Chapter Twenty-One
Oliver
Wrought iron gates, at least eight feet tall, swing open when I enter the code.
I steal a glance at the usually eccentric woman asleep in my car. I’ve never seen her still, cheek smushed against the window, bare legs tucked and curled under a hiked-up thousand-dollar gown she doesn’t give a damn about.
Two nights in a row she’s fallen asleep in that seat beside me, and I’m beginning to like the view, even as my stomach tightens.
Her father trusted me to keep her out of trouble, and I have.
He needn’t know I also dream about the way her dripping cunt would feel wrapped around my cock, or how torturous it is that I could have her in an instant, a single wall in my home being the only barrier between her and the desires I’m finding it impossible not to chase.
And when I do, because it’s not an if anymore, when we concede to this, it could all come crumbling down.
His trust in me would be tarnished.
I could lose my job.
And his serendipitous daughter can act like she doesn’t care about her status or her stake in the company to piss him off, but I have a rebellious daughter of my own. I see the fear beneath her unending confidence.
She cares about earning his trust, just as much as I do. I’m still curious about the ideas she has. Could there be changes we implement together as a team?
For now, we keep this between us.
For us.
We’ll have to tell him eventually, if it…doesn’t end. If it could be more than temporary. A hollow feeling unsettles me when I think about the end of this summer.
Of her leaving.
And damn it, I wring my fingers through my hair and tug. It’s barely even begun.
The dusk approaches, orange and yellow light streaming in from the window and casting a heavenly hue across her body.
“Love again, Oliver. You have so much of it to give. Promise when I’m gone it won’t die with me.”
“No, Lo. I won’t talk like that. You’re getting the next treatment. This is the best facility.”
“Promise, Oliver. Promise you’ll live.”
Is this what Lauren meant?
Lemon is beautiful and brilliant. I think about what she said to Lydia at the shop. She stood up for me, but more notably, she helped that seamstress gain a valuable lesson on kindness, regardless of status or wealth.
Now, why would a billionaire’s heiress even care about that?
Another one of her surprises.
She stirs, smiling when her eyes flutter open to mine staring back. “We’re at your place.”
“The apartment?” She sits up quickly, assessing the paved drive that surrounds a large, marble fountain in the center of the parking loop. She sighs a breath of what seems like relief, but it’s so quick I almost miss it.
Apartment?
“Phillip’s car is gone, which means Father’s already left. We can get the car without having to explain this.” She pats my shirt collar and draws my attention to the lipstick smudges she put there somewhere between the dressing room and the car. “We can bump a Tide pen from the maids.”
“The maids, huh?” I tease her with my nose in the air.
“You know what I mean.” She chews her lip. “I can’t help if my father has maids. And maids need jobs, too, ya know? Our maids have families. They get bonuses and healthcare and…”
“Sour Patch?” I meet her glossy eyes. “I’m not judging you.”
“Promise?” Her breath staggers, one hand poised on the door handle and the other reaching for mine, so I squeeze it.
“Promise.” My lips meet hers. “Only Miley can do that.”
“Ass.” She swats my shoulder and curves her lips. “Let’s go before I change my mind about the Tide pen. We could let me loose on your body instead and the whole shirt can have little kissy prints.”
“You know, I’ve never really liked Tide. More of a Gain guy.”
“You don’t say.” She laughs.
Holding her hand felt so natural in the car that I almost reach for it again, but the door swings open first. An elderly woman in all white comes out to greet us with an apron secured around her waist. Her eyes crinkle when she yanks Lemon through the foyer. “Lemon Cake! I’ve missed you!”
Their reunion strikes me as odd. She hasn’t been living with me that long, but there was the tour before this, I suppose.
The grandmotherly woman fawns over Lemon’s hair, then her dress, before finally appraising me.
“This is Amelia,” Lemon says, as her eyes flick between the two of us.
“Hi, Amelia. I’m Oliver. It’s a pleasure.” I shake her hand, careful not to squeeze. She reminds me of my grandmother before she passed. Her body was frail, but her mind was keen.
Amelia uses hers to read me.
“I like him.” She winks, offering me a smile.
We’re ushered to a small sitting room with leather sofas and a round glass table in the center. An obscure black sculpture sits in the middle, a figure screaming from inside a cage.
Lemon snatches it up with a dramatic eyeroll, shoving it in a side-table cabinet as soon as she sees it.
