Nathaniel started to go towards her, but almost as soon as he had made up his mind to go speak with the woman, one of the volunteers was shoving a box of clothes into his arms. “If you don’t mind-,” the young man was saying with a smile.
“Oh, of course,” Nathaniel said, as he looked back towards the table where the woman had been seated, he saw that she was gone. He shrugged it off for the time being; he assumed he would run into the woman again. Nathaniel took the box and hurried to the trucks in the back to help Adam and some of the other volunteers with the unloading; there were two enormous trucks full of donated items ranging from clothes to small children’s toys. He was surprised at how many members of the homeless were present; he had not realized how bad the homeless situation in his hometown had gotten. The place was filled to its capacity, but by some miracle, they managed to get every person there a warm meal –although they had cut it very close. He spoke with the lead woman volunteer, Maggie, and had her increase the amount of food they would need to purchase to ensure that no one got turned away with an empty stomach in the future.
Once things started to settle down a bit, Nathaniel looked for the woman in the green, knitted hat, but he could not find her anywhere in the crowd. Soon, more trucks full of goods arrived, and there was more work to be done. He got his hands dirty, but a part of him was enjoying the charity work –it was a different side of him that he had not used in a while.
Chapter 6
As the day started winding down, Nathaniel started revamping his search for the woman in the green, knitted hat. He could not quite put his finger on it, but there was something transfixing about her. He had gotten butterflies in his stomach when he had seen her, and there was this sense of familiarity that he simply could not expel. He began by asking the volunteers, but it was as though none of them had even noticed the woman, and this bothered him. He took it almost as a personal insult that someone so lovely and visually charming could have been overlooked by so many people.
“Sorry, man,” one of the young teenaged boys who had been in charge of unloading the trucks said when Nathaniel pressed him about the woman. “I didn’t notice anyone who looks like that. I didn’t really work around the people too much. I was in the back unloading boxes all day.” The kid slung a backpack over his shoulder, clearly ready to go for the day.
“Crazy. I’ve talked to every single volunteer here, and not one person seemed to have noticed the woman I’m talking about,” Nathaniel complained.
“Hey, man, here’s a thought,” the kid said, his voice full of sarcasm, “why don’t you try talking to the homeless instead of the volunteers? You know, because they might actually know her personally. Half of the volunteers don’t even live in this area. I live all the way out in Queens and am volunteering to avoid jail time… so I wouldn’t ask me.”
Nathaniel huffed at the kid as he practically sprinted out the door; far too eager to avoid doing any of the last minute clean-up that the perkier volunteers were more than happy to work on. While he was annoyed about the teenaged brat trying to avoid talking to him, the kid had a point. Nathaniel headed to the large room in the shelter where all of the cots were laid out and currently being claimed by those fortunate enough to have been at the front of the line. They had had to send people away because they had filled up so quickly.
He first began by walking up and down to aisles to see if the woman was even there, but she wasn’t. She must not have arrived early enough to get herself a space, and this saddened him to imagine her sleeping on the street for the evening. Once he had walked the entirety of the room, he began asking around in an attempt to find someone who might know her. After spending nearly half an hour walking around, it was starting to seem pretty hopeless. The lights were turned down, and most of the residents were curling up in their cots.
Nathaniel didn’t want to continue pestering them, so he headed back into the main room in the cafeteria where most of the volunteers were getting ready to leave. Maggie, the leader of the pack, was signing slips for the high schoolers who were part of a volunteer organization and needed the hours for their programs. “And I really do appreciate all of you coming out today,” Maggie was saying. “Be sure to tell your friends about the shelter; we are going to always be needing new volunteers!” The woman was almost frightfully perky after such a long day of work.
Some of the kids waved and thanked Nathaniel, throwing a few compliments his way for opening up the shelter on their way out, and he offered them a friendly wave. Adam had already left for the evening, eager to retire to bed. Tony was sitting at one of the tables, his head rested on his arms; Nathaniel thought the young man was passed out from exhaustion. Maggie smiled at Nathaniel as he approached. “Did you find the mystery woman you were hunting for?”
Nathaniel chuckled. “Afraid not. I swear it’s like I imagined her.”
“What’s got you so interested?” Maggie questioned.
“She just seemed familiar, and I can’t quite figure it out,” Nathaniel said, writing off his infatuation as mere curiosity; it was hard for even him to believe that he would be attracted to a woman he ran into at a homeless shelter.
Tony sat up suddenly and rubbed his eyes, confirming Nathaniel’s suspicions that he had been asleep. Nathaniel nodded a goodbye towards Maggie and went over, smacking Tony on his shoulder. “Morning, sunshine,” Nathaniel teased.
“Geez,” Tony grumbled, still rubbing his eyes and giving himself a slight slap on the cheek.
“You’ve been running around like a total loon today,” Nathaniel said. “I say we get back to the hotel and call it quits.”
Tony stretched his back. “I saw your room’s got a hot tub,” Tony said, “I don’t suppose I can talk you into letting me use that?”
