Crazy for Loving You

by Grant, Pippa

  “This works out well, since I have all the baby stuff,” Becca offers. “I mean, the part where I’m giving you a ride. Not the part where Daisy had an allergic reaction.”

  “Yeah,” I agree. I try to smile back at her, but it’s hard to smile when you’re gripping a phone so hard you can feel it in your molars. Not that I expect either of them to call me with an update, but I’d very much like to hear that Daisy’s okay.

  Becca looks away toward the parking lot.

  We manage to get most everything crammed in the trunk of her Corolla—which is easier than it was to cram it into Daisy’s Daisy Wagon—and we go out of our way to not accidentally touch while getting Remy’s baby carrier strapped in well enough without the built-in base that hooks into the car’s latch system. The entire ride to Daisy’s mansion, the only thing we talk about is which street to turn on.

  As soon as the porte-cochère comes into view around the bend, and then the house itself, Becca gawks with undisguised lust. “Wow.”

  She finds a house more sexually attractive than she finds me.

  And I’m not as offended as I should be, but I still feel fucking awkward.

  A woman I vaguely recognize—Daisy’s personal assistant, I think—bustles out the front door when we stop under the porte-cochère. “Daisy will be a few hours,” she tells me. “Which means you get to deal with Imogen. Congratulations and good luck.”

  “That sounded ominous,” Becca says, but she’s still gaping at the house.

  “It was. Let me know what I owe you for the diapers and formula.”

  “Baby gift. I insist. Can I help you carry it all inside?”

  “No.” I wince, knowing I sound like an ass.

  But I’m feeling like an ass.

  I don’t want to watch Becca ooh and aah over Daisy’s house. Nor do I want her to get scrutinized by the devil woman who thinks I’m an inconvenience at best, and a pain in the ass to be disposed of at worst. “She’s not a nice person. Imogen, I mean. I’ll get you the tour another day.”

  She smiles again without meeting my eyes. “Sure. Great.”

  “I really appreciate the help.” I’m a fucking retired Marine and I feel as smooth as a thirteen-year-old kid hiding from his sisters while drooling over the lingerie models in the JC Penney catalog.

  “No problem. Thanks for lunch. It was fun. The first part, I mean.”

  Yeah.

  The part where I wasn’t talking and Daisy’s face wasn’t swelling like a red balloon.

  I gesture to her trunk. “Could you…”

  “Oh! Yes. Right. Sure. Of course. You bet.”

  Ten minutes later, one of the security guys from the house and I finally get everything dragged through the front door. Remy fell asleep in the car halfway through a bottle, so he’s the easiest part.

  The security guy is no help when we find Imogen Carter pacing the sitting room just beyond the foyer though. Dude up and disappears.

  And I’m left standing there staring at a wily old lady with calculating blue eyes who couldn’t walk her ass thirty feet out the door to help drag in diapers and formula and baby gear.

  It pisses me off even more than today already has.

  I don’t like being pissed.

  I like being happy that I’m alive in a world that’s not perfect, but does its best.

  Yet since Thursday afternoon, very little is going smoothly.

  I drop everything but the baby in a heap on the marble floor. Remy, I place down gently, since he’s sleeping in his carrier.

  “What?” I snap.

  She draws her shoulders back and glares at me with the kind of glare that could explain the dinosaurs going extinct all those millions of years ago, if she’d been around back then. “I’ve signed Remington up for music lessons, and—”

  “No.”

  “Mr. Jaeger—”

  “He’s two fucking months old. Music lessons can wait.”

  “You have a lot to learn about how children are raised in this family.”

  “I’m his family. I say what he does.”

  “Daisy is his family. You’d best learn your place.”

  Christ. This woman knows how to piss a person off. “My place is right here. If you ever want to see this child again, you’re going to quit looking down your nose at me, quit issuing orders, and learn to say please. I don’t know where the hell you came from, but where I come from, a person’s character is determined by their actions, not their bank accounts. And I’m not raising a kid around people of questionable character who think music lessons are more important than making sure a kid knows he’s loved and safe. Now, you can either pick up a box of diapers and help get it to Remy’s room, or you can get the hell out of this house.”

