Chapter 11 Zach
Zach
I wander onto the terrace, drink in one hand and phone in the other, immediately grateful for the quiet. Male jeers and laughter, the sounds of bottles clinking, and music emanate from the living room. My ears still throb from the chaos inside, otherwise known as monthly poker night.
Seeking solitude, I left the group of men—some colleagues but mainly guys I grew up with, and some I even call friends—to come outside into the muggy night air. But truth be told, I only wanted silence to gather my thoughts.
Paige is on my mind.
She has been for the better part of the day. She was phenomenal with the board last night. A natural. She fit in like she’d been doing those kinds of dinners all her life. So much so, a few board members have reached out to comment on my brilliance in dating such a woman.
I’ve wanted to call her many times today but have been smart enough to think better of it. It isn’t that I worry what she’ll think if I do call. I have the perfect reason to—a legitimate excuse—Nan has invited her to lunch.
But I don’t have to call her. I have options. I could just as easily have Karen, my assistant, extend the invitation, even on the weekend, and that would be the best thing to do.
The truth of it all is I want to hear her voice.
And this is a foreign concept to me. I’ve always enjoyed the company of women, but not to the point of needing to speak to one just because.
Paige is different from the women I’ve dated and I think that’s what it is. This thing we’re doing isn’t conventional or even dating. Maybe that’s why I’m so intrigued.
Now, as the day draws to an end, that need—to hear her voice—is greatest.
And absolutely insane.
With the phone to my ear, I’ve got my banal greeting ready to go the minute she picks up. I will play it cool and aloof.
Only my facade crumbles at the breathless panic coating her two shaky words. “Help me.”
“Paige, what’s wrong?” Something grabs hold of my throat and it feels like an agonizing eternity before she responds.
“He was here and…and…I-I-I don’t know if he still is.”
My heart spasms.
Joel Hummel.
He was in her house.
Again.
“Call the police. I’m on my way. And Paige.” I pause, placing a hand over my exposed ear to lessen the noise now that I’m back inside. “Is he still in the house?”
Words and paragraphs from the report the investigator put together on her landlord flit through my mind. Dammit, she doesn’t know who she’s dealing with.
My people told me they were on top of it, and it looked like they were. He’d all but faded into the background and it was only a matter of time before she moved out. Someone was even watching Hummel. How did he get in the house without my guy knowing about it?
“I don’t know. I need to search the house.” Her voice is tremulous.
“No,” I shout, and she releases a mouse-like squeak. “Shit, listen. Don’t go looking for him. Right now, with me on the phone, go into a bathroom or another room that has a lock. Somewhere you can be alone and safe.”
I want her the fuck out of there but it’s too much of a risk. If that sick fuck is still in the house, I don’t want her running into him.
“Now?”
“Now. I’ll stay on the line. Tell me once you’re there. Then I want you to call the police.” She whimpers and I sharply swallow another curse. “It’s going to be okay. I’m on my way.”
Shuffling and breathing are the only sounds I hear over the phone for a few seconds. “Okay. I’m in the bathroom.”
“Good. Now I want you to hang up and call nine-one-one right away. They’ll stay on the phone with you until the police get there. I’m leaving right now.”
She doesn’t give me another word; my ears ring with the dial tone and everything else disappears with only one task driving me forward.
The following twenty minutes, while I rush to get to her, is a terror-filled fog, unlike anything I’ve felt before. Hummel is escalating.
Fuuuck.
I race from my home without any explanation to the few guys who notice me running out the door like a mad man. Fortunately, I haven’t drunk a drop—the guys had just gotten there—and I drive my car, forgoing a driver. It would take too long and I need to feel in control.
Even if it’s an illusion.
On the way to Paige, I call my lawyer, wanting to know how the hell Hummel got into the house and worse, so close to Paige.
“Good evening, Mr. Rothwell,” Tamara says calmly in her lilting British accent, only ratcheting up my anger at the incompetence of my people.
“What the fuck happened? Hummel got into Paige Hayes’s house. Someone was supposed to be watching him!” I roar and my beast-like rage reverberates throughout the confines of my car.
“What? When did this happen?”
“Tonight. Tamara, I want answers. Now.”
