Really? “Are we… expecting visitors? Do yacht owners just say hello?”
He shook his head. “Absolutely not.”
A thought dawned on me. “Pirates?”
“Fuck, I hope not. But we are armed.”
We were? We must have roused Banyan. He was out of bed without a word. Maven’s arms came tighter around me. “Stay here with me. If it’s not safe, don’t go up there.”
Well, I didn’t want any of them going up there if it wasn’t safe. Chance ran from the room with Banyan right on his heels. “Maven, let me go.”
“Give it a minute. Chance will make bad decisions if he’s worried about you. I highly doubt pirates are coming over at…” He grabbed his phone. “Noon.”
I supposed that made sense. “Is there a pirate problem here? And do I have clothes?”
“Yes.” He nodded, jumping up. “I mean yes to the clothes. Truth is I don’t know about the pirate problem. Might make a great book.”
He padded over to a dresser. “I think Chance put all your clothes in here. You know he picked all of them that we packed. So… if it’s nothing but underwear, don’t blame me.”
I grinned at him. He was trying to be distracting. Although I supposed it was possible Chance might have just thought about the undies…
I opened the drawer and was relieved to see I had clothes. I shoved on a pair of shorts and a white t-shirt, both of mine from before I’d known the guys, and found my sneakers. I put them on, too. Footsteps came down the stairs to the cabin and the door swung open.
It was Chance. He didn’t look like he’d been taken prisoner by pirates, who were now full on attacking us in my imagination, and he ran a hand through his hair. “We’re all good. It’s Banyan’s father.”
“Banyan’s father?” Maven gaped. “He’s arrived on a boat.”
Chance nodded. “Yes.”
That was good. I really did need to thank him. At least I wasn’t meeting him in a hospital gown this time. I made my way upstairs. The boat was rocking, and I sort of stumbled as I walked. I grabbed onto the railing at the top of the stairs. I was absolutely not going to break my head now. If I thought it enough, maybe it would happen.
Girl needs to stop making an ass of herself in front of boyfriend’s father. Girl absolutely fails. News at ten…
“Hey.” Banyan grabbed my hand, which made me wince. They were still sore. “You okay?”
“I may not be cut out for yacht life.”
Banyan’s father shook his head. “It’s a beautiful day at sea, Giovanna. Everyone is cut out for yacht life. Give it a little while. It’ll get in your blood.”
“My father becomes a professional sailor in his own head every time he comes within ten feet of a boat.”
He tugged me to him, and I found my feet. “Well, I hope he’s right. Otherwise I’m going to spill everything and fall on my rear end a lot.” I’d be lucky if it was my butt I fell on. “Mr. Banyan, I owe you thanks. Again. You keep rescuing me. Thank you for getting me here and for apparently handling things back in Manhattan for us. And Pennsylvania for that matter.”
Banyan’s father nodded. “Giovanna, you make this boy happier than I’ve ever seen him. He hasn’t thrown anything since you’ve been in the picture.”
I looked at Banyan. “Do you throw things?”
“I plead the fifth. Dad, I was wondering if I could speak to you for a minute or two. I have some things I’d like to say.”
His father lifted his eyebrows. “So we’re going to have a fight. I actually came this way to deliver news.”
“The phone works. So does the internet. I think you came here because you wanted to see me and that’s what I wanted to talk about. I don’t want to fight. Not even a little bit. I want to do… just the opposite.” Banyan rocked back on his feet. “Can we speak over there for a minute?”
His father opened and closed his mouth. “Sure thing. I did come here because I wanted to see you. That’s true.”
Banyan let go of my hand just as a wave rocked the boat, and I banged into Chance. Or maybe he’d put himself there just in case. He laughed. “Come on, skipper, we’re going to have some breakfast.”
I nudged him with my elbow. “Make fun of me all you want. It won’t be pretty if this turns into vomiting.”
