Chapter Three
Well…I’d give it to him. Zeke hadn’t lied or pretended that he knew something he didn’t know. That was slightly…refreshing.
“Again?”
He shook his head, a scowl coming across his face. “Your father is one of the most unscrupulous, untrustworthy, terrible people I’ve ever encountered in my life. And I’ve known a lot of bad people.” Zeke looked away for a second. “I made him a very rich man, and to be fair, he made that, too. But I’d give it back to never have known him. I could have made someone else, someone less…pitiful. How much money was he going to get from the Allards? Something I suspected, by the way, but couldn’t prove.”
I suddenly felt like I was being asked to divulge state secrets. People didn’t talk to me about things because they didn’t think I’d understand, and most of the time, I didn’t. But sometimes they spoke in front of me for the same reason, like I was so stupid I couldn’t hear them or grasp their meaning, even sitting there in front of them. Like I was a decoration left on the mantle, placed and soon forgotten.
My father had just thrown me away like I’d fallen and broken. He’d had me forever but was happy to discard me, like I’d never mattered at all. I was taking this metaphor too far, but that was how truly wired my mind was at this moment.
Who was I betraying? No one. They’d cared so little about what I did and didn’t know that no one had bothered to tell me it was a secret to begin with. “Thirty billion dollars.”
My answer must have been rather significant, because Zeke took the longest sip of his drink, yet. “I see. And do you know where he was going to put that money?”
“That goes beyond me. I’m afraid they’d never have mentioned that to me.”
He sat forward. “Who would know? Hope? Bridget?”
“Yes, likely they would know.”
It was like I could see a plan forming in his eyes. I’d spent a lot of time studying him, but I had no idea exactly what he was thinking. I just knew this was about to turn the day on its axis, again. How many times could a day do that?
“And I don’t imagine you could just ask them. That would be too obvious, they’d guard up, and besides, you’re not going to betray your sisters since they are the only people who give a shit about you at all.”
My stomach burned, and my bravado threatened to flee. No. I wasn’t going to go back to almost crying. That was too hard, too miserable. “Thanks for that.” I let sarcasm drip from my tone. It wasn’t like me to do that, at least not aloud. But he’d earned it. “Yes, I’m luckier than most to have that much love in my life.”
“Love is overrated. I’ve never believed in it. Why bother?” He rose. “But I’m wondering if keeping you would just be enough.”
“Keeping me? Enough for what?”
He got to his feet. “Come on. Let’s go get your stuff. I don’t think I’m putting you on a plane tonight or any night soon. That is unless you want to go back to people who don’t care if you’re there or not.”
I rose slowly. The dress was constricting, my feet hurt, but my mind was whirling. It was like we’d hit that wall where everyone else was going to understand what was happening except for me. I had to tread slowly to not make some kind of mistake.
“What are you saying to me?”
He put out his hand. “Right this second, I’m saying we’re going to go get your stuff. Unless you’d rather stay here not eating peanuts or drinking your drink.”
A woman rushed over to him, throwing her arms around him before kissing his cheeks one at a time, in the way that was so un-American and so French to do. Also Italian, Portuguese, and other places I’d lost count of. Her arrival startled me. It had seemed a little bit like we were alone in a cocoon, he and I. Sure, the waiter had come and gone, but it was like the rest of the world couldn’t really intrude on us here.
That had been ridiculous. I barely knew this man, and the leggy blonde who had moved from kissing his cheeks to trying to kiss his mouth certainly did. She’d have succeeded, but he set her aside in a swift move that was impressive in as much as anything because it indicated he’d done it before.
Throwing her a smile that looked fake to me, he spoke to her in French. Well, I assumed it was French. I really couldn’t hear the difference.
She turned to me, and her eyes widened. After she said several things, I was actually able to make out the word Layla. Great. She recognized me. Looking like this. Next, she’d be taking a picture. Or wanting a selfie.
“It is you.” She spoke to me in English. “I didn’t believe it.” Her accent was light. Whoever this beautiful woman who wanted to kiss Zeke was, she spoke nearly flawless in English. I never ceased to be impressed that people could do that. “I said to myself, it couldn’t be the redhead with Zeke. Why would Zeke be with the redhead?”
Depending on who I was talking to, people either called me the redhead or one of the three. I did have a line I used in response that I said so much it really had become just that, a line I said like an actor delivering a speech. “Oh, I’m hardly the redhead. If you looked about here, I’m sure you would find two or three more. We’re rare but not that rare.”
She smiled. “Oh, you are adorable even in this…wedding dress?”
Zeke took my hand. The act startled me, and I stared at our joined fingers. It wasn’t as though we had some kind of history where we did that sort of thing. He’d tugged me around quite a bit, actually, and I couldn’t say I minded. What did that say about me? Something bad? Something good? But holding my hand was different. More intimate, somehow?
“Sophie, yes, this is Layla Radford. We have to go.”
She stared at our joined hands. “Oh, I see. Yes, you have to go.” She laughed. “I obviously see the attraction, Layla. We’ve all seen the attraction, but you know our Zeke. He doesn’t ever have just one of us.”
