The gate opens, and we drive up, and I finally get to see the house I bought. “This isn’t my house,” she says, and I just look at her.
“No, it’s ours,” I tell her, driving past the little creek that runs through the land and then finally seeing the house. The outside lights are on, and you see that it’s two stories. The front of the house looks like wooden logs. Six windows cover the side of the house, showing you the inside, so we are definitely going to have to get blinds. I drive under the awning, but it’s really where the game room sits, and it attaches to the four-car garage that is hidden on the side. It’s held up by thick rock wall arches.
I get out of the car and open hers while she gets out and her mouth just hangs opens. “This house looks magical,” she says, and I look up at it closely and see it really does. There are so many windows all over that you never really could tell in the pictures. The front door sits on the side of the house at an angle with five stairs.
The door is glass as well. “We need to change this door,” I tell her and grab the keys from my pocket to unlock the door. I open the door. “Welcome home, baby,” I tell her, leaning down to kiss her and wait for her to walk in. She does and then she stops right there in the entryway. The house has the open concept with a ceiling so high you need to strain your neck. The back of the house has the same windows as in the front. A staircase on the side leads you upstairs. Walking farther into the house, you see a huge rock wall with a fireplace in the middle of the house. There are four master bedrooms in the house all on the second floor, the hallway in a square around the house and all you see are doors. The railings have clear glass. “We have to go furniture shopping also,” I tell her, looking around and seeing that it’s very rustic, and there are more wooden antlers than I care for.
“This house is so beautiful,” she says, and then she looks at me. “You bought this house?”
“Well,” I start to say, “technically, I bought it, but my mother picked it out.”
She stands there, looking at me. “Are you hungry?” I ask her, and she shakes her head.
“I want to get out of these clothes,” she says, looking at the outfit that she wore on stage. I grab her hand, and we go up the side stairs and see that the walls are all rock, the long hallway in rich dark wood.
“I have no idea which room you want, so how about we start in there and then work our way around the house?” I suggest, opening the first door I see. “All the rooms have their own bathrooms,” I tell her and see the big king-size bed and a huge window in the middle of the room.. “I’m going to get your bags, so why don’t you take a shower?” I say. Leaning in to kiss her on the lips, I then walk out before I take her against the shower. I jog back downstairs, looking for our bags, and they are right there sitting on the couch.
By the time I walk back upstairs and pull out a pair of her sweats and a shirt, she is walking into the room with a towel wrapped around her. “Your turn,” she says, coming up to me. “I’ll wait for you here,” she whispers. She goes to her bag on the bed and tosses it on the floor along with her clothes, then slides under the covers. And by the time I finish my shower, I find her softly snoring. I walk to the door and flip off the light, and then walk over and slide into the bed with her. I pull her to me softly, not wanting to wake her, and for the first time in over a week, I fall asleep peacefully.
When I finally open my eyes, the sun is shining bright. “It’s about time you woke up.” I hear from beside me and look at her, sitting up in bed with her back to the headboard. She leans over and kisses my lips. “Morning.”
I grab her and drag her back down with me, burying my face in her neck. “Morning,” I grumble. Her stomach makes a gurgling sound, making me laugh. “What time is it?”
“Four o’clock,” she says. “I got up maybe twenty minutes ago and tried to shake you awake, but nothing, so I got on my phone instead.”
“Okay, let’s go eat,” I say, rolling out of bed and putting on shorts while she grabs a robe. We walk down to the kitchen, and I open the fully stocked fridge and see trays and platters of cooked food all labeled. “We have mac and cheese, chicken fried steak …”
I look over at her, and she is holding a box of Honey Nut Cheerios in one arm while her hand is in the box, and she is shoving them in her mouth. “I don’t care.”
I grab both trays and put them in the oven. “Thirty minutes,” I tell her, looking at the instructions on the top of the container.
“Well, it gives you thirty minutes to fill me in.” She looks at me, and I just nod my head. Grabbing her around her waist, I head to the couch. She puts the box of cereal down and sits on the couch, and I sit next to her. I lean in and kiss her lips. “Spill it.”
“Okay.” I take a deep breath. “What do you want to know?”
“Well, let’s start with the obvious,” she says. “How did you find me?”
she whispers.
I close my eyes, not wanting to remember the moment my heart literally stopped in my chest. “The plan was for you to get off stage and then Cori was going to have you brought to the plane where I was going to be waiting for you.”
“I was going to my house,” she whispers. “Cori made sure it was all set up.”
“I was going to be on the plane, and I was going to force you to finally listen to me,” I tell her, grabbing her and pulling her on my lap. “I was going to tell you everything, but then she called me, and I thought my heart had stopped.”
“Honey,” she says softly, putting her hand on my face, and I turn my face and kiss the palm of her hand.
“Anyway, it all happened so fast. Cori called me, and Dante called Hunter. The team back home was already in place and getting a ping off his phone.” I breathe out a huge sigh of relief. “Then when I found out what he told you, I had Rachel dig into his background and check accounts, and I have to tell you it didn’t take long to put the pieces together. He was broke. He was even lower than broke,” I tell her, and she looks at me in shock. “He was at the end of his rope, and he was getting sloppy. We put a tracker on his phone. He turned it off, but you can still get a location from the Bluetooth in his car.”
