I take her dry remark unblinkingly. “I was hoping there might be something like that lying around here. I wanted to get started on breakfast soon, but I wanted to take inventory of allergies, so—”
“You were with him last night, weren’t you?” she asks. Her lips and eyelids are locked in place.
“What are you talking about?” I try to play stupid.
“He took you to Malibu, didn’t he?” Does she have the Friend Finder on Denver’s phone? This is definitely a poker-face moment so I mimic her cold front.
“I have no idea what you are talking about, Jill,” I smile.
“Did he make you feel special?” she asks, the straight line of her lips twisting into a smirk.
“Listen, Jill, I don’t know if we’re on a different page here or what. It sounds like you think I was with Denver.”
“I know you were with Denver, Tara,” she says. “Don’t make me tell you how I know.”
I freeze at the thought of what she could have over me. There is a fear instilled in me just at the thought of what she could do with the amount of money she probably has. “You know, since I’ve met you, I’ve never seen you step out of the mansion once.” This has Jill interested. “Are you even allowed to leave at all? Or are you, like, contractually obligated to remain on the premises at all times for a certain duration?”
She breathes in slowly, nodding her head. Her green eyes reptilian as she stares into me. “It’s not as bad as it sounds,” she says, the sarcasm in her voice enunciated as she bats her eyes. “If Denver invited you to be a live-in employee then you should consider yourself lucky,” she says, her eyes returning to the book in her lap as she turns another page.
“Where is Denver?” I ask, realizing that he is usually either in the gym or working at his laptop in the kitchen over coffee at this hour.
She looks up from the book, eyebrows elevated. “What do you mean, ‘where is he’?” she asks, closing the book. “Why isn’t he with you?”
Something has changed in her cold visage—eyebrows now furrowed, mouth agape. “I haven’t seen him since yesterday,” I reply, which is partially true because I fell asleep something around 11:50. Why hasn’t she seen him? Is he still upstairs? Did my body take that much of a toll on him? Maybe he left early but is asleep upstairs, resting off the night of rough ecstasy.
“Denver never came home last night,” she says, breathing heavily. “I stayed awake all night waiting for him—nothing.”
If he didn’t come back to the mansion, then where did he go after I fell asleep in his arms? “Have you tried calling him?” I ask, taking out my phone to look for his number.
“He hasn’t answered my calls or texts since he met you, sweetheart,” she says with a dry, sharp chagrin. I can’t help but feel flattered at the thought, but a sudden shriek enters the library, stealing both of our focus.
“What was that?” I ask, jumping up.
“Mae Lin!” Jill shouts, rushing out of the library.
I follow her and find Mae Lin standing in the bright corridor with her phone glued to her hand. “I just got a call from LAPD,” she pants, “they found his car at Point Dume…” She drops to her knees and the phone hits the ground, shattering. “They didn’t find him, they found his car.”
“So where is he?” Jill asks, her eyes wide.
I barely know Denver but by gauging Mae Lin’s reaction, I’m guessing this is out of character for him. Jill shares in Mae Lin’s panic, and at first I don’t grasp the audacity of the situation—this is only my fourth day knowing him. But last night he changed my life completely, and now they say he’s missing.
*****
The billionaire I lightweight fell in love with and gave myself to is missing after our powerful night of lovemaking. He hired me to be his personal chef the day he met me, and ever since then my life has been one crazy ride. After throwing a Valentine’s day party, Denver told me to meet him in Malibu after we made out in a closet. Now his car has been found in Point Dume with no sign of Denver himself.
This is my fourth day knowing the man, and already my heart is simultaneously busted and throbbing with passion. Damn you, Denver, I think, looking to Jill, Mae Lin, and Gloria. They are Denver’s Live-Ins, something he invited me to do the night we were together. The deal is that after signing the contract they live with him for one year to do the work he needs. Jill is the housekeeper, Mae Lin is the assistant, and Gloria is the chauffeur, which would make me, Tara, the chef if I sign the contract.