“We do have him under surveillance. I don’t understand. I’ll get right on this. Have the police been notified? What do you need me to do?”
“Make it so Joel Hummel never so much as thinks about Paige. Do. Your. Fucking. Job.”
I hit the end button, still frustrated and not any closer to an explanation for tonight’s debacle.
It takes me half the usual time to get to her house, where flashing lights and police cruisers line the curb. I park behind a cop car and bound out from my Bugatti.
The front door is open and a cop stands on the porch as I stride briskly up the walkway, spotting Paige’s silhouette through the open doorway.
Her long dark hair is loose and from the looks of it, still partially damp. She’s wearing tiny purple shorts and a black tank top, and while it’s hot enough for it, I want to cover her up.
She must sense me or something because she glances over her shoulder, out the front door. Our bewildered gazes lock.
“Zach.” She says my name as if it’s a balm and the relief in her voice is undeniable.
She moves quickly in my direction yet with every step closer, she slows and finally falters only a foot or two from me. It’s like she remembers something—who I am or more aptly, who I’m not to her—and she altogether stops.
The gentle calm washing over me at the first sight of her recedes at an alarming rate, leaving a biting chill in its wake.
My arms stiffen at my sides, yearning to hold her, but I manage to keep myself in check.
I want to comfort her but I’m unsure as to what she’s feeling, thinking, or more importantly, what she needs.
“Are you okay?”
She nods and her chin quivers in a feeble attempt at a smile. “You came.”
“I said I would.”
“Excuse me, Ms. Hayes, we just need you for a few more minutes.” A police officer sticks her head out the door with a warm expression for Paige and then motions to me. “Your visitor can come, too, if you wish.”
Paige takes my hand and it’s a small consolation to her distance but welcomed nonetheless, and I follow her into the house.
Ahead of us, a plainclothes officer descends the stairs with what looks like a toolkit in one hand and a large brown paper bag in the other. Following right behind him is another person, a woman this time, with several more bags filling her hands.
Evidence?
It’s then I realize I don’t know the specifics of what happened tonight, how Paige knew Hummel had been in the house. I have a million questions and I want answers. Now.
Paige isn’t in any shape to retell the night’s events in every detail. Besides, she most probably had to relive the evening several times already during her conversations with the police.
“Would it be all right if this officer,” I make sure Paige watches me point to one of the policemen in the room, “told me what happened?”
She nods and beside her, the officer interjects, “Sorry, Ms. Hayes, we need verbal consent for…who are you?” She looks directly at me.
“Zachary Rothwell. I’m her boyfriend.”
‘Boyfriend’ sounds so juvenile and foreign, and instinctively I frown at the use of the word. Paige eyes me warily, obviously uncomfortable with parading our arrangement in front of an officer of the law. It isn’t a big deal. A white lie at the most.
“Is that so?” The policewoman is keen to pick up on whatever passes between Paige and me.
Her question is directed at Paige as if challenging my claim and I mask my irritation with a clenched jaw.
“Yes.” Paige doubly confirms it with a head nod.
“I’ll be right over here.” I clasp her elbow and point to the kitchen before kissing her lightly on the forehead.
Her eyes shutter closed and the corners of her lips tip upward for the briefest of moments, and she nods again.
It’s then I notice Tamara showing the man at the door her credentials. She joins me and we listen to the officer recount the evening and what they have discovered so far.
My lawyer isn’t her usual cool, calm, and collected self. Worry creases the corners of her eyes and mouth as she glances my way several times. Good, let her sweat.
“To recap. No signs of forced entry. We’ll do a light dusting for fingerprints in the bedroom, but he’s the landlord, so if we find any, they likely won’t hold up,” the policeman says, more to Tamara than me, as she furiously takes notes.
“The clothes on the bed and the shoes have been collected and will be tested. It appears the underwear has some kind of substance on it. An initial examination suggests it’s body fluids, but we’ll know more once the tests are done.”
Fuck. Just a more sterile way of saying cum.
That sicko jacked off with her underwear while she was in the bathtub just feet away. My fists curl and teeth grind together, a sharp ache shooting to the top of my head.
Instinctively, I need to seek out Paige. She’s still with the other officer, nodding at something the woman is saying and then glancing my way.