  Huh.

  She just grew two feet taller.

  That’s probably a bad sign.

  Also a bad sign? That she can make me lose my temper with four words. There’s something about her haughty insistence that the world bend to her just because she wants it to that sets off all of my triggers. Who is she, really, to think she can play god?

  “Mr. Jaeger, you do not issue orders around here. Speak to me like that again, and you won’t see this child again. Ever. Also, his name is Remington.”

  I fold my arms and glare at her.

  She folds her arms and glares back.

  Daisy’s assistant is perched on the curved glass staircase behind us, leaning forward for a better angle on her phone.

  Fuck. She’s recording this.

  “Now,” I growl, “start over. Politely.”

  “I believe we’ve already covered who issues orders in this house.”

  “Daisy does. And since we got married over lunch, turns out, I do.”

  Fuck. Fuck. I don’t know where the hell that came from, but it’s stupidly satisfying to see her face drain of all the blood.

  Maybe this is why Daisy likes chaos so much.

  There’s power in unpredictability when dealing with her grandmother.

  “You did not,” she breathes.

  “Didn’t we?”

  She doesn’t know if she should believe me.

  Lying goes against everything I was taught growing up, and everything I learned as a Marine.

  But nothing about the past few days has followed the rules of life.

  “Help or get out,” I growl.

  “I’m not leaving until I speak with Daisy.”

  The assistant is still aiming her phone at all of us. Definitely recording this for YouTube.

  “That’ll be hard to do, since right after we said our vows, she had an allergic reaction to some shrimp,” I tell Imogen. “If she doesn’t make it, I’m the only hope you have of ever seeing this baby again.”

  “Tiana. Where is Daisy?” she barks.

  The assistant shrugs. “Last I heard, getting admitted to the emergency room. Cell reception’s spotty inside hospitals. And I didn’t catch which one, but Alessandro assured me they had real doctors on staff.”

  “Daisy’s not allergic to anything.”

  “She’s allergic to something, and she’s at the hospital.”

  Her neck swivels until she’s aiming that apocalypse-inducing glare at me again. “You poisoned my granddaughter.”

  Christ. Am I in a soap opera now? “Did you actually see your other granddaughter’s dead body, or is this all a conspiracy to ruin my life because I wouldn’t put a fountain in her fucking nursery?”

  She sucks in an audible breath, and I can’t decide if I regret all those hours I spent listening to my sisters discuss Pretty Is As Pretty Does, that daytime show that my mom got them all addicted to, or if I’m having fun.

  I’m probably not having fun if I have to question it.

  She snaps her fingers, and a butler who was hiding behind a giant palm in the corner leaps to attention. “Yes, Mrs. Carter?”

  “Pierson. Time to go.” She spears me with one last glare. “The Rodericks have filed more legal paperwork suggesting that you’
re as unfit a parent as they claim Daisy is. Do not leave this house again until I say you can.”

  Definitely not happening.

  I have jobs to finish.

  A house to check on.

  And some sanity to get in touch with.

  But mostly, I need to make sure Daisy’s okay.

  And break the news to her that we’re married.

  Christ.

  I don’t know who I am today, but it’s not the same person I was when I woke up yesterday.

  Sixteen

  Daisy

  My face is the mushy part of an overripe seedless watermelon.

  I know I’m only pretty because I’m rich. My eyes are too wide-set, my mouth too big, my nose too small, and my cheeks too round. I know this. I accept this. And because I have the personality to compensate for it, it never really bothers me.

  Until times like today, when I feel utterly stupid for not seeing the warning signs sooner.

  The last time I had shrimp, I caught a six-hour cold and thought I’d gotten stung by a honeybee on the lip when I wasn’t watching my drink carefully out on my boat.