Maven made a face at me as he sat down next to where Chance indicated I should sit. I hadn’t seen the crew yet, but presumably they’d put out this breakfast. I’d thank them, too. Maven looked over his shoulder to where Banyan spoke to his dad. They were huddled together in the corner of the boat, talking with serious faces.
“What do you suppose he’s saying?” Maven looked at Chance and me.
“I think he’s telling him he’d like to have a better relationship. However Banyan puts that.” His words from last night floated back to me. He did have a way of saying just the right thing. “How did it go with your father, Maven?”
I’d never asked. He took a bite of some toast and passed me the coffee. Finally, when he’d swallowed, he spoke. “Badly. But turns out they can’t actually cut off my trust fund. They’ve been lying about that. So… yeah, there’s that. Now I just need to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. I’ve taken a page from Banyan’s public display of “get-away-from-me” that he did with his mom and told them to leave me alone. I was feeling all proud of that when I walked out of the house to discover what happened to you. My parents getting the fuck out of my life seemed less important.”
Banyan and his father came back to the table. They sat down, and Banyan smiled brightly. “Is that coffee?”
His dad passed it to him. “So…” He cleared his throat. Was he overcome with emotion? It took him a second to speak again and no one rushed him. “I did come to see Banyan in person. If I don’t do this, I never get to see him because he abjectly refuses to come to Texas to see me. But he tells me he wants to work on things and for that I’m grateful to all of you.” I didn’t know that any of us were responsible for this shift as much as Banyan himself. Still, I could see why his father was as successful as he was. When he spoke, no one interrupted. “I’m afraid I don’t have one hundred percent wonderful news.”
I leaned back in my chair. “Do the police need me to go back right away?”
He shook his head. “No. They’ll be calling for your official statement soon. Or doing it over the screen. I’m not sure which. I imagine you’ll have to speak to the prosecutor’s office. But Molly is pleading guilty in exchange for being sent upstate to a mental health facility that she won’t be coming out of any time soon.”
Maven gaped at him. “She might someday come out?”
“She might someday come out of there, but not back out to the general population. I imagine if they deem her cured, she’ll be sent elsewhere. Or at least that’s what I’ll be seeing happens. My son and his girlfriend can’t be worried about arsonists, kidnappers, and guns.”
Chance steepled his hands. “Not when they have to be worried about reporters digging into their lives?”
The older man nodded. “There is one not going away. She’s rather pushy about this. Wants this story and no other. Frankly, I’m wondering if she has a relationship of some kind with your mother, Banyan. Why else wouldn’t she settle for better gossip? I’m offering her a career making info on much more important, worldly messes than who you, a man who took himself out of Manhattan for four years, are sleeping with.”
A piece of hair had fallen into Banyan’s eyes. I wished I was close enough to push it away. “I don’t think it’s my mother. She’s fallen rather low, and I’ve kicked her out of my life. Sure, she told a reporter. But a new one being this pushy? She’s getting info elsewhere. Besides, I’m only sleeping with one person, and open relationships, which is how they’ll see it, are hardly new to the scene. I don’t say this to be shitty, Dad. We’ve made serious progress. But what if it’s someone else in the family?”
His father’s face fell. “I hadn’t considered that.”
“Yeah, well, my relationship with her is different than yours, and you’ve been making effort with me which always makes her twitchy.”
I was missing something. Chance leaned over to me. “His stepmother. His father’s wife. The woman his dad, ah, stepped out on with Banyan’s mom. She tends to sabotage Banyan. They’ve had some family strife on this before.”
“Particularly when it looks like we’re getting along,” Banyan added. “Which we have sort have been doing. And I’d like to do more of.”
His father rose. “I’ll find out. I promise you, if it’s her or your siblings, it’ll be stopped.”
Banyan sighed, sipping his coffee. “I hope so.”
His dad, holding his phone in his hand, left the table. Banyan stared at me. “This is usually where it falls apart. He has a tremendous amount of guilt in relation to her. He cheated. I mean, there’s nothing okay about that, but here I am. He was done with my mother by the time she was pregnant. I think it’s probably obvious why. But he had a kid. And he didn’t want to abandon ship, to keep with today’s metaphors. Anytime we figure out how to make it work, she sabotages, and he takes her side.”