By the looks on their faces, I start to worry that there may no longer be any contract to sign. The question of priority in my mind next to ‘Where is Denver D. Phillips?’ is ‘Which of these women have slept with Denver D. Phillips?’ Before last night, the thought never really occurred to me. For a moment I thought maybe something was happening between Jill and him, but the way he treated me felt like he hadn’t been with a woman in a long time.
Or so I’d like to believe.
“I’m not going to sit around and wait for the police,” Jill says, digging the keys out of her purse. With the rage in her eyes, I’d hate to be in any car where she’s behind the wheel.
“Where do you suggest we look?” Mae Lin asks. “Wouldn’t it be smarter to just wait here for him to come back? I mean—I mean maybe he’s okay. Maybe he just took a little time to be alone.
“Denver’s not the type of guy who wants to be alone,” Jill says, heading for the mansion’s front door. Just moments ago Jill and I sat in the library where she accused me of sleeping with Denver—which was true, but she had no way of knowing. What’s weighing on my mind is when she said, “I know you were with Denver, Tara. Don’t make me tell you how I know.” Those were her exact words.
I really don’t want to know what she could possibly have on me and Denver, but by the sounds of it she could have something incriminating. I wouldn’t put it past anyone here with all this money and technology lying around. Hell, Denver made his money developing software. For all I know the entire house could be bugged.
I look around the ceiling, for the first time realizing that a paranoid thought such as this might not actually be that stupid. I hate the feeling of paranoia coursing through me, unable to trust any of these women. As Jill exits the mansion, Gloria and Mae Lin look at each other and then at me.
“Where did you go after the party last night, Tara?” Mae Lin asks me. I distinctly remember her having a lot to drink and being quite handsy with me, only to be sent off to do some menial task as soon as Denver entered the room. I haven’t seen her since, and it looks like she hasn’t slept at all.
I don’t know how to answer her question right away. When Jill called me out, I replied on the offense, making judgmental cracks about being one of Denver’s Live-Ins. What do I say to Mae Lin? Her eyebrows are pushed down toward her eyes, as if it’s the most important question on the planet.
“I was with a friend,” I say, relying on Dominic to be my alibi. Although I only saw him this morning after leaving the empty hotel room to get the last of my things.
“Oh, because last night you just kind of left the party without cleaning up,” Gloria says.
That’s right, I think. It took me 45 minutes to sneak away from the party after Denver, and I didn’t even realize it was my job to clean basically 70% of the party.
“I’m so sorry,” I say apologetically. “I just broke up with this guy I’ve been seeing this morning and last we were fighting all night after I left. He kept texting me. I didn’t really know what to do. This job is important to me and I didn’t want any negative energy in my life.”
“Shit, I understand that, girl,” Gloria says, shaking her head. “Good for you.”
“Jill shouldn’t have just taken off,” Mae Lin says, drying her teary eyes. “Splitting up is not a good idea with Denver.”
“Not even a good idea,” Gloria says, scrolling through her phone. Whose number is she looking for that’s so important?
“Why do you say that?”
I ask Mae Lin.
“Because his life depends on us,” she says with a monk-like confidence. “That’s why we’re supposed to stay together in the mansion unless otherwise specified, and none of us were otherwise specified.”
It’s like she has the whole contract memorized. Is that part of the job requirement? I don’t think I’m eligible, if so.
“For example, I’m only allowed to leave when he needs me to drive him,” Gloria says, still going through her phone. At first I thought she was ignoring us but now I think she’s actually looking for something important. “And last night he didn’t ask me for a ride, which is why I had his car tracked in the first place. And he went to a hotel in Malibu.”
“Wait, you had his car tracked?” I ask. “That seems a little extreme, doesn’t it?” Both Mae Lin and Gloria look at me shaking their heads.
