Episode 51
Episode 51
Teen Angst
MAIA
“You will not teach my daughter how to steal!” Rhodes growled.
I looked at him wide eyed and shoved off the bed. “Of course, I wouldn’t! I may not have a college degree, or a high school diploma for that matter, but I’m not stupid.” I snarled right back.
Rhodes slumped down onto the bed, his elbows braced on his knees, head in his hands. “I’m sorry,” he rubbed at his face. “Obviously you wouldn’t. I don’t know what I was thinking. Just a knee jerk reaction, I suppose.” He lifted his head. “Forgive me?” His steel gray eyes looked tortured and beyond that, exhausted.
“Yeah,” I nodded quickly then moved to stand in front of him. The moment I did so, he reached out and curled his large hands around my hips. Then, to my utter shock, he pressed his forehead to my stomach.
“I really am sorry. I’m out of sorts. Jet lag, the worry, and then Emily was being so nice…it just doesn’t add up.” He sighed as he nuzzled my stomach, clinging to my hips.
I reached out tentatively and put my hands on his head. Instinctually, I ran my fingers through his hair.
He sighed so deeply it was as though his very essence relaxed, his body slumping deeper, more of his weight leaning on me. I used my nails and gloried when his grip tightened on my hips, reminding me of what we did on the floor in the hotel room not an hour before we boarded the flight to France.
“Hey, the thing with Emily, it’s going to be okay, you know. Teenagers are hard to figure out, and they have strange ways of working through change. I should know, it wasn’t that long ago since I was one,” I teased.
He groaned and shifted his head, so his chin was pressed to my abdomen and his gaze was on me. “Don’t remind me. If I think too hard about our age difference, I’ll have a whole new set of worries to obsess over.”
I dipped my head and kissed his forehead. “I’m very much an adult. And besides, my birthday is right around the corner.”
He sighed. “Still doesn’t change the fact that you’re closer to my daughter’s age than mine.”
I scrunched up my nose. “Let’s not forget I’ve lived as an adult for a decade. I may be younger in years than you’re used to dating, but not in life experience.”
He looped his arm around my back and tugged until I got the hint and straddled his lap, bringing us face-to-face.
“You didn’t get your high school diploma?”
I pressed my lips together, hating to admit anything about my past but knowing it was important if we were going to be married for the next three years. And I liked Rhodes. A lot. Not just how he treated me, but the way he treated everybody. Emily, Alana, Christophe. Heck, he was even genuinely kind to strangers he met in the airport.
“Here’s the thing. When you’re a runaway and want to attend school, they immediately call child services. That means foster care, and worse, a sweet and good-intentioned social worker that wants to reunite you with your birth parent. Meaning my mother and her abusive husband.”
He closed his eyes briefly. “I see.”
“Yeah. It was hard enough obtaining a copy of my birth certificate and social security number, and Alana had to pull some strings to make that happen, hence the reason I also have a passport. It was how I ended up being able to work odd jobs. Ultimately, I ended up doing better on my own.”
“Pickpocketing.”
I nodded.
“Do you want to get your diploma?”
“Sure. It’s on the list of things I want to achieve, but it’s never been my top priority. That has always been saved for finding a way to get my mother and siblings away from the Devil.”
Now I was the one feeling the exhaustion creep up and smother me in despair.
“I checked my phone when we got off the plane and haven’t received a call from an unknown number.”
“We’ll try again, maybe after we’ve had a bite and taken a nap, yeah?” he offered.
“Whatever you want.” I looked away. What was another day in the grand scheme of things?
“Hey, look at me, Maia,” Rhodes urged.
I turned my head and focused on his handsome face. He really was a looker. The salt and pepper hair, the scruffy jaw, naturally sculpted dark eyebrows, long Roman nose, and gray eyes that seemed to look straight through me with nothing but honesty. The man was a walking, talking, fantasy come to life, and he was mine…for the next three years.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want. Just because we’re getting married doesn’t mean I own you.”
“But the auction rules…”
“Fuck the auction rules. I live my life by a moral code. One that doesn’t make the woman I’m going to marry bow to my every whim. If there is something you want or need, we’ll get it. You are not a prisoner.”
“Okay.”
“Right. Then I’ll ask again, would you like to go get some food and then take a nap?”
I ran my hands up and down his thick shoulders and biceps. His face was something to see but that body… I shivered in his lap and watched as a smile spread across his lips.
“Unfortunately, now is not the time or the place for what that look you’re giving me implies,” he said in a rough, sultry timbre.
“I’d actually like to nap. I ate a snack on the plane when you were making calls before we landed.”
He nodded, cupped my cheek and then pecked my lips. “Okay. You rest, I’m going eat and talk to Emily, then I’ll join you.”
