The Darkest of Shadows

by Lisse Smith

  “Do you love her?”

  “Totally. Absolutely. Stupidly and completely,” Lawrence admitted with a resigned sigh.

  “It must hurt to know that she doesn’t feel that way about you,” Nicholas commented.

  “Like you could never imagine,” Lawrence confirmed, then added, “But not as much as it once did. Like today, Lilly mentioned her family, that she was once married. That’s a big step for her, and I think it was a good step. She has never mentioned him to me before, and the fact that she did tonight and didn’t freak out shows me that she trusts me; and for Lilly, that’s a pretty miraculous thing.”

  “Do you think she will ever get better? Enough to function more normally?”

  Lawrence took a deep breath. “It’s not as simple as that. I can’t take back what she went through, and I wouldn’t, because the Lilly that I know today wasn’t the Lilly that existed back then. She is who she is today as a result of what she suffered through. I wish the pain away, I wish her reconciled with what happened, but I don’t want to change who she is now. I’ll take all the bad, and the strange, and the worry, as long as she doesn’t hurt anymore.”

  “Why are you telling me this now?” Nicholas asked after a long moment of silence.

  “Because I trust you, and I think that Lilly does too,” Lawrence replied. “And I need to talk to someone, or I’m going to go crazy.”

  “And here I was thinking that you had the perfect life. The perfect job, the perfect woman.”

  Lawrence laughed, a bitter sound. “And do you know what makes it even more crazy?” he said. “The fact that I wouldn’t swap her for someone else, even if the tradeoff was for that perfect life. Something about Lilly completes me. She understands me, she understands the world that I live in, and she doesn’t think the sun shines out my ass.”

  “I know how special she is,” Nicholas acknowledged. “I see her with you, and wish that I could find someone like that. I see how she works around you and with you and isn’t intimidated by any of it. She’s a remarkable woman.” Nicholas sighed. “As difficult as it is, and as hard as it is to watch, I find myself envious of you and what you have.”

  “I nearly lost her once already,” Lawrence said, and leaned forward on the chair to rest his head in his hands. “On New Year’s Eve. We were at a party, and there was an incident.”

  Nicholas nodded for him to continue.

  “It still scares me to remember,” Lawrence confessed. “Some crazy man wanted to buy a casino development I was involved in, but when we looked at the offer, it just didn’t add up to a reasonable proposition. Oh, the money was good—way too good, which is what first raised the alarm bells, so I had the lawyers reject it. The next day a secondary offer came through for an even larger sum, but we rejected that one, too. That night at the party, the man responsible for the offer kidnapped Lilly and held her hostage in exchange for me signing off on the deal.”

  “Fucking bastard.”

  “Kind of what I thought at the time,” Lawrence agreed. “I was really lucky. Scary lucky, actually. They took her from the home of one of my friends, who was hosting a very select gathering of individuals, including some US Senators, a few congressmen, and one of the security advisors with the CIA. Let’s just say that between them, there were some seriously pissed-off men.”

  Nicholas whistled quietly in appreciation. “I could imagine.”

  “They found Lilly within about half an hour and then sent in a special strike force. She was released and returned safe less than an hour after she was taken.”

  “Did they hurt her?”

  Lawrence shook his head. “She was unconscious for most of it. They drugged her when they grabbed her. I’m not sure what they might have done if she had been in their custody for longer, and I’m thankful that I’ll never know, but I’m telling you this so that you might have some concept of what she lives with every day. Being taken hostage, kidnapped, tied up, and terrified is traumatic. It’s a horrible situation that most people, would take scars from. Lilly, she walked away from the whole thing relatively easily. She had a few moments right at the beginning, but as she said, that incident was nothing compared to what she has already lived through. So for her, it was easily forgotten. Just another speed bump in her life that she dealt with and moved on.”

  “What the hell happened to her before?”

  “That’s her story, and I can’t tell you.”

  “Does someone need to be made to pay for it?” Nicholas asked the question carefully, but Lawrence shook his head.

  “I wish it was that straightforward,” Lawrence replied. “But suffice to say that if blame could be attributed anywhere, then the people involved are already paying the price.”

  “I wish that made me feel better.”

  “You and me both.”

  “I’m not so sure that I’m better off with this knowledge,” Nicholas said, after a moment’s thought. He held up his hand to stall Lawrence when he looked like he was going to say something in response. “Do you know that only a few hours ago I lived in a world where everyone thought I was wonderful, and there were rainbows in the sky and fairies magically made my bed each morning, the paper found its way to my breakfast table each day and women fell over themselves to get into my bed. My world was a happy place, Lawrence.”

  “I lived in that world once.” Lawrence understood exactly what he was saying.

  Sixteen

  Thursday found us on a plane to Belgium, where Lawrence was attending a conference where he had been asked to speak. He didn’t often accept public speaking invitations; he felt that his ideas were his own, and his business was different from most others out there, and for him to be giving advice that would probably not work for others was irresponsible and dangerous.

