by Heidi McVay
She could hear the edge of relief in his voice. “I’m just about to fly out from Athens, but I won’t be back in the country for at least another fifteen hours at the earliest. I need a huge favor.”
That made her frown. Scarlett glanced toward the phone as if she could see through it and to him, to what he was thinking. “Okay?” She drew the word out, making it a question. Who the hell did he think he was, calling her out of nowhere after two years of silence and asking for a fucking favor?
This time, he sighed, suddenly sounding more tired than angry. “Tatiana left Evie with the nanny last night. I need you to go and get her, then take her to my place. I’ll text you the address and the gate code.”
Surprise tore through her, and Scarlett released a harsh bark of laughter. “You have to be kidding me. You call me out of nowhere after years of pretending I don’t exist to ask me to babysit your kid?”
Silence came once more from the other end. He sighed, and she could hear his voice break, a pleading tone entering it. “I asked my mom, but she can’t fly right now. She has some kind of a sinus infection or something. Please just do this one thing for me. You’re the only person I trust. After this, I won’t bother you again, I promise. I’ll just leave you alone if that’s what you really want. Please. I just…” She could hear him cut himself off as if realizing that he’d been reduced to begging. A moment later, the simple words came through the line, severing her resolve instantly. “Please, Scar.”
Scarlett swallowed hard and drew in a breath. When she pushed out the words, they were harsher than she intended. “Fine. But this doesn’t change anything.”
“I know.” He confirmed, something like defeat in his voice. “I’ll text you the address. I have to board the flight. How long will it take you to get there?”
“Three hours, maybe four. Depends on how soon I can get a flight out of Denver.” She replied flatly as she lifted her coffee. “I’ll text this number when I have the kid.”
On the other end, Zarek spoke quickly. “I’m going to text you my credit card information. Charter something private if it gets you there faster. I don’t care what it costs. Okay?”
Scarlett snorted and reached out, ending the call without another word. She already knew she was going to regret this, even as she headed for the stairs once more, already scrolling through her contacts to call her client to postpone her conference call. A moment later, a series of texts arrived with the information Zarek had promised. Oh yeah. She was definitely going to regret this.
*
Zarek stared at his phone for several long minutes after he sent the information to Scarlett. If he’d been hoping for a response, he’d have been disappointed. There was, however, no disappointment, only a vague sense of relief. He slipped his credit card back into his wallet and set his phone to airplane mode as they began to taxi toward the runway. He lifted a hip, shoving his wallet back into his pocket, and trained his eyes on the tv mounted in front of him. The private jet he’d chartered was usually a rare luxury. But today, it was a necessity. Tatiana’s death was going to cost him almost as much as her life.
He turned his eyes toward the window, staring out at the sun-drenched afternoon landscape as he mentally calculated what time it would be when he finally made it home to LA. Just under fifteen hours in flight, no stops for refueling. It would be after nine pm when he landed, then another hour home.
As he closed his eyes, Zarek waited for something, anything to rise up in him at the prospect of seeing Scarlett again. There was nothing but the numbness. It had been with him since he’d walked away from her that last night. The regret had been instant. He should have turned back, should have kissed her, should have taken her to bed, should have told her that none of it mattered except for her. But it would have been a lie to tell her that.
The truth was that if he’d gone back, as he had wanted, his life would have taken a drastically different path. He would have spared himself the nightmare that had been his short-lived marriage. He would have spared himself the public humiliation of the conversation that had gone viral before he’d even been aware of its existence. He could have spared himself everything. But all of it, every moment of the hell his life had become was worth it for Evie.
He’d shut down, gone completely numb when he’d said his vows to Tatiana. He hadn’t felt anything for months until he’d held the little girl he’d fought so hard to bring into the world, the child that had been an idea until she’d emerged screaming bloody murder, tiny and purple with a head full of his dark hair and her mother’s blue eyes. Even now, it was only when it came to his daughter that Zarek felt anything at all. Only Evie had the power to bring him to his knees anymore, to chase away the numbness and fill him with anything like warmth.
