Tidal Wave (Paradise Lost Book 3)

by Megyn Ward

  “You owe me more than that, cupcake. After your grandmother pulled the plug Tom and I had a hell of a time getting a job.”

  Jesus. I don’t have time to smooth her feathers. “It’s my little girl, Ellie. I think Jonas and Simone have taken her and they plan to start a new show with her.”

  Jeri pauses for too long. “A new show and the sons of bitches didn’t call me?”

  “Jeri. I need your help to stop this. Do you know who they might get to direct it?”

  She grumbles a string of cursing I don’t try to sort out. “Goddamned Tom. We parted ways after I got an offer. They didn’t want him and it pissed him off. But, damn it, I had to save myself first, you know? Like oxygen in an airplane. I told him I’d help him find something. That was a year or so ago. He didn’t take it well. I’ll bet that jerk took my job with Jonas and Simone.”

  “Tom?” I haven’t dealt much with her sidekick. He directed the co-stars and walk-ons, mostly giving them the rules and keeping an eye on them when they weren’t on camera. “Do you have his number?”

  She slams something down. “Not anymore.”

  I try for a few more courteous exchanges but finally wrap it up and promise to call her soon to catch up. Now what am I going to do? If Jonas and Simone have Ellie and intend to create a new show, what would they do?

  I force myself to sit still and silence my brain. I’ve done this countless times while I got into character for Liesa Life or when bracing for a day at Paradise Found. I grip the steering wheel to keep my hands from trembling and slow my breathing.

  Think, Lauren. If you were as desperate for money as Jonas or craving attention like Simone, how would you use a funny, smart, and trusting little girl?

  My eyes wander to a pile of discarded newspapers on the floor. Kylie isn’t the neatest person on the planet.

  I gasp and slam the pickup into gear. I knew where they’ve taken Ellie.

  Chapter 34

  Blake

  I haven’t taken my eyes off the security gate in the half-hour since I watched Erika go through the sliding doors. I can’t see beyond them, but unless she escapes through the doors onto the tarmac, this is the only way Erika can leave the airport. Of course, I can’t force her onto the plane, but this is the best I can do for now.

  It’s impossible to sit still and I pace the open-air lobby, keeping vigil. As soon as that plane takes off, I’ll be back in that putt-putt car and racing to Lauren. Our life together begins soon.

  I hear the plane from Miami land. The lobby starts to buzz. Cab drivers line up outside the doors waiting for the tourists who are about to burst through customs, ready for their vacations in paradise. Resort reps pull out their signs to alert patrons where to gather and which shuttles to climb into. Hustlers flit in and out with their come-ons to entice new tourists to their overpriced excursions and promises of outlandish gifts for only an hour of their day for a timeshare presentation.

  My heart hammers with anticipation and worry. Erika needs to get on that plane and jet out of my life.

  A few passengers slip from the arrival area into the lobby. These will be locals who didn’t check bags or have to slog through the long customs line. It will still be a while before everyone disembarks, the cleaning staff resets the cabin and they begin boarding the new passengers. I’ll wait, though. I don’t need Erika getting into my business again.

  The sliding doors open and a few more arriving passengers emerge. I do a double-take.

  “Kylie? Zach.” I hurry to where they’re tugging carry-on roller bags through the lobby.

  It’s so unexpected and they both stop and stare before recognizing me. Kylie’s eyes open and she grins. “What are you doing here?”

  I give her a hug, really glad to see her. “I’ve finally come to my senses.”

  She gives me a sideways grin. “What do you mean?”

  I wave at the boarding area beyond the sliding door. “Erika. I’m here to send her off.”

  Kylie looks surprised. “Erika, your fiancé? She’s in Cayman?”

  I let out a breath. “Don’t pretend Diana hasn’t told you all about Erika.”

  Zach tips his head back and eyes me with amusement. “You mean the elf?”

  Guilt hits me. I shouldn’t have been with Erika, ever. Someone—probably a lot of someones—would appreciate her. Their friends would embrace her. The only reason Diana and Kylie make fun of Erika is because they see how wrong she is for me. “She’s a nice girl. Really.”