“I made that shit in like tenth grade and Papa still displays it like actual decor. It gets old, that’s all.”
“He loves you.” I smile, taking the sculpture back out before she can stop me.
She gives up easily, waving her hand at the piece like it’s nothing, but I don’t miss the way her eyes flick to mine each millisecond I inspect her work.
“The person screaming, that’s you?”
She nods.
“And the cage? It’s…” I gesture around the room, “this mansion?”
“No. Good try, though.” She smiles, reaching over to strum her fingers across its tiny clay bars. Her bracelets jingle from her wrist, and I wonder what those represent, too.
Amelia returns from the kitchen smelling like cookie dough and coffee, and my stomach grumbles on cue. “Your father and Ms. Clements left for their cocktail reservation earlier. Should I whip something up for you two? Coffee or tea? The event starts in just a few hours, you know.”
Lemon retracts her hand from the sculpture and cocks her head. “Did you say Ms. Clements?”
Amelia’s face pales. “Oh, dear. I was probably not meant to tell you that, was I?”
“Is he seeing her again? Sylvia Clements of Clements Music? She’s his competition!”
Lemon storms up the stairs, shouting German phrases I’m glad I can’t translate. All I can do is shove my face full of the warm, gooey cookies while Amelia wrings her hands against her apron.
“Well, don’t just stand there, young man. Run up there and make her feel validated. Come on, now!”
I laugh through a mouthful of cookie. “I am not a young man.” I gesture to the silver that started in my beard years ago, but she bellows, slapping my shoulder with a dishtowel.
“Everyone is young when you’re my age, dear. Even you. Now, go help. And make sure she doesn’t make a scene at that charity event. For the love of tabloids, we do not need another press frenzy. It requires me to feed quite a lot of mouths, and my old hands just can’t keep up with it these days.”
“I hear what you’re saying, Amelia. I won’t take my eyes off her.”
I’m not sure it’s in my realm of possibilities, anyhow.
“Good.” Amelia exhales at my assurance, but there’s the other issue I’m not so sure about.
“How am I supposed to help her?”
The things she’s struggling with and the things I’m working through are two very different things. There are entire layers to that woman I’m not sure I’ll ever uncover, if I’m honest with myself.
I eye the sculpture, the pain a teenage Lemon must have felt as she carved her own bars and shoved herself inside them to scream from that stone for eternity.
“Do you care about her?”
I place the sculpture back in the cabinet where Lemon wanted it and close its door. “I’m worried I might care too much.”
Amelia’s smile almost reaches her eyes. “Then show her. Not many have.”
“Who could possibly not care for her? She’s magical.”
“Not everyone believes in that sort of thing.” She winks. “Do you?”
“Which one’s her room?”
“Her room room is in Pine Forest Apartments above the bar. Drives her father crazy, you know. She does have a horrendously pink princess suite up the stairs that I assume you were referring to, however. Looks the same as the day she moved out ten years ago.”
Amelia smirks at my surprise.
She moved out of this into low-income housing?
“You’re not talking about the ones above Cowboys Paradise, are you?”
“I sure am. Clever décor. Those Isaac and Campbell boys do handy work when they get together.” She picks up the empty cookie tray and wipes the table.
“You know,” she studies me, “Lemmy would kill me if she knew I spilled her beans…maniacal about her reputation.” She rolls her eyes dramatically, and I see where Lemon gets it now.
“You seem like a man trying to figure her out, and I like you, Oliver.”
“Thank you, Amelia. I like you, too.” She makes great cookies. Most importantly, she cares about Lemon. And aside from Jeremy and Emil, she’s the only other person I’ve met who knows the real Lemon Perkins.
Amelia must feel the same about me. She leans closer, her voice a hushed whisper.
“Lemon doesn’t just live in those apartments, dear.
Her father doesn’t know. She owns them. All of them.
She used some of her trust money years ago when she turned eighteen, and she rents them free to youngsters who age out of her cousin, Katie’s, group home, provided they work and open a savings account.
She even maps out the financial planning services. ”
“She does this for free?”
Amelia nods, tears springing to the corners of her eyes, sharing this secret with me.
But why is she concerned with financial independence from her father if she has properties of her own? She must file as a non-profit to have that sort of program moving, so why play by her father’s rules at all? Furthermore…
“Why would she agree to be my nanny for the sake of an inheritance if she’s got the funds and skills to go at it on her own?”