His Precious Secret

by Jenna Rose

  “Wow,” he says simply. “You are gorgeous.”

  “You think so?” I whisper, twisting my leg, doing my best to look cute.

  “It’s a fact. Now get over here, baby girl.”

  7

  Rick

  When I wake up, Taylor is in my arms.

  Oh, no. Fuck, no.

  How did I let this happen? I remember taking her last night, twice actually, but then what happened after that? We fell asleep in each other’s arms. I fucked up, and as I hear Brandi moving around downstairs, I realize just how badly I fucked up.

  My house is big, but there’s no back way out of my part of the house—no secret stairs or outdoor steps. With a hand over her mouth, I wake Taylor. “Shh, baby. We fell asleep together, and your mom’s up. I’m going to go downstairs and distract her. I’ll try to get her outside, and you can run back to your room, okay?”

  Taylor just nods, and I quickly throw on some sweatpants and head downstairs to find Brandi sitting on a stool in the kitchen, a sour look on her face.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” I say sarcastically as I fill a glass with water. “How are you today?”

  “I want fifty million dollars.”

  I almost want to laugh as I turn around and face her. “Fifty million dollars, Brandi? That’s a laugh. You’re lucky I’m even letting you live here. Why on earth would I give you fifty million?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She smiles like a snake. “So I don’t tell the world about you fucking my daughter?”

  My heart sinks. No, scratch that. I almost have a fucking heart attack. She has to be bluffing. There’s no way she could know.

  “I came upstairs to see you last night,” she says, rising from her stool. “Thought I’d try to make things up to you. And what do I find? My precious little daughter, completely naked, asleep in my husband’s bed.”

  This is bad. Beyond bad. I’m a man who’s never short on words, but even I can’t come up with anything to say right now.

  “This is a new low for you, Rick.”

  “New low for me? I have to have hit a low to have a new low, Brandi. You would know all about that.”

  “What, so I cheated on you?” she laughs. “Sure, that’s bad. But not as bad as this.”

  “She’s not blood related, Brandi.”

  “Is that what you’ll tell the tabloids?” she asks, advancing on me like an assassin. “Think your business partners will like that? When the public finds out that their favorite brand of auto-parts is run by a sick man, do you think they’ll keep buying from you?”

  All valid points, but that’s not what scares me; what scares me is what happens to Taylor if this gets out.

  “You drag me through the mud, you drag her through the mud, Brandi.”

  She shrugs. I should have known better. She’s never been the model mom, and it’s never been more obvious than right now.

  “She’ll get over it. Besides, maybe this will teach her a lesson about being a little slut.”

  “Don’t talk that way about her!” I bellow. “She’s never even been with a man until…”

  My voice trails off when I realize my admission. Brandi just shakes her head. “Until now? Until you? How’d you do it, Rick? Convince my daughter to have sex with you? Promise her all the money in the world? Vacations to the South of France? Gucci flip-flops?”

  “None of that,” I snap back. “It—it’s not like that, Brandi.”

  “Oh, so you’re gonna tell me that you really love her?” she laughs. “I’m not a teenager, Rick. That lie won’t work on me.”

  “It’s not a lie, Brandi. I know love might seem like a foreign concept to someone like you, but for the rest of us—”

  “Fifty million dollars, Rick,” she replies. “Or I call TMZ right now.”

  “Fine,” I reply immediately. Fifty million might be a lot for her, but it’s nothing to me. “And as soon as you have the money, you move out.”

  “Once I find a place.”

  “No.” I shake my head. “You can stay at a hotel.”

  “You’re in no position to be dictating terms here, Rick,” she replies. “Now go upstairs and tell my daughter you never want to see her again.”

  “Wait, what? That wasn’t part of the deal.”

  “Oh, did I neglect to mention that?” she muses, a cruel smile on her lips. She’s really enjoying this. It’s not enough for her to lie to me, cheat on me, blackmail me, and extort me, now she has to ruin any chance of happiness I have.

