The Crazy Rich Davenports Box Set, page 45
“I need to grab a few more of my things.” His big blue eyes bore into me.
“You’re really moving out?” Lucy moves toward him and rubs the outside of his arm.
“Yes, and I’m not going back to school next year. I’m going to be working full-time for Grandpa Davenport and stepping into my old man’s shoes.” I can hear the detest in his tone.
“You can’t be serious?” I gasp.
He walks over to the coffee pot and pours a cup. “I don’t know what the two of you expect me to do. He knows something happened to one of his men, and one day he’ll figure it out. Prison is not somewhere I want to be. Strip club…prison?” He lifts his arms like he’s weighing his options.
“We took care of that. Daniel will never find his body.” Lucy pounds her fist on the counter.
“He’s got me by the balls, and if I don’t do what he wants, this family is going down. He’ll take everything we have. Evan will go to juvie, Erik, far worse, and god knows what he will do with Yaya. And, you’ll be married to Uncle Cash.” He sips his coffee.
“I’ve already told you, I will handle this. If marrying Cash gets us free of them, then that’s what I’ll do.” She pauses. “What did Evan do?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He pours the rest of his coffee in the sink and looks at Lucy. “Mom, your shirt is inside out. I’ve got to go. I can’t be late for my first day of work.” He starts for the stairs.
“Ford.” I touch his arm, and he turns toward me.
“I…”
“Don’t say it, Daisy. Let him go,” Tommy screams in my head.
“Be careful,” I say, instead of begging him to love me.
He nods and runs up the stairs.
Unshed tears fill my eyes, knowing something really bad is going to happen. I feel it in my gut like it’s itching to come out and Ford is at the forefront of it all.
“I need to go take care of Kitty before I leave.” I rush by Lucy before she sees me cry.
I run as fast as I can to Kitty’s corral, trying to keep whatever’s brewing at bay.
“Whoa!” Tommy has me halting a few feet from her pen. “There are footprints here that don’t belong to us.”
I squat down to the sandy area that surrounds the pen. “How do you know they aren’t Lucy’s or Bets playing in a pair of her click-clack shoes?”
“Lucy wears a size eight. These are some dainty-looking feet and too big for Bets.”
“It’s probably one of the Vinny and Roxy’s porn stars.”
“We’ll find out.” He points to a camera mounted on the side of the cottage. “I put those up there after Kitty was dropped off without us knowing it.”
“I’ll look at it later. I really need to get out of here.”
“Take your phone out of your back pocket. I downloaded an app that you can watch the camera on.”
“What else did you do on my phone?” I can feel the scowl form as I pull my phone out.
“There may or may not be a few dick pics on there. I’m not saying whose they are, but if they’re impressive, it’s mine.”
One day he and I are going to have to have heart-to-heart about his so-called rocket.
I find the app and open it up. “It’s dark and hard to make out who that is running from Kitty. Oh, wait. What the hell were they doing here?”
“Spying on us, what does it look like?”
“I need to show Ford this video.”
“You’ll do no such thing! Ford is no longer in our circle. Erik is our man.”
That angry voice did not come from Tommy. Those chills down my spine are back, and I fear what’s coming. I don’t think I can protect myself from it, much less Ford.
Chapter 3
Lucy
I NEED TO go back upstairs and face Cash. Gah. How could I be so stupid?
You mean drunk don’t you? Peaches is stretching her arms above her head.
“Shut the hell up! I don’t feel like dealing with your snarky crap anymore today. ”
“I didn’t say anything.” Bets starts to cry.
“No, not you sweetie. Mommy is so sorry.” I help her scoop the coins back into her pouch.
“Does this mean I can get Kitty a pet?” She wipes her nose with her hand.
“No, it does not. I have an idea, how about I take you to the zoo?”
She runs over to the calendar that Daisy made.
“Write it in, Mommy, before Daisy makes me take ballet.” She scrunches her nose up.
