24. Knight
Chapter Twenty-Four
KNIGHT
Iwas in the middle of an online meeting with some businessmen in Mongolia when Jerome came in holding the Saint in a headlock. He didn’t realize that my friend was letting him dominate him in an act of humility or humor. Sometimes those things got tangled up for him.
I smiled politely and said to my business associates, “Uuchlaarai. I have an emergency.” I closed my computer and stood up. “What can I help you with?”
Jerome started. “This guy parachuted down inside the compound. He says he knows you. I say we use him as the meat for our next barbecue.” Jerome’s smile was more than slightly terrifying, but the Saint didn’t seem worried.
“He’s a friend of mine,” I said, frowning at the unwanted visitor. I’d told Charles that I was going to talk to him about the ethics of my relationship with Trixie, but I’d already decided that I was going to stop delaying the inevitable. Talking about it wouldn’t change anything.
“She likes you,” Jackson Dewitt, ‘The Saint,’ said, still seemingly stuck in Jerome’s grasp.
I stared at him. “What?” The rest of the world fluttered away with those magical words.
Jerome rolled his eyes and released him. “Now he won’t have his head in the game for a week. You are friends with him. All of his friends are annoying distractions.” He left me alone with the Saint in disgust.
I pulled out a chair and gestured him into it with a smile. “Can I get you something to eat? No? What do you mean, she likes me? Could you be more specific?”
“I dropped in on her and ate most of your leftovers, so I’m good. Those leftovers are high quality.”
I bared my teeth at him. He’d dropped in on her? Without me? What if she decided he’d be a better fake daddy than me? “Obviously. I moved a chef into the hotel to personally take care of her needs.” Because I was the best fake daddy she could possibly want.
He raised a brow and pulled a zip drive out of his glove, tossing it at me.
“Congrats on the baby. It’s a long game I didn’t expect from you.
” His eyes narrowed and his smile disappeared while I held onto the drive.
Was this the intel I’d asked him to find?
There was an organization run by the Scorpion, in the far east, that he’d been willing to infiltrate.
For some reason, the drive wasn’t as important as the fact that Trix might like me.
I shook my head. “I didn’t engineer a pregnancy so that she’d be forced to stay with me. It wouldn’t work anyway. She decided to make me the father of her child.”
His forehead wrinkled in confusion. “She chose you to be her sperm donor? Wow. What did you do to engineer that?”
I leaned on the edge of my desk, generic prefab trash, because I didn’t know if Trixie would crash my office again.
“If I’d created this situation, I wouldn’t be planning to let her go once she’s off bed rest. And what do you mean you saw her?
Did you make her answer the door? Did you wake her up from a nap?
” I glowered at him while rage played in the periphery.
He grinned. “You are so cute. I love the way you redecorated your apartment for her. She said that you have a chance winning her heart because you make amazing turkey sandwiches.”
I stared at him while my thoughts tilted sideways and fell out of my head. “I cut the bread crooked.”
“Apparently, perfectly crooked.”
I grabbed his shoulder, gripping him too hard, but the world was getting fuzzy around the edges. “You can’t tell me that.”
He grasped me in return, hard enough that the pain cut through some of the euphoria. “I’m not saying that you should stalk her, but you don’t have to hold back so much. You’ve given her years to live her own life, and she ends up asking you to get her pregnant?”
I cleared my throat while my head spun. “You think it’s okay if I…pursue her?”
“I told her that you went to college. The valedictorian majoring in social sciences. She thinks you’re the best roommate ever. And she wants to cook for you. I mean, why not go for it with the one woman you want who is having your baby?”
Ah. She wasn’t having my baby, but had made me her baby’s fake daddy. I couldn’t clarify that point to the Saint because if Trixie told a lie, it was a precious deception that I would keep, particularly if it cast me in the role I never knew I’d always wanted.
“I’m not saying you should get creepy, but a lot of women are legitimately obsessed with you. Like that Janice character. I’d stay away from her. That’s one woman who would chop you into pieces and stick them in a jar. Also, she’s got roots tied to some very questionable people.”
“It would have to be a very large jar. She’s resourceful, could definitely find a jar large enough.
You’re serious about it being okay if I try to get Trixie to fall for me?
” I started mulling over the possibilities out loud.
“She knows about the piano and the education. Good. I was going to tell her that my mother was a school teacher, but it never came up. Just that she’s dead.
I can keep not mentioning it. She doesn’t pry.
She’s got this way of listening that makes you feel so seen. ”
“Yeah, she said you’re amazing at pretending to be interested in her engines. She knows you’re full of crap. She thinks that means you’re kind. She can read people really well, and the more honest you are with her, the more you’ll resonate to her.”
I shook my head. “She can’t know who I am.”
“Who are you? You’re a businessman who fights and races. You don’t need to tell her the full extent of what you do, but if you want, just talk about growing into other markets, increasing your profit every quarter until she’s comfortable with the idea of you as a billionaire magnate.”
“You think that’s ethical?”
“Sure. And you can buy the hotel with your profits from your other business ventures. I told her that you were bright.”
I pointed at him. “You set up a lie for me?”
“I’m helping you work your reality into hers.
Gradually. It took you years to become roommates, so who knows who long it will take to move to another level, but why not give a real relationship over time a shot?
Maybe you’ll get engaged when you’re forty, married when you’re fifty, during your kid’s college graduation. ”
Charles buzzed me, and I answered it absently. “You’re interrupting.”
“Your wife just left on your motorcycle. She was wearing her kicking boots. I’m tracking her GPS. I do apologize for interrupting whatever else you thought was important five seconds ago.”
I grabbed Jackson in a chokehold. “Helicopter. And Charles, get Pixel to bring the drones. The ones with red lights so they look weaponized.”
“He may have actually weaponized them,” Charles murmured. “Either way, he’s on his way.”
I nodded. “Start the helicopter. I’ll be there in a second.”
“Already done. I’ll pass on her coordinates. It’s convenient that she took your bike so we can just use your GPS tracker and not have to hack into her phone.”
“You’ll do both.”
“Naturally. I’ll let you know if the two diverge.”
I grabbed Jackson and dragged him out of my office at a run, towards the helicopter pad. When I left the building, it was already roaring to life.
“I’ll fly,” Jackson said, loud, directly in my ear. “That way you can do the navigating, and the jumping out if necessary.”
I nodded and finally let go of the death grip I had on him. My wife had left my hotel on my bike. Was she going on a drunken rampage? Would she end up with another man in a drunken haze? I had to get to her before she did something she’d regret. I needed to save her from something.