I nodded.
He looked deeply into my eyes before kissing me softly again, then lifted me and turned sideways so I was on the bed and he was standing before me. I held my breath as he reached for my foot and slid off one shoe and then the other.
I shifted and crawled up toward the head of the bed and pulled the covers down.
“Do you want to get undressed?”
“Is that a proposition?” I teased and then ruined it by yawning.
He chuckled. “No.”
“I’m fine. I’m used to sleeping in my clothes.” I laid my head on the pillow as he covered me with the blanket.
“I’m not sure I even want to know why you’re used to such a thing, because I know I won’t like it, so I’ll just leave it alone,” he grumbled, tucking the blanket around me.
“Good idea,” I mumbled, sleep already invading.
“Sleep well, Maia.”
“Mmm hmm,” I said and then I was out.
* * * *
RHODES
For a full two minutes I watched Maia sleep. She closed her eyes and was out like a light, seemingly instantaneously. Her face was angelic when she slept. All of the intensity and nervous energy that tended to surround her simply gone. I vowed to make her look more rested as we got to know one another better. But the little I did know didn’t take away from my concern for her and her family.
The situation with her mother, siblings, stepfather, and stepbrother was ugly. The more I thought about what she shared earlier, the more I realized I might need to call in reinforcements in order to help them, provided her mother even wanted that. Maia didn’t really have a good read on her mother because it had been years since they’d seen one another. And from what I gathered, they didn’t talk often.
What if we went to Colorado, barged in like white knights, and were cut down by the very person we were attempting to save? One lesson I’d learned in my thirty-eight years on this earth was that you couldn’t save someone who didn’t want to be saved. No matter how hard you tried, or how well-meaning you were. They had to want it themselves.
I shook my head as the jet lag started to creep in, making my limbs feel even heavier. Still, I needed to eat and I wanted to talk to my daughter. The way she reacted to Maia didn’t add up to the Emily I’ve known her entire life. If she was playing some game, I’d put an end to that shit real quick.
I kicked off my shoes in the corner of the room next to my suitcase and removed my jacket, tossing it on a lone chair. On socked feet, I padded out of the room and closed the door gently so I didn’t wake up my sleeping beauty.
A high-pitched laugh I recognized made me smile as I followed the sound to the kitchen.
Emily’s expression lit up at my entrance. “Dad! Alana says we can take Maia shopping in Paris at the Galeries Lafayette! Isn’t that badass?”
“Mouth,” I reminded her.
She rolled her eyes, which was very much like my daughter, so I relaxed a bit when I took the seat next to her.
“Where’s Maia?” She looked over my shoulder.
“Sleeping. She was beat.”
“Jet lag took me out for like sixteen hours, right Uncle C?” She gestured to Christophe.
“That is true.” He smiled at my daughter and passed her what looked like a crepe. The man would have made an excellent father. He doted on Emily as if the sun rose and set with her. Then again, he didn’t have to live with her teen angst on a regular basis. He might not be so willing to spoil her rotten if he had even half the dose she gave me daily.
The cook set down a fully loaded plate of eggs, bacon, hashbrowns and a perfectly cooked crepe. I did a double take on the crepe. Like I said, what Emily wants, Emily gets, especially when it’s Alana’s and Christophe’s to give her. I usually didn’t care as long as their gifts were within reason. Every teenager needed to be showered with love from the adults in their lives, and one adult in particular didn’t give Emily the attention she desperately needed.
“So can we go?” Emily asked around a mouthful of food.
“Go where?” I blinked not having a clue what she was going on about.
“Shopping, duh! With Maia and Alana at the Galeries Lafayette,” Emily practically whined.
“Darling, this word, duh, is irksome. It is rude and makes you sound like a small child and not the lady you are becoming. Can you cease using it?” Alana interrupted.
Emily’s mouth dropped open as she focused on Alana. Surprisingly, she nodded but didn’t respond.
Maybe my daughter was maturing before our very eyes.
“ Merci beaucoup ,” Alana responded with a sweet smile, and shocker of all shockers, Emily smiled back.
“Yes, honey, when both Maia and I are rested, perhaps tomorrow, we can go shopping.”
“But tomorrow…” And there was the annoying whine that grated on my last nerve.
Again, one sharp narrowing of Alana’s gaze and she looked down at her plate and pushed the crepe around.
“Okay Daddy, that’s fine,” Emily begrudgingly answered.
For a few minutes the four of us ate silently until Christophe spoke. “How about, while your dad and Maia rest, we can paint together?”
Emily’s eyes widened and her entire face lit up with excitement. “In your studio? ” she breathed as if he was suggesting taking her to the mall with no spending limit.
