by King, Imani
“Shawna, Is he a professional bodybuilder?” I asked.
“This is Jackson Dallas,” she smiled.
“Oh really? Wait, you mean the football player?”
“The same,” he said, reaching out and shaking my hand cordially. He towered over me, even more so than Miles did.
The shock of seeing Shawna brought back my past with a sudden vengeance.
Where Shawna and I were from, no one would expect us to show up at such a fancy party. We went to parties where cheap beer was the preferred beverage, possibly there would be malt liquor if someone went all out.
Not parties catered with wine and champagne, with Grammy-winning bands playing on stage.
There was also the fact that Miles stood behind me, looking mighty confused. “I thought you said you didn’t have anyone you wanted to invite?”
I laughed. Nervously. Really nervously. “Oh, um, uh.... I thought Shawna would be really busy here.”
“I’m surprised as she is,” Shawna said. “I’m here because I’m the new face for Liana Corbett’s new charity clothing line.”
“Oh, you are Christian’s new wife,” Miles said.
“Yeah, she’s here by coincidence,” I replied. “You? A model for a clothing line? That’s fantastic, Shawna, please tell me more.”
“I wear clothes. I try to look sexy in them. They take pictures. There’s not a whole lot to talk about.” She shrugged. “I don’t want to tell the same boring stories. I want to catch up with you.”
“There’s nothing to catch up on. Really.”
“Nothing to catch up on? Really?” Shawna said, while she checked out Miles. “Who’s this handsome stranger you have at your side?”
“Miles Corbett,” Miles introduced himself as he took Shawna’s hand and shook it lightly. “A pleasure to meet you.... Shawna, was it?”
“The Miles Corbett? The one this party is honoring?”
“The same.”
Shawna looked my way. “My, my, my. Destiny. I didn’t realize the Destiny on the invitation was you.”
“Maybe I should have left it just Destiny. Like Prince, or Madonna.” I said, trying to make a lame joke.
“There were like, three Destinys in my high school class alone,”
“Well, yeah, it’s me. I’m marrying Miles Corbett.”
“I really didn’t expect it was you. What’s with Brooke?”
“Brooke?” Miles said.
“Yeah, it said Destiny Brooke. I thought your last name was Lowell.”
Goddammit, Shawna.
“Uhm, uh....” I stammered.
“I guess your last name won’t matter. Miss Brooke, Miss Lowell, whatever. Now you’re going to be Mrs. Corbett, none of that matters, hmm?” Shawna was trying to gloss over the fact that she kicked open a hornet’s nest.
“Yeah,” Miles said, now glaring at me. “She will be.” His look wasn’t on the order of sweet affection like so many of his others I’d seen before.
I could tell Jackson felt the sudden tension in the air. “Uhm, Shawna, how about we go get some grub? I wanna try those... whore durves? Whatever they’re called. Hard to pronounce but so easy to eat.” He smiled and pulled Shawna away.
“Yes, Destiny and I were going to go do something in private ourselves.”
“Oh okay,” Shawna said. “Don’t be a stranger, Destiny. You have our number if you need anything or just want to talk.”
“Thanks, Shawna.”
Goddammit, Shawna.
Now I was alone with Miles. Ordinarily that would be my choice. That would be before I received his hard glare
Now I could see his confusion and disdain. His broken trust hardened his expression. The sad thing is, the better know someone, the more you can read them, and the greater effort you make not to hurt them.
“I’m going to let Ash and Christian know I’ve come down with an inconvenient case of food poisoning,” Miles said. “I think we need to head home and talk things out.”
His words sent chills down my spine. I was running out places to hide.
* * *
Our ride back to the ranch house? Silent as hell.
Dammit, Shawna. You’ve ruined everything.
I knew I was going to ruin everything eventually anyway, but I could have enjoyed denial just a little longer.
The car pulled into the garage. Miles stepped out, and looked across the top of it. “Before you come into the house, I want you to come clean with me.”
My lip trembled as he talked. “About what?”
“Your name for one. That’d be nice. Is your name even Destiny?”
“Yes, my name is Destiny,” I shook my head. “It’s complicated, okay.”
“What’s your full name then? Don’t even try to pass Lowell off as a middle name, because you used Delilah as a middle name on your application, for whatever that’s worth.”
“That is my middle name.”
“Then give me a damned surname, Destiny. I want you. I want to love you. If you can’t be honest with me I can’t help you. Your biggest enemy right now is yourself.”
That was a major understatement.
Saved by the bell, at least that’s what I thought.
The doorbell was being massively abused. Someone wanted to annoy everyone inside.
Miles grunted, and headed into the house. Reluctantly, I followed.
Chapter 18
Miles
Who the heck was ringing my bell at this hour?
I had enough shit on my plate right now. Destiny, or whoever she was. It was driving me batty. You think you love someone, and then you’re not sure if anything is there. At this point, I didn’t know if she was a spy or something else entirely. God, I fucked her without protection. Constantly. I was literally planting the seeds for another Vivian in my life.
No. Right now, even though I had no reason to give her any benefit of the doubt my heart told me Destiny was nothing like Vivian. Something else was at work here.