“I texted Cori,” she says. “She is going to find out what I have left.”
“You have everything left,” I tell her, and she shakes her head.
“He blew all my money and took out loans on the houses. I have nothing.” I shake my head. “I have the house in Nashville only because my mother co-signed.”
“Baby, you aren’t losing anything,” I tell her, and then I tell her what she is going to find out soon anyway. “Cori stayed in New York to go talk to my lawyer.”
“Your lawyer about what?” she asks me.
“About buying all your stuff back,” I tell her. “You aren’t losing everything you worked hard for because of a piece of shit like Tommy.”
“What?” she asks, confused.
I look up at the ceiling. “My father is Harold B. Kitch the second,” I tell her, and she just looks at me. “My older brother is Harold B. Kitch the third, and lucky for me, my mother got to choose my name and went with plain old Brian.”
“Hold on one second,” she says, getting up. “Your father is the oil tycoon who was in the newspaper just last week for acquiring the biggest tech company in the world?” she asks but doesn’t wait for me to answer. “It was all over the papers last week.”
“That would be him,” I confirm. “I don’t have anything to do with the business. When I turned eighteen, my father was ready to give me a larger role in the company, but I ran away and enlisted.” She opens her mouth in shock. “My big brother went to Warton and graduated at the top of his class, and my father assumed I would be following the same path, but just the thought … I couldn’t do it.” I hold up a hand. “But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have stocks in them, or that I don’t have a trust fund that has more money than I know what to do with, and even if my children’s children spend stupidly, there is much more.”
&n
bsp; “He’s a billionaire. Your brother was on the cover of Forbes.” Her voice is monotone as she gets all the information I’m throwing at her, and she is putting all the pieces together. “The company was worth over a hundred and forty-five billion dollars.”
“I know. Trust me, I know. He sent me the article in a frame,” I tell her. “You’ll see he’s a cocksucker, but he took the reins, and for that, I owe him. He got to go to stuffy boardrooms while I got to play with guns.”
“Oh my God,” she says, putting her hand in front of her mouth. “That is what Dante meant. You paid to rent the houses we stayed in?” I nod my head.
“All of them,” I tell her. “I also did this case pro bono.” She smiles.
“You,” she whispers out, stuttering. “You.” Her eyes fill with tears.
“You did all that for me.”
“No,” I tell her, wiping away the tear rolling down her cheek. “I did it for me. I did it for us.” I kiss her. “I did it because you’re mine.”
“How long were you working pro bono?” she asks me, and I smile.
“Since the second time I picked you up.” I kiss her now, and when her tongue slides into my mouth, I feel like I’m home. I feel like my heart can start beating again, and I feel like I’m finally alive again.
Chapter Thirty
Kellie
“So how much?” I ask Cori, who sits at the island in the kitchen, as I pull open the fridge and grab a water bottle. She finally arrived this morning after spending five days in New York with Brian’s lawyers going over everything.
I wasn’t just broke. I had nothing left. Well, I would have had nothing left if it wasn’t for Brian and his lawyers, who got everything back.
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” she says, and I glare at her. Brian comes into the room, walking straight to me and kissing my lips.
Then he turns to say hello to Cori. “What are you guys talking about?” He stands next to me. Ever since we got to this house, I never go more than ten minutes without him.
“She was asking how much you paid to get all her things back,” Cori tells him, and he just shakes his head while I look at Cori and mouth, “Traitor.”
I move away from Brian, crossing my arms over my chest. “Why can’t I know?” I ask them both. “I don’t want to be kept in the dark about anything.”
“Fine,” Brian says and looks at Cori. “Tell her.”
“Well, the good news is that nothing was in foreclosure, so all we had to do was pay off the mortgages again,” she says, and I start to calculate that it must have cost him close to twenty million.
“I’m going to pay you back.” I look over at Brian, and now he glares at me. “You are not going to be stuck paying my debt.”
“It’s not your debt. It’s Tommy’s debt, and I won’t have it touching you,” he says, leaning back against the counter. He doesn’t say anything else because there is a ring at the door. “I swear to God,” he starts saying, “if that is one more flower delivery, I’m sending it back.”
I just smile when word got out about everything that I went through, and the flowers started arriving once they found out where she was. Now the whole house has flowers; you literally smell them everywhere. He walks to the door, and when he opens it, the man is standing there in the UPS outfit, and he hands him the envelope in his hand. “Perfect timing,” he says and closes the door and then looks at Cori. “Is everything ready?”
“Yup.” She smiles, standing next to me. “Her bags are on the plane and ready to go.”
“What is going on? Where am I going?” I look at them, and then Brian comes over to me.
“I know I promised you we could stay here, but …” he starts saying. “Well, I FaceTimed my mom when we got here, and she saw the décor, and she has the men coming in to gut this place tomorrow morning.”
“What?” I ask in shock, looking around. Okay, there is a lot of wood and antlers. “What if I tell you that I don’t want to change anything?”