That sounded awful. I knew how it was to never have my parents on my side. I knew it quite well. “And so then it’s over again. Whatever strides you’ve made together.”
“Yeah.” He closed his eyes, leaning his head back so that his head faced the sun. “I did what I could. I see that he’s been trying. With everything you are all going through, I realized that he wasn’t perfect but he wasn’t…” His voice trailed off.
Maven sat up. “He wasn’t as bad as he could be. I get it. I kept hoping my dad wasn’t as bad as I thought he was. Only he was worse.”
“It went that bad?” I still hadn’t really gotten Maven to talk about it.
“We had a back and forth. He told me I’d always been a terrible son, a huge disappointment, that he’d been sure I would never amount to anything.” He rubbed his eyes, and I put my hand on his shoulder. He leaned over to kiss the part of my arm he could reach between my elbow and my hand. “I told him I’d had a terrible role model, considering he was now an ex-con. That I thought both he and my mother were horrible people. And I’d be good if I never saw them again. My mother then walked in. She told me to go out and put on a show for the crowd and continue to be the diligent son or she’d tie my trust fund up until I was dead. Her words.”
Until he was dead? What mother said that to a kid?
I never got to say that because he continued speaking.
“Then it turned out my Aunt Poppy was listening at the door. I’ve always hated her, but this time it was helpful. She would do anything to screw my mother. Anyway, she came in and said they’d been lying, that the trust had been mine since I was eighteen. Gave me a card of the lawyer to talk to and left. I promptly told my hideous parents I was done with them.” He sighed. “I shot an email to the man while we were on the plane. I’m golden. And… it’s freeing… but it also makes me feel…”
Chance finished for him. “Off kilter. You’ve been taking their crap for so long you aren’t sure what you’re supposed to do with yourself without it. That’ll pass.”
“What about you Chance?” I nodded toward the islands not far from here. “What are you going to do?”
“Today,” he rose, “I am going to sit on this deck and look at the ocean. I am going to be glad you’re healthy and here with me. I’m going to celebrate the fact that the four of us are together. I know it wouldn’t work for everyone, but it does for us. I’m going to be ecstatic I’m alive and here with all of you.” He pointed at the lounge chair. “I am going to drink iced tea and probably fall asleep in that chair for a while. I am going to admire you in the bathing suit you are going to put on, and when Banyan’s father gets off my boat, I am going to take you down to the cabin where the crew can’t see us and hope that Maven and Banyan want to help me make you come. A lot.”
Chance didn’t always say how he felt, but damn when he did, it was really something. “I… Okay.”
Maven laughed. “Okay? That’s what she says when we say we’re going to make her come? Okay? We might need to do better, boys.”
“I think that sounds like a challenge.” Banyan lifted his eyebrows.
Whatever they would have said stopped because Banyan’s father came back. He sighed. “Not your stepmother, but your sister. I’m afraid it was she who talked to this reporter. She isn’t sure she can call her off either. Apparently, you know the reporter, or knew her, in high school.”
Chance rolled his eyes. “Old love come back to haunt you, Ban?”
“I’ve never loved anyone before Giovanna.”
His words warmed me but that wasn’t the point right now. “Someone you have a bad history with?”
Banyan shrugged. “I spent all of high school just waiting to get out of that mess. My siblings have never liked me. They tortured me there, too. Why stop now? The difference is I don’t give a shit.”
His father sunk onto a lounge. This was a man who ran a billion dollar empire. His own family clearly deflated him and all of the angst was his own fault. I couldn’t really feel sorry for him even if I respected that he was finally owning it and trying to fix things.
“I’d really like for you guys to… try again.”
Banyan nodded. “Dad, they’ve always hated me. Whether that is because I am the product of you stepping out on their mother or because I now have a huge chunk of what they think of as their rightful inheritance, I don’t know. I can’t go through my life constantly being sorry for existing. I’m done with it. From my end, I wish them good luck and good things. I’ll handle the reporter. As I said, I don’t care about me. She can write whatever she wants. It’s Chance I’m worried about.”
