“Right, of course,” he said. “Actually – I already got it. Sorry, I knew you’d never let me, so I took care of it earlier.”
“Oh!” she said. Normally she would’ve scolded him for doing something like that, but she didn’t have it in her now. It was the least surprising news of the evening that he’d snuck off and paid the tab. Seemed like a billionaire thing to do.
They gathered their leftovers and walked to the car in silence.
“I’ll drop you off before I head over to Ashley’s, okay?”
“Thank you,” Craig replied.
Once in the car, the radio sprung to life with Adele’s velvet voice.
I know I have a fickle heart and a bitterness…and a wandering eye and a heaviness in my head. But don’t you remember? Don’t you remember?
Kali switched the station. Rock music. She didn’t know any rock songs, and she thought it’d be better that way.
“I’ll probably be at Ashley’s late,” she said. “But feel free to grab my laptop from the living room. Maybe you can get in contact with someone?”
“It’s the middle of the night in London,” Craig said with a laugh. “So I doubt they’ll pick up the phone.”
“No,” Kali replied, keeping her eyes on the road. “But you can send them an email, maybe? Let them know you’re alive?”
“That’s not a bad idea.”
“I guess I don’t have to worry about you stealing my stuff anymore,” Kali said with a nervous laugh.
Craig turned to her. “Regrettably, my alleged wealth has no impact on my kleptomania.”
Alleged. That was odd of him – there was nothing alleged about it. But it was easier to play along than have to face the enormity of the truth. “Ah, of course. That’s where all of my forks have gone.”
“No actually, those are all in the sink downstairs, sorry. I will return them. But I am a fan of your cats and can’t make any promises about not stealing them.”
Kali shot him a look. “My cats!”
“Chip in particular. The little rascal has taken a liking to me.”
“Well I hate to burst your cat-stealing bubble,” Kali said, putting the car into park. “But Chip would have to go through an extended quarantine to travel back to Britain with you, and I don’t think he’s up to it.”
“Isn’t he?”
Kali crossed her arms. “No. I already asked him.”
“What did he say?”
“He said Mrooowww!”
Craig burst into laughter. “That does sound like him.” He turned to open the door. “Well – thank you for the lovely evening.”
Kali nodded. “The officer said we could go to the police station tomorrow to collect your things.”
“Right. Thanks.”
“Don’t wait up,” she said as he stepped out of the car.
“Have a good night!” he called out as he closed the door.
Kali pulled away, laughing to herself about her cat joke – Craig wasn’t the only one who knew how to make lame jokes. Anyway, there was no way she would let Craig take Chip. If he were rich enough to buy a yacht, he could buy his own stinking cat.
Ashley only lived a few minutes away and by the time Kali got there, she felt totally better. It was good that Craig figured out where he came from. Great even! Sure, him being a billionaire was a bit of a shock, but that only meant that she didn’t have to support him anymore. He could probably leave on his private jet tomorrow, in fact. She’d never have to risk being seen around town with him again and she could start standing up to Betsy. Life would return to normal, just like she wanted.
Ashley saw her pull up and came running outside. She peaked into the passenger seat.
“What, no Craig?” Ashley asked with a disappointed look.
“You’re going to freeze to death!” Kali said, getting out of her car. “Where’s your coat?”
“You sound like my mother!” Ashley lamented, pulling her into a hug. “Come here you big bad ICU nurse. I haven’t seen you in forever!”
They walked into Kali’s house, arms linked. This was just what she needed to forget that she’d had a billionaire living in her basement for the past few weeks.
“So seriously, why didn’t you bring Craig?” Ashley asked once they got inside.
Maybe it wasn’t the right place for her to go to forget about Craig. “He’s back at my place. The police called, they found his wallet.”
“Get out! So he knows who he is now?”
“Sort of. He knows his name. And we found some stuff about him online.”
“Oh my gosh – please tell me he’s single.”
Kali removed her coat, shooting Ashley a stern look. “Aren’t you a happily married woman?”
“Yes, but you aren’t. And Steven said he talks about you all the time.”
Kali’s heart made a little leap. All the time? She pushed the feeling away. “He’s not single. He’s engaged. And she looked very nice.”
“I bet she did.” Ashley slapped her in the shoulder. “Look at you in that dress! You look fabulous!”
“Ow!” Kali rubbed her shoulder. Ashley was stronger than she realized. “I just – I dug this out of my closet. Craig insisted on taking me to – ”
“I know, Amalfi Corner. Steven told me. And I don’t care how ‘nice’ this woman looked, there’s no way she looked as nice as you do in that dress!”
“It’s not like that, Ashley.”
“Uh huh.”
“It isn’t! I didn’t help Craig all this time so I could be some homewrecker.”
“Aha!” Ashley pointed a finger in Kali’s face. “So you admit it! You like him!”
Kali shook her head and answered in her level headed nurse voice. “No, not like that. He’s a nice guy, and I’m glad I could help him out, but that’s it.”
“So you’re not upset at all that he’s going to walk out of your life forever and marry some woman who didn’t even notice he was missing?”