“ Oui . A few sessions with me and you will be painting your own masterpieces in no time,” Christophe boasted.
That time I rolled my eyes while Emily danced in her chair, eating her breakfast with more gusto than before. Probably eager to get to painting.
We finished eating and Emily popped up and took her plate to the sink. Again, where the hell did she get these manners? At home, it would take half an army to get her to do something as simple as cleaning up her own plate. She’d usually grouch that we had a live-in house attendant for that very reason, regardless of the fact that I was doing my best in trying to teach her good manners.
“Hey Em, honey, can we chat in the living room privately for a few minutes before you meet up with Christo?”
“Go on, ma douce ,”— my sweet , he called her—“I will get the supplies ready.”
I put my plate in the sink, and Emily followed me into the living room. She threw herself onto the couch ass first.
“Em, don’t sit like an elephant. The springs in the couch aren’t made like a trampoline. You run the risk of breaking the seat base when you do that. Sit like a lady,” I used the same phrasing Alana would have in the hope it might trigger this new side to my daughter. The mature side.
“Ugh, sorry, Dad.”
It worked. She actually apologized instead of griped.
I sat down next to her and put my hand on her knee. “Honey, I just wanted to talk about me having Maia here. You were really kind when you met her, and I wanted to thank you for being so nice.”
She frowned. “Because I’m not always nice to new people?”
I tilted my head and stared at her, giving her enough time to come to her own conclusion.
Emily looked down and stared to fiddle with her fingers. “I’m not that bad. I’m not mean to everyone .”
I laughed. “Nope. That’s normally reserved for me.”
Her shoulders stiffened, and I could see tears fill her eyes. “You’re not going to get rid of me, are you? Send me away to some boarding school for rich kids whose parents don’t love them anymore.” I watched in horror as the tears fell down her ruddy cheeks.
“What on Earth would give you the idea that I would ever let you go?” I gasped, my free hand going over my heart as if it were breaking in fucking half.
She shrugged.
I reached out and tilted her head up with two fingers under her chin. “Emily, you are the most important thing in my life. Maia was not wrong when she said that. Nothing will ever come between me and you. I am your father, and that will be so until my last breath.”
She swallowed, and her lips trembled. “But what if you want to like get married, and then go off and be free like Mom does with her men?” She cast her gaze away as if afraid to see my response.
I closed my eyes and breathed through my nose, my nostrils flaring as I mentally tore Portia a new one for creating this new fear in our daughter’s mind.
“Emily, I may have a girlfriend, and I may, in fact, want to marry her, but she does not replace you. Not now, not ever. She will be added to our lives, not replace another’s position. And there is no way I’d ever shuttle you off to a boarding school. I love you. I love being your dad. I love having you just down the hall when I put my head on my pillow at night. Nothing gives me peace like knowing you are safe, sound, and happy, living right under my roof.”
Emily flung herself into my arms and cried against my neck.
“Is that why you were so nice to Maia? Because you’re worried I’m going to replace you with her if you don’t like her.”
She nodded against my neck, her tears wetting my skin.
I held her tight. “I want you to get along with Maia. She could really use a good friend like you. And for me, I really like Maia as a part of my life. But she will never replace you, because you’re irreplaceable, Emily. I will never love another the way I love you.”
“But Mom never wants to be with me…” she sobbed. “And if you want to be with Maia like she wants to be with her boyfriends…”
“No! Absolutely not. Do not compare me to your mother. I loved Portia, and the best thing she ever gave me during our marriage was you. A gift I’d never give back. And if she can’t or won’t spend time with you, then she’s missing out. I will not be missing out.”
“I love you, Daddy.” Her voice cracked.
“I love you, baby. Forever and always. You never have to feel otherwise.”
She sniffed, wiped her nose on her sleeve, and smiled. “I do like your new girlfriend. She’s really pretty, dresses cool, and she’s so small. Do you think she’ll want to hang out with me too?”
I cupped both her cheeks and wiped her tears away with my thumbs. “If she doesn’t, she isn’t worth my time.”
Emily snickered and softly punched me. “Daddy, if you keep up that talk, you won’t have a girlfriend for very long.”
“Oh is that right, because you’re the expert on girlfriends?” I tickled her ribs until she howled with glee. “Get out of here. Go paint with Christophe.”
She bounced up, the melancholy gone as quickly as a swift breeze passing through a window.
Exhaustion set in as I watched her bound up the stairs. My gaze became rather blurred at the edges and my eyelids were hard to keep open. I eased up and went to my room to find Maia hadn’t moved an inch. I removed my pants and overshirt and slid into bed next to her in my underwear and t-shirt. I curved an arm around her slight form, tucked my face into her sweet-smelling hair and passed out.