“I’ll pick a day, and we’ll go.”
“Yay!” She jumps up and down, clapping her hands.
“Now, go get ready for your…” I squint at the calendar. “Day at the museum.”
“Okay, Mommy.” She skips off.
Rummaging through one of the cabinets, I find Tylenol and open the lid, letting the white pills spill into my palm. Right now, I’m tempted to take the whole lot of them, but that would only make things worse. I scoop them back into the bottle until there are only two left. Placing my hand under the kitchen faucet, I turn it on and cup water in my hand and down the pills.
I turn around and nearly trip over the dog. “You are too stealthy, Roscoe.” I step over him, and he follows me upstairs to my bedroom. The door is still closed from where I slammed it shut earlier.
Turning my back to the door, I slide down to the tile and lean against it. Roscoe crawls into my lap. “I fucked up, again.” His tongue laps out and lands on my face.
“Gross, Roscoe! I know what—or should I say who—you’ve had in your mouth.” I wipe the wetness off with my shoulder.
I remember the séance, and I remember taking the vodka down and drinking half the bottle, but not so much after that. How the hell did I end up naked in bed with Cash? Did I screw him? Things couldn’t have been any worse when I slithered out of my own bed this morning. Talk about the walk of shame.
I recollect things from this morning. Cash was partially covered with a sheet, sleeping on his belly, when my eyes finally opened. At first, I thought it was Troy, but no, in my drunken stupor, I somehow ended up in bed with Cash.
The door flies open, and I fall backward on the floor, and Roscoe starts growling.
“There you are.” Cash is buttoning up his jeans. “I was coming to look for you.”
Roscoe bounces off me and grabs Cash’s pant leg and starts shaking his head back and forth.
Cash backs up and flings his leg out, trying to get Roscoe to let go. “Roscoe! No!” he yells. “Lucy, get him off me!”
I wish Roscoe would eat him, but then it would probably kill him, and I kinda like the dog. “Roscoe! Come!” He lets go and sits beside me.
I stand. “Serves you right, you know.” I walk past him into my room.
“What did I do?” He shuts the dog outside the door.
I want to slug the shit out of him. “Why were you in my bed with me naked? Did we…” I point between the two of us.
“So what if we did? We’ll be married soon.”
The asshole smiles at me. “It doesn’t count!” I cross my arms over my chest and glare a hole in his forehead. “If I don’t remember it, it doesn’t count!”
“How do you not recall the best sex you’ve ever had?” He’s still got a smug smile as he closes the gap between us.
“Huh! I highly doubt that!” Damn, was he really good? Okay, Peaches, now’s your time to respond. Was he good? Oh, great, now you decide to keep your mouth shut!
“How did we end up in here together and me naked?”
“You were drunker than shit. You stumbled down the stairs, and I caught you. I carried you up to your room, and you came on to me. I tried to tuck you in bed, but you started stripping.”
“You took advantage of me!” My jaw clenches hard.
“Nothing happened, Lucy. I’m not an asshole like you think.” He sits on the end of the bed. “I held you off until you passed out.”
“Then why were you still in my bed this morning, and naked.”
“I had my boxers on.”
I sit next to him. “But you were still in my bed.”
“I stayed because before you conked out, you asked me to curl up with you.”
Pressing my temples with my fingers, I do recall something like that.
“I didn’t touch you, I swear.” He holds up his fingers into a Boy Scout swear.
I fall back onto the bed, and he scoots next to me on his side, with his elbow propped up and his head resting in his hand. “Would it be awful if I told you I wanted to?”
I roll to my side and mimic his position. His jaw is tight on his chiseled face. A mop of dark blond hair is perched on his forehead. His deep brown eyes are watching my lips. “Thank you for protecting my virtue last night.”
Virtue, you’ve had no dignity for the last year when it comes to men, what makes you think you had any virtue left. Peaches is sitting cross-legged in the bed.