“We don’t know that!” Kali said. “He was very hard to find. He’s here in Wisconsin, for some reason, and she’s in London. Well, he thinks he’s here because his mom was from Madison. He remembered that.”
Ashley stared at her for a moment. “Interesting.”
“What?” Kali said, exasperated.
“Nothing. Well, let’s get some face masks on and then we can stalk him online.”
Kali smiled. She wasn’t against learning a little more about her soon to be ex-tenant. “If you insist. You’re in for a surprise.”
They spent the next two hours reading every article they could about Craig and his family. Kali felt bad – it seemed a bit intrusive. Ashley insisted that it was fine, especially when she saw that he was labeled a “billionaire bad boy.”
“He’s practically a public figure. We can’t be the only two women in the world who don’t know his business. And oh my gosh!” She gasped.
“What?”
“He took you on a date!”
Kali rolled her eyes. “He did not. It wasn’t a date.”
“It was too a date.”
“Was not.”
“Was too.”
“I’m not having this argument with you!” Kali finally said.
“Fine,” Ashley said with a knowing smile. “But we still need to look into his history.”
Kali thought it was wrong, but she couldn’t resist. Ashley found information about his parents, his school friends, and of course, his fiancée. Kali managed to act perfectly indifferent as Ashley gasped about this or that. By the end of the night, she’d played it off so well that she almost had herself convinced that she didn’t care about Craig.
Almost. There was a moment – one she couldn’t help, just when she got home. She pulled up to the townhouse and saw the glow of a light in her living room. Her first thought was that Craig might still be awake and she felt excited – she felt genuinely excited that she’d get to see him again. After hurriedly getting to the door and walking in, she found the room em
pty. He’d just left the light on for her.
Her heart fell. And in the solitude of her living room, she no longer had to pretend. She let the sadness flood in and she reminded herself that this was her life – Luke was gone, Craig would leave, and she would be alone for the rest of her days. That was how it had to be.
She quietly went upstairs and got ready for bed.
Chapter 14
It was after eleven when Craig heard Kali come in. His first thought was to jump up and return her laptop, but after only a few seconds, he heard her go upstairs. He didn’t want to follow her – that might scare her, plus he didn’t know what to say.
All this time he’d lived off of her hospitality while secretly being rich. He worried that she might think he hid it on purpose. He certainly did not…though now that he knew the truth, he wished he could go back to not knowing.
The internet allowed him to learn a stunning amount of information about his life – his father was one of the richest men in Britain, and his family had been powerful landowners for hundreds of years. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Watsons also got involved in shipping, resulting in their wealth skyrocketing during the first and second world wars.
None of this was exciting to Craig – not really. As he read more, little bits and pieces of information came back to him. It all seemed – well, a bit embarrassing. His family profited off of some of the worst wars in history. Sure, they didn’t encourage the wars or anything, but it seemed a bit boorish to make a fortune from it.
He remembered his grandfather James, though, did not find it boorish at all. He found a picture of his grandfather on Wikipedia and the memories came flooding back.
James was the exceedingly proud and cold force that ruled over the entire family. Craig’s father Phillip wasn’t going to inherit anything after disappointing his father by marrying an “American field mouse.” When Phillip’s older brother died unexpectedly, James was forced to leave him the family fortune. Otherwise, it would appear that the family unit was falling apart, and James cared very much about the appearance of the family.
Looking at pictures of his father and mother, Craig had a few fond memories trickle in, but it was like he was seeing them through broken glass. Things didn’t connect, he couldn’t hear their voices. They were just out of reach.
The one person that he couldn’t remember, no matter how many pictures he looked at, was his fiancée Bernadette. He found her public Instagram, so he had a lot of pictures to look at. She was a beautiful woman, tall and lean like a model. Her hair was always perfect, at least in pictures anyway, and the pictures were always taken so she looked like she was having the most marvelous time. Craig must have stared at her pictures for two hours. Nothing came to him. Not her voice, not her smell. He couldn’t think of her favorite meal or her favorite movie. It seemed like she liked to travel – she had pictures all around the world. There were even some of the two of them, on the yacht he supposedly gave her.
It was so strange for Craig to see pictures of himself on the yacht or skiing on a mountain top. Without his memory, it seemed like he was looking at an identical twin who led a much more glamorous life than he did. It didn’t seem right. Just that week he pulled a glob of hair from a drain that was the size of his fist. As disgusting as it was, he was excited by it at the time. Not only did he solve a concerning drainage problem in the bathroom they were working on, but then he also got to chase Steven around the house with the glob, much to everyones’ amusement.
There was one video on Bernadette’s Instagram that was particularly cringe worthy. He was shirtless for some reason, running down the beach.
“No pain no gain!” he yelled as he ran by the camera, pointing at his abs. Bernadette, who was holding the camera, giggled.
Craig watched it three times, hoping that perhaps it was part of some inside joke. He couldn’t possibly be that pretentious, could he?
