by Liv Bennett
After a few minutes of chatting at the bar, we proceed to the table, and Michael arranges our seats so he ends up sitting between Bree and me, unfortunately across from Taylor, too. She tries her best to act happy and interested in the silly conversation Bree has going with Michael.
“So, I heard you have two sons. I bet they don’t have half the charm you have,” Bree says, brushing her hand on his shoulder. Okay, I might have imagined her hand on Michael’s shoulder. In reality, it must be wandering south under the table cloth, judging by the high pitch in Michael’s laughter.
“Zane has my eyes, but Christopher is all his mother,” Michael declares after his laughter. “So, Lindsay—” Michael turns to me, and I feel triumphant for getting his attention without even trying. “What made you give up on beautiful New York?”
“Unemployment. I pissed off the company I’d worked at so badly that no other business wanted to hire me afterwards,” I reply, popping a piece of bread into my mouth, not missing Taylor’s unusual peak of interest in the conversation. Shit. I haven’t told her anything about the lawsuit.
“Really?” Michael’s hand touched my elbow briefly. “Will you shed light onto what it is that you did so I can take precautions if you start working for me?”
I turn to him, curiosity pulling my eyebrows together. “Are you offering me a job?”
“First tell me what you did, then I’ll consider it.”
I eye Taylor and notice how her eyes narrow, a clear sign of anger. I should have been anxious, even scared for Taylor’s momentary annoyance at keeping secrets from her, but I feel rather satisfied for distracting her attention from the constant worry over her baby. “I sued my boss for sexual harassment and won. Apparently, as a woman, going after your rights and striving for dignity at the work place isn’t something the recruiters appreciate deeply over there in New York.”
Michael laughs, and somehow it sounds really genuine this time, compared to the laugh he’d given to Bree’s over-the-top compliment. “A feisty girl. I like that.” He produces a card from the pocket of his suit jacket and hands it to me. His eyes crack at the corners as his face brightens with a smile. “Call my assistant and tell him to set up an interview for you.”
I stare at him suspiciously, not missing Bree’s cold look toward me. “Just like that? You don’t even know what I do, if I have a degree at all.”
“Let’s leave the interrogation for the interview, shall we?” He focuses his attention back to Adam, and the two delve into some utterly boring details of the ongoing project.
I force myself, more than a couple of times, not to yawn, as I’m the only one who’s clueless about the project. Even Bree joins the discussion more often than I’d have liked. Okay, I admit she’s not a dumb slut as I’d have preferred her to be. Only downright annoying.
After the lunch, Adam, Michael, and Bree hand the valet their tickets, and Michael offers his hand first for me to shake. “It was a great pleasure meeting you, Miss Doheny. I’ll be looking forward to that call.” He winks, and I wonder what kind of call exactly he expects from me. A stunningly beautiful, metallic-grey Bentley stops in front of us, and the valet leaves the car, opening the door for Michael. Michael hurries to place his goodbyes before settling, in the sexiest way a man can have, behind the wheel. I don’t dare look at Taylor’s face, since she won’t miss how my mouth is watering.
“I’d rather have that car than a condo in West L.A.,” Bree exclaims, waving her hand enthusiastically at Michael. For once she and I have the same opinion on something.
Taylor slides her hand beneath my elbow, directing me toward the backseat of Adam’s car. “You’re not going to apply for a job at any of Hawkins’s companies. Why didn’t you tell me you were unemployed? We have an open post for a public-relations expert. It’s yours whenever you want to start.”
“Baby,” Adam interrupts. “Why don’t we go have desert somewhere before heading to work?”
I free my arm from Taylor’s grip, smiling at them both. “Yeah, you two do that. I’ll take a cab back home.” I should give them a little space, since I’m sure they’re tired of having me as a constant third wheel.
“You don’t need a cab. I’ll drive you wherever you want to go,” Bree says, and I shrug my acceptance and wave my goodbyes to Taylor and Adam, as I collapse onto the passenger’s seat of Bree’s Volkswagen Beetle. “Mind if we stop by my place very quickly before heading off to Taylor’s place. It’s only five-minute drive away, and I need to pick up some documents for work.”
“Sure. Having plenty of free time is one of the perks of being unemployed. Cute car, by the way.”
“Thanks.”
“Never thought of you as a Beetle girl.”
“Why? Which car fits my image better?”
“Don’t know. Something fancier... sexier. Like a BMW.”
“I’d love to own a BMW, but I don’t want to fall behind on mortgage payments.”
“That’s a valid argument.” I nod, envying the fact that she owns a home, whereas I live under my sister’s roof.
“I think Michael likes you.”
I frown, not exactly sure if I like the change of topic, and it surprises me how easygoing she is about Michael’s interest in me. I thought she wanted to wrap her claws all around him and never let him sneak a glance at another woman. “You think so?”
“Yeah. Why else would he want to recruit you without knowing anything about your qualifications? You shouldn’t decline his offer, not because he’s a super yummy guy, but for your career.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“A help from someone in the top management is the single most important factor that determines how quickly you’ll climb the ladder in an enterprise. I wouldn’t be where I am now, if it wasn’t for Jack and Taylor. Having Michael on your side will keep you safe from the dicks in the mid-management, too, if you know what I mean.”
