Chapter 12
TWELVE
“YES!” MIMI EXCLAIMED.
“Oh my God, Mimi, you are right. We do know her!”
They didn’t “know” her. They “knew of” her, she’d guess.
“I was sorry to hear about Spencer,” the easy, cool guy said with real empathy. “Went to the funeral.”
One of few. Even she wasn’t there.
Breathing got hard. Her head was spinning. Fast. Vertigo closed her eyes, but still the world flashed before her. Two lives, her two lives, were never supposed to collide and certainly not like this. Her past life was supposed to be over. Would it ever be over?
“Her name’s Elle Jones,” Cam said with such conviction there was almost a laugh in his voice.
When her eyes opened, they immediately landed on the cool guy still scrutinizing her.
“Want me to shut up?” he asked. On instinct, she nodded. “‘Kay.”
He sauntered past and the door was almost clear when—
“Candy?”
Cam. His hand slid onto the side of her neck. God, she couldn’t look at him. If the woman in front would just get out of the way. Who were the others? Staff or something, they hung back, loitered on the stairs, though probably absorbed every word.
“I have to get out of here,” she whispered to no one in particular.
“You’re not wearing shoes.”
Yeah? And what did that matter?
The brunette scoffed. “Shit, if I had a dollar for every pair of shoes I lost at a party…”
“Would you turn around?” Cam asked, pulling her back a step. “Mom, get in the damn house.”
Mom? That woman in front of her was his mother?
“Thena Collier,” the woman said, discerning eye growing acute. “Camden’s mother.”
Confirmation. Shit again.
“No,” she said because nothing would compute. “Sorry, I can’t—”
“Find Schmidt outside,” cool guy called somewhere in the background. “He’s one of the drivers, he’ll take you home.”
“Tripp!” the brunette exclaimed. “Don’t scare her away. We want her to stay. She’s Cam’s friend. His special nookie on the pool table friend.”
“Nookie?” There was such hope in the older woman’s question.
“There’s a damn camera in the room, Rox Out.
I’m surprised she hasn’t sprouted wings and flown out of here.
” How did this Tripp understand? He got it.
In a breath, he understood something she hadn’t even figured out yet.
“Schmidt won’t tell anyone where he dropped you. He’s discreet. No one will follow you.”
“Is the camera the problem—out!”
“Rox—”
“Get your shit and disappear, Hatfield.”
He huffed. “Is there somewhere we can set up to—”
“No,” the brunette said and clapped her hands. “Call Keith. Go to the club. Play nice there a while. Out! Out! Out!”
That got the bodies moving. Thena gave the camera guy and his people space to leave the building and the brunette went after them to slam the door before their asses were barely on the other side.
She spun on the spot and held out a hand. “Roxanna Kyst.”
“Kyst-Lomond,” Tripp called from the couch, earning himself an eye-roll glare.
“You think there’s a risk of me having an affair in this room?” Roxanna asked and flashed the guy the impressive glitter on her hand. “I’m married. Big whoop. I think the world knows it. I made enough money telling them about it.”
“Just saying,” the guy teased. “I’m counting.”
“You do that, boy,” Roxanna said and rested a hand on her upper arm.
“Tripp Breckenridge and I are Collier family friends. Thena is Cam’s mom; Mimi’s his grandmother.
And you’re Ariella Tipton?” There weren’t words.
Not in her head. Her throat. Hearing that name was almost too much to compute.
“I’m sorry, should I know Ariella Tipton? ”
Still, there was nothing to—
Cam appeared beside Roxanna as his mother moved deeper into the room.
“Are the panties necessary for something, Parfait?” Thena asked. “Are they art?”
The question gave them all a new focus, thank God. The cool guy, Tripp, sat right in the middle of the couch, completely non-plussed by the lingerie strewn around and beneath him.
“Noble’s upstairs,” Cam said.
Explanation enough, his mother nodded and bypassed it all to sit at the dinner table instead. Less underwear there.
The moment was mortifying for many, many reasons. Her guilt and discomfort grew when it occurred to her the mess was only there because of her. And it should’ve been her job to make sure it was gone before the sun reached the horizon. Long before anyone respectable showed up. Fail.