  “Right now, Rick,” she says as she pulls out her phone. She opens the gallery and presents a photo to me: Taylor and me in bed. “Or I send this to TMZ. Five, four, three—”

  “Okay!” A sharp pain embeds itself in my chest as I think about what this could do to Taylor. I don’t care what happens to me. I don’t care about the money; I just have to keep her protected. “I’ll go up there and tell her now.”

  “I’ll come with you,” she says as I take the steps.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea…”

  “I don’t think you plugging my daughter is a good idea.” She shrugs. “But then again, you didn’t bother to ask me.”

  I’ve taken the stairs to the second floor countless times over the years, and some of them were worse than others—like when I knew Brandi was up there waiting for me in bed, and I didn’t want anything to do with her. But even those ascents pale in comparison to the dread that fills me as I put one foot in front of the other and make my way to my bedroom.

  My bedroom now. The bedroom that was supposed to be for Taylor and me.

  I stop before the door, and Brandi leans against the hallway wall, just out of sight. “I’m going to listen to every word,” she whispers. “And if it doesn’t sound convincing, I’m making the call.”

  “You’re a cruel, cold-hearted bitch, Brandi.”

  She just smiles. “Uh huh!”

  It takes every bit of strength I have to take those steps into the bedroom. Unaware of what’s happening, Taylor smiles and brushes her hair from her face as I come in. “Hey, Daddy.”

  I cringe, knowing Brandi is just outside and heard that. I want to shake my head or give her some kind of sign that I don’t want to say what I’m about to say, but I just can’t risk it. This is all about protecting her now, and if I fail at that, I never deserved her.

  Before I speak, I let her beauty wash over me. I try not to picture what our lives could have been together, but the images just fill my mind. I see us together, sleeping, eating, exploring the world. I see her finishing college, getting her degree, marrying me, starting a family.

  I bunch my hand into a fist behind my back.

  Do it. Rip the Band-Aid off. Waiting will only make it worse.

  “This is it,” I tell her. “We’re over.”

  A look of confusion comes over her face, but she shakes her head and laughs.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy.” She smiles. “For whatever I did, I’m sorry. Feel free to punish me—”

  “This isn’t a joke, Taylor,” I growl. “I just wanted to fuck you, and now that I have, I have no more use for you. Your mother is leaving. I need you to get your things and leave with her.”

  The words spill out of my mouth like poison, burning my throat, singing my lips. I want to cut out my tongue as the sorrow fills her eyes.

  “Why are you saying this, Rick?” she asks.

  I shrug. “Because it’s the truth. You really think I would want to settle down with an eighteen-year-old girl who hasn’t even been to college? Get serious and get out.”

  Unable to bear it any longer, I turn my back on her and stride out of the bedroom. Brandi’s waiting for me like an evil queen. I flash her a filthy look as I pass her and head straight outside and hop in the Ferrari. I gun it out of the driveway and head north. My business meetings will have to wait. I just lost Taylor, the most important part of my life, and I don’t know if I will ever recover.

  8

  Taylor

  Thre
e weeks later…

  For the first time since Rick broke my heart, I don’t wake up crying. I’m on the verge, though, and when I go into the bathroom and look in the mirror, the tears fall.

  I look like death. The last twenty-one days have taken their toll on me. I haven’t even bothered to shower in three days, and my hair looks like I’ve been sleeping on the streets.

  If you were to drive by my new house that I’m sharing with my mom, you wouldn’t ever think there would be someone as miserable as me inside. It’s huge, worth nine million dollars, and could be featured on any one of those YouTube channels that shows off enormous celebrity homes.

  But to me, it’s nothing more than a prison cell.

  Every day I’m reminded of Rick, whether it’s my mom talking to her lawyers, documents showing up at the house for the divorce proceedings, or seeing him online or on TV with countless reporters speculating on the status of his marriage.