I give her a knowing smile. “You’re absolutely right. I’d rather try it over at Michael’s than at Edelman Constructions. I don’t want people behaving differently around me just because I happen to be the sister of the company owner.”
“I wish I had your problem.” Bree breaks into a laugh, making me feel like a jerk. I guess she’s not as annoying as I made her to be. She pulls up in front of a two-story home. “This is my place until I win the lottery. Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee?” I consider it for a second but before I can reply, she adds, “Oh, wait. I have tea as well, if you’re a tea junkie like Taylor.”
“I guess it runs in the family.” I watch her gather her handbag from the passenger seat behind and climb out.
Niceties aside, I’d have preferred sitting in the car and waiting for her than going to her home with her. I can’t use having no time as an excuse after having just declared the generous amount of free time I possess. She slams the car door, following me with her eyes as I climb out.
Yellow light floods from one of the windows as an indication of the existence of a roommate. Bree shoots a cautious glance at me before pulling out her keys. I’m thrown a bit off balance, when she rings the doorbell before inserting the key into the lock. It’s disturbingly suspicious, unless her roommate walks around naked and Bree wants to warn her or him about my arrival. However, no roommate whatsoever appears when she opens the door wide for me to pass.
The living room is dark, despite the yellow light I’m sure I saw just a minute ago, and I hesitate to walk farther without her showing me where to proceed. As soon as she closes the door, she hurries toward the windows and draws the curtains.
Okay, that’s one too many creepiness, and I won’t stay a second in this dark room, much less drink tea with her. “I should really go,” I murmur and make a run for the door, taking advantage of having her back turned toward me. I don’t know and will never know what Taylor sees in her, but closing the curtains in midday isn’t normal.
I reach for the door handle and push it down. What the fuck?
It
’s locked.
14 – ADAM: The imminent fall
I’m beyond content to be able to take Taylor out, even for a desert. I haven’t had a chance to have her only for me since Lindsay’s arrival. Not that I’m complaining about her stay. She’s the rock Taylor and I have needed to lean on during this rough period. But, I need my wife and her sole attention on me every now and then. And from her cheery look, I can say she’s not thinking about the imminent death of our baby at the moment.
My eyes roam down on her hand as it slides beneath her shirt, and my heart does a tumble.
“The skirt is too tight,” she explains when she notices my stare. “I can’t breathe in it.”
I order chocolate cake and ice cream and turn to her. “Something is bothering me about Michael, but I can’t put my finger on it.”
Taylor gives me a heart-warming smile. “Let me help you, hon. You don’t like how he flirted with my sister, now do you?”
“A man of his age? That’s just wrong. I consider Lindsay as my sister, and the last thing I want for her is to get hurt.”
“Let her make her own choices.”
“Easier said than done.”
“Did you notice Bree’s disappointment at the lunch table, while Michael was talking to Lindsay?”
“No, oh, right. She was hoping to...”
Taylor bobs her head up and down. My ever-gossip-loving wife. “I guess she’s not really happy about Lindsay’s visit. The other day she told me seeing me together with Lindsay made her miss her own sister.”
“I didn’t know she had a sister.”
“She keeps a picture of her sister on her desk. Besides, she introduced her to us on our wedding day. Don’t you remember? Her sister was there with her partner.”
I try to remember one of the happiest days of my life, and it feels very long ago. The burden of our baby’s malformation has taken years from my life. “Honestly, I don’t remember anything about anyone that day, except for you.”
“Oh. Aren’t you the sweetest?” She moves her hands and covers mine. “Wait a second. I think her sister’s name was... Helen. No, Heidi. And her partner’s name was Annette Greene.” Her eyes widen in an instant.
“You’re kidding me. That’s the name the private investigator gave us of the woman who worked at Del Piero Constructions and hung out at the same gym with Valerie.”
Taylor lifts a hand up to cover her now-wide-open mouth, while her other hand clutches on mine. “That explains how she knew about the timelines of the Berenson project. It shouldn’t be difficult to get those tidbits out of Bree, considering how much info she spills without thinking.”
“That’s insane. Bree might have a big mouth, but she wouldn’t give away those details. If indeed she’s the culprit, we need to limit her access to confidential data.” Which is basically everything.
“Not before having a serious conversation with her about it,” Taylor says. “As soon as she realizes it was her mistake, if it was her mistake at all, she’ll be more cautious. I’m sure.”
It’s not a light matter to be solved just by talking, but Taylor doesn’t need the stress of the work in addition to the one inside her belly.
Her expression changes from shocked to sorrowful, when the waitress comes with our desert, and I notice why. The waitress has a visible belly bump, just like Taylor’s.
Gasping softly, she drops her eyes onto the desert plates. “You must be dying to know what I’m planning to do about the baby.”
I nod and reach down for her belly, caressing it slowly. “Every new day is a burden on your body.”
“I know.”
“And risky. The possibility of encountering a complication increases as the pregnancy progresses.”
“You sound like Dr. Fowler.”
“Because that’s what she told me. I don’t want you to suffer more that you are already suffering. If something was to happen to you—”
“Nothing will happen to me.”