He shook his head. “I’m all good.”
“Right now, sure. But you want to be a doctor. I want you to be invited into whatever practice you want to be in. I don’t want your future career damaged by gossip. And Giovanna, I will protect from now until I die. I’m done with her being hurt.”
I touched his arm. “I’m also okay, love.”
“You’re not.” He kissed my cheek. “But you will be.”
Was I not okay? He was probably right.
“I’ll figure it out, Banyan. I should have twenty-two years ago. I will now.”
I supposed we would see if he would.
* * *
I knew they were coming. I stood under the shower, washing the sunscreen, the salt, the sea air, and the heat off my body. Chance had been very clear about what they were going to do, and I didn’t doubt they would for a second.
I just wanted to be clean and not disgusting when we did. It had been a quiet day. Banyan’s father hadn’t been in any hurry to leave, and much as I discovered he was both nice and sometimes funny, he wasn’t a person used to being hurried away when he didn’t want to be. He’d taken on getting to know Banyan and that meant asking me all kinds of questions.
We’d mostly sat around on lounge chairs and let him. At some point the crew—there were three of them working for Chance—brought us lunch. They’d tried to serve drinks, but all of my guys seemed to be off alcohol for the moment. I’d never put on my bathing suit. Maybe I should have felt plenty confident to do so, but I hadn’t, not with Banyan’s dad gently grilling me on all topics from my feelings about dogs to the melting polar ice caps.
Maven had remembered the sunblock. I was grateful for his thoughtfulness. I might still be rocking my multicolored hair, but my skin reminded me I was a redhead.
Maybe I’d go pink. Pink was cool.
The door to the bathroom opened. I smiled but didn’t move from under the spray. A second later the shower door opened as well. I didn’t open my eyes. This yacht was luxurious, but there really wasn’t room for two of us in this shower. I lifted my lids to wink at Chance. “Getting anxious? I’m trying to be clean.”
“Tease. You were just going to stand there and let me look at you na
ked.”
I nodded slowly. “Yes.”
He grabbed a towel and opened it up like an offering. “Are you done?”
I shut off the water and walked into the towel as an answer. “I was just thinking of dying my hair pink.”
“You’d be hot in any color, Vonni.” He kissed the end of my nose before he wrapped me up in the towel. Chance smelled like sunblock and the ocean. Much as I wanted those scents off of me I loved them on him.
“How is this happening? How am I this girl here with you guys?”
He didn’t answer me right away, seeming to roam my body with his gaze alone. “I think… I think we all complete each other in a weird way. We’re all sort of lost, aren’t we? Alone, we seem like we’re functioning. Maybe we are. Maybe we’re good enough, but we’re not complete.”
I understood what he was saying. “Together we make sense. Together it is better than just okay, just getting by. It’s… right.”
He gave me a side smile. “Plus, we all think you’re so fucking hot.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck, laughter shaking me. “Well, thanks for that, too.”
Chapter 12
Chance laid me down on the bed. It should have been disconcerting, having three sets of eyes focused on me as I was about to have sex, but it wasn’t. This was the power that came with knowing I was loved, so loved that I was comfortable with whatever happened. I craved their eyes on me.
“Towel.” Banyan walked over to the bed.
Chance grinned. “Just what I was thinking. Towel, off.”
“Looks like we’re all on the same page.” Maven stepped even closer.
I grinned at them. “Sounds perfect.”
None of them had changed. They were sun kissed, relaxed, and looking at me like I was the best dessert they’d ever ordered. Chance pulled the towel off me and threw it aside. Banyan jumped onto the bed, moving to the top so that my head was at his knees, and he stared down at me. Faster than I could believe, his mouth was on mine. I closed my eyes, kissing him back. Two other sets of hands stroked my body, touching me everywhere.
Undeniable: Reverse Harem Story #3 Page 13