He had to stop looking at things online. Everything he found showed him as a stuck up, self obsessed snob. Perhaps he wasn’t getting the full story. That’s what he had to tell himself, at least, to be able to fall asleep. He couldn’t have been that bad of a person – his parents were lovely people. He did almost kiss Kali the night before, but that was only because he didn’t know he was engaged. He’d be sure to keep things strictly professional with Kali going forward. Surely his memories of Bernadette would come back soon, and the love he felt for her would return from wherever it was hiding. He’d promised himself to this woman, after all, and he wasn’t going to betray her because of a knock to the head.
The next morning, he felt awkward going upstairs to face Kali, but if she knew any links to his embarrassing identity, she showed no hint of it.
“Morning,” she said cheerfully after he knocked on the door.
“Morning,” he replied, watching her carefully. “Did you have fun with Ashley last night?”
“Yes, we had fun. Thanks for asking.”
He cleared his throat. Was it him making it awkward or was she being awkward, too? “That’s good.”
“Were you able to contact any of your…family?”
“Yes,” he said hurriedly, “I reached out to Bernadette, I sent her a message. Hopefully the police will have my cell phone, though, so I could contact some of them more easily. I can’t remember anyone’s phone number.”
Kali frowned. “They didn’t mention a cell phone. But we can head over now if you like? Do you want some breakfast?”
“I’m alright, thanks.” He had no appetite. He was afraid that they’d find out even more terrible things about him at the police station.
He wasn’t totally wrong. When they got to the station, the officer they met with first apologized profusely for not calling sooner.
“We actually found your wallet not long after you stopped in, but the officer on the case had to take an unexpected leave.”
“Is he alright?” Craig asked, imagining the worst.
The officer smiled. “Maternity leave. Baby came a little early, but they’re both doing fine.”
“Oh,” Craig said, feeling like an idiot. Why did he assume the officer would be a man? “That’s good to hear.”
“So we were working through her highest priority cases and…well, sorry.”
Craig waved a hand. “It’s no problem, none at all. I’ve had a very kind guardian these last few weeks.” He smiled at Kali.
“The world needs more people like you, miss,” the officer said to Kali.
She blushed. “Oh, it was nothing.”
Hang on a minute. It seemed like this officer was flirting with Kali. That seemed unprofessional of him! Who did he think he was, flirting around on the job? Craig leaned in to read his name tag.
“Officer Wilkes, you said you had a video?” Craig said to break up whatever was going on between them.
Wilkes broke his gaze on Kali. “Yes, come this way.”
The three of them walked back to a small desk. Officer Wilkes pulled a video up on the computer screen and hit play. Craig leaned forward. It seemed to be security footage of a street corner. After a few seconds, a figure walked onto the screen.
“That’s me!” Craig said, pointing excitedly. “You have footage of the guys who attacked me?”
“You bet,” Wilkes said with a smile.
Craig turned back to the screen just in time to see his huddled figure slip in a cartoonish fashion and fall flat on its back.
Kali burst out laughing. “Some attackers you had there Craig! It looks like it was the invisible killer: black ice.”
Craig crossed his arms. “I was attacked by the brutal Wisconsin winter. It’s claimed many victims, you know.”
Wilkes leaned in to fast forward the video. He slowed as some figures approached Craig. “These are the individuals who found you. They called 911 – but they also stole your shoes and coat first.”
“Don’t forget my wallet and phone,” Craig added.
Officer Wilkes nodded. He pulled a zip lock
bag from his desk drawer. “We recovered your wallet next to a nearby dumpster. The phone was nowhere to be found.”
“Thank you,” Craig said as he pulled his wallet out of the bag. It was made of fine leather. All that was inside was his identification and a frequent buyer’s card to a place called Dingo’s Dogs.
“Oh this is exciting,” he said, pulling out the card. “It looks like I’m only two hot dogs away from a free dog.”
“It’s really good they didn’t steal that from you, Craig,” Kali commented.
Officer Wilkes responded to her joke with a belly laugh.
“Well,” Craig said curtly, “thank you for all of your help, officer. We won’t take up any more of your time.”
“You’re welcome. Stay warm out there – and Craig?”
“Yes sir?”
“Try not to fall down again.”
Kali burst into laughter.
“Right, thanks.”
He had no right to be jealous of this officer flirting with Kali, so he decided it was best to excuse himself. If she were into that sort of muscular, brave, hero type of fellow then that seemed like a good match for her. Why shouldn’t she have a good match? She certainly deserved it.
Hopefully Bernadette would see his message soon and arrange to bring him back home. Then he could leave Kali to her life and her flirting and never cause trouble for her again. It would be best for everyone if he left. The sooner the better, he decided.
Chapter 15
Monday morning, Kali got two unpleasant surprises. The first was a phone call that roused her from sleep. She caught it just before it went to voicemail.
“Hello?”
“Good morning Kalista, sleeping in today?”
She looked at the clock. It was 6 AM, on the nose. “Morning Betsy.” So typical. How dare she be lazy and sleep past six on her day off?
“Listen, I’m going to need you to come in tomorrow.”
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