thirty minutes answering emails before I figured out what to do for the rest of the day.
A tense sigh left my lips and I kept my voice low in case Olivia was home. “If I’m attentive, I’m wrong. If I keep my distance, I’m wrong. Do you have any other creative ideas for how I can be completely useless in this situation?”
“Fulfil your obligations as the father of those twins, that’s all you do,” Mom said. “Don’t involve yourself with her any more than you already are. She might be growing the next Fontaines, but she clearly doesn’t want us to bring her into the fold.”
I pulled open the study door and stepped inside. “She doesn’t even want to give them the Fontaine name. I’m just hoping I can get her to see reason and she’ll give up the ridiculous notion that my babies will carry the name Ada—”
The sight of a tall coffee cup placed on my desk stopped me in my tracks. I set down my water and picked up the cup—the coffee was still warm.
“She…got me a coffee from the place downtown,” I said into the phone. A neon blue sticky note on the side of the cup caught my eye. “And a note.”
“What does it say?”
I read the message written in purple marker. “Of course you’re a Capricorn.”
“Great,” Mom groaned. “She’s one of those women.”
I put the note in my pocket. “How did she know? What does this mean?”
“It means she snooped through your socials and got information,” Mom said. “Worse, it means she’s suspicious or she’s bored—either way it’s dangerous.”
I weighed the coffee in my hands, as if testing to see if it would explode. “So, do I need to make myself even more uninteresting so she doesn’t go digging?”
“Nothing about you is uninteresting,” Mom said. “But if Olivia doesn’t want to be part of this family, she can’t learn anything else. Understand?”
Though she couldn’t see me, I still nodded.
Mom wasn’t happy that I told Olivia the bare-bones story of what happened to Grandpa, or even that Katie and I had a bad fallout instead of just spinning the “amicable breakup” lie. She could be as mad at me as she wanted, but Mom didn’t understand what it was like at the manor.
“You know I’ll do anything for this family…
what all is left of it.” I examined the coffee cup and then tossed a glance to the framed ultrasound photo that sat on my desk.
“But the family includes the babies and the babies are relying on their mother. Olivia is…fragile right now, and sometimes I have to share bits of my life to get her to take care of herself. I’m doing my best to be discreet, but this is a tough balancing act. ”
Mom took in a long inhale, likely taking a drag of her cigarette. I anticipated a lecture, but instead she sighed and said, “You’re going to be a good father.”
My heart warmed as I kept my eyes on that blurry black-and-white photo of my little babies. “Thanks, Mom.”
“You have a good rest of your day,” she said. The soft patting of her carton of cigarettes against a table echoed through the speaker. “And happy birthday, baby. I love you.”
“Love you too,” I replied.
After she hung up, I examined the seemingly innocuous note.
The blue note had come from a pack in my desk drawer.
Had Olivia been snooping? Did she find the keys to the filing cabinet that were hidden in a box behind the pens?
Did she drug the coffee to make me collapse on the study floor so she could make copies of my thumbprint to use on the family safe?
I let out a breath and glanced at the googly-eyed globe on the other side of the desk. Mom was making me paranoid, but was it unjustified? I hadn’t been this close with anyone since Katie, and even though I couldn’t say Olivia and I were anything resembling romantic, she made me feel very…exposed.
I was a defanged rattlesnake when it came to the mother of my children. We could hiss at each other all we wanted, but I could never risk inflicting strife on her as she grew the babies. She could hurt me a hell of a lot worse than I could ever hurt her, but I couldn’t let her know that.
As exposed as I felt, the real question was if I actually craved the opportunity to let her hurt me.
Was the pendulum swinging in the other direction after years of isolating myself?
Did I want to find out if Olivia Adams was the type of woman I could hand a gun to and trust her not to pull the trigger?
Swirling the coffee in my hand, I dared to test my theory. I took a sip, just a little one, and let the warm coffee trickle down my throat.
Carmel vanilla latte. Delicious.