Nathaniel laughed. “Sure, kid, why not?”
Tony climbed up out of his seat, eager to head back to the hotel. The two men started towards the door when one of the homeless night guests was entering into the cafeteria; the man waved them down before they could get too far. “Mr. Lynch?” the man asked as Nathaniel and Tony slowly met the man in the middle of the room.
“Yeah, that’s me,” Nathaniel said, expecting that he was simply getting a thank-you for the warm bed and decent meal the man was getting.
“My name’s Walt. I heard that you were asking around about a woman you saw today; she was wearing a knitted hat, a green one, right? A blonde woman?”
Nathaniel grinned. “Yeah, I was. Do you know her?”
“Not well, but I know her. She tends to camp out around Frear Park, the park with the golf course,” Walt said.
Nathaniel nodded. “I know the place. What’s her name?”
“Don’t know her real name,” Walt said. “Everybody just calls her Ace.”
“Ace?” Nathaniel questioned.
“She’s got an Ace of Spades tattoo, supposedly,” Walt explained. “Never noticed it myself, but that’s why everyone calls her that. But that’s her usual spot.”
Nathaniel thanked the man, and he in return thanked him for the shelter before retiring to his cot. Nathaniel and Tony left, loading up into the rental car to head back to the hotel. Nathaniel smiled; he didn’t have much to go on, but he had a possible location and a nickname. At least it was something.
Chapter 7
Nathaniel was tempted to hang up and pretend that the call had been dropped, but he would get hell for that later, and he knew it. Instead, he busied himself while his mother yelled at him by sifting through his accounts online. He was in bed, his laptop sitting in his lap, and his phone on speakerphone by the nightstand. His mother was still fairly irate about him ditching Eliza on their first date.
“Honestly, Nathaniel,” his mother droned on as he pulled up one of his checking accounts to make sure a recent payment had gone through. “You are almost thirty years old. You can’t keep playing around forever, and Eliza is a wonderful woman. You did not even give her a chance. And you were so rude! I mean, she took it like a true lad
y, but you did not even bother calling her back after running out like that. I just don’t understand what could possibly drive a person to behave this way. Your father would be-”
“Mom, I swear to God, if you bring Dad into this I’m hanging up right now,” Nathaniel hissed, and she bit her tongue.
“All right, Nathaniel, all right,” she huffed. “But I’m still serious. You can’t keep acting this way. It’s not healthy. You have to grow up sometime, son.”
“I own a multi-billion-dollar company, and I still get lectures from my mother about not being mature enough,” Nathaniel huffed. “Fine. Would it make you feel better if I apologized to Eliza?”
“I want you to do it in person,” she said, pushing her luck.
Nathaniel shook his head. “Fine. Fine, Mom. I will apologize in person to Eliza. But I’m going to be gone for two weeks, so it’ll have to wait until I get back to California.”
“That’s fine by me. You can apologize to the woman and take her to dinner,” she said. “You owe her an actual date.”
“Is she even that upset?” Nathaniel questioned. “Or are you just the one who’s upset?”
“Nathaniel, honestly!” his mother snarled. “I am so tired of going round and round with you. I’m going to bed. I’m tired of all of this back and forth.”
“Well goodnight, then,” he said.
“Goodnight. I will see you in two weeks,” she hung up the phone, and he felt an immense amount of relief pass through him.
Nathaniel hung up his phone and leaned his head back, letting it hit up against the headboard with a thud. There was very little in this world that stressed him out more than a conversation with his mother. It was times like these that he truly missed his father. The two of them had always been close, his father always did want more for him, and his mother liked to remind him of that constantly. He wondered if his father really would have liked Eliza or if that was just a line his mother liked to feed him to guilt trip him into doing what she wanted. He was fairly certain it was the second of the two.
His mind went back to the woman he had seen at the shelter. He could not quite figure out the obsession he had. She had been pretty, sure, but she was nothing too special, he supposed. She had been covered in filth, and she was well covered in old, raggedy clothes. Nothing about her really seemed that unique to where it should have him so transfixed, yet he could not take his mind off of her. Was it empathy? No, he was certain wasn’t what it was. He was incredibly infatuated by her –but why? Then there was that daunting sense of familiarity that he could not shake…
Nathaniel yawned as he finished skimming through his online files. Something about his checking account wasn’t adding up. There were nearly thirty-thousand dollars unaccounted for, and while thirty-thousand dollars was a minuscule amount and something he could spend on a party at his lake house in a single weekend, it was still a large enough number to raise an eyebrow. Thirty-thousand dollars? Surely it was a mistake. He texted Tony and told him to look into it.
After shutting his laptop and placing it on his nightstand, he laid his head down on his pillow. It had been a long day, and he had a lot of meetings to go to the following day –mostly with his public relations reps. Nathaniel closed his eyes and graciously greeted sleep when it finally came.
Chapter 8
For the first week in Troy, Nathaniel spent a portion of his day around Frear Park. He kept searching for the mysterious Ace woman, but he never spotted her. During the day, he had some of the volunteers on the lookout in the event she returned to the shelter, but he never heard from the volunteers. It was beginning to frustrate him terribly.