I wonder if she knows what Joel Hummel did with her underwear. I’m not surprised—it’s close to what he did with his previous tenant. I already knew the dangers of this man.
If I was incensed before knowing the events of tonight, it’s nothing compared to the anger coursing through my veins while the officer finishes his report. I let that deranged man get this close to her, take it this far.
And with every word from the cop, Tamara grows more uptight, shifting from one foot to the other, once or twice even tugging at the collar of her crisp white button-down shirt.
She was supposed to be on top of this. She knew what Hummel was capable of, and what happened tonight is just as much her fault as mine.
“Mr. Rothwell,” she starts once the officer leaves.
“Save it. I want a full report emailed to me by eight tomorrow morning and in it you will outline your strategy for putting Hummel behind bars. Immediately. Do you understand?” My voice is strained, barely holding back the shitstorm I so want to unleash.
She nods curtly, eyes wide even behind her square-framed glasses, and leaves, knowing better than to stick around. She’ll bear the brunt of my outrage if she does.
The police finally give the go-ahead for Paige to leave with the understanding that she needs to come into the station by Monday. She does a quick scan of the ground floor and the look on her face says it all. This house is no longer her home. Her refuge.
“Do you need anything before we leave?” I ask and she hesitates, glancing up the stairs and then out the front door. “Tell me what you need and I’ll get it.”
She doesn’t have a chance to answer before the officer says, “Sorry, sir, you’re not allowed up there. One of us will go up and gather what you need if you tell us where it is.”
“My bathroom under the sink, there’s a blue toiletries bag.” She hides her face by looking down at her clothes. “I don’t have anything else to wear, but…”
She wants to get out of here, and my guess is the thought of even having to think of her bedroom and the instructions she’d have to give the police is too daunting and troublesome.
“Don’t worry about your clothes. I’ve got you covered.” My arm slides around her shoulders and I wink at her for my poorly timed double entendre.
While the officer goes upstairs, Paige leans into me and I willingly give her the support, for my sake as much as hers. We stand like that for a beat or two.
“Did you call your family or friends?” I ask, not ready to hand over the responsibility of caring for her to someone else but also knowing we are acquaintances with a business deal.
Last night’s dinner may have been a success, great even, but it doesn’t change the fact that none of this is real.
We aren’t real.
But I can still be here for her. I feel responsible for what happened tonight, and once her brother finds out, Drew will likely feel the same way.
“What?” She looks up at me, dazed as if she was somewhere else and only now realizes where she is.
“Do your parents know what happened tonight? Drew?”
“No, Mom and Sam are away, and I won’t tell Drew tonight. He’d be on the first flight to Toronto, and Dad…well, no.”
“Okay.” I nod to the officer in thanks and gently nudge her out the door.
“Why?” she asks as we near my car.
“I wondered where you were staying tonight.”
Stay with me.
“Oh. Um, I guess my mom’s. I could stay with the family friends taking care of my youngest brother but…”
“But what?” I lean forward to open the passenger door to my car for her.
“Too many people and I don’t want to worry Bas.” She nibbles on her bottom lip, glancing to her feet and back up at me. “Can you take me to a hotel?”
Uncertainty swims in her usually warm chocolate gaze and I make the decision to push beyond our fake relationship. Besides, what I’m about to ask will only help our deal.
“Stay with me.”
“I don’t think that’s…”
“Stay tonight or as long as you want. You don’t have a permanent place to live right now.”
“Thanks for reminding me.” Her attempt at levity makes me chuckle.
“My building has security and I’ve got more than enough room.”
She’s about to open her mouth to protest—it’s written all over her face—when I place one finger on her now parted lips.
“It’s getting late and I don’t want you alone.”
“Okay.” She gives in more easily than I anticipated, and her tone suggests fatigue is the culprit—she’s too tired to argue—but her relief is hard to miss.
Turning to face the Bugatti, she slides into the cockpit-designed interior and sighs, “This is some car.”
I smirk at the admiration in her voice and nod, shutting the door, and when I slip into the driver seat, I find her palm running seductively along the buttery, one-of-a-kind leather.
The crotch area of my pants tightens at the thought of her hand stroking me like that.
Damn. I’ve got to get my head on straight.