“The cleaners will be here at noon.”
“No one cares about the mess,” Cam said, gentle, like he wasn’t mad. How could he not be mad? “Every time Roxie has a party, the entire state ends up a mess worse than this. We’re all used to it.”
Roxie nodded, stroking gently. “It’s true. Didn’t even register.”
“And if this is the state of the place when Cam’s on the wagon…” Tripp scanned the space, hooking one pair of panties on his index finger to spin it around until it flew across the room. “Damn, I’m sorry I missed it. Noble become the king of party games?”
“Of getting women naked,” Mimi said. The older woman had been strangely quiet until then. She went to sit by Tripp. Right beside him. The guy’s arms were stretched along the back until Mimi was settled, then one came down around her. “You thrive on competition.”
“He’s a Breckenridge,” Roxie said, putting an arm around her. “Once upon a time, my guy would’ve claimed that title.”
“You’ve clipped his wings.”
Roxie grinned with pride. “I sure have.”
She didn’t have the wherewithal to free herself from being directed back to the living room.
“A true Breckenridge would get their old, decrepit auntie a sherry.” Yeah, Mimi looked and sounded anything but decrepit. In fact, if asked, she’d have said the woman wasn’t old enough to have grandsons Cam’s age. “I changed your diapers, you know.”
“Pah! You’ve never changed a diaper in your life, Old Woman,” Tripp replied. “You think my mom let any baby out of her sight long enough for anyone else to get in there?”
“I’ll do it,” Cam said before Tripp could move. “Sherry?”
“Alcohol at this time in the morning?” Thena asked.
“Yes! It’s a celebration! We solved a mystery,” Mimi said and smiled at her. “We found long lost Ariella Tipton. Someone call Caspian and tell him we have the front page!”
Horror impacted her chest so hard, her next breath went nowhere.
“Can’t you see she doesn’t want to be found, Mimi?”
“We’re supposed to pretend we didn’t see her?” Mimi recoiled from Tripp to check his face. “Do women call you Priest in bed?”
Okay, hairpin, and that came from…?
“Nana,” Cam said on his approach to hand over the delicate glass of sherry. “Drink your booze. Leave the sex interrogations until after we’ve eaten.”
“I still say it’s a travesty you keep yourself locked up, Parfait. Colliers are prime physical specimens,” Mimi said and sipped her drink. “And Tripp doesn’t mind answering? Do you, Sexy?”
“No, I will talk about sex all day long, ‘specially with a hot woman.”
“I want to know the answer.” Roxie seated them on another couch. A party couch that wasn’t usually there. “What do women call you in bed?”
“Women call me whatever the hell they want in bed or anywhere else,” Tripp said. “If I’m getting pussy, I’m not listening.”
“Oh, please,” Roxie said. “No one believes that. Mimi?”
“My soul sister is right, you can’t help yourself, sweetie. You’re a Breckenridge.”
“A bleeding heart?” Cam said. “You don’t fall for that, do you? It’s all an act, Mimi. He’s a sex addict.”
“And proud of it.” Tripp relieved Mimi of the glass to take the rest of the sherry in a shot himself, then stood up. “You need another drink.”
“Mix me a cocktail,” Roxie called as he disappeared into the store by the beer fridge.
“Not your husband!” came Tripp’s response.
“No, just my freeloader!”
“Lime drop?”
“That’ll do,” Roxie called, wearing a smile. “Ariella wants one too.”
“I really don’t,” she said, finally finding her voice and her feet. “I have to go.”
Except the camera crew could be out-front, lying in wait. Would it be too dramatic to climb over the back fences?
“Candy—”
“I can’t,” she said, backing away. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I—I have to get out of here.”
Out of the state, maybe the country, how many passports did she have left? She couldn’t handle it happening all over again.
Cam came to her, but didn’t stop her, he crowded her back until she was cornered by the front door.
“You’re in trouble?” he murmured.
“It’s not like that.”
“I know who Ariella Tipton is.” Of course he did. “And I knew Spencer Raith.”
He did…? “How?”
