SweetHarts (5 Book Box Set)

by Kira Graham

  There are none. There isn’t a single small, even miniscule time when I did something that could be considered romantic. Unless…

  “I told him that I loved him, and I proposed!” I yell victoriously, my triumph dying a quick and gory death when they all snort and start laughing so hard that I lower my fist and blink back at them silently.

  “Oh, for the love of God, he led you to it. We all did, Rosetta! We were all in on it. It was like subliminal messaging, only much more covert. All those phone calls and lunches, and all those little hints that we all dropped about how great he was, and then Tee constantly calling him a sappy fool. Of course you were going to propose, Rosie. You already loved Zeus; all we had to do was get you out of martyr mode and into a place where you weren’t trying to spare him,” Cleo says softly, shaking her head at me in wonder. “Of all of us, you are the most easily led because you already want to go there; you just need a little nudge.”

  That isn’t true—

  “Oh, stop it,” Sin groans, rolling her eyes at me because I’m doing the dramatic wailing again. “It is totally true. You’re so weird, Rose. You always make decisions so easily and then carry them out with a military precision that makes Hitler look like a fumbling klutz, and yet when it comes to romance, to real love, you start to vacillate and procrastinate. Like with Chilli. Remember when you first told me that you loooved him?”

  “Shut up! What if Zeus bugged my office? He would totally do something like that, and if he hears you saying those words, he’s likely to come back here, screaming bloody murder. He’s crazy jealous of Chilli. Why do you think that he’s pushing this Utah thing?” I grunt, a smile curling my lips.

  Awww. That’s so cute—

  “It isn’t cute. It’s insane. You are both insane, Rosetta. You find his stalking you a turn-on, and think that a tracker on your phone is like him giving you a bunch of flowers. He thinks that having a conversation while you take a shit is intimate and proves that you’re close. It’s odd, Rose, and not at all what normal people do,” Tee groans theatrically, while gagging.

  “What’s your point?”

  “My point is…you and Zeus are sort of perfect for each other because you both, you know, like being…obsessive. And you’re also not perfect for each other because you’re both locked in a struggle for power. Which is not healthy, but, you know, who am I to judge?” Cleo asks, wide-eyed, her expression a little hopeless. “Face it. He’s got you right where he wants you, while you’re…trying to regain the upper hand. You’re both sort of like those people in that movie.”

  “What movie?” we all demand, as I pray to God that she isn’t referring to some lame foreign film. Or anything with Kate Hudson. I just…don’t like that one.

  “You know, that one where the girl is rich and falls in love with the poor guy, but then they argue all the time, and so she leaves and gets engaged to the hot guy, but then she sees him in the paper and goes back, and then they have sex and fight again and—”

  “Oh, my God, this is nothing like The Notebook! What is up with your sick and unreasonable love of that movie?” I scream, more than a little insulted.

  I would never go on a boat ride with Zeus just to see swans—oh, my God, I am unromantic! All I can think about with that picture in my head is how the mosquitoes would eat me alive, and how the rain would ruin my hair. I realize, feeling sickened, that I’m the hot version of Rizzo from Grease, not Sandy.

  Shit!

  “I like Ryan Gosling. I think he lives up to the hype. And James Marsden. He’s a great actor—”

  “Cleo, shut up. No one, and I mean no one, should ever be compared to Rachel McAdams. She’s hot and stuff, but her characters are always a little more than crazy,” Sin mumbles, looking away with a whine that tells me that she wants to laugh.

  At me.

  “Exactly. Rose and Zeus are like that. Oil and water. Fire and ice. And yet, fifty years from now, I bet he’ll still be reading her a story to remind her of how much he loves her. See? Romantic,” Cleo tells me, giving me a pointed look. “That, right there, is the problem. You’re dead inside, devoid of romance, and that must be pretty hard for him to deal with, what with your lack of sticking power.”

  “I married him! That’s romantic, and I so did propose, even if you all brainwashed me. That’s romantic. I can be romantic if I want to be, but anyway, that still doesn’t explain why he took off like a bat out of hell,” I rage, hissing at Dana to close the door when she pops her head in.

