Beach Reads Box Set

by Madden-Mills, Ilsa

  “You … gave it to them?” she squeaks. Her head swings wildly back and forth between the expanse of green pasture land that’s one of the most unique things about Houston. Urban and rural blend within feet of each other. And it’s self-contained, but with easy ingress and egress to streets that are the major traffic arteries of the city make the location ideal for commuters going to all of the major commercial centers in Houston. The Galleria, downtown, Greenway, Katy, Sugar Land, The Medical Center. She stares at me for a few minutes, her face tight with concentration as if she’s looking at a puzzle that makes no sense.

  “What?” I ask.

  She frowns. “It’s just that there’s a dissonance between your actions and words, Hayes. Last time we talked about this, you were shocked that we wouldn’t accept a settlement. Now, you’ve committed your family’s resources to doing exactly what you refused to do last week.”

  “Well, it was actually almost two weeks ago, and then, I hadn’t been to see any of the properties. I hadn’t met Matt and Jasmine and their ten-month-old who couldn’t go anywhere without the machine they use to treat his asthma,” I say.

  “I heard about your visits,” she says. “Your little notetaker was very proud of himself.”

  “He’s a good kid. And after those visits, I decided to make that donation. Some of those units should have been condemned before the flood.” I shake my head as I remember the rubble and debris that still lay strewn in the parking lots of these units. It’s a disgrace and I couldn’t sit by while they suffered.

  “Does Remi know that? Why wouldn’t he tell me that?” I ask.

  “Because I asked him not to. I wanted to tell you myself, and I didn’t want you to know until I thought you were ready to hear it,” I tell her.

  Her eyes narrow slightly. “Why do you get to decide what I’m ready for?” she asks.

  “Because I’m the decider,” I say, mimicking George W. Bush’s infamous words.

  “Oh, really?” she asks and crosses her arms over her chest.

  “Yes. That’s what I do. I make decisions that I think are best for myself and my family. Sometimes they mean I will have to hurt the people I love. Not be candid with them. Move them around like pawns,” I say.

  “How do you feel about that?” she asks, surprising me with how soft her voice is.

  “I feel fine about it. I’m not impulsive, Confidence. When I act, it’s after long deliberation. There have been moments in my life where I didn’t think, where I just acted, and I hurt people without any really good reason. The ends didn’t justify the means.”

  “You should hear yourself, Hayes. You’re a stage five control freak,” she says, but her voice is completely devoid of recrimination. In fact, I hear shades of pity, and I don’t fucking like it.

  “I have to be,” I say tightly.

  She holds her hand out to me and I step forward and take it.

  She brings it to her lips and brushes the back of them in a sweeping motion. She looks up at me through her lashes, and I’m struck by how every time she looks at me, her eyes nearly lay me flat.

  “You can’t control people, Hayes,” she whispers, and a knot tightens in my chest at the distress in her voice.

  “I’m not trying to control anyone. I just take opportunities when I see them,” I say and before she can cut me off, I tell her what I’ve been dreading. “Like when I realized that Kingdom wasn’t going to do anything they weren’t forced to when it came to the tenants, I knew Remi would need the best lawyer on his team.”

  “What do you mean?” she asks and then her eyes widen and her mouth falls open.

  She drops my hand. “You didn’t,” she says quietly.

  I’m shocked she hasn’t guessed already. She jumps to her feet. “If you say that you asked Remi to hire me, I am going to walk out of this room, and if you try to stop me I will scream at the top of my lungs until someone calls the police,” she yells.

  Fuck.

  “I didn’t ask Remi to hire you,” I hedge.

  “But?” she bites out between her clenched jaw.

  “But, I did bring you to his attention,” I say.

  She growls and balls her fists.

  “Why, Hayes? Because you wanted me here so badly that you’d persuade your friend to give me a job I wouldn’t be considered for otherwise? How do you think that makes me feel? After everything I shared with you, you know that is the very last thing I would want,” she says and starts for the door.

  My arm whips out like a lasso and I draw her to me.

  “No, you aren’t leaving,” I say. “And scream because the closest house is three empty lots away. And you’ll be screaming for nothing because you know I will not hurt a hair on your head to keep you from leaving,” I say.

  She looks pointedly at her arm, where my hand is cuffed around it.

  I let go.

  “I’m not holding you, but you’re not walking out of here over that. You needed a job. This one was perfect for you, and Remington already had your resume. He just needed someone to vouch for you. And I did,” I say. “But you know him now. Do you think he would have hired you because his friend asked him to? His twin sister works somewhere else because he won’t hire her,” I remind her.

  Some of the fight flows out of her.

  “Why didn’t you tell me, then?” she questions. Her voice is raised to a near shout, her eyes are pools of conflict. She’s angry, hurt, but she also … understands.

  “Because you are so fucking stubborn, Tesoro,” I say in exasperation. “You would have cut off your nose to spite your face and spit in Remi’s the minute you knew I was involved,” I say.

  “I would not have,” she says.

  “Liar,” I taunt her.

  “I would not have. Not everything is about you,” she says.

  “Liar,” I say again.

  “Stop saying that,” she says angrily.

  “Stop lying,” I say.