Adam had already left Troy for California, far too eager to put some distance between himself and his former home. Adam was back in California now, running the actual business while Nathaniel made regular appearances at the shelter for the media to gawk over and give them something to talk about other than his supposedly former party boy days. Nathaniel and Tony tended to spend their lunches together away from the shelter to give themselves some breathing room and time to relax. Normally it was after lunch that Nathaniel would take a walk through the enormous park in hopes of locating Ace.
On this particular day, Nathaniel was incredibly antsy at lunch –and his behavior certainly did not escape the notice of his attention driven assistant, Tony. “You all right?” Tony asked as he dove into his burger; they had decided to go low-key that day and eat out at a local burger joint. Truthfully, Nathaniel preferred a simple burger over a five-course meal at a five-star restaurant most days.
“Huh?” Nathaniel retorted, his mind having been on finding Ace and his walk through Frear Park that would come after lunch.
“Seriously, what gives?” Tony asked.
“Sorry. Just distracted,” Nathaniel said and took a bite of his cheeseburger.
“Is it about that chick you’re trying to find?” Tony asked. “Look, I don’t know what has got you so interested in some homeless woman, but you’re going about this the wrong way.”
“How so?” Nathaniel questioned.
“The guy you talked to last week told you she hangs out at Frear Park. Frear Park is mostly golf course property. A bunch of upper-middle-class pricks who think they’re something hangs out there during the day. Do you really think they’d put up with a bunch of homeless people hanging around? No, of course not. The woman probably hangs out there at night so she can find a place to sleep, man.” Tony spoke with an air of confidence that had Nathaniel quickly convinced that he needed to take a new approach.
“I suppose that makes sense,” Nathaniel said.
“Go there right after the golf course closes. I bet she gets there early to stake out her claim for her sleeping arrangements,” Tony said and popped a French fry into his mouth. Still chewing on his fry, he asked, “So what is it about this woman that’s got you all hung up anyways? I mean, homeless is not exactly your go-to type.”
“I just can’t shake the feeling that I know her somehow. You know that I used to live in Troy. Maybe I did know her,” Nathaniel said. He leaned back in his seat and took a sip of his soda. Placing the glass down, he said, “I guess it’s a little bit of guilt too. I mean, if Ace and I are both from here we had the same upbringing. But then I made it out. I made enough of myself to where I can afford to open up a shelter, but the only reason I’m doing it is to improve my reputation. Then in walks this woman, I swear that I know, and she didn’t make it out. She stayed, and she just wound up on the streets. That could have easily have been me if it wasn’t for my father.”
“But it’s not you, Nathaniel,” Tony said. “You shouldn’t feel guilty for your success.”
“My success? I only made it this far because my father was the one who pulled us out of the grime,” Nathaniel huffed.
“Nathaniel, your father may have left you a trust fund to pull from, but you are the one who started this company and made it into what it is. Not your father. I’m not bashing your old man or anything because he obviously taught you a lot, but you had it in you to be able to accomplish something like this.” Tony smiled at Nathaniel, and Nathaniel rolled his eyes slightly.
“Don’t go getting all sappy on me, Tony,” Nathaniel waved the kid off. “Did you ever figure out what was going on with the missing thirty-thousand dollars I mentioned a few days ago?”
“Oh, shit, yeah, sorry,” Tony said, “I called Adam –he pulled from the account for something for the shelter. He just failed to report it. I looked it up just to be sure, and the money went to some local shops –probably to get some extra food ordered for the rest of the month.”
“All right, good,” Nathaniel said and finished off his burger. He decided to take Tony’s advice and wait until the late evening to return to the park. Instead of going there after lunch, he headed back to the shelter with Tony. He decided it wouldn’t hurt him to do some actual volunteering when the cameras weren’t rolling. He would hate to leave the impression with his volunteers that he only cared
about his image and not the actual shelter.
The rest of the day was spent at the shelter since he did not have any meetings to attend to; the rest of the week would be filled with bankers’ meetings as well as community volunteer meetings and online meetings with the home office back in California, so he took the day to actually get to know some of the volunteers at the shelter. He even adorned his volunteer t-shirt and shorts to give the impression he was on their level and that they didn’t need to be intimidated.
Soon the day drew to a close, and Tony called himself a cab so that Nathaniel could take the rental car to Frear Park. “Wish me luck,” Nathaniel said as he loaded up into the car in the parking lot.
Tony, who was still waiting for his cab to show, nodded approvingly. “Good luck. So if you actually find this woman, what are you going to do?”
“I guess try to help her,” Nathaniel said through the driver’s seat window. He did not want to admit to Tony that he was attracted to this woman. She was, as Tony had said, not exactly his type. Rich, slightly snobby, and oftentimes drunk women were more his type. He grunted at the thought, realizing if Eliza had been a little drunk on their first date he probably would have slept with her because she was gorgeous and therefore fit the bill.
Utterly Yours (Book One) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) Page 3