  “Uh, you wanna tell her?” Tee asks Sin, refusing to look at me while Sin gulps and gives me a wide-eyed, nearly frightened stare.

  “Remember when you and Zeus first met, and he asked you to go to the carnival with him?” she asks hesitantly.

  “Oh my God, it was awful—the kid behind me puked, and some got in my hair,” I groan, shuddering slightly.

  “Okaaay. Recall, if you will, that time when we all went to the lake, and Zeus took you on that hike,” she says slowly, making me think back and—

  “There was poison ivy everywhere. Every. Where. I still can’t believe he thought that hiking would be my thing. Everyone knows that I do not exercise unless paid to do so.”

  “Yeeeah. Okay. Now, think back to almost each and every single time that Zeus took you somewhere or got you anything more expensive than a hot dog,” Cleo urges, tittering nervously when I bite my lip and consider those times.

  “Well, there was the time that we went to that auto show that Chilli invited us to, and I got food poisoning from the pork sandwich. Then there was that art gallery that showed all the expressionist art shit, and then…” I trail off, thinking back to each and every…date, I guess you could call them.

  Huh. Now that I think about it, Zeus and I went a lot of places together, and—

  “Oh, my God! He likes art and carnivals and car shows and pork sandwiches! Doesn’t he? He likes all the stuff that I hate, and he doesn’t want to lie about it, so he’d rather not tell me, because then we’d have to do things that I will complain about the whole time,” I say in one breath, more than a little taken aback at how simple the answer is.

  And also complicated, because that means that Zeus is trying to…change himself, for me, which means that we’re not dealing with a stalker-stalkee relationship, which could be romantic, but rather, with a dictator-slave relationship, in which, I am ashamed to say, I may be the dictator.

  “Shit.”

  “Yeeeah. See, here’s the thing, Rose…you’re kind of an asshole with little to no sentimentality, and you kinda insult people without thinking about it. At all. A lot. And that makes it kinda hard for the rest of us to be, you know, honest about things all the time. Like yesterday, when you called me and told me that my new haircut makes me look like a man?” Tee asks, self-consciously touching her hair, where she’s shaved the sides off.

  I zip my lips, just barely holding in the words “’cause it’s true,” and take in the way her hair is done. Oh, hell…

  “You cut your hair off to add to the hair that Aunt Hope donated to the cancer people, didn’t you?” I sigh, feeling like shit.

  “The wigs were for twins, and they needed a little more hair than mom could supply, but since Honey threatened to disown me if I was bald in Cleo’s hypothetical wedding photos, I went with a half-cut.”

  Shit!

  “And last week, you called me and told me that my new interest in knitting is an old-lady hobby,” Sin cuts in, smiling a little shyly when Cleo titters and cracks a joke about cats and knitting being synonymous.

  Dammit, I think. I’m like the redheaded American version of an emotional Nazi. My husband—the sweetest, kindest, most thoughtful man—left instead of confessing to me that everything that he likes is everything that I have made fun of since we met.

  Well. That puts me into perspective, I think, my thoughts drifting to that documentary that he DVRed and saved for a week because he wanted to watch it with me. I watched it for five minutes, told him it was boring, and
went back to reading an employee contract instead.

  “Holy shit. I’m unromantic. And thoughtless. And selfish,” I breathe, more than a little embarrassed that it’s taken an intervention from my sibs to set me straight.

  Because that is exactly what this is, I realize, a little miffed that I didn’t notice it until just now. They’re all here carrying out a plan that was probably put into effect thanks to the Sweethart gossip mill. The only thing missing here is Alex, but the way I see it, thank God she’s been ignoring us all, or I’d be self-flagellating by now. That woman does not have a tactful bone in her body.

  “Well, not so much selfish as self-involved. I mean, you were freaking out about being arrested and everything, and we totally get that, Rose, but you just kinda…forgot, I think, that Zeus and Joe were being harassed about the alibi they gave you, and could have gone to prison with you if things hadn’t worked out,” Cleo says gently, her point made so thoroughly that I swallow and feel my face flush.