  Kylie brushes that off. “So, she’s heading back to New York.”

  Zach grins. “And you’re not.”

  My heart starts to thud again. I am going to say it out loud and maybe they’ll jump in to stop me. After all, they know how I walked away before and left Lauren alone. I look at the concrete floor of the airport. “I have no right, but I’m going to try my hardest to convince Lauren to give me another chance.”

  They don’t answer and I finally take a chance and raise my eyes to them.

  Kylie’s hands are on her hips, and she’s giving me a stern look. Zach appraises me as if sizing up a new boat for Paradise Found.

  I wait and when they don’t say anything, I fumble on. “I know I left her. I never should have done that. But she’s the only girl I’ve ever loved and I need her. I hope I’m not wrong but I believe she loves me, too. I just pray I’m not too late.”

  Wow. Was that me spewing all that heartfelt, gooey shit all over their flip-flops? Neither of them speak and I don’t seem to be able to stop from making a fool of myself. “I want what you guys have. You’re building a business and life together. You have each others’ backs. I mean, when Zach’s mother got sick, you’re both there. Together. And someday….” I am actually starting to choke up as I think about it. “Someday I’d like to have a baby with Lauren. I see Ellie and how great she is and what an amazing job you’ve done raising her. I don’t know if I can be as great a parent as you are, but I know Lauren can be.”

  Zach and Kylie exchange a puzzled glance. Whatever is passing between them, it seems as if Zach is asking a question and Kylie seems indecisive. After the shortest of pauses, she turns to me. “You still think Ellie is our daughter?”

  I’m about to say, yes, of course, when I feel like a bucket of ice water is dumped over my head.

  Kylie and Zach wait while I’m putting it all together. I mumble something stupid. “She’s not?”

  “Blake... think about it.” Kylie shakes her head as if I’m the world’s biggest idiot. “Ellie has olive skin, and those wild brown curls. I’m blonde. We both have blue eyes, not those big brown beauties Ellie owns.”

  “Come on, dude—seriously?” Zach chuckles as if it’s funny. “She looks just like you. Only a hell of a lot cuter.”

  I can’t breathe. My mind swirls and I’m at once filled with awe and a rush of love so intense it threatens to drop me to my knees. That’s followed by a sense of despair so acute I want to cry, because I didn’t know, couldn’t be with her for her first three years. That’s followed by an anger so deep I want to throttle Lauren for not telling me. And finally, I’m gutted, knowing that the reason Lauren didn’t tell me, the reason I missed Ellie’s babyhood, is because I’d abandoned them without a second glance.

  And Lauren had taken it all on her shoulders. She’d raised our daughter all on her own.

  Kylie puts a hand on my arm. “Blake? Are you okay?”

  I’m shaking my head, trying to clear it so I can think straight. Kylie and Zach come into focus. “She must hate me.”

  Kylie’s mouth turns up in a grin. “She loves you, jerk. Always has.”

  Zach nods. “And you love her. Don’t see where the problem is.”

  Shit. There’s so much to make up for. So many misunderstandings between us. But Zach and Kylie are right. We never stopped loving each other. Everything else can be figured out.

  And we have Ellie. I have a child. An amazing, wonderful, fabulous little girl. She looks like me. She’s so much li
ke her mother. I think I loved her even without knowing. But now? Now, she’s my daughter.

  I spin around and start to run.

  “Hey!” Kylie shouts after me. “As long as you’re here, give us a ride home.”

  They’re the best kind of friends because they grab their rollies and sprint after me, not slowing me down by more than a few seconds. Seconds I hate giving up.

  I glance at the time. “We’re going to Paradise Found. She’ll still be closing up for the day.”

  Kylie is next to me. “Good. I need to talk to Diana and see what fell apart while we were gone.”

  I’m weaving in and out of traffic, laying on my horn and being the biggest asshole on the road. I don’t care. I need to find Lauren, explain everything, and make her understand how much I want us to be together.