  This event, however, was more a charity than a conference and dealt with how businesses could help support underdeveloped areas of the world and their responsibilities in that field. Lawrence was a generous philanthropist and had no problems encouraging others to give where the money and support were needed.

  “Where are we going?” I asked Lawrence the morning, after the conference. I watched in confusion as the English coastline moved closer and closer through the window of the jet. “Aren’t we meant to be heading east—because last time I checked, Italy was not near England.” We were meant to be heading to Rome to finalize details on a development that had just sold. I wasn’t aware of any change to those plans, so I found it puzzling that we were heading back to England after leaving Belgium.

  “I cancelled the meeting with the buyer.” Lawrence didn’t look up from the paperwork he was reading when he announced that. “Our agents in Rome will take care of that. They don’t need us there for this part of the negotiations.”

  “Did you really?” I raised an eyebrow at him; a wasted effort, as he still didn’t look at me. “Do you mind if I ask what we’re doing instead?”

  “We’ve been invited to stay with an old friend of mine in the country. We’ll be heading there as soon as we land.”

  It was a strange statement from Lawrence. Granted, this wasn’t the first time that we had made an impromptu visit to a friend, but he never canceled an event to attend something like that. They were always last-minute parties that he went to only if there was a spare space in his calendar. There definitely wasn’t a spare space in his calendar for this country visit.

  “How long are we staying?” I asked casually. It was Saturday afternoon, and we had to be back in the States on Friday of next week, something that would have been much easier and quicker if we were leaving from Rome instead of London or God-knows-where in the countryside.

  “We’ll make it to LA by Friday,” he assured me, knowing instantly what I was referring to.

  So we had a week in the country. Didn’t sound too bad, actually; it would really depend on who the friend was and who exactly would be attending this little gathering.

  “Anyone I know?” I queried.

  “Nope.” He sh
ot me a quick grin but didn’t elaborate.

  There was a very sleek, low-riding sports car waiting for us when we got off the plane outside London. Interestingly, it only carried two people. A dilemma for Frost and Charlie, but I quickly learned, much to my amazement, that it wasn’t a problem. Lawrence shook hands with both of them as our bags were transferred from the plane to the extremely small boot of, if I wasn’t mistaken, an Aston Martin.

  “Enjoy your time off. I’ll call you when we leave, so you can meet us at the airport in LA,” Lawrence told Frost and Charlie; then he grabbed my hand and led me over to the car.

  I shot a wave over my shoulder at our two guards. These people had been a stable and nonoptional presence in my life for nearly two years now. In all that time, neither of them had ever been away from us, at least not at the same time. It was a strange shift to my reality to walk away from them now, strange and somewhat exposing.

  “Why aren’t they coming?” I asked, as Lawrence settled into the driver’s seat beside me. It was odd, but it had never occurred to me before that he even had a driver’s license. I realized that I had never seen him behind the wheel of a car before, but of course he was a male, so hardly uncommon for him to have a fetish for fast cars.

  “The place we are going has sufficient security for us. I thought it would be a good opportunity to give them both some time off. They deserve it, and we’ll be safe enough while we’re at Parkgrove.”

  “Parkgrove?” I queried. “Any chance you might tell me where the hell we’re going now, and why?” I was pretty sure this wasn’t business related, so I felt I had a right to say no if I didn’t want to go.

  “William Edward Bates,” Lawrence announced. “The third,” he added with a smile. “He’s been a friend to me for nearly twenty years; he was what you might call my mentor when I first started in business. My first official partner.”

  “OK.”

  He hesitated, and I knew that he was considering how much to tell me, what to tell me—which worried me. “What?” I asked, a particular edge to my voice.

  “Some time ago, we spoke about you talking to someone,” Lawrence reminded me. “Will has listened to me for as long as I can remember. He’s not a shrink, far from it. But he’s very good at listening, and I think that when you meet him, you might like him.”

  I knew this was going to be a bad idea. “Talking to someone isn’t going to fix me, Lawrence,” I warned him. I really didn’t appreciate being pushed into this situation, and I liked it even less that he had waited until we were driving to the man’s house before telling me about it.

  Lawrence reached over and grabbed my hand, which I grudgingly let him have. “Will doesn’t know anything about you,” he said. “He knows that I have a friend, and he would very much like to meet you, but I haven’t told him anything about you. I swear.”

  That made it a little easier. “What do you want from me?” I wasn’t sure.

  “Nothing,” he responded. “I would like for you to meet Will, because you are important to me and Will is one of my oldest and dearest friends. He understands me on a similar level that you do, and I hope that you could both be friends. I’m not asking you to tell him anything about yourself, no more than you would meeting any other of my friends.”

  “And…?” It seemed like there should be more than that.

  “And, if Will has the same impact on you that he does on me, then, and only if you are comfortable, you might like to talk to him a little about how you feel.”

  “He’s not a shrink?”

  “William thinks that shrinks are a waste of space,” he told me. “He doesn’t believe that anyone has the right to tell someone how they should feel or act. Everyone is an individual and reacts to situations differently, exactly as each person thinks differently and feels differently.”

  “Maybe he and I have more in common than I thought.”