His daughter was everything. Her mother, however, was the worst decision he’d ever made. Their farce of a marriage had been the disaster his father had tried to warn him it would be. Tatiana had threatened, over and over, to terminate the pregnancy, all the way up until it was too late, by law, to do anything. After that, she’d begun to threaten to take the baby and leave. Every time he’d heard the words, his anger had mounted a little more. Zarek hadn’t seen the threat for the hollow shell that it was until after Evie was born and realized that Tatiana had never had the least bit of maternal instincts whatsoever in her.
When he’d left for Prague, just three weeks after Evie was born, he’d not had to push too hard to convince Tati to come with him. The entire two months they’d spent there, Tatiana had barely seen their daughter, never held her, never spent time with her.
It had become a running joke on the set when Zarek had gone to the extreme of hiring a nanny to watch the baby while he wasn’t able to. He’d worn Evie on his chest in her sling for two straight months, handing her off only when he was forced to. By the time his little family had returned to the States, he had understood what it was to love his child profoundly and deeply, and what it meant to hate his wife just as profoundly, just as deeply.
The regret hadn’t begun to really set in until the day his mother had texted him with a link to the YouTube video that had sprung up overnight. There’d been more than a million views in just a handful of hours. Zarek had watched the captions the creator had added with disgust and quiet rage at the words his lovely wife had been speaking to her mother, apparently just hours before the ceremony.
He could still hear her words ringing in his mind as she’d had the conversation with Miranda Landais. Her voice had been smug and satisfied. “He may not have as much money as Daddy, but it’s enough to be comfortable for as long as I need to stay married to him. California is a community property state, which means that as long as he’s earning the kind of money he’s earning, I’ll have nothing to worry about.”
Miranda’s voice had been soft and reproachful. “I can’t believe you’re doing this. Tatiana, we raised you better than this.”
“Did you, Mom? Because I remember you telling me once that this was exactly how you ended up married to Dad. I was your little ‘accident’.” Tati’s voice had been amused, as she’d continued. “And besides, Daddy cut me off. What else was I supposed to do?”
“Get a job!” Miranda had snapped. “Or keep modeling and just stop spending every dime you make. Not get pregnant and marry someone you barely know. And how did that happen anyway? You’ve always said you’d never have kids. I thought you had more sense than this. You always swore you’d be careful.”
Tatiana’s voice had lowered to a hiss. “Keep your voice down. Someone will hear you.” There had been a moment of silence before Tatiana had spoken again. “It wasn’t an accident, don’t you get that? He was going to leave me, Mom. I didn’t have a choice. And I don’t see the problem. He loves me, and he’s going to take care of the baby and me.”
Miranda Landais’ voice had been even softer as shock edged in. “You did it on purpose?”
“Of course, I did!” Tatiana had shot back. “He’s got more money than he knows what
to do with. This baby is my meal ticket. I’ll make the marriage last until I know he’s in the double digits at least, and then I’ll file for divorce. Between the alimony, the child support, and half of his assets, I won’t ever need to worry about money again.”
To her credit, his mother-in-law had sounded sickened by her daughter’s words. “I can’t believe you. No man deserves to be used like that. You can’t do this to him. I won’t stand for it.”
“Oh, yes, you will.” The steel in Tati’s voice was something he had come to recognize as time had passed. It was the tone she used when she was ready to make good on a threat. “Or I’ll tell Daddy about your little ‘charity’ trips.”
Zarek still didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, even now. But whatever it was had been trumped by hearing Miranda quietly conceding to her daughter’s demand for silence. He’d listened to the recording three times before it had finally sunk in.
By the time Tati had returned from her girl’s trip to Hawaii three days later, he’d changed the locks and served her with divorce papers. The first thing she’d done was go after Evie. It had begun a nightmare of a legal battle that had ended only today when he’d gotten the call from Sasha, the nanny. She was watching Evie when Tatiana had left to go paragliding with her new boyfriend, some personal trainer or tennis instructor. The relief he should have felt feel though, was nowhere to be found. He was simply… numb.