  Chapter 35

  Lauren

  The studio parking lot is small and crowded. It takes me some time to find a parking spot. Most of the travelers in Grand Cayman are tourists and make their way to and from the airport in taxis. After that, they either hang out at Seven Mile Beach or get taxis. A few rent cars, but not like these, expensive and polished free of dust. The island is a mix of working-class locals and the super wealthy who either work in the financial district or have piles of money and don’t need to work at all. The cars belong to the rich. The locals take the bus.

  A line snakes from the front doors and the crowd seems impatient to get inside to the air conditioning. I stare at those gathered, hating the thought of being seen. But I need to get inside and save Ellie from Jonas and Simone’s plot.

  No wonder Simone and Jonas were so interested in keeping Ellie today. They knew that by the time I got off work and made it home, they’d be signing contracts and counting money. I’m in my swimsuit bottoms, flip flops and long-sleeved rash guard. Hardly appropriate attire for hanging out in a beach bar, but really wrong for crashing onto a soundstage.

  I race through the gathered crowd lined up at the door. They aren’t happy as I shove my way from the back to the front and stand nose to nose with a person taking money.

  “You cannot go through here.” He isn’t tall but he’s solid. There’s no way he’s letting me through without a ticket. I’ve got no wallet or cash.

  “My daughter.” I stammer, not sure how to continue. “I think she’s been kidnapped and they’re in there.”

  He is concerned and waves his arm to signal someone from inside over to us.

  The crowd behind me is making some grumbling sounds. A white-haired guy standing at least 6’5”, wearing a golf shirt and straw fedora speaks for them when he says, “We’ve been in this line for over two hours. Our granddaughter is auditioning and we need to get in there.”

  Several people chime in. They sound like a mob gathering force in a Dracula movie. Pretty soon the pitchforks and torches will appear.

  The new guy and the money taker I engaged with have a quick conversation in island patios while I tap my feet and the crowd behind me sends hostile arrows into my back. The new guy assumes the place behind the counter and winds his hand in a “come on” motion for the grandfather.

  The other guy takes my wrists and draws me aside. “You said your daughter is missing?” He pronounces it like dauta.

  “I don’t know for sure. My parents took her while I was at work. I don’t know where they’ve gone.”

  He steps back and frowns at me. “You are tellin’ me that your daughter’s grandparents came to babysit your child?”

  He makes it sound innocent. “Okay, yes. But that doesn’t matter. They’re going to put her onstage and sign her to a contract.”

  He laughs. “Pretty confident in your tike. Like the other stage muthas.”

  “I’m not a stage mother. I want to get her out of there.”

  He studies me in my swimsuit and flip-flops. “You here for vacation? You havin’ a good time?”

  “I’m not a drunk tourist! I live here and I’m telling you, my daughter is in danger.”

  He looks over his shoulder beyond the front door where the ticket-taker is allowing a slow trickle of audience inside. “And the child’s grandparents are selling your daughter for slave labor of a multi-million dollar reality series?”

  I try to get around this guy. He obviously isn’t believing me.

  “Liesa? Liesa Temple?”

  I squeeze my eyes closed at the sound of the name. I want to melt into the pavement.

  A hand on my shoulder makes me jump and I open my eyes to see Tom, the assistant director of Liesa’s Life.

  The name seems to whisper from the front of the queue like a breeze and gather momentum until it’s a hurricane.

  Liesa. Liesa. Liesa.

  I’ve been hidden away for four years. Speculation ran around every few months. Pictures on tabloids showed someone with roughly my facial features but 300 pounds and the headlines would tell of deep depression that led me to try to eat myself to death. Or the same thing, only emaciated and shriveled like beef jerky. The headline telling of the tragedy of my cancer battle. There were tales of my death, my going underground in paranoia. Every time they ran out of alien babies or presidential affair news, they’d make up something about the mysterious disappearance of Liesa Temple.

  No one thought to look twice at a girl with a buzz cut, wearing outdated sundresses, floppy hats, sunglasses, and sporting a diaper bag. Or holding the hand of a precocious, dark-haired child.