“It’s in the contract,” Mae Lin says. “We’re supposed to track him any time he doesn’t correspond with one of the four Live-Ins.”
This is all starting to sound like nonsense, and without realizing it I have my face buried in my hands, suddenly feeling the need for a hot shower. “I don’t understand why somebody would want that,” I say, which is the truth. “Wouldn’t Denver want privacy considering his status?”
“Actually, no,” Mae Lin says. “Denver prefers us to keep close quarters on him because of his status. Mr. Phillips has many enemies.”
Enemies? The word alone puts some of this into perspective. It’s pretty naïve of me to think that a man with so much money wouldn’t need some people to watch his back. Does that mean he thinks I have some kind of capability to protect him? Because there is no way I’m raising a hand to protect a man, I don’t care how much he’s worth.
Okay, depending on the size of the opponent, I might scrap a little for Denver. A billion is a really big figure.
“It looks like he left the car at Point Dume at around four this morning,” Gloria says, showing us the screen of her phone. She’s been mapping out the path he took after the hotel.
“That is supposing it was him driving the car,” I find myself saying. I wish I didn’t, because now I’m worried that I sound suspicious.
“I didn’t even consider the fact that the car could have been stolen,” Gloria says, tapping herself in the forehead. “We need to go check his hotel room right now.”
“I bet that’s where Jill is already heading to,” Mae Lin says.
“I can’t believe her,” Gloria says. “She’s always doing this kind of thing.”
“What kind of thing?” I ask.
“Breaking the contract,” Gloria continues. “She thinks that she is some exception to a legally binding document because she has the delusion that her and Denver share a bond.”
Mae Lin’s face tightens at those words, as if she believes that Denver and herself share a bond. Do all of us share a bond with Denver D. Phillips? Here, I thought I was special.
Tara Rogers is nothing special, I remind myself. Get back to reality, girl. “Maybe Jill’s not stupid for going to look for him,” I say, against my instinct. “Maybe it’s dumb to sit around here waiting because of some contract. He could really need our help.” Now, even though I am growing a strong distaste for Jill, I find myself drawn toward the door after her.
“Maybe we should go together,” Gloria says. “We should go check the hotel and if we don’t find anything there then we check the car at Point Dume.”
“I don’t know about this,” Mae Lin whimpers. “Should I stay here just in case he comes back?”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Gloria says, clicking her phone off. “Tara, are you down to roll with me?”
“Yeah,” I say, not thinking. “Let’s roll.”
*****
In the passenger seat of Gloria’s car, Tara felt the tension of her lie growing with every mile. Could she risk telling Gloria that she was with Denver? They drove in silence, with Gloria filling in the awkward moments with random facts about the job and Denver.
“Been on contract for five years,” she says with pride. “I met him when I was bartending in Hollywood. Next day I was his driver,” she laughs. She wears a big pair of Oakley shades with a bright blue tint. When she looks over at me, the reflection of my chocolate skin is a weird shade of dark navy.
“You’ve been working for him for that long?” I ask, amazed at the amount of commitment.
“After a while you’ll stop thinking about it as work,” she nods, eyes focused on the winding PCH. Looking over to her, I see the beautiful blue ocean and sky—and on such a gorgeous day it’s hard to believe that we’re on our way to look for a missing person. “Soon you’ll start to see that this way of life is hard to give up. If we find him, that is.”
The way she says the last part is so ominous that shivers run up my arms. “When was the last time something like this happened?” I ask.
“You really want to know?” she replies, face forward.
“I guess I’ll let you be the judge of that,” I say, at this point no longer sure what I’m getting myself into.
“The last time Denver disappeared, it was because one of the partners in his company kidnapped him for ransom,” she says with a straight face. Part of me is waiting for her to crack a smile and confirm that she is joking, but the smile never comes.
“And how does that story end?” I ask.
“It ends with the partner, Jerod Olecki, sentenced to life in prison,” she says. We’re now in Malibu, close to the hotel. “Jill, Danielle, and I found him in San Diego. They wanted a ransom for two billion.”