  “You are not a mind reader!” she yells now. She’s practically vibrating, but with something much more potent, vibrant, and transformative than anger. It is relief and acquiescence. She’s relenting.

  I press my advantage.

  “You and I are cut from the same cloth, molded from the same earth, sky, water, and fire. I can read you.” I trace a line down her forearm.

  “Did you do this because you wanted me to take you back?” she asks and points out at the development.

  “Partly, yes. But not just because I want you on my arm and in my bed, but because I need you by my side,” I say.

  “You do?” she asks, and I laugh at the surprise in her voice.

  I nod over at the window, at the land. “I could have sold it. It’s some of the most valuable land in Texas. But, what’s the point of enriching my family and living in a walled off castle when the rest of the world is burning or in Houston’s case, drowning. But I wouldn’t have considered it if I hadn’t met you. At least, not as quickly,” I admit.

  “So, you did it because—"

  “Because I knew it was the right thing to do. The only thing I could do. You said this should be a personal problem. And you’re right. When I think about what I want the legacy of my times as head of this family to be, I find that preserving it isn’t enough - not just for the sake of it, anyway. That land has sat empty for two hundred years. It doesn’t flood, the only real expense of it are the property taxes, and because it was a donation and they’re a 501(c) (3), it’s a nice tax holiday for all of us. So, win-win,” I say with a shrug.

  “My brother is on death row. He killed my father during one of their drunken rages,” she blurts out suddenly and I freeze.

  “What?” I say because I don’t know how else to respond.

  “Yeah, the one named Fortune,” she says.

  “What happened?” I ask her.

  “There was a terrible storm that night. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been home,” she says, her tone a little wistful. “When they were both drunk, I couldn’t bear to be under
the same roof. But the river was already swollen from rain a few days before, so it was flooding. I was trapped in the house, and they were fighting. Over the last beer. Fortune had opened it and Daddy snatched it from him. The bottle broke, and Fortune stuck the edge of it into Daddy’s neck and he bled to death right there while my mother and I hid under the dinner table,” she says dimly.

  I convulse in horror. That’s unimaginable.

  “I love where I come from, but I could never live there again. I was trapped between two terrors and it was only when one was gone that I was able to escape the other,” she says, her eyes distant and dull.

  She’s drawn her knees up to her chest, her heels rest on the edge of the window seat cushion and her feet are dangling off the edge. Just then, I can see her as a young girl, sitting on the edge of a river bank, her long hair hanging off one shoulder as she looks over it at the danger behind her. Her toes being tickled by the water while she listened for the danger at her front.

  “Did he hurt you?” I ask, even though I absolutely do not want to know if he did. I know that if she says yes, I will never rest well. Knowing someone hurt this woman, and I will never be able to make them pay.

  “Of course, but he also made me stronger. I always fought back. I never took my beating lying down,” she says, and I want to go and find her brother and spare him the comfort of that needle.

  “Well, am I free to go?” she asks quietly.

  “Free to go where?” I ask, truly confused.

  “Don’t you want me to leave? Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing you’d wanted to know and avoid when you ordered the background check?” she asks.

  “For a smart woman, you’re pretty damn obtuse,” I say. “I told you why I ordered it, and that by the time it came through, I didn’t care what it said,” I remind her.

  “And you care now?” she asks quietly.

  “Did you not hear me earlier?” I ask and place my hands on her shoulders.

  “Which part?” she says. Her smile is small, but it’s there, for the first time all day. I skim her arms and the sweep of all of that unbelievably soft skin at my fingers makes me want to take her clothes off and pull her supple body against mine and show her what my words have failed to.

  That I need her constantly.

  That she owns me as completely as I own her.

  That I love her endlessly.

  “The part about you and me being made from the same combination of elements. About you being mine?”

  “Still?”

  “Tesoro, knowing, didn't change anything. In fact, it just showed me how alike we are.”

  “Why? Are your relatives murderers, too?” she asks, and shoves her hands through her hair and looks up to the ceiling in despair.

  “Maybe?” I shrug and think about it quickly. “I don’t know,” I say.

  “Well, then, they’re not. If you had a murderer in your family, you would know it, trust me,” she says.

  “Then, I don’t know that I would care. You’ve been shaped by the river, learned more from it than you did from the man who spawned you. You are not him. You have shaped me,” I tell her.

  “Ha, right!” She laughs. I ignore her and press on. “You know the Mississippi River starts in Minnesota, right?” I ask her.

  “Of course, I do,” she says.

  “Well, at its mouth, it’s narrow enough that you can walk across it in less than a dozen steps,” I say.

  She looks at me, eyebrows raised in question.

  “You’re like that river. At least in the way you’ve affected me,” I say.

  “How? Easy to cross?” she says morosely.

  “Stop pouting.” I chuck her under the chin. “I mean that you started like that for me. A pin prick sized drop of water on the very still waters of my life. And the minute you touched me, you caused a ripple that blurred everything I thought I was certain of. The way I saw myself, my obligations, my future. And now, just like that river you love so much does, it winds its way south, you rush through me, and I’m drowning in you.” I kiss her quickly.