  And now Tom dropped it like a bomb in front of the very people who would eat it up.

  A surge of people push around me.

  It’s her!

  What happened to your hair?

  See? I told you the cancer story was true.

  If she’d had cancer she’d be skinny. It looks like she’s put on twenty pounds.

  She’s thinner than she used to be.

  Filled out, like she’s grown up.

  Scrawny, and sickly.

  They shout questions. They relive the last episodes and want to know. Where is Zach? Do we still see each other? Did I really start a commune in Utah and practice polygamy with five husbands? Each question and comment piles on the others until it rises to a roar in my head and tumbles, blocking out thought and whittling at my control.

  My hands shake, and I feel like throwing up. I reach toward Tom and barely mumble. “Please. I need to get inside. Ellie.”

  Still the people push in, sucking out the air. The sun blares down, the noise crackles and flares. I struggle to get a breath. “Tom. Help me.”

  My fingers close, trying to clasp his shirt, pull myself from the brink of this full-fledged panic attack.

  Tom no longer stands in front of me. He must have taken off inside. The staffer is gone, too. I have to go after him. Jonas and Simone have Ellie in there. They’ll set her in front of the audience, make her sing and dance like some organ grinder’s monkey. It will be great at first. She’ll love the spotlight. I know, oh god, how I know the embrace of an adoring crowd.

  But Ellie is not like I was. She has an abundance of love in her world. She doesn’t need the adoration of an audience to feed her. Oh please, God, let her understand the spotlight is not the truth.

  Someone shoves a notebook in front of me. “Sign this to Abbey.” A woman leers in my face. “You led him on. What a sweet boy and you broke his heart.”

  “You’re a spoiled bitch.”

  The voices fly at me as if they don’t have faces belonging to them. A hand seems to come out of nowhere, attached to nothing. It shoves at my shoulder, knocking me back. “Leave her alone,” a woman sputters.

  “She got away with too much. Rich bitch.”

  “Always in charge and whining. What’s it like now?”

  I back to the side of the studio building. The metal of the siding burns my shoulders as I press closer. They want to hurt me. This crowd of people that watched every episode of Liesa Life and thought they knew me. I was the one they envied. The camera and makeup that transformed me from a regular girl into
some kind of beauty queen. The opulence of parties, travel, clothes, restaurants. Celebrity outings. They love me equal to how much they hate me. And all of that is measured by the cash that piled up in Jonas’s accounts and the Nielsen ratings.

  This is what I hid from for four years. This is what I want to save Ellie from. But I can’t move. My arms and legs won’t take my orders. My brain is like mashed potatoes and I don’t know what to do. I need someone to save me.

  “Blake.” I say his name out loud.

  Tall. Dark skin, bare chest. Long legs. Strong. Beside me. Holding me. He pulled me from the blades of the boat’s propeller. He calmly sprinkled vinegar on my jellyfish bites. Blake.

  And I can’t hear anything but the pounding of my heart and my breath drawing in and out, like the whoosh from the regulator when we dive.

  Please Blake. I need you.

  Chapter 36

  Blake

  The tires of the little wind-up car actually squeal as I whip into the parking lot of Paradise Found.

  Kylie’s shoulder slams against mine. “Whoa, there, cowboy. Lauren’s not going anywhere and it would really ruin the whole kissy-huggy thing if we’re all bloody and mangled.”

  I don’t care. My door is open and I’m halfway across the blacktop before Kylie steps out and is leaning in to flip the seat up for Zach.

  Diana is at the front door with her key in the lock. When my feet thud onto the dock she jumps and whips toward me. “Oh, thank god!”

  “Where’s Lauren?” I don’t want to waste any more time. I have to find her. Tell her I love her. Tell her I know about Ellie and I want us to be a family.

  “I don’t know. She….”

  I can’t wait for anymore. The divers and boats are gone so Lauren must be in one of the sheds, taking care of equipment or filling tanks.

  “Wait!” Diana hollers at me but I’m already at the tank shed. When I don’t see Lauren I’m racing to the equipment shed and Diana is running toward me.