“You can’t know that.”
“No I can’t, but I want nature to take over and terminate the pregnancy on its own time. Maybe our baby wants to have a little more time with us, and I can’t, for the love of god, take that away from her.”
How can you argue with that? I drop the argument, as always I do when it comes to her reasons for not wanting to end the pregnancy. She concentrates on the desert in front of us and finishes them both without letting me get a bite.
“Don’t you need to go to work?” she asks, when she catches my hypnotized stare on her glowing face. With our baby’s loss, I’ll be losing the exceptional luxury of watching all the beauty the pregnancy has brought upon her, not to mention her joy.
Leaving a twenty on the table, I grab Taylor’s hand and pull her up close to me for a kiss. I suck her lips like my life depends on it. She’ll be going through another trauma when the pregnancy ends, naturally induced or otherwise. She’ll be crashed and suffering with another heartbreak, bigger than the one she had after Jack’s death, and grieve after our baby for I don’t know how long. I’m not ready to throw her down into that pit of hell again.
15 – TAYLOR: Enemy at the door
Adam drives me home before going back to the construction site. I don’t miss the longing that’s tainted with pain his eyes radiate as he kisses me goodbye. I stopped blaming myself a few days ago for the malformation of our baby. I can blame everything under the sun, pray and beg God until my hair grows white, but nothing will change about my daughter’s health condition. She’s doomed to die, even before oxygen can fill her lungs. The only reason that’s keeping me together is her existence; that she’s still inside me and with me.
And the fact that despite her condition, she’s not giving up on me. She’s her daddy’s girl, all right. Her persistence can put us all to shame.
My hands rest on my belly, as they do the majority of the time, and I enter the elevator, hoping Lindsay will be at home. I feel helpless if I have to stay alone and fear the possibility of the onset of the labor. I don’t have an emergency plan besides calling a cab or 911. That’s why I should keep my phone with me at all times, even while in the bathroom.
As I enter the apartment, the silence disappoints me. Lindsay usually spends her days in front of the TV. That there’s no TV sound means she’s out, perhaps shopping at a mall or catching a movie. I fish for my phone and toss the handbag on the couch, before settling on it myself.
An email alert makes the phone buzz in my hands; I open my inbox reluctantly, and click on the email titled with “Statement Ending” from my bank account. It takes several minutes until the statement page loads, so I busy myself with the TV.
A tiny but sizable current courses across my belly, and I wonder, paralyzed, if it’s my baby moving inside me. Some women claim to feel their babies move as early as sixteen weeks. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if my girl has decided to show her mommy the strength of her kick.
How am I ever going to let her go? My eyes dampen with tears, and my heart aches for the inevitable moment that I’ll have to lose her forever.
The page finally loads, and I start going through the bank transactions in the company’s checking account. Shocked is an understatement for what I feel when I notice the entire account balance is zero dollars. The two-million dollars that I’d ordered to be wired from my personal savings is all wiped out? Oh, my god.
The day I was supposed to wire money to the company’s account comes to my mind, and I flinch with physical pain. Bree. I trusted my finances to her, and now I’m facing an account emptied to the last cent. She was the one who brought this mess upon us in the first place, and I was dumb enough to trust her for a second time with even more money.
What should I do now? Call the police, or my consultant at the bank, or Adam? With my hands shaking, I start dialing Adam’s number, but my call is stopped with an incoming call.
From Lindsay. Good. She can help me calm down at least.
“Lindsay, are you on your way home? Ple
ase, come now.”
“She’ll take a while before she can be there,” a familiar female voice says. But it can’t be. How? Isn’t she? “Did I shock the life out of you?”
“Valerie.” How does she have Lindsay’s phone? “Oh, god. Where’s Lindsay?”
“She’s right here with me. Only for a short time, though, because I’ll cut her limbs one by one and throw each of them into a different dumpster, if you don’t show up here within half an hour.”
“Valerie, please.” I shriek. “She’s innocent. I’m the person you want.”
“Well, then, let’s do a little exchange. Come over here with the passwords for all your bank accounts, and I may let her go. No calling the police, no informing that stupid ass of your husband. I’ll know if you call anyone.”
I hear a click and the line goes dead. I stare at the phone and remember the words of the private investigator that Adam hired, about our phones being bugged. We replaced the phones since that incident with the project, but Valerie might have managed to corrupt the new phones as well.
A beep shakes my phone in my hands, and I open the message to read the address I’m supposed to go to so I can save my sister.
God! How did she end up in Valerie’s hands?
Because of Bree? Is she now Valerie’s accomplice? But, she saved me from the suicide scheme. Was that heroic act actually a part of their plan? After all, labeling me as suicidal would have served Valerie’s final goal to take over Jack’s heritance, if she’d succeeded killing me at the end, and could have shown my death as an accomplished suicide.
Adam had called Bree that day of Valerie’s attack to ask her to stay with me while he was gone for work. Bree knew I’d be alone and physically vulnerable because of my stiches. Those two hours would be the perfect time to finish me off, if only the LAPD detectives hadn’t paid a visit to Adam’s apartment.