Chapter Four
Scarlett carefully maneuvered the minivan down the long gravel road toward the address on the GPS. Upon arrival at LAX, she’d promptly rented the largest vehicle they had available. As a result, the baby blue minivan was ridiculously oversized for the baby that slept peacefully in the middle of the car.
It was overkill, she knew. She’d known it the second that the nanny had stopped cold in her tracks, the car seat held in one hand and the happily babbling Evie in the other, staring at it. She’d cocked her head, and her voice was slightly curious as she turned her gaze to Scarlett. “You, uh, do know she only weighs twenty-two pounds, right?”
At that moment, Scarlett’s face flushed as she cleared her throat. “Well, yeah. But you can never be too safe.” Especially when it was Zarek’s daughter, and especially when she had never driven in Los Angeles. The shuttle ride from the terminal to the car rental lot had been terrifying enough, and the drive here indescribably nerve-wracking.
Scarlett had registered the amusement on the young woman’s face a moment later and couldn’t help the defensiveness that crept into her tone. “You’ve met Zarek. If I do anything to break that kid, my ass is grass.”
“Fair enough.” Sasha had chuckled then, stepping closer to Scarlett so she could hand Evie to her while she secured the car seat into the minivan. And Scarlett had accepted the little girl cautiously, expecting pain to tear through her at the knowledge that she was holding Zarek’s child.
Instead, there was only curiosity and sympathy. The little girl’s entire world had altered just hours before, and she was blissfully unaware, at least so far, that she would never see her mother again. It wasn’t the baby’s fault that her mother had been a wart on the ass cheek of humanity. The baby had happily played with her hands, gazing up at Scarlett with wide blue eyes. There were traces of Zarek, though, that were immediately obvious. From the way one corner of her mouth lifted slightly higher than the other when she gave a toothy grin to the mop of dark hair that stuck out in unruly spikes around her head. It looked like Zarek’s had when they were kids, like Evie been zapped with electricity.
“Okay, I think you’re all set. Just leave it in the car in case you need to go anywhere else. Zarek will take care of getting it out and putting it back into his car. Whatever you do, don’t let Jesse touch it. He tries to be helpful, but he can’t manage baby stuff. Screws it up every time.” Sasha gave a tight smile as she stepped back and reached to take Evie. The little girl smacked her lips and shrieked happily as Sasha tickled her belly. “Now you’re going to be good for Auntie Scarlett, aren’t you, precious? Don’t give her a hard time. She already looks terrified enough.”
Evie, for her part, had merely given an answering stream of babbles as Sasha showed Scarlett how to buckle her into the car seat and make sure the straps were secured properly.
“Now, she’s front-facing in this one, but if Zarek tries to give you a hard time, you just tell him that’s all the bitch left for me.”
Scarlett had blinked in surprise at the blatant insult to the now-dead mother of the baby who was singing off-key a song in a gurgling baby language only she understood. Sasha shrugged as she shook her head.
“Zarek pays me. Tatiana leaves her…” The woman caught herself and blinked. “Tatiana left her… with me more often than she had her. Horrible excuse for a human being and a mother. That sweet baby called me Mama before Tatiana. Anyway…” Sasha reached out to close the minivan door. “My number is in the side pocket of the diaper bag. Call if you need anything. Just don’t let Jesse fuck with the car seat.”
“Who?” Scarlet began, but Sasha was already headed up the steps toward her apartment. Scarlett had merely sighed and pulled the keys from her pocket, climbing into the behemoth and starting it up.
Somewhere on the freeway, the babbling stopped, replaced by the softest little snore she’d ever heard in her life.
Stopping at the massive gate that led onto the property, Scarlett punched in the code that Zarek had texted. As she watched the gates swing open, she wasn’t sure what she expected. The property was large, and unlike the homes in Los Angeles, this one didn’t have a lush, green lawn. It was scrubby little trees, dirt, and rocks. There was grass, but it was distinctly like what she’d seen in the desert when she’d gone to Vegas a few years ago.