After sipping the coffee and thinking too much, I shut myself in the gym and made my body work through the turmoil so my brain wouldn’t have to.
I wore only my gray sweatpants as I cycled through a body weight circuit, grounding myself with the feeling of my feet and palms on the floor as I did push-ups.
I shot Olivia a text to check up on her in the middle of my workout. Close to the end of my final set, she responded.
“I’m in pain.”
My brows furrowed as I looked at my phone. I asked her to specify what kind of pain and finished my set as I waited. Olivia had been complaining about her hips being stiff for the past few weeks, so maybe that was it.
Or maybe it was worse.
I got up from the floor and texted her again. No response. I toweled the sweat off my neck and chest—still nothing from Olivia.
My heart started racing. Pain could mean one or both of the placentas detached. She could be hemorrhaging. I shoved my phone into my pocket and left the gym.
“Damnit, Adams,” I called from the foyer as I quickly headed up the stairs. “You’re scaring me.”
I had hoped for a sassy response, but was only met with silence when I made it to the second floor landing. I hurried down the hall to her bedroom door and knocked. “Olivia?”
No response. I turned the knob—locked.
She had fallen again. She couldn’t reach her phone. She was bleeding, unconscious, on the bathroom floor. I had only seconds to spare.
“OLIVIA!” I shouted as I shoved my shoulder into the door, popping the lock open. The door gave way and I stumbled into the room, my chest heaving as my head whipped from side to side. She wasn’t in bed. Or on the floor.
I only took a few quick steps into the bathroom to find her. She was in the bathtub, her hair piled into a bun and her face frozen in shock. She was awake and not bleeding, but the relief washing over me didn’t stop my pounding heart.
“Beau, what are you—?” she whispered.
I threw down my hands. “You can’t just text me that you’re in pain and disappear!”
“I’m sorry, I…I left my phone on the dresser,” she said. “It’s my pelvis again. I thought taking a bath would help.”
I forced out a sigh. She was fine. It was a simple misunderstanding. The babies were fine.
I rubbed my shoulder to soothe the ache from hitting the door. “Well, next time could you tell me—”
A low vibrating noise hit my ears. I looked at Olivia and she looked back at me.
Her eyes were the size of baseballs and her cheeks grew redder by the second.
Though the bath was full of bubbles, covering everything below Olivia’s shoulders, it couldn’t hide the very mechanical trembling beneath the surface that made the water ripple.
So that’s why she wasn’t answering my texts.
I leaned against the doorframe and gave her a little smile. “Pain, huh?”
She furrowed her brows. “OK, big strong man—you got to bust open my door and now you know I’m just fine. Now if you will please just—”
The vibrating noise softened until it fizzled out. The bathwater went completely still and Olivia looked down at the bubbles and cursed under her breath.
As if there couldn’t have been a more perfect time for a battery to die.
I held back a laugh. “Serves you right for scaring me like that.”
She turned back to me like she was about to spit venom, but then her eyebrows raised and her face softened. I tracked her gaze and suddenly became hyper-aware that I wasn’t wearing a shirt.
“I didn’t know you had a tattoo,” she said softly.
I lifted myself off the doorframe and looked down at the tattoo of an angel spearing a python on my right arm.
“I, um, got it while traveling a few years ago.” I rotated my arm toward her so she could get a better view. “Didn’t hurt as bad as people say.”
“It’s pretty.”
Badass was the term I would have used, but I’d take the compliment. That might have been the first compliment Olivia had ever given me, actually.
Olivia’s eyes dropped to the bubbles as the flush creeping along her cheeks deepened. She bit her lower lip in a way that made me want to swallow my own tongue.
“I have a tattoo on my back.” Her eyes flicked back up to meet mine. “Want to see?”
My heart started to pound. I put all my willpower into keeping my eyes on her face and not giving into the temptation of taking a quick glance into that thinning layer of soap bubbles.
Her tattoo wasn’t all I wanted to see.