“Stay in the car,” Zeke said as he pulled into a space.
I should have argued, but the truth was that I didn’t want to. If he wanted to be this nice to me, my sore feet were going to take him up on the offer. He left the car running, and I watched from behind the tinted window as people stared at it on their way into the hotel. Most of our guests from the wedding-that-wasn’t were staying at the reception site, and I was glad I didn’t have to go there to collect anything.
It would be very awkward to have to see my ex-fiancé’s great aunt right at this moment. Zeke was back fast holding a trash bag I presumed held my stuff in it. Laura Allard had certainly been busy getting my stuff removed from everywhere I’d been. Even the hotel room that should have been mine until the next day.
Zeke got back in the car and held out my phone to me, which I gladly took. He must have pulled it out of the bag. The trash bag got shoved in the small area in the back, that wasn’t really a seat but could hold a bag of that size. Thank goodness I hadn’t had very much stuff here. Had it only been hours ago that I’d been here getting ready to get married?
He didn’t speak when he drove away this time, and I looked down at my phone to distract me from thinking about how all the plans I’d had before today were in three bags, including one made for trash, traveling in Zeke’s car right now.
My phone had blown up. It was really amazing how many of my friends wanted to sympathize with me and claimed to hate Kit when they’d all been singing his praises the last time I’d seen them. And most of them were already leaving Paris. It was also amazing how much privilege we really had. I hardly ever thought about it. I mean, I knew I’d been rich. Right now, I was as poor as I could imagine being financially, even as I sat in a car with a billionaire. But they’d all been in Paris, and now that my wedding wasn’t happening, they’d hightailed it out like I’d asked them to come to some bug-infested nightmare instead of a city people dreamed of seeing their whole lives.
In any case, no one was particularly asking to speak to me. It was like an obligatory text they’d sent to say they did. As I was about to fall off the face of the Earth for most of them, I was sure this would be the last time I heard from at least three-quarters of them. I should have done better than this in picking people to spend my life with. They were just on to the next event, the next photograph opportunity. Did Hope and Bridget have friends? Did Justin?
My betraying brother…
I steadied myself as I opened up Instagram and was immediately bombarded with pictures of myself running away from my wedding. That hadn’t taken long. Hell, probably some of the people who texted me were the ones who’d uploaded these shots.
“Everything okay?” Zeke asked without looking at me, which I appreciated. Right then, I needed to pretend I was in a bubble that no one could see through. My own private bubble that no one could see through but me.
I nodded. “Yep.”
“Uh-huh.” He made a left turn and had a little space ahead of him, so he revved the engine and we sped up like we were floating in air instead of the road. I should have been impressed. Like my friends should have felt lucky to be in Paris. All of us were really just fucked in the head. Did anything impress Zeke? I wasn’t going to ask him. He might ask me back, and then I’d have to explain just how pitiful I was, even in my own head.
“Where are we going?” I should at least know that. Now that I had my clothes, I’d really like to take off this dress. Take it off and burn it. Never have to look at it again. Pretend this whole thing had never happened. That I’d never said yes to Kit to begin with.
“Home.”
That was sort of impossible since that was technically in New York City, right? “Can this baby fly?”
He smiled, a real one, like he’d given to me when I’d admired the birds in the hotel. “No. I wish. Funny, I thought when I was a kid, we’d have flying cars by now. But how would we handle that with the air travel? We’d have to book passages in our own cars to not conflict with airlines, otherwise there could be crashes. We’d get in each other’s lanes. Can you imagine that noise? The ones that they hear in the cockpits when another plane is even nearby?”
The loud alarm that sounded. He’d clearly been in a private plane where he could hear that noise in a cockpit, as I had more than once. Commercial planes didn’t let the passengers hear that. “They’d have to do something about that noise. It would have to be another signal. Like a flashing red light.”
“No, it would have to wake you because you’d have to set the car on auto fly for most of the trip over the Atlantic.” His smile hadn’t faded, and I sort of loved that we were talking about this. It might have been the strangest conversation of my life. Cars didn’t fly, and we didn’t need to worry about being woken over the Atlantic. But…it was fun to think about.
“I wouldn’t sleep. I never sleep on planes. It’s like total hell the whole time. But I don’t drive cars, so I doubt they’d let me drive one that flew.”
He shot me a look, side-eyeing me the whole time. “You’re not going to say it, right?”
“Say what?”
Zeke rolled his eyes. “That you’re not smart enough to drive a car.”
I laughed. It wasn’t funny. But the way he said it like it was the most absurd thing he could think of added some amusement that might not otherwise have been there. “I’ve had no reason to drive. I was chauffeured or we lived in a city where no one drove.”
“Didn’t matter what city I was living in, I drove.” He shook his head. “Driving is one of the great pleasures of life.”
“Maybe in a car like this one.”
We turned a corner, and he slowed down. This was the first time I got a look at Zeke’s mansion. It caught my breath. Maybe I’d been wrong when I thought I wasn’t impressed with displays of wealth. I’d seen some of the biggest, most expensive homes and apartments in the world. Sailed on yachts. But I’d never seen anything like Zeke’s home in Paris.