No, I hadn’t known that. I was digesting that information when Zeke must have had enough. “Good to see you, Sophie. We’re leaving.”
“Layla,” she called after us as we hustled out of the bar. “I would love to go shopping with you. You will make me look like my best me, yes?”
“Um, sure, if we can do that.” I was trying to be polite. I had to be whenever someone approached me. Every person on the planet had a platform to talk about me if they wanted one. They could post and post and post. Enough people started to say that I was a spoiled, entitled bitch, and eventually, that would be what I was whether it was true or not. I made sure that I was always kind, always polite, always someone they thought might be their best friend if given enough time.
And my security always made sure they didn’t get the chance to be too close for too long. I guessed that Zeke took that role now since I no longer had any. They’d not really been with me for me anyway, more like to prevent me from being kidnapped so that my father could be forced to pay ransom for me. I didn’t guess he’d pay that now.
My feet hurt, and I wasn’t going to be able to keep up with him much longer like this. “Zeke, I don’t have any shoes on.”
He stopped, looking me up and down for a second. “Really? What happened to your shoes? Or were you always barefoot?”
“I lost them in the run. My feet hurt and…”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Fuck.” A second later, he’d scooped me up and strode out of the hotel holding me like he was going to carry me over a threshold. It was sort of funny. I was in a wedding dress, and he was carrying me around like something out of a movie.
Only I didn’t know him, this wasn’t that, and I had no idea where he was taking me.
“We’re going to the car,” he answered my unasked question. “And then I’m going to take you to your hotel room to get you some shoes, collect your stuff, and we’ll go from there.”
I held up two fingers. “That’s how many stops we have to make.”
“Right, I’d known that. We have to go back to that venue, too. Fine. In the meantime, I want you to consider staying.”
Oh, we were back to this. The moment right before Sophie had shown up when I was confused and didn’t know what was going on. I was still in that zone. What was happening here? “How could I do that? I have no money.”
“You don’t need it. You’ll be my guest.”
Being carried like this might have been the most awkward conversation position in the history of all conversation positions. “Why would you do that? We don’t know each other, and I have the distinct feeling that you don’t like me very much.”
“I don’t like anyone that much. People in general. Maybe because I understand them too well after a lifetime of selling them on things they probably shouldn’t be doing. Trust me, if I can make bank executives invest in your father’s crummy platforms, I can make anyone do anything. I’m leveling with you. Keeping you will make your father crazy. He will fume over this, and it will give me the ability to finally figure him out with his guard down. Or he’ll make a mistake.”
He opened a car door in the parking lot. It was a two-door Porsche. I’d been in a lot of them in my life. I knew men cared a lot about this kind of thing. I shouldn’t be genderizing. Some men and some women probably did, too. Hell, I needed to keep my head focused. When he would have strapped me in, I stopped him. There were some basic things I was absolutely capable of doing for myself.
Zeke shut the door and went around to the other side. With traffic so constantly bad in Paris, I couldn’t imagine he got to open this up around town very much. But it was probably more about having it than actually driving it. There was status to this car, and it probably got girls like Sophie to agree never to be exclusive with him.
“What do you think?” He started the car.
“About what? You haven’t really told me anything. You want to make my father nuts by keeping me. Is that what you want me to help you do? Stay here and make him nuts?”
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel while he pulled the car out into traffic. It was the middle of the day, and it was going to start to rain. My reception would have been ruined. I smiled. That was sort of funny. It would have been a terrible disappointment to everyone. They hadn’t put out the tents. And rain had not been in the forecast.
“I can help you. What I saw today when you booked it away from your chosen life partner was a person who needs to take some control of her life. I can help you do that. By the time you go back to New York, you can have some say over your destiny. Trust me. I pulled myself out of a shit hole. I pulled your father out, and I can help you do the same.”
It sounded lovely. But too good to be true was too good to be true. “That would make you just like my dad. He paid for me, too.”
“By the time I’m done with you, you won’t need anyone else for that the rest of your life. Layla, you can be the captain of your own destiny. Then no one can touch you. Ever. Trust me on that. You’ll say when, who, and how. The world can fuck itself if you tell it to. You won’t have to ask your father or your sisters or anyone for help. I’ll help you. If you help me. A little quid pro quo.”
I sat up straighter in my seat. “Really?”
“Really.” He nodded. “You help me, and I’ll see to it that you will never have to run from anyone ever again. They’ll run from you, honey. I promise you that.”
Chapter Four
Was it possible to even consider this? That was the question that plagued my mind the whole drive over to the hotel. I’d limped into the hotel behind him, declining to be carried because that was just too much. Once, okay, he’d surprised me, but now he’d put it out there that he wanted to Pygmalion me into some kind of woman who could take on the world.
It turned out my bags were packed and waiting by the front desk for me. The staff ran fast, holding all of them out to me as soon as I came through the door.
Zeke spoke to them in French before turning back to me. “You have a passport in the safe, right?”
Yes, as it turned out, I did. “How did you think of that?”