  “I’m all for you loving me, but it’s not worth your life.” She uses the very same joke I made that night in the hot tub and I laugh.

  “Actually, I can breathe deeply for the first time in a long time. I know we’re from totally different worlds, but I feel like we’re also from the very same one. We love our family—not just the ones who were born of our blood. My brothers, Stone and Beau, aren’t biologically related to me at all,” I tell her. “You’re not the daughter of a sadistic drunk and the sister of a killer. I’m not the scion of a line of philanthropic, but short-sighted men and faithless women. Our legacies—what we choose to leave of ourselves in this world—is up to us.”

  She sighs…

  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I ask her.

  She purses her lips and then she blows out a breath. “I don’t talk about it. No one in Amorel does. It’s our collective secret. We all like to pretend that Merle—that’s my dad—never existed and that Fortune is already dead,” she says quietly.

  “And I’m ashamed of what they did and how I deny them. But to acknowledge them is to remind everyone not just that my brother killed my father, but about the blood that runs in my veins. It means something that it’s part of my history. And, in a way, that’s more than just a random moment. That it shaped me. Reduced me. Just like the river. Just like I thought Nigel had done. Just like I was afraid you’d do if I gave you another chance,” she says. I grasp her chin, a little more forcefully than I need to and turn her face toward mine.

  “There is nothing that could reduce you. You wear your name like a crown, and it’s one of the truest things about you,” I tell her.

  She sniffs dismissively. “It feels like a joke. And I’m afraid sometimes that it is. My brother Fortune is going to die on a table with a state-sanctioned, poison-filled needle in his arm. My brother, Happiness, ran away before he was thirteen. I can’t imagine that his life has brought him much of his name’s meaning.” She shakes her head.

  “Well, first, I think you’re giving your parents a lot of credit. Your mother, I will say, seems lovely. But fortune teller didn’t seem to be one of her skills. They gave you a name they liked. You’ve made it your own. You can decide that what you’ve done with your life is worth less than some whim by your parents twenty-seven years ago. But you would be lying to yourself,” I tell her.

  She looks up at me through her long lashes and smiles.

  “You believe in yourself. Enough to see beyond your current situation and reach for more. That’s more than I can say for myself. I didn’t consider that your interest in me could be more than all of the things that I’ve used to define myself. But, I swear, by the time we left Italy, I knew I didn’t care what it said, and I knew that I could trust you,” I say. And then I add the part that has been a more recent revelation. “I know that one of the reasons that people think of my money when they look at me is because that’s what I show them. I started changing that after your visit. If I wanted more from people, I had to give more,” I say. “You asked me about wanting more from my experiences than money could buy.”

  “Oh Hayes,” she says wistfully.

  “What?”

  “Thank you for speaking so my heart could hear. I don’t want to be bought. I don’t want to be wooed with flowers or nice trips. I want to be wowed by you living your best life. Because I want to live mine, too,” she says.

  “Let’s do it together.” I pull her off the window seat and carry her toward the bed.

  “What are you doing?” she cries. “I’m still talking …”

  “Well, when you’re done, you’re going to put your pussy on my dick and make it dance,” I say. “I just want to get you in position.”

  “Aren’t you mad that I didn’t tell you sooner? How do you not have any more reaction than this?” she asks.

  “I already knew,” I admit and then brace for her reaction. Her body tenses and I just hold
on tighter.

  “You knew?”

  “Yeah. After you left that day, I read it. I wanted to know what spooked you so badly,” I say.

  She glares at me.

  I smile at her.

  Her glare falls apart and her mouth trembles before she covers it with her hands.

  “You have the heart, spirit, and courage of a queen. I’m proud to know you. Proud that you love me. You’ve taken something and made it into nothing,” I say.

  She rolls her eyes. “You’ve got it backward,” she says exasperatedly.

  “No. I don’t. I’m telling you that you have taken something that should have reduced you, changed you, trapped you, maybe even erased you, and you have made it something so insignificant that you can leave it out of your life story and no one will know it’s missing,” I explain.

  The light in her eyes changes. It softens, becomes more luminous and she relaxes in my hold.

  “You really don’t care?” she asks.

  “Of course, I care. But not in the way you think. I’m sorry you lived through that. I care that you think it’s something you should be ashamed of.”

  “I worry sometimes that it’s in my blood,” she whispers and clouds roll into her eyes. So, I sit down on the bed with her still in my arms.

  “What is?”

  “That violence. Not because I feel inclined to it. But because I always know when it’s coming. Will I pass it on? Will it suddenly rear its head?” She sounds dejected.

  I squeeze her a little.

  “My grandfather was a cruel man. Everyone acts like he walked on water because he donated money for a hospital and because his name was Rivers. But I know what he was. My father, for all of his failings, raised me to believe I am my own man. He sent me to Gigi to make sure Thomas wouldn’t ruin that. And as much as I resented it then, I’m very grateful for it now as an adult. Because I can see that left to Thomas, I’d probably be just like him. Forgetting that my name is more than an access card for us. It can also be one for others. There is no such thing as a generational curse. There’s intent and action.”

  “Then why do you feel responsible for what Kingdom has done? Why are you spending this money and time on the flood victims?”