  I even made it into some of the footage. It was the day he took me out shopping. Only one of the reporters made some crack about Rick dumping his wife for his “sexy, teenage stepdaughter,” but his female co-host scolded him so quickly that he immediately took it back.

  No, that’s not on anyone’s minds. And why would it be? I was dumb enough to believe it was more than a fling anyway. Come on, my stepdad being in love with me? That kind of love?

  I guess that’s what I get for being as naïve as I am.

  Mom and I aren’t speaking. I pass her in the kitchen from time to time, but mostly I have food delivered around the side entrance so I can avoid her. I’ve even been applying for jobs as a server so I can get out of the house and away from her.

  I threw out all the clothes Rick bought me. Filled trash bags with them and put them in the bins outside. All except the lingerie and heels. Those got a special treatment. We have a fire pit out back, so I burned them to a crisp. The lingerie was easy, but the heels took a few hours to turn to ashes.

  Ashes…just like the ashes of my scorched heart after Rick carpet-bombed it on the worst night of my life.

  “Going out, honey!” my mom announces from the front door, her voice shrill like a rusty ironing board.

  I don’t bother answering. Since we moved, my mom has become something of a Real Housewife. She has a gaggle of friends, all of them rich and divorced, living off their ex-husbands’ money, and they love getting together, getting drunk and having to take an Uber home.

  If only I had my own money. I’d get out of here. Out of this city. Out of this state. Maybe even out of the country. But I know that no matter what the distance, I’ll never be able to forget Rick.

  Hell, I can’t even push my feelings for him out of my chest. Despite what he did to me, taking advantage of me in that way, I can’t help but love him. Love and hate, all mixed up into one like an ice cream sundae covered in vinegar.

  Once my mom is gone, I wander downstairs and go out to the back yard and look up at the stars. It’s a beautiful night and a shame I don’t have anyone to share it with. Having Rick’s arm around me would make it absolutely perfect. But would it even be the Rick I thought I knew?

  Did that Rick ever even exist?

  “Hey, you.”

  The shock of a male voice behind me causes me to jump and throw my phone into the grass. I whirl around, expecting to find a robber or a rapist with a gun aimed at me, but instead find Rick, casually dressed in a pair of gray pants and wearing a white T-shirt, smiling at me in a way that makes my heart melt.

  No. Don’t fall for it!

  “How—what are you doing here? How did you get in?”

  “You don’t think I’d buy your mom a house and not have a spare key made, did you?”

  He advances on me slowly, and just like it happened before, I feel my body coming alive for him. Desperately, I fight to push those feelings down and remind myself of just who it is I’m dealing with. The man who broke my heart just so he could pop my cherry. Now the memory of my first time is like a black burn mark on the history of my life.

  “Get out of here, Rick!” I say as I back up. “Get away from me!”

  “I’m sorry, beautiful—”

  “Don’t call me that!” My voice scrapes my throat as it comes out. “I hate you! You’re a liar, and you broke my heart! You told me you loved me!”

  “I do love you, Taylor!” His eyes seem pained, but I know he’s a good actor. I’m not buying it. “I had to do what I did because…because of your mom.”

  “Oh.” I laugh painfully. “So you want to be with her now? Want me to dig up a lost sister so you can have her too?”

  “I don’t want to be with her, Taylor,” he says, advancing on me. “She was blackmailing me.”

  A brief moment of hesitation comes over me. I feel myself starting to slip, like a dam ready to give way, and fight to hold back.

  “How? How would she even know about us?”

  “It’s all my fault,” he replies, shaking his head. “I let you fall asleep in my bed, and your mom came up and saw us. When I went downstairs she confronted me. She had a picture and everything.”

  “What…?” I didn’t know it was possible to feel this embarrassed.

  “She demanded fifty million from me, Taylor. I thought that would be the end of it. But it wasn’t enough for her. She made me go upstairs and break things off with you.”

  “So this is all about your money?” I snap. “You didn’t want to pay her so you just broke up with me?”

  “I would gladly pay more than fifty million if it meant being with you, beautiful,” he replies. “But your mother was going to expose me if I didn’t do what I did.”