She pulled through the gate and watched in the rearview mirror as it swung closed behind her, waiting to make sure that it was completely shut before she returned her eyes to the driveway and set off at a crawl. Still gravel, but considerably better graded than the road, it was nearly half a mile before she saw any sign that she was in the right place. While she wasn’t sure what she had expected, it certainly wasn’t what she saw when she pulled the minivan to a stop just before the driveway expanded into a large, circular turnaround.
The house was not massive, at least from the front. A single-story that looked like it had been built sometime in the 60s. She expected something… bigger, maybe? More impressive? Certainly not this. Scarlett lifted her phone, staring at the map app that showed she was in the right place, and then back through the windshield. The place screamed of Zarek’s personality. Basic, practical, and with room to spread out.
She pulled closer to the house and put the car in park, staring at it for a moment before she tore her eyes from the neat little place and toward the rest of the property. A decently sized barn, well-maintained, stood with the doors open, and inside, she saw the ass-end of Buttercup. He still had the damn El Camino. Only now, it was pristine with a bright yellow paint job that was even less subtle than it had been when he’d gotten the damn thing. “Christ, kid. Your dad still has that piece of shit?” She spoke softly to the still-sleeping baby. Her only answer was another of those ridiculously adorable snores.
As Scarlett killed the car’s engine and pulled the keys from the ignition, she heard barking. A large dog streaked out of the barn, some kind of a large German Shepherd with a missing ear and only three legs that seemed to somehow go in four different directions. Scarlett watched in fascinated horror as the dog skidded straight into a stubby tree, face first. She winced in sympathy as she heard the dog yelp and reached for the door handle.
She heard a man’s voice from inside the barn. “Dammit, Kilo! Not again!”
Scarlett was torn between amusement and horror as the dog righted himself and barreled toward her, barking and happy. His tail wagged with such force that she was surprised he didn’t take flight. He was on her in a second, balancing on his one back paw as his two front paws pinned her by the shoulders to the door
of the minivan. He barked again but didn’t attack, and instead, she found her face being covered in overly-enthusiastic doggie-kisses.
A second later, she registered the man’s voice again, closer. “Kilo! Stop it! Down!” A moment later, the dog was hauled off of her, and she cracked her eyes open to see a handsome man, nearly as large as Zarek, regarding her with a sheepish smile. “Sorry about that. You must be Scarlett.”
She scrubbed at her wet face with one shirt sleeve and nodded, fighting back a grin as she watched the dog sit at the man’s feet as if he’d done the best job in the world, tail wagging expectantly. The man held a hand out, his brown eyes crinkling at the corner. “I’m Jesse. You uh, you met Kilo. Sorry, he’s not all there.”
She accepted his hand, staring for a moment. He looked vaguely familiar, with a powerful frame that was clad in plaid flannel, worn jeans, and boots that were covered in dust. “Nice to meet you, Jesse.”
His handshake was firm but polite as he flashed her a smile, even white teeth, and the scruffy beard standing testament to the fact that he hadn’t shaved in several days at least. “Good to meet you too. Heard a lot about you through the years.” She couldn’t shake the feeling that the man was familiar. She knew she’d never met him, but he looked so damn familiar.
“I had no idea there’d be anyone here. Zarek said there was no one else to watch Evie. But if you’re here, then I should just-” She began only to be interrupted by a sudden shake of the man’s head.
“Don’t you dare say you’re leaving. Zarek would kill me. Slowly. I love that kid, but I’m not a baby kinda guy.” He snapped his fingers downward toward the dog as if it were an afterthought. Kilo yipped happily and took off running in the other direction, on a mission to achieve something that Scarlett didn’t understand. “I just watch the place while he’s gone. I don’t even go in the house. I live in the barn.” He gestured behind himself toward the barn. “Come on, I’ll show you where the key is. Is your stuff in the….” The man trailed off, raking a hand through caramel-colored locks that were just a touch too long. “How many kids you bring with you again, Lady?”