I went to the door, and thought of the devil, and the devil appeared.
Vivian.
“Miles, love!” She smiled. Her smiling was never good. Ever.
Destiny had followed me in, looking as crushed as she ever had been.
“Ooo, do you already know? She had that look of a liar who had just been revealed.”
“Vivian, what the hell do you want?”
She pulled an envelope out of her pocket and handed it over to me. I tore it open and flipped through it.
“Let me condense it for you, Miles,” Vivian began. “You’re to have no contact with our daughter until the hearing. There is an effective restraining order against you. If I see you approach my home, I can have you arrested. Which, as you know, just makes your shitty case look even worse.”
She wasn’t lying. “What’s going on Vivian? What legal nonsense did you pull this time? Did you lie to them about some trumped up claims or something?”
“No, no. I haven’t the need to fabricate anything to prove you an incapable father to Judge Taylor.”
“What do you have? I’ll sue you for libel, Vivian, I swear. I’ll make life hell for you as much as hell for me.”
“That requires me to be fibbing Miles. I’m not. Judge Taylor says a stripper is not qualified to be a caretaker when a better option is available. Also, if the father shows poor judgment to marry one so quickly, he has the evidence he needs to rule in my favor. He suspects you’re on drugs or something, Miles. I mean, you are marrying a stripper you only just met.”
“Stripper? What the hell are you on about?”
I glanced back at Destiny, and all the color had drained from her face.
Vivian looked her way and grinned. “It’s ultimately pretty simple. I don’t want my daughter raised by a stripper and the courts completely agree with me.” She laughed. “I honestly have to thank you, Destiny. Your presence alone might not have not been enough to assure my victory, but now that Miles has spontaneously decided to marry you, well, that seals it.”
> I looked over the forms, hoping that somehow Vivian was just stirring shit, and throwing papers at me to make me panic.
The papers confirmed what she said.
“Miles, you know what I want. With you being so imbalanced, I don’t think even withdrawing my objections would be enough for you to get custody of Ashley.” She just grinned again.
My anger flared. I wanted to punch her in the face. I settled for balling my fists.
Vivian finally left. What more was there for her to do? She had succeeded in ruining my hopes and my future.
She left the door open. I slammed it close. I wanted to unleash my rage on something. I never thought I had issues with anger, but with everything happening now, this was just too much for anyone to handle. All men have their limits, and I had either met mine or had sailed way past it.
“Miles,’ Destiny said as she reached toward me. “It’ll be okay.”
I slapped her hands away. “Don’t touch me.”
She shied away. “Sorry for that. For everything.”
“Was this the plan all along, Destiny? Did Vivian hire you to seduce me?”
“What? No! I didn’t know she existed until she stomped into this house like a queen bitch.”
“Then what tare you doing here, Destiny? You said you were sent to learn about my holdings and pressure me to sell.”
“I don’t know!” she screamed.
Chapter 19
Destiny
“I don’t know why I’m here!”
I was ready to tear my hair out. This was just too much to deal with. He wasn’t supposed to find out so soon.
He wasn’t supposed to lose custody of his daughter. He wasn’t supposed to suffer because of me.
It was all lost. There was no more point in lying about my past or anything else anymore.
So I spilled it. Everything.
“My name is Destiny Delilah Lowell. I grew up in the care of my grandmother, my own mother was absent. When I turned of age and faced the real world and real bills, stripping seemed like the most lucrative option available. For the past six years, I’ve been an ‘exotic dancer’ or stripper, in Las Vegas.”
I just stood there, my arms at my side. I didn’t care anymore. I had hurt everyone I cared for. The least I could do was put the truth out there. He could do whatever with it, but he deserved to know.
“Stripping paid well but I ran up debts by taking out loans from my boss, Bruce Fornelli. Loans quickly became unsustainable, and I was basically indentured to Bruce permanently. Then he offered me this job. They needed a young woman to serve as a maid to learn what it’d take to get a certain landowner to sell. They handed me falsified ID, said it would be enough to get me hired.”
Miles took in what I was saying but he was breathing hard and his face was flushed.
“I didn’t want this to happen. I hoped I could just get them what they wanted and be done with it. When I saw who you were, how sweet you were, how sexy you were, I just.... fell in love with you. I knew then I couldn’t do that job for them and I didn’t have a plan anymore. I only knew I wanted more time with you. I wanted for it to last as long as it could, because I relished every single second of it, Miles. I knew once you found out I was a....”
He cut me off. “You say all this, Destiny, but how do I know these aren’t just more lies? How do I know you weren’t sent here to seduce me, make me lose my daughter? Make me lose the home I wanted to give to her?”
I didn’t know how to respond. “What will you do next?”
He took a deep breath. He struggled to think rationally and be calm. “I need to talk to my lawyer. Figure out what I need to do next. Getting my daughter back is absolute top priority right now.”
“How are you going to do it?”
“How else? Give Vivian what she wants. There’s no point in saving this land to give to my daughter if I don’t have my daughter.”