  “What do you care?” I ask. “Everyone knows you’re a ladies’ man.”

  “This is different, Taylor, and you know that. You’re not just any girl. You’re my stepdaughter.”

  He’s right of course. But still, I’m not buying it. There’s something missing here.

  “So you were worried about your reputation?”

  “No.” He shakes his head and a hint of a smile comes over his face. “I was worried about yours.”

  Suddenly, I feel so stupid. This whole time I assumed he was protecting himself; I hadn’t even occurred he’d be thinking about protecting me.

  “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself, Taylor, if what I did ended up hurting you. I’m used to my life being discussed in the press and having people come after me. But you don’t deserve that. Not with something like this.”

  Two tractor-trailer-trucks of emotion collide within me. The fierce hatred I feel for him has not subsided. It’s now at war with the complete sense of relief and stupidity that’s starting to grip me.

  He’s not lying. Either that or he’s an Oscar caliber actor along with being a billionaire. Tears begin to sting my eyes as I look at him. I want to accept this, but I’m afraid. And I don’t know how to get past all the negative emotions that are exploding inside me.

  Luckily for me, Rick does.

  He moves right in and sweeps me into his arms like a prince. My mouth instinctively falls open to accept his kiss, and the red-hot, fiery rage I was feeling before is doused in the healing waters of his embrace.

  I melt into him. The terror of losing him forever is still strong in my chest, so I throw my arms around him and pull him as tight as possible. I feel his pain—what he must have felt when he came to the bedroom and said those terrible things to me.

  But together we can get past it. I know he loves me now. I’m no longer afraid. I don’t care if the whole world finds out our precious little secret if it means I get to be with him. Rick, my prince. My daddy.

  “I know you probably are still mad at me, Taylor,” he whispers, stroking my hair. “But I want to ask you something.”

  “I’m not mad, Daddy. What is it?”

  Intent fills his eyes. Happiness swims through me as the anticipation rises. Is he about to say what I think he is? He can’t be. I’m just being ridiculous for even thinking it.

>   “Will you come home with me?”

  I almost laugh. Of course he’s not asking me that. It’s too soon.

  “Of course I will, Daddy.”

  “Good.” He nods, pulling me to the door. He stops half-way and turns back to me. “Oh, and also—will you marry me?”

  Epilogue

  Rick

  Two years later…

  Talk about a life change.

  I’m no longer Rick Clark, the billionaire-playboy-CEO; I’m Rick Clark the married-billionaire-businessman.

  Secretly married, of course. It’s not even technically legal in the eyes of the law. Taylor and I said our vows together in an ultra-private ceremony with a priest who I had sign a non-disclosure agreement. Now that I’m divorced from Brandi, marrying Taylor might not seem taboo to some, but I still have to protect her. And who cares what the law says if we’re happy?

  Brandi was overly confident. When we met up the next day to discuss the transfer of the fifty million, I brought a hidden recorder and taped her blackmailing me. Then I brought my lawyers in and they let her know that if she didn’t take the five million I was now offering and sign an NDA saying she would keep her mouth shut about her daughter and me, she’d be going to jail.

  She folded.

  I didn’t have to pay her, of course, but I did it anyway. It was more of a PR move so she wouldn’t be able to talk bad about me in the press or try to play the victim. I also didn’t openly discuss the fact that she cheated on me. I wasn’t looking for a war; I was looking for a peace treaty. And I got one.

  Taylor and I moved in together immediately. Going out in public is a bit of a pain. I either have to take her somewhere I trust and book the whole restaurant for myself, or we have to pretend we’re just father and stepdaughter and there’s nothing more going on between us.

  It’s kind of fun actually; it’s almost like reverse role play. At home we live our truth, but in public we put on a persona. It turns me on when she gives me sass, says, “Okay, Dad” in that bratty tone of hers or pretends like she doesn’t want to be out with me, because I know that when we get home, she’s all mine.