Now you speak. I’m careful not to say the words out loud this time. She’s always getting me into trouble.
Cash surprisingly doesn’t mock me. “You’re welcome,” he says softly, then nearly jumps out of bed. “I can’t promise you the next time I’ll be able to control myself.” He picks up the shirt he had on last night and throws it over his head, working his arms into the sleeves. I can’t help but admire how lean and toned he is. Not like Troy, with his tight muscular body, but still nice.
“I was so fucking hard for you. I mean, you were naked.” His gaze scans my body. “You are one beautiful woman, Lucy Davenport.” His Adam’s apple bobs.
“You’re such an asshole.”
“Mom and Dad have announced our engagement party,” he says as he sits on the side of the bed, putting on his expensive leather loafers.
I let my body fall to the bed. “When is it?”
“Saturday.”
I rise quickly. “Saturday? As in this Saturday?”
“Yep.”
“Why so soon?”
“They want us married by the end of the month.” Cash turns, like the smug jerk he is, and walks toward the door.
I’m doomed. I can’t get anything on them by then. Unless…I can get Evan to read the ledger. There has to be something in there. Even if I believed last night’s séance, there is no way to prove how Sarah died.
Cash turns back, and his grinning eyes once again rake over my body. I’ve never felt so naked.
“By the way, Luce. Your shirt is inside out.”
Chapter 4
Daisy/Tommy/Slutty Pepper
THE VEIL IS thinning. I can feel it within me, bubbling like a pot ready to boil over. I don’t understand why or how. I want to blame the séance for unearthing memories I keep hidden deep inside me, away from me, away from Tommy and away from Slutty Pepper. But something’s cracked my walls, and I can feel “the one we don’t speak of” lingering in the background like he’s waiting for the right moment.
For what?
I can’t tell yet. He won’t let me in, and I know why. I locked him away. With the help of the other two, we double bolted the lock and threw away the key.
“Now he’s back?” Slutty Pepper is whispering and nervously wringing her hands together.
“No, and we need to keep it that way.” Tommy is wrapping his hands with material as if he’s ready to fight.
“Tommy’s right. He can’t surface, and you both remember what that means, right?” I climb into my car and start the engine.
Slutty Pepper immediately starts whining like a teenager and Tommy is grumbling, all pissed off.
“That’s right. You two have to stay locked up for a while. You have to fight him in there while I fight him out here. It takes all three of us, and we absolutely cannot let our guard down.”
And at the same time, we have to figure out why those women were sneaking around on our property. Although “the one we don’t speak of” is lingering around, I believe the tape takes priority today.
“Hey, why are we driving away? We have to show Erik the video.” Tommy’s slamming his fist in his other palm.
“I’m closing you two off. I can’t let you know what’s going on with him listening.”
“Oh man.” Slutty Pepper is sulking again. She’s never good under this type of pressure.
“We’re here if you need us.” Tommy’s bouncing around like he’s in a fighting ring ready to step up to his opponent. Only this opponent doesn’t play by the rules. It would be Fight Club, and we’d all get knocked out cold.
I tune them out as I’m driving down the road. I had planned to see my sister today, but after witnessing the tapes, I have to show the video to someone. Ford is my first candidate, but the thought of his name is stirring a darkness inside me I fear, especially with “the one we don’t speak of” rising up.
“I’m gonna shut you down!” I yell into thin air. “You’re not coming out again!”
Silence answers me. A good sign…I think.
I drive to the old building that houses the children’s museum. It’s packed for being this early in the morning, but with school out, I’m not surprised. I find Pops’s vehicle to confirm he’s here before I park and walk to the main doors.
“Daisy.” The staff here know me and the kids by name. They also know that when I walk through the door, so does the boy who wants to climb and jump off everything like a supervillain and the little girl who plays hide-and-seek with her imaginary friend—who just happens to be a ghost…I think I’ll keep that to myself. I saw Frankie rise above me, and now I can’t decide if I’m crazy or if the Davenport’s are crazy.