  “How the heck am I going to fix this? You guys have to have realized by now that I’m not romantic,” I wheeze, ignoring their derisive smirks and the money that Cleo hands over to Sin with a curse.

  “Honey, we have no idea, but I’d say that you have exactly two days to figure it out before your man comes home, and if I were you, I’d make sure that whatever he finds makes up for the last few weeks. Or months. I mean, you have been a total idiot since you guys met.”

  And there is the Sin that I know and would love to throttle. No tact, I tell ya. Not even in my time of need.

  Dammit! I seriously need to do something about my impromptu monologues.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Rosetta

  I awake with a stretch, moaning at the stiffness in my back and the cold spot against my ass, wondering groggily if Zeus put the air on too high again, until it hits me that the apartment is a balmy seventy-nine, thanks to my freedom with the thermostat now that he’s fled my insensitive hide.

  Frowning, I try to cuddle back down into the mattress, determined to fall asleep again until the alarm goes off, only to blink myself awake when instead of soft, plush feathers and cotton, I feel a cold, hard floor and something wet against my ass.

  What the hell? I think, struggling to open my eyes wide enough to blink away the sleepy wooziness that comes with a hard slumber. As soon as my eyes are open, however, I regret waking up, and not just because my soft mattress has been replaced by cold tile, or because my head is pounding. I regret it because the first thing that I see is darkness, and then, when my eyes adjust, I see the marble floor that Zeus bragged about having imported from Italy.

  I’m on the floor in the living room, and the wet spot on my ass seems to be growing, prompting me to roll over so that I see the vase of flowers that I got this afternoon, tipped over and dripping water over the glass table and onto me.

  How did I get here? I ask myself, almost annoyed enough to believe that I fell asleep on the couch again. But no, I clearly remember calling Zeus while I was in bed to say goodnight and tell him I loved him. As romance goes, I know that that isn’t exactly star quality, but it’s better than the phone sex that popped into my brain first before I stopped it in its tracks. Romance is key…

  Would you stop thinking about all that sappy shit and pay attention? You fell asleep in bed, my brain barks, spurring me to force my mind to work and think more clearly. I did fall asleep in bed, silently crying while feeling sorry for myself because Zeus cut our call short when I started to get a little deep, awkwardly leading into a conversation about how sorry I was. It was a little heart-clenching and embarrassing to realize that I was having some trouble getting to the sorry part, and even more hurtful when he said that he had to go before I could get there, but I have hope. He loves me, and I love him, and I can do this. I can make it right. All I need is the chance.

  Now, if only I could figure out how I got myself to the living room.

  “Good. You’re awake,” a deep voice barks, ripping the foggy veil of sleep right off.

  I know that voice. I don’t want to know that voice, but I watched enough tape of this man’s confession, before he was carted off to prison, to recognize it immediately. Hilan.

  “Stop squeezing your eyes shut, bitch, and look at me!” he hisses, his dark shape cutting out a flare of light when he crouches over me and slaps my cheek.

  My dad always told me that I should play possum in times of extreme stress. He said that you can fool your attacker and then spring a surprise attack of your own. He said that a top brass military guy told him that a long time ago, and that’s why he’s been fainting in front of Mom for years. I’m hoping that it will work for me but give a cry of pain instead, when my arm is gripped brutally, and I am yanked to my knees.

  My hands go up in defense and try to cling on to something as I fight to get my legs underneath me in order to take some of the strain off my arm.

  “There we go,” I hear him say before he tosses me onto the couch, his laughter ringing around me when I cry out and scramble up, my eyes now wide and taking in the situation.

  Hilan stands in front of the coffee table, his large body obscuring the front door behind him and cutting off my escape. He looks like hell, his blond hair oily and stuck to his head in disarray, while his face, a face that is coldly handsome, is held in a mask of fury that makes me think of a killer I once saw on a crime show. The victim’s mom described the guy as soulless, and I get that now, because what I see in Hilan’s eyes is nothing but emptiness.