“Then I’ll ask you if you knocked your head when Tommy kidnapped you,” Cori says.” Jesus, have you looked around here? It’s well, it’s very rustic, and you are a country girl, yes, but you aren’t this country.”
“So where are we going?” I ask him, and he smiles.
“The beach for one month,” he says, and I try to hide my excitement. “One month, me and you on our own private island.”
“Jesus, besides your brother”—Cori looks at him—“is there anyone I can marry?” Brian laughs and then looks at me.
“If you’re ready, the plane is ready.” I look down at my jeans and sweater.
“I’m ready,” I say “I don’t even care what I look like. My man wants to take me to a beach for a month.” I hold his hand, and Cori drives us to the airport where the same private plane is waiting. “Where are you going to go for a month?”
“Me?” she asks, getting out and giving me a hug. “I’m going to get my ass back to the house and make sure all that shit is gone, and when you come back, everything is going to be perfect.” I climb the stairs to the plane, step in, and take my seat with Brian by my side holding my hand.
“I love you,” I tell him, and he looks at me. “Even if you didn’t have any money in the world and I had to start over all again, I would be okay with you by my side,” I tell him as the plane leaves the runway and takes me to the beach.
“You can go change,” he tells me. “The bag is over there.” I get up and go into the bathroom and take out my aqua sundress that Cori packed for me. It’s a tube top and goes all the way to my ankles. I grab my gold strappy sandals and put them on and then go out. He looks up from his phone and smiles. “We will be landing in an hour.”
“How close to the beach are we?” I ask him, looking outside, and all I see is crystal blue water.
“Right on the beach. The house is totally secluded,” he tells me, and I climb on his lap now. His hands going to my ass.
“Does this mean we can go skinny dipping?” I whisper, and he nods. “Does this mean I won’t have any tan lines?”
“As long as I’m the only one on the island, you can walk around naked. We have to take a private boat to the island. Then they come back daily, depending on if we need them or not.”
I lean in and kiss his neck, trailing my tongue. “Think we can have some sex on the beach?”
He pushes one side of my hair behind my ear. “I think I can help with that,” he says with a smile. I lean in to taste his lips, then lay my head on his shoulder and just take in the serenity of his arms. The heat hits me as soon as I get off the plane, but a town car is waiting for us. The driver opens the door for us, and the cool air hits us right away.
I look out the window at the view of the ocean, and it looks like there is ocean on both sides as we make our way through the town and then toward the pier. We pull up to a wooden dock with a boat waiting for us. We walk down the dock holding hands while the driver brings our luggage, and I have to say, she really downsized with my packing because it’s just a small carry-on bag. The driver smiles at us and holds out his hand for me to get into the boat, but Brian gets into the boat first and then holds out his hand for me. I shake my head. “It was hard enough to trust Dante with your life,” he says, and I sit on the white leather bench with him next to me, his arm around my shoulder, and I hold my hair when it goes all over the place while the boat zips through the empty ocean, the water so crystal blue you can see the bottom. I see a couple of houses in the distance, actually only three, all with a forest between them. We pull up to the dock, and a man dressed in a white linen suit is waiting for us. Brian gets out of the boat first and then holds out his hand for me.
“Welcome to the island.” He smiles at us. “My name is Andre, and I’ll be giving you a tour of the house.”
“Brian,” he says, holding out his hand, “and this is Kellie.”
I hold out my hand. “Pleasure.” I smile, and he turns to walk toward the house. From where I’m standing,
it looks like the house is shaped like a diamond. We walk in, and the air conditioner is working as the cool breeze hits my warm skin. I don’t even pay attention to anything he says. Instead, I go to the living room, going down two steps, and see that it looks like the ocean never ends. The two walls are glass from top to bottom, and the view downstairs where the pool is has a swim-up bar and two huge palm trees on the side of the pool. There are two daybeds at the end of the pool with a wooden dock that leads all the way to the white sandy beach. I see six daybeds down by the ocean along with two awnings for shade. He takes us through the house to the kitchen, the movie theater, and then to the master bedroom, which has the same view as the living room. Except you can open a sliding door and let the ocean breeze come in. The king-size bed is so high you need a stool to get into it.
By the time he’s finished giving us a tour, the only thing that I know is that I need to get my ass in that water on the beach. “If you need anything, my number is by the phone. I’m about five minutes away by boat and available twenty-four hours a day. The maid will come in every day at noon. If you don’t need her or want her to, please let me know.” He turns to walk out of the house, and I grab Brian’s hand and pull him toward our bags in the bedroom.
“The plan is to get me to the beach,” I tell him, and he just smiles. I open my bag and fish around for my bathing suit. I grab the white bikini, then go into the bathroom and change. I tie the back and then slip on the bottom held together by five strings on the sides, holding the two little materials together for the front and the back. The top is all mesh with two flower decals where my nipples are. I turn and walk out of the room, seeing Brian sitting on the bed already in his suit. “Oh, I thought you would have put your Speedo on.” I see his cock spring to action while he looks me over. I walk up to him, cupping him in my hand. “I take it you approve of the swimwear?” I kiss him, and he groans. “But it’ll have to wait. My toes need to feel some sand.”
Hollywood Princess Page 21