Either way, I have to show Pops this video so he can help me figure out the next stop.
“I’m looking for the kids.”
“They’ve been here for about an hour, so I would try the second level.”
She doesn’t charge me since the Davenports buy year passes for everyone in the family. I walk past the first level of caves with fake bats, spiders, and other creatures hiding in the darkness. I skip right past kids throwing sand in the dinosaur digging fossil area. There is an elevator and stairs to get to the second level, and I take the stairs two at a time.
The second level is a giant indoor playground with an old-fashioned school, houses, grocery store, restaurants, and there’s even part of a fire truck for the kids to play with. I’m listening for the littles’ voices between the screaming and shouting, crying and punishing.
“Bets, why don’t you go make a new friend.” I hear Pops and follow the voice into a corner behind the fire truck.
Bets is sitting on the ground, arms folded, and her little lower lip is trembling like she’s on the edge of crying. “Frankie wouldn’t come today, and what if he doesn’t want to play with me anymore.” I want to question why Bets is calling Frankie a “he” when we all know it’s her great-aunt but now is not the time.
I bend down beside Pops. “Hey, sweetie.”
“Daisy!” Her arms wrap around my neck. “Did you bring Frankie? Did Frankie want to come?” She stretches her head around me to look behind, and I feel her body slump when she doesn’t find Frankie.
“Hey, look. It’s Olive.” I point into the mini restaurant at one of the regular girls we see here pounding the buttons on a cash register. “She loved playing with Frankie last time, remember?”
Bets’s eyes light up as she recalls their playtime together.
“How about you go play with her now, and if Frankie shows up, she’ll know where to find you.”
Bets nods. “If you see Frankie, tell her to find us.” Now Frankie’s a she.
“We will. Pops and I will keep our eyes peeled.”
When Bets skips away to the little girl, Pops leans in and says, “I’ll be running the other way if Frankie makes another appearance.”
I laugh.
“What are you doing here? Besides saving my granddaughter from a meltdown, thank you.”
“Anytime. Is there somewhere we could talk in private?’
He nods, and we end up in the back of the mini, cramped fire truck. Pops is grinning like a grown-ass adult playing fireman.
I pull out my phone and open the app. “Tommy installed some cameras around the guest house perimeter. I’m not sure if it’s for surveillance or personal enjoyment…”
Pops’s grin widens. “Those porn directors sure know how to make their own porn videos.”
“How do you know?”
His smile disappears, and he shrugs, not giving me a straight answer.
“Maybe I don’t want to know. Anyway, this happened last night.” I wait for Pops to slide his reading glasses on, and then I press play on last night’s video. Two tall, skinny women dressed in dark clothes and scarves covering their hair are creeping around the yard before Kitty gets sight of them and chases them away.
“Is that who I think it is?”
I nod.
“I think they were up at the house too, and from what I recall, she possesses a key.”
“What on earth are they doing sneaking around the property?”
“Besides wanting it, I don’t know, but I think we better find out.”
“Or phone the police.” Pops is getting huffy, and he pushes the back door open to climb out. “Those women, I swear!” he growls, tearing his glasses from his nose to rub his eyes.
“We can’t phone the police.”
“Why not?”
“Because Mr. Tutu was mentioned at the séance.” I walk close enough that only he can hear me. “If they know about him, they could tell the police and Ford would be arrested for murder and the rest of us for accessory to the crime.”
“Horseshit!” Pops yells.
“Dollar!” Bets yells from the restaurant.
“All right, listen.” Pops is taking deep breaths between his sentences. “We need to make a plan. Go find Bryant, and I’ll wrangle Bets. Let’s meet out front so we can figure out our next step.”
“Okay.” I head to the first floor again where Bryant loves the skeleton animals. I’m heading toward the entrance when I hear, “Daisy! Look, I’m Aquaman!”