  He squeezed my fingers in his hand. “I really do think you will like him, Lilly,” he said. “I would never push you toward anything that you aren’t comfortable with, but I honestly believe that William might be able to help you. Even if only to be a friend, or someone who will tell you stories about my most embarrassing moments—and trust me he has a few of those stories. William is a good man, and I hope that you will like him as much as I do.”

  “OK.” I could manage that; as long as there were no preconceived ideas on William’s behalf about me telling him all my secrets, then I could probably manage to spend a week in his company. At least it meant that I had Lawrence for that whole week, too. A week of no interruptions, not having to get out of bed in the morning, long quiet evenings. “OK,” I said again, this time with more conviction.

  It took a long six hours to reach Parkgrove, which, if I was paying attention, was somewhere north, possibly in Scotland. We had certainly traveled long enough for it to feel like we should have been in Scotland. When Lawrence mentioned that the estate had adequate security, he didn’t do it enough credit. There were uniformed guards at the huge gates of the property, and a brick fence that was easily four meters high stretched off in either direction and disappeared out of sight. Cameras stood stationery on the top of the wall, and I had no doubt that there was probably a lot more that wasn’t quite so visible.

  It was dark by the time we arrived, so it was difficult to see much of the estate, but the main areas were heavily lit by bright lights. This included the main drive between the gates and the actual house, which was some distance away. I could only imagine the size of the actual property. And when I say “house,” I use that word loosely. It was really a palace, or close enough to that for most people’s worth. It was huge and very old English. Probably heritage listed, and if it wasn’t, it should have been. It was styled in the more traditional baroque fashion, with pillars and grand windows gracing the front and two wings jutting forward on both sides to form a huge U shape.

  The grounds were spectacular, what I could see of them, and incorporated so many smaller buildings that the place actually resembled a small village more than a single residence—that is, if you could overlook the giant of a house that overshadowed everything else.

  “He actually lives here?” I asked with a raised brow.

  “It is a bit ostentatious, huh?” he agreed.

  “Just a little bit.” Good lord.

  “He doesn’t actually use most of the house,” Lawrence told me, as he drove around the back of the main house toward some of the smaller buildings. “He has a few key rooms that he uses regularly, but most of the main section of the house is maintained out of a love for the estate and to keep the heritage of the house whole. It’s stunning. Wait till you see it.”

  Stunning. Of that I had no doubt. It must cost an absolute fortune to maintain. “Does William have family?” I asked.

  “He had a wife. But Elizabeth died nearly ten years ago, and they had no children, so William lives here alone now.”

  I was instantly saddened by that news, because although I didn’t know exactly how old William was, I had a feeling that he was an older gentleman; and without having met him, he already reminded me of my own dad who lived a similar lonely existence without his wife.

  The garage was remarkably functional and modern and already housed an impressive array of cars that probably cost more than most people make in a lifetime.

  “So I’m guessing that William is fairly well off,” I commented as we walked the short distance to the back of the house.

  “He does all right,” Lawrence replied, grinning. I was surprised to see genuine excitement and joy in his gaze.

  “You really do like this man don’t you?” I said.

  Lawrence nodded. “I haven’t seen him in over two years,” he told me. He led the way through the house with a familiarity that said more than words how close these two men were.

  We finally located the man himself in a room at the front of the grand house, in what looked to be a drawing room, or something similar. The walls were covered in beautif
ul, intricate wallpaper, and the furniture was pure old English aristocrat. It was stunningly beautiful, as was the part of the house I had seen as we passed through on our way to this room.

  “William!” Lawrence’s voice boomed out into the room. The man who rose from a desk near the window was nothing like what I was expecting.

  William Edward Bates, III, was probably only about sixty years old, and he looked as strong and virulent as someone who was totally grey could look. He moved with a confidence and assurance that spoke volumes. There was nothing old and frail about this man.

  “Lawrence, my friend.” William crossed the room in long strides, and I watched in astonishment as he and Lawrence embraced as only old, trusted friends could. “It has been far too long.”

  “It has, Will, it certainly has.” Lawrence kept a grip on the other man’s arm as they smiled at each other. Renewing acquaintances and reaffirming familiarity with each other. Lawrence and William had the kind of friendship where time and distance had no impact on their relationship.

  “Will.” Lawrence stepped back a pace and reached out to grip my hand, drawing me closer to them. “Allow me to introduce you to Lillianna Owen. Lilly, this is my friend William Bates.”

  I shook his hand in greeting, a slight smile drawing the edges of my lips up. “Please call me Lilly,” I told him.

  His answering smile was warm but held an edge of surprise. “It is indeed a pleasure, Lilly.”

  “You have a beautiful home, William,” I told him truthfully. “It’s quite impressive.”

  “I’d be honored to give you a guided tour of it over the next few days. There are some very special places in this old girl, places that deserve to be shared.”

  “That sounds wonderful.” And I meant it.

  “Come. Sit.” He indicated a set of lounges near the front of the room, overlooking the dark gardens. “How have you been?” Will enquired. “It’s been, what, two years since I saw you last.”