“I knew your name. Your face was never shared.”
“It was almost ten years ago.”
“You were too young.” God, this was excruciating. “I was in the room when my father made that decision.”
Grief gave way to curious confusion. “Your father?”
What did that…? Cam was—Thena, his mom. Thena Collier. Roxanna Kyst… What did Tripp say…? Lomond was a well-known name—and Caspian. Caspian Collier.
“Oh my God,” she exhaled, “You’re a CollCom Collier?”
There wasn’t the slightest hint of his upbringing in the house.
He didn’t have pictures or albums lying around.
Not that she’d necessarily have recognized any of the faces.
Their name was famous, they owned a vast proportion of the worldwide media in its various forms, they didn’t feature in it.
Not as such. Of all the men in the world she…
“You didn’t know that?”
This guy was successful in his own right. People talked of his professional brilliance and, yeah, he had wealth, but a CollCom Collier? Holy hell!
“You’re an architect. You never said—no one ever said—”
“It’s okay, we’ll figure this out.”
“No,” she said on a doubtful snicker. “It’s never that easy. Spence and I spent a long time, a long, long time staying as far from the limelight as we could. People want scandal, they want to vilify and—no, we never wanted that.”
They didn’t talk about this, about them, about… She and Spencer had lived in a bubble of their own making, by choice. It wasn’t fun to feel that choice fading away.
“You and Spencer?”
The air was thinning again. “I’m sorry.”
“This is why you’d never talk about your past.” That didn’t need a reply. “Your husband…” His hand slid off the wall. “Shit, you were married to Spencer Raith.”
“Until the day he died.”
Something more discerning put his hand back by her head. “But you scrap and graft, there should’ve been enough money there to—”
“We didn’t have any money, and I wouldn’t take it from them.”
They’d never offered and never would. The Raith family only wanted to pay her for one thing and it was something she’d never leverage, even in her darkest moments.
“The family?” he said. “After you and Spencer—”
“I don’t want to talk about this.” She squeezed her eyes closed. “I was there, I know what happened, and the world doesn’t need to salivate over the details.”
“I’m the world now?”
And when her eyes opened, there was a tinge of anger mixed in with his hurt.
“I honestly didn’t know who you were. I had no idea there was a Collier son so far from their loop.
We’re about as far from California as you can get in the lower forty-eight.
I wouldn’t have invited this. I chose to live as far from the media’s radar as—you can’t know what it’s like.
” His family controlled the media, they couldn’t be hounded by it.
“And now there’s footage of me here, with you… ”
In the party mess and last night’s dress. Shame hadn’t needed a walk, she’d laid it out on the pool table.
“That footage will never see the light of day. It’ll be destroyed—”
“You can’t.”
“I can,” he said, vehement. “I might be far from the loop, but that doesn’t mean I’m out of it.” He tipped his head back to call. “RK—”
“Footage is being burned as we speak. Knox is on the road already,” Roxie replied without him asking a question. “Troops are mobilizing.”
“You should call Mieux,” Tripp said.
“Any excuse. Why should I call Mieux?” Roxie asked. “Since when do you need me to call a woman for you? Want me to pass her a note after gym? Pull her pigtails for you too?”
Mimi chimed in as well. “Many millions of women out there in the world would offer themselves to your beck and call, Sweet Breckenridge Priest. Including the ones you’ve already slept with. Especially them.”
Cam’s fingers curled around her chin as the other conversation went on without them. “No one here will hurt you. We protect our own.”
And was she that? One of theirs?
“I can’t go through it again.” She’d only just got to a place where life was starting to make sense again after a very, very long time. “No one understands—”
“Explain it to us,” he murmured, coming a little lower. “Nothing you say will ever leave this room.”
Tell her story? No. Absolutely not. For a decade she’d kept her and Spencer’s relationship close. So close that no one except them truly understood it. Without him, she was alone, and the only one left who even knew the truth of their story.
“I can’t,” she said, pushing him back. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
Sneaking past him, she opened the door to escape. Schmidt may not be the best option, but without shoes or cash, he was the only one available. Home was no longer home. She had to get as far away as she could. Fast.