I sat up straighter. “Wow.”
He smiled. “I wanted a place I could love and that also told certain members of the world to go fuck itself, that I was richer than they were.”
“Well, goal achieved.”
We’d lived in a lot of places, moving every one to two years it seemed. Perhaps it really would have made sense for my father to place us in boarding school and leave the four of us there. Maybe it would have given us stability. Maybe if I could have stayed in the same place long enough, a teacher or two might have helped me with my learning issues. Or maybe that was wishful thinking. There might not be help for me in that way. Moving hadn’t held back Hope or Bridget.
We parked in a detached garage and walked through a white guard house that would presumably keep unwanted people away from entering if Zeke didn’t want them to. A guard wearing all black nodded to us, and Zeke stopped to speak to him. I heard my name, but the rest of what he said was lost on me.
Still in my wedding dress, I probably looked a sight. Or maybe they were used to Zeke bringing home strangely dressed women. I still held my shoes in one hand, and I’d slipped the socks into them, one each so they wouldn’t get lost. I had my cell phone in my other hand.
“Zeke?” I interrupted him, sorry to have to do so since I couldn’t follow the conversation and didn’t know if it was a poorly timed moment. “Can you open up the car so I can get my bags?”
He shook his head. “I’ll get someone to bring it in. Come on, let’s go inside. I was just getting you on the approved list so you can come and go as you wish, since you’ll be staying here.”
I didn’t know that we’d actually settled that. “Am I?”
“Obviously, I’m not going to force you, but I think after we talk, you’ll want to.”
I followed him onto a cobblestone path that led to the house, white like the guardhouse. It was funny about security. Or maybe funny wasn’t the right word. Odd…perhaps. Most people didn’t have to go through life living with security. My father did. Zeke did.
Arguably, Zeke seemed to have less of it than my dad, who had to be followed around by his. And because of the threats against him, his children did, too. Well, three of them did. I no longer had any.
They got so rich, that they had to employ people to help keep both them and their stuff safe all the time. Was there some kind of middle ground? Enough money to feel flush with it, but not have to worry that they were going to constantly be robbed?
There was another gate that could be locked behind us, but it looked more decorative than useful. It wouldn’t actually stop anyone from busting through should they want to.
Everything was white on the outside of the house except the windows and the painted black lanterns that were probably, I imagined, actually electric lights designed to look old. It really would be weird if someone had to come out and light a flame in them every night. In fact, that would be ridiculous. Oh, the places my mind went. Small details didn’t matter, I really had to focus on bigger things. But then all I could see was that there were eighteen windows and they were spotless. Not a stain on them. Not a smudge that I could see, and, thanks to corrective eye surgery, I had great vision.
There might be more. I strained my head back to look at the roof. I was pretty sure there were some windows up there, too.
“What are you looking at?” Zeke stood next to me as he asked me the question.
“Windows.” I shrugged. “I like details.”
I turned left and stared at the side of the house. It was shaped like an L so I could actually see the whole area if I wanted to and…
“Come on. You can see them from the inside. They work both ways.” He winked at me.
Was he teasing me? I wasn’t good when people did that, because I couldn’t really tell if they were making fun or if they were being nice or some combo of both. Rather than say the wrong thing, I stayed silent. It tended to work in most circumstances if I just stayed that way.
But I almost lost my silence when I stepped inside. There was never a time that Zeke didn’t look perfectly dressed. Fashionable and tailored, but never overdone. I couldn’t say the same for the inside of his house.
It was such an odd display. Not everyone knew how to style homes, and I was certainly not an expert and wouldn’t claim to be. We’d never lived anywhere long enough to own furniture for any length of time. We’d arrive at a new house, and it would be a whole new set of things for us to use and get used to just in time to go again. It was almost like we were criminals—always fleeing the chance that we might get settled somewhere. Being accustomed to some place was illegal in our world.
But Zeke clearly thought that because he lived in this huge French mansion he had to decorate it like he was in the Palace of Versailles. Gold chandeliers. Persian rugs covering marble flooring everywhere. It was cold on my feet, which didn’t feel good under the circumstance. It was almost as though the cold burned.
I limped after him, keeping my decorative opinions to myself. Room after room didn’t change my impression, which of course begged the question as to whether it actually wasn’t him who had done it. No, this was a decorator. In fact, with their long, heavy drapes and fabric striped couches I saw displayed here and there, I would bet that no one ever came in these rooms at all. He lived here, but he didn’t really live here.
Chandeliers everywhere. And my god, mirrors. This was ugly. Really, truly, a lesson in what not to do when decorating.
I’d never been so glad to get upstairs as I was when that finally happened. The bedroom he led me to seemed much more like a hotel room than a statement in the history of the French monarchy that the downstairs had been.
“This can be your room.” It was the first time he’d spoken in a long time, and I was glad for the noise.
A man I’d not met rushed past us, putting my bags—the garbage bag and two thrown together suitcases—down in front of me.
“Thank you,” I said, and he nodded to me.