“Who is Danielle?” I ask, realizing that name has never come up. Gloria gives herself a few breaths before responding.
“She was the chef before you,” she says. “She passed away recently.”
Passed away? Please tell me that it was of natural causes.
“What happened?” I ask nonchalantly although my heart is beating in my ribcage.
“She was killed,” she says. “Poisoned, and nobody figured out who poisoned her. I, for one, believe it was Olecki, or at least Olecki hired someone to do poison her, but it was never confirmed. And I’m legally restricted from confessing my beliefs or making accusations that might take me or Denver to court.”
So the last chef was poisoned. For a second I literally feel like I’m about to pass out. For all I know, I could have been poisoned already. Could last night have been a hallucination? Could someone have drugged me with my own food? Mae Lin was awfully close to me.
No, that’s impossible, I think. Last night was too vivid, too real. “Did you get the FBI involved?” The more questions I ask, the more stupid I feel.
“You’ll see on the contract that the FBI is never to get involved,” Gloria says. “And the fact that LAPD even called to inform us that the car was found is because Denver has someone working in the force.”
I don’t even feel like I can speak—is it possible that Gloria is in on all this? I start to panic, that damn paranoia is making me think that this woman is driving me to my death. You’ve watched too many movies with Dominic, I think. He would always have on some crazy thriller that’d wake me up in the middle of the night.
I can’t let these doubts get to me—my gut tells me that for now I need to try to trust these people, and stay positive. All I need is to see Denver again, once he’s in my arms everything will be different. And when that moment comes, I’ll look into his eyes and ask him to tell me the truth.
Just hold on to that thought, Tara, I tell myself. Gloria stays silent for the next few blocks where we turn into the hotel. I’m so worried that if I go inside someone will recognize me from last night.
In the drive, Gloria is forced to pull through for the valet. It’s same guy who parked my car last night, so I turn my face out the passenger side window.
“Hello, there, miss,” he says politely to Gloria.
“I’ll park it myself,” she tells him. I can’t help but admire the confidence in everything she says.
“Yes, ma’am,” the valet says, and Gloria drives off her spot.
“Ready?” Gloria asks with a smile.
“Ready,” I answer, my hand hesitant on the passenger door.
*****
Gloria scans the parking lot for Jill’s car, which is nowhere to be seen. “Damn that girl,” she says with legitimate agitation. “She’s probably at Point Dume, then. Well, just remember that if and when we go there, not to trust everything we find.”
She is so mistrusting of Jill that it makes me wonder whose side I should be on. I’ve never doubted Gloria for a second, but why am I second-guessing my feelings about her now? As we enter the hotel, I refuse to look at the concierge or anyone else in the lobby because I’m afraid of being recognized. Last night the concierge took me right to Denver’s room as if he was waiting for me to enter the lobby. Nobody is expecting us now, so I’m hoping that we can pass through unnoticed.
Don’t act like you know where you’re going, I remind myself. I guess if I’m going to keep up this lie then I don’t have much control over the situation. Following Gloria’s urgent gait, she goes straight for the front desk—the last place I want to go.
“Hello, I’m here to see if there is anyone checked in under Denver D. Phillips?” she asks the young woman at the desk. She’s so forward that the poor girl is taken aback.
“I’m so sorry, miss, let me look that up for you right now,” the girl says in a high-pitched squeak.
Gloria takes her glasses off, looks at me, and raises her eyebrows seductively. Her tan skin is so exotic; I can see why a man like Denver would lust for her.
He lusts for you, Tara, I think. Don’t forget what you did to each other last night. That is forever.
As long as I have that none of these stupid doubts can break me.
“I’m sorry, there is no Mr. Philips in our system,” she says. Gloria and I both glare at each other.
“Okay, try Thomas D. Figaro,” she says. What? Where did that random name come from?
In Time to Love Page 112