  The time before that, I caught a rash on my face that I attributed to uneven sunscreen distribution.

  But now, my entire body has revolted to let me know, in no uncertain terms, that just like my mother, I’ve developed a shellfish allergy in adulthood.

  “I’m not an adult,” I whine to Alessandro while he drives us across the final bridge to my humble abode. “I’m a twelve-year-old with the mental capacity to handle business and the physical capacity to handle alcohol and this desperate need to know that Julienne’s baby is okay. But I have at least seventy-three more years before I qualify as an adult. For the record.”

  He humors me with a grunt of agreement.

  At least, I’m calling it agreement.

  He’d probably call it frustration.

  “Thank you for saving my life,” I add. “And I’m still mad at you for not letting me go show Pixie that I’m just fine.”

  “Tiana took care of it.”

  We turn down my seashell drive, and I frown. My eyes are still a little blurry from all the swelling and tears, but there’s definitely a big black truck parked under my porte-cochère. “Who’s here? Is that Becca?”

  “That’s Mr. Jaeger’s truck.”

  “Oh. Right.” Relief I didn’t know I needed floods through my limbs.

  He’s still here.

  Probably with Remy.

  I hop out of my car as soon as it slows to a roll.

  “Stop,” Alessandro orders. “You want a smashed nose to go with the rest of it?”

  “I’m fine,” I retort. “And I need to check on the baby.”

  I need to check on the baby.

  Who am I?

  It hasn’t even been forty-eight hours, and I’m all…motherly.

  I fling open the door, and seven cats shriek, meow, and dart at me.

  “Aaahh!”

  “Mrow!”

  “Meow!”

  “Yaaaarrrooooo!”

  I gape at the tortoiseshell cat, because is he bungee jumping from the stairs or something?

  But no.

  He just has a weird meow.

  “What the fuck?” Alessandro says behind me.

  “Oh, shit, it’s Saturday,” I whisper.

  “What’s Saturday? Who authorized this? What the fuck’s going on?”

  I don’t answer, but instead dash past my sunken sitting room and down the hall toward my lounges.

  You can’t keep a reputation for being an epic party-thrower without having themed lounges.

  Plus, I get bored easily. And I like variety when I’m hosting friends.

  Acquaintances.

  Same thing.

  Also, I wouldn’t normally be upset about seven cats wandering around my house—we’d catch them all eventually, and if one got out, it would be very well cared for in Bluewater—except I don’t know how cats are with babies.

  Or how babies are with cats.

  And if this didn’t get cleared off my schedule, who else can sneak into my house?

  Shit.

  I need to get more responsible. Now.

  “Is this like the exotic bird thing?” Alessandro says while I race toward the end of the curved hall.

  “I told one of Luna and Beck’s friends who runs a cat shelter that they could do a photo shoot. What better way to find the poor sweeties their forever homes than with professional photos of cats looking adorable?” I swing into the last room, my current favorite party room, which is basically one huge room of interconnected trampolines with ball pits lining the black walls, and instead of dozens of cats bouncing on trampolines, there’s a single chubby calico meowing plaintively from the center trampoline while Luna’s boyfriend, Beck, tries to crawl carefully out to get her.

  And there’s a photographer happily snapping away as the big blond bearded biker dude tries to not scare the single cat left on the trampoline.

  I hold up a hand to stop Alessandro. The poor kitty looks terrified. If anyone can reach her, Beck can, but only if we don’t scare the piss out of her first.

  We back out of the room, because my face could scare a shapeshifting vampire wildebeest today.

  “How many cats were coming today?” my bodyguard asks.

  I shrug. “Somewhere between eight and thirty?”

  “Fifteen,” a breathless Tiana answers as she bustles in from the courtyard. I owe her overtime for coming in today. “We’ve caught one, if you count the one still in the trampoline room with Beck. I let them in because they were cleared by security.”

  I keep waiting for the day that they both get frustrated with me and leave, but so far, I have yet to drive them to drink or quit. It helps that when my grandmother insisted I hire a security team, I picked my own head bodyguard instead of letting her have a say.