“Layla, this is Carel. He works for me with three other people. They know you’re going to be staying with me for a while, and they’re going to do their best to speak to you in English.”
Carel cleared his throat. “We’re glad to have you. My sister follows you.”
I smiled at him. “Thank you for helping me.”
He nodded and left. Zeke stood, watching me. “I didn’t realize today how famous you are. I guess I knew it, but I’d never focused on it. And having spoken to you today more than I ever have, you’re different than I would have imagined. Different from your sisters.”
I didn’t have the wherewithal right then to ask him in what ways I was different. I pretty much knew the answers. He’d worked with Hope and Bridget. He’d know how… I wasn’t even going there in my mind at the moment. I couldn’t. There was only so much self-flagellation I could take in one day. And it was… I looked at my phone. Only just about mid-day.
“I’m going to take myself into that bathroom and soak my feet before I wash off the rest of today.”
He put his hands in his jacket pockets. “Sounds like a good plan. I’ll order some food for dinner. I don’t assume you’ll want to go out.”
I absolutely didn’t. “We should talk about why you want me here, but before we do that, I have to ask you a favor.” And I hated having to do it like I hated pretty much everything right now.
“What’s that?” He lifted his dark eyebrows. Even knowing that he’d hired a terrible decorator to do up his house like some kind of monstrosity out of a horror movie, he was still absolutely the most physically beautiful man I’d ever seen.
I made myself look away, knowing that my cheeks were going to get really red in the way that happened to redheads. “I need you to get me out of my wedding dress. I can’t do it myself.”
He cleared his throat. “Get you out of the dress? Like undo the buttons and what not?”
“Frankly, I don’t care if you take scissors to it and slice it into strips that you then use to wash your windows. But I need to get out of this, and I can’t do it myself.”
One more humiliation on a day filled with them.
Chapter Five
He stepped toward me. “Turn around.”
I pivoted, grabbing on to the top of my dress in front so that it didn’t fall down. “Do you see the buttons?” I’d been so out of it when they’d been putting me in it that I hadn’t focused on how long it had taken the woman who buttoned me in to do it. Not long, I didn’t think. But she’d been a stylist. They were amazingly adept at all things clothes.
The dress vibrated slightly as he undid one button and then another. There were probably about fifty of them for him to undo. He had big, strong hands with thick fingers. This might be hard for him, but he didn’t say a word of complaint.
“What would you have done when you wanted to get out of it after the wedding?”
I smiled. “Kit would have had to have done it.”
He was quiet for a long moment before he spoke again, in a low voice. “He’d never have been able to do this.”
I pictured Kit’s shaking hands. “No, he wouldn’t have. Long night, I guess. Or I’d have had to call someone in the hotel to help me.”
“Or sleep, live, eat, and die in this dress for the rest of your life.”
This was like the flying car conversation. I liked when he did that. The idea that his mind sometimes fled from the present to the absurd like my own did was fun. And not something I ever imagined when I was touching myself and thinking of his hands on me. My cheeks heated up at the memory.
“Right,” I managed to get out. “Or I’d have to stay in this horrendous dress for the rest of my life.”
He finished and stepped back. I held on to the dress to keep it over my body and turned to look at him. “I thought you were a fashion person. Why do you hate your own dress?”
“I’m not a fashion person. Not really. Not a designer or a stylist. I wrote, or sort of wrote, a book that helped people to feel better in their own styles, in their own clothes. This was
n’t my idea. I didn’t even pick it out.”
Zeke must have been done with this conversation because he turned and left, stopping only when he was by the door. “I think you have everything you need here. But if you’re missing something, let me know. I’ve never had anyone stay here before, so it’s possible something was forgotten. I’m down the hall. Burgundy doors. Knock if you need me.”
I limped into the bathroom. We had to have some serious conversations about what exactly he expected for this night, or nights, I got to spend in his house. First, however, I was going to soak my fucking feet. The bathroom was huge with a cast iron tub that called my name. I dropped my dress onto the ground in between the bed and the bathroom and made a limping beeline to the tub, where I ran the hot water. I should put my whole body into it, but for now, it just had to be my feet.
Very rarely did I think about my feet, but when they hurt, they were all I could think about. I tucked myself into the side of the tub to sit on the edge and put my feet beneath the water. I wished it felt wonderful, but they stung, and I was pretty sure I was going to have to clean them off with antiseptic and antibacterial and everything anti before I bandaged them in a few minutes.
I closed my eyes. I just had to breathe. But then my phone rang.
I stared down at it as Hope’s name appeared on the screen. I answered it. “Hope?”
The sound of the airplane hit me before she answered. “Layla?”
I smiled. It was ridiculously nice to hear her voice. “What happened?”
“I’ll tell you, hold on.” She paused for a second. “He’s being ridiculously mean right now.” Of course, she meant Dad. “And I’m hiding in the bathroom. Bridget is distracting him with numbers.”
I could practically picture it like I was there. I’d have been sitting with my legs up, staring out the window or trying to read because I hated airplanes so acutely, I could never rest, and Dad would have no need to talk to me.
Redhead On The Run (RedHeads Book 1) Page 5