He stormed off without another word and left me alone.
My heart was breaking. I knew how much he wanted to give all of this to Ashley. My eyes filled with tears. If I hadn’t lied to him in the first place, none of this would have happened.
I’d done enough damage. He hadn’t told me to leave, but I was getting out. I rushed to my room and gathered my things. I needed to get back home.
Wherever home was.
Move on. Try to forget everything that happened here.
Because I knew that nothing would ever be remotely this good again.
Chapter 20
Destiny
“So...” Shawna said as she drove the car down the dark country road. “Are you going to talk, or are you just going to stare out the window and be a mute?”
“What’s there to talk about?” I said, with a flat voice. “I needed to get out of there.”
“So desperately that you got me out of bed in my hotel to drive to the middle nowhere? There’s something to talk about, Destiny.”
“No there isn’t.”
“I’ve been driving a couple of hours. I’ll take exactly that long to drop you back at Miles’ ranch. I’ll do it if you won’t open up to me.”
I looked over at her with disbelief.
“Don’t try me. I’ll do it.”
“There’s some things I just can’t talk about, okay? I don’t want to get you involved in my drama.”
“What part of driving for two hours to nowhere in the middle of the night keeps me uninvolved?”
“I was going to just call a cab, but none of them would agree to come out this far.”
“Am I just cab service to you, Destiny?” Shawna protested with anger but then softened her tone. “I owe you the world for what you’ve done for me. Let me help carry whatever burden you’re carrying?”
“What burden am I carrying? I left it behind.”
“Don’t go all zen on me. You just up and vanish one day, without telling me a damn thing other than you had a gig out in Wyoming. Then you’re suddenly marrying some rich dude? There’s something up.”
“There’s nothing up.”
“What did he do to you Destiny? Is he hitting you?”
“God no,” I said, almost too quickly. “Miles isn’t the domestic abuse type. He wouldn’t beat his wife or his kids.”
“I don’t know, Destiny. You definitely seem beat up. Emotional abuse is still abuse.”
“He’s not emotionally abusing me either. Not sexually, not physically, and no, not psychically either.”
Shawna shook her head in disbelief. “Just because I called that hotline once doesn’t mean I believe in that stuff.”
“I was just covering all my bases. My leaving had nothing to do with anything Miles did. He’s completely innocent.”
“I don’t know...” She didn’t sound convinced. Not one bit.
“Nothing. He was a perfect gentlemen, Shawna.”
“If you insist.” She stayed silent for a few seconds. “I hope, at least, you were well paid for all this.”
“I was going to be.”
“Was?”
“I left the money behind.”
“Why on earth would you do that?”
“I didn’t deserve it.”
“Destiny, you aren’t in a place where you can afford to be picky.”
Could she really understand? I didn’t want to throw out the whole spiel. I didn’t want to imply Miles was judgmental.
I was the villain here.
Or at least the unwitting tool of villains.
“I’ll pay my debts through hard work. Not some rich guy’s guilt.”
She blew a raspberry. “Yeah, hard work dancing for a man who only pays enough to cover the interest of the loan. There aren’t enough hours in the day to pay off Bruce, Destiny.”
Again, she made me cringe. My deal with Bruce. Back when I assumed Miles was nothing more than a generic pompous rich asshole.
Was I really ready to accept payment for that? For robbing a man of his home, and potentially his daughter? I wouldn’t accept blo
od money either.
Bruce would never have let me take it and run. This was the same guy who told me he would charge a reasonable interest rate on my loan. The kind of guy who would predatorily use my need for the money against me.
Things started to slide together in my head. A whole lot of people wanted Miles to sell that land, and suddenly Bruce is involved? I could buy Vivian advocating a deal and being a pretty public face for QNWS.
Bruce, though? No legitimate organization would want anything to do with him. That dude was a walking mafioso stereotype, minus any class. I was ninety-nine percent sure that he was involved in several illegal things.
Actually, one-hundred percent. He was not exactly an accredited financial institution. That so-called loan he had given me? That was probably illegal. I doubted I was the only one who Bruce ever did this for.
They must all be connected somehow. I felt like some conspiracy theorist, but I was absolutely convinced it was true. If QNWS worked with Bruce, it was likely they were involved in other illegal things.
Would proving them fraudulent be enough to get them to back off Miles? Force Vivian to accept his terms? I had no idea.
What I did know?
I was a stripper. Who was going to take my word for anything? There was also the matter that it wasn’t just illegal to be a loan shark, but to use them as well. He was paying me to carry out this activity but I was incriminated as well.
No, I had absolutely zero credibility as a witness. I needed evidence. Hard evidence.
Shawna’s car finally reached the city. “You can sleep on the couch in our suite. We’ll head back to Vegas tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Shawna.”
“Not a problem. This is nothing compared to what I owe you.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I was hardly feeling like a heroine at the moment.
I was glad for the time before we returned to Vegas. That would give me time to plan. If I could figure out how to get the proof that would at least let me sleep at night sometime in the future.
Because tonight, given the mess I’d made of everyone’s life, I wasn’t going to get a wink of it.