  “You thought that you and that boyfriend of yours could send me to prison, huh? Thought that I’d just give in under the pressure and accept my fate? Well, I don’t ever fail on a job, bitch, and I don’t walk away until my mission is complete.”

  I tremble, my heart racing a mile a minute as I try to focus on anything other than his cold words and their implications. My ass is wet where my small silk nightie took the brunt of the water, and the skimpiness of my nightwear does nothing to hide my near-naked skin. My legs, stiff from the cold, are cramping to the point where my muscles are tense and balled up with the need to run, and my head is throbbing behind my right eye, obviously due to the aftereffects of whatever he gave me.

  I’m not a sound sleeper during the week, relying on my alarm to wake me, so I know for a fact that he did something to me, gave me something that must have made me sleep extra deeply.

  This is bad—really, really bad—and I know this based on a few reasons that have my heart rate exploding into a frantic gallop. One, this guy is in our apartment despite the heavy security that surrounds me at all times as I go to work and come home again. Are the guys out there, unaware of what is happening, or did Hilan hurt them, possibly kill them? It makes me sick with terror to think that they’re dead, and even sicker to think that I am trapped in here with a cold-blooded killer, my only escape blocked by over two hundred pounds of military-trained muscle.

  Two, I don’t have anything to use to defend myself with, because, after everything that happened, Zeus made me get rid of my weapons, reasoning that I shouldn’t ask for trouble, and convincing me that having a quirk wasn’t as important as keeping my freedom. Besides, half of those weapons were illegal, anyway.

  Though I could really use one right now, I think, as I scuttle back into the corner of the couch and try to remain calm.

  Don’t be a baby, Rosetta. You’re not a ’fraidy cat, I hiss silently, even as I gulp to keep tears of fright from leaking out. This man is here to kill me, and unless I stay calm and do something to stop him, he will succeed. I just don’t know how to fight something this…monstrous. What I do know is how to argue, and in the spirit of distracting him from his efforts, I start to talk, keeping my voice as firm and level as I can.

  “You killed those men and tried to frame me for it. You deserved to go to prison, and you deserved to be punished for your crimes, Mr. Hilan,” I say softly, thinking of what poor Donald and the others must have felt.

  Barnes Hilan isn�
�t a sight that I would want to see in my normal life, never mind as the last thing filling my vision before taking my last breath.

  “They were all assholes, Rosetta, and you know it. You think I didn’t know that they fired you without cause because one of them had a bug up his ass about female power in the workplace?” he snorts, his mouth tipping up when I find myself gaping.

  “Do not tell me that you’re a women’s rights activist, because I will not believe it,” I tell him, snorting when he grins and swipes a finger against his bottom lip, obviously enjoying the cat-and-mouse sparring.

  “Not really, but I didn’t think that it was fair the way they just railroaded you. After Black, I sorta figured that the least people could do was cut you some slack. Speaking fighter to fighter, I do have a little respect for your grit. It doesn’t sit well with me that you need to die, but hey, a job’s a job, right?” he shrugs, seeming so nonchalant that I find my temper spiking.

  This piece of garbage has no conscience and probably won’t regret killing me at all, and yet something about him has my mind racing, trying to wade through my panic in order to knit together the pieces of the tapestry that is this situation. I keep asking myself one question, one simple little question, and while I don’t want to die tonight and will fight like hell in order to survive, I know that there’s a strong possibility that I will in fact die. And I want answers first. Call it a macabre curiosity, if you will.

  “Tell me, Mr. Hilan, out of curiosity, and from one fighter to another, why are you doing this? Is it money? Because if it is, I have a lot more to offer you. If it’s something else—well, then, I have the right to know, in case I can sweeten the pot somehow,” I tell him, watching his eyes flicker before he grinds his jaw and breathes in deeply.

  “What I need, you don’t got, lady,” he says softly, the hard glint returning to his eyes when I shift and rise to my feet, forcing my shaking legs to hold me up.