  “Cute idea to photo shoot them on trampolines,” she adds. “They got some really adorable shots. At first. Until West decided to see what needed babyproofing around the house. He opened the door, and the cats took off.”

  “Where is West?”

  She finally looks straight at me, gasps, and she stumbles back half a step. “Maybe you should go take a nap and let us deal with the cats.”

  I touch my face. “It’s still bad, isn’t it? Or is this because you don’t want to tell me where West is?”

  “He’s around here somewhere. With the baby. Security’s basically been trailing him to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid. And you probably shouldn’t go near the photographer again if you don’t want to end up in the National Enquirer with their proof that you’re actually an alien. He might be cleared by security, but that picture would go for a fuck-ton of money. Also, your calendar’s clear tomorrow. I can get you scheduled with Mirabella for a facial if you want.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  “Yes.”

  Clearly, I don’t pay her to lie to me. I wince, which makes my skin hurt. “You think it’ll be better enough by tomorrow?”

  “If not, Mirabella will know what to do. Even if it’s to tell you to take a few more days off. Or Emily and Luna. Someone. Somewhere. We’ll make sure you have your game face back by Monday.”

  I don’t need my game face.

  I need to find West and the baby.

  But they’re not in any of the lounges. Nor in any of the sitting areas.

  I cover the entire hump of the D of my house, all three levels.

  The courtyard, where a cat has settled onto a floatie and is sunbathing in the center of my pool.

  I head to my private wing, because I’m still in stilettos and I don’t feel like stilettos when my face is sore and my hands are starting to shake from the amount of Benedryl and adrenaline still pumping through my system and this niggling fear over not being able to find West.

  Why haven’t I programmed his number into my phone yet?

  Also, if I’m going to have to lead a search party to find Julienne
’s baby and my co-guardian, I want my face to match my clothes.

  In other words, I’d like to be scary as hell when I find him, so he knows he damn well better never take that baby anywhere without telling me again.

  What if he hopped a boat and they capsized too, just like Julienne and Rafe?

  What if they went wandering through the enclave and didn’t realize that Steve’s house is for an alligator, not a dog, and tried to get into the fence to the lagoon to pet him?

  I don’t think Steve likes human as much as he’s developed a taste for chicken since we adopted him and gave him his prosthetic leg, but I don’t know that for sure, because I don’t feed humans to the alligator.

  I’m working myself into a panic as I race through changing into hot pink tiger-striped yoga pants and a unicorn tank top offering to bake you some shut the fuckupcakes—it’s battle armor—and then search my bedroom, home spa, closets, secret library, and office, just in case he’s snooping.

  But he’s not.

  He’s nowhere in my private wing, not even in the rooftop gardens.

  I spin in a slow circle, squinting in the sunshine at the palm trees dotting the landscape in Bluewater beyond my house, the roofs of the village, the condo buildings, the thickets of saw palmettos and hibiscus on the paths to Luna, Emily, and Cam’s houses, and the bay, and as I’m finishing my circle, movement at my scrotum pool makes me pause.

  There he is.

  Pacing in front of the pool house, phone to his ear, which hopefully means Remy’s with him in the building.

  I head down the back staircase that leads to the shortcut to my second pool. West’s voice travels down the short pathway, and I freeze.

  “Yes. Daisy Carter-Kincaid. Yes. The heiress. No, I’m not some creeper trying to spy on her, I need to know if she’s—dammit.”

  There’s a splash, and I peek around the corner to see waves rippling out in the center of my pool.

  “Did you just chuck your phone in there?”

  He jerks his head in my direction. Relief washes over his face, his shoulders relax, and he starts to rub his eyebrow, then stops and growls. “I need your phone number. Now. Alessandro’s too. And anyone else who keeps tabs on you. Except your grandmother. That woman can go the fuck to hell and show her horns where she belongs.” He blows out a short breath. “Are you okay?”