“People put their passports in the safes in their rooms. We all do that. It’s not rocket science. They cleaned up your room because Laura Allard told them to. But they didn’t get the passport, so let’s go do that now and get it out.” He gave some more instructions, and suddenly, my bags were being brought outside. I watched them go a little bit like I was watching a television program I’d just stumbled upon. There was a distance to everything, the sense that nothing was real, even though it was happening.
Maybe my adrenaline was crashing.
I followed Zeke and the manager, who was really talking fast, into the elevator and headed back upstairs to the room I’d exited that morning before sunrise. A guest entered on the next floor before we continued on to the fourteenth floor where my room had been. Who had picked this hotel for us? This wasn’t where we were supposed to have gotten married or where our reception would have been. Why had we stayed here?
The second the woman in the elevator recognized me, her demeanor changed. She was tall and maybe thirty years old. She was in a bathrobe, so she was either coming from the spa or the pool. I assumed there were both those things in this hotel. I supposed it was possible she just liked to walk around in her bathrobe. Stranger things had happened.
“You’re Layla. One of the redheads.” Her accent was British.
I put on my smile. “I am. But I mean, there are lots of redheads. I bet you can find three or four others here. We’re—”
“My God,” Zeke groaned behind me, leaning on the elevator wall. “Really? Every time?”
I ignored him. He could go suck on an egg. “Sorry, he can’t control himself. We don’t pay attention to him, and you shouldn’t either.” I smiled broader at the woman, hoping she’d remember that and not Zeke’s outburst.
“Oh, I would love to shop with you.” She practically squealed. “And you can make me look like the best me.”
I nodded. “I’d love to be able to do that if we had the time.” The elevator dinged. “Have a wonderful day.”
I limped out of the elevator, letting everyone else walk in front of me in the hall. While the manager did that, Zeke didn’t. He glared at me as he slowed his stride to match my own. “Do you give that little speech every time someone knows you, and what is that thing they keep saying to you? Look like the best me.”
“I wrote a book. That was what I talked about in the book. Helping people to dress to look like the best them.”
He lifted his eyebrows. I’d surprised him, and I couldn’t imagine that happened very often. “You wrote a book?”
Here was where I could lie, except I never did. The thing about a ghostwriter was that I didn’t have to tell anyone I’d done that. Only I always had. In every interview, every conversation ever, I’d admitted to it. I hadn’t really written the book, not technically.
“I didn’t write it. I collaborated on it. I can’t write a book. I’m not smart. I’m not able to do things like that. But I talked to the woman who wrote it, and she wrote it trying to be as close to my voice as she could possibly be.”
He nodded. “Lots of famous people do that. Not everyone is able to sit at the computer and… You know what? How many times a day do you say that I’m-not-smart thing?”
We’d gotten to my room. The manager opened it, and I walked in, going straight to the safe. I always used the same code, so it was no problem getting in there to pull out my passport and my wallet. I held both in my hands, turning myself back to Zeke. I was sure the manager could speak English. I’d never stayed at a hotel where most of the staff couldn’t speak the languages of the guests, at least well enough to communicate basic things.
But if he weren’t embarrassed, I wouldn’t be. “I don’t say it that often, actually. Most of the people I talk to on a regular basis know already.”
“Okay. That’s the last time you’ll say it. Consider me informed of your opinion on the subject. I don’t want to hear it again.”
I shook my head. “You asked, so I had to explain.”
>
“Fine.”
We rode in silence back to the lobby. Zeke was stewing about what I’d said, or maybe it was something else I did. Or maybe he was just angry about the shape of the elevator. I’d never imagined him so moody. The manager practically bowed to him on our way out, and I limped my way into the car.
Sighing, I waited for Zeke to come in the other side, and when he didn’t, I turned around to see what was going on. He was in the trunk, digging through my bags.
“What the hell?” I pushed open the door. “What are you doing?”
“Socks. Shoes. Do you own any that aren’t high heels? Do you own socks?”
I gritted my teeth. “I do own sneakers. I didn’t pack the bag. That was some stranger my would-have-been mother-in-law paid to do, so for all I know they’ve been stolen.”
“No.” He pulled them out and strode over, carrying a white pair of socks with him. He knelt down in front of me. “Give me your feet.”
That was sweet, and I almost laughed before I stopped myself. This man didn’t give the impression that he was particularly gentle and kind all that often. “I know I’m not smart.” I said it purposefully to piss him off. “But I can put on my own clothing.”
He narrowed his gaze. “Fine.”
Although I was sure he wanted to throw them at me, he instead handed them to me gently and stormed to the other side of the car. Twice now, I’d provoked him, and twice now, he’d not really reacted in a terribly mean way.
Sure, he probably had a line he couldn’t be pushed past, but I’d hit him, and he hadn’t done anything about that at all. Who was this man who tried to put my shoes on, buckle my seatbelt, and had no qualms about yelling at me in public?
Why didn’t he know the rules about dealing with me? You never did anything you didn’t want to see later on five different social media platforms.
Or did he just not care?
As he drove his Porsche through traffic, I examined my feet. They were torn up, and much as I was glad to have my shoes to put on, I almost didn’t want to touch them. They needed to soak before I even attempted to put shoes back on.
Redhead On The Run (RedHeads Book 1) Page 4
