Before she could stand and get their attention, Purson was there, greeting them and leading them off to the backyard.
* * * *
Ted’s senses were already on high alert when Purson practically tackled them upon their return and asked them into the backyard for a private discussion.
After making sure the camera crews weren’t around, Purson started, keeping his voice low. “Guys, you really need to be more careful. I can control the edits and what gets on the air in the final cuts, but I don’t want anyone taking any cell phone videos of you four together.”
“What?” Ted asked. “What are you talking about?”
“Essie,” Purson said. “Cat’s out of the bag. One of my guys overheard something or saw you three with her and now he knows you’re a poly item, as it were.” He waggled a finger at them. “Congrats, but you need to be more careful unless you don’t care who knows. If that’s the case, then we can use it to add an extra level of interest.”
“No,” all three of them said at once. Ted held out a staying hand to his brothers. “No,” he repeated. “We don’t want our personal lives in focus like that. We certainly don’t want Essie being in the limelight.”
“Okay, that’s what I figured.” Purson ran a hand through his hair. His voice returned to its normal tone. “I’ll handle my crew member, but you guys be more careful, okay?”
“Thanks.”
“While I have you here, I need to talk to you about the case with Lisa Parker’s mom. When can we start filming that? And do you think Essie will let us film her for that case? At least give us an interview about rescuing the dogs?”
Mark and Ted left that up to Josh. Josh rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know. We can ask her. She was pretty upset about it. It was overwhelming for her. I don’t know how she handled it so well.”
* * * *
Essie once again stopped at the corner of the house, listening. The film crew had stayed with her mom, the second crew focusing on the cleanout inside, the third crew taking a lunch break.
“I don’t know how she handled it so well,” she heard Josh say. “She took it like a champ, though. Like she’d been doing it for years. I was worried about her at first, but she had a good cry when we finished, and I think she did okay.”
Shocked, she found she couldn’t make her feet move. Frozen in place, she listened, horrified at the men’s betrayal.
“Well,” Purson said, “please talk to her about that. Getting her on film in that situation, it’d be a great thing. Add some depth to her story, too. Show another side of her.”
“Let us handle it,” Mark said. “We’ll talk to her about it. See if we can ease her into the idea.”
Ease me into it, my ass. Anger and shame coursed through her, with grief egging those emotions on.
She’d trusted them.
Worse, she knew she’d fallen in love with them.
She turned on her heel and headed, practically at a dead run, for Loren and Ross’ house.
Once locked inside her room, she ripped off the microphone, making sure it was off before she tossed it onto the bed.
Then she locked the bathroom door going to her mom’s room and jumped into the shower, just long enough to hose off the grime and sweat. With adrenaline still coursing through her and making her hands tremble, she quickly packed all her things, searching through the dresser to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. She shut her phone off and jammed it and her laptop into her carry-on bag.
Once she was ready to go, she unlocked the doors, took a deep breath, and snuck out the back door and around the side of the house to where her rental was parked on the grass next to the driveway. She threw her suitcases and carry-on into the trunk and darted across the street to where her mom was still sorting stuff.
Before she could start crying, Essie hugged her mom and reached down to shut her mom’s mic off. “I have an emergency,” she whispered. “I have to go. I love you, and I’ll call you when I get back to Spokane. I left my mic on the bed in the guest room. Please tell Ross and Loren thank you for everything for me.” She switched her mom’s mic back on and, before her mom could protest, Essie was bolting for her rental car.
She had already pulled out of Ross and Loren’s driveway when she saw in her rearview mirror that her mom had flagged down the three brothers.
Forcing herself to look forward instead of back, she quickly headed for I-75. It wasn’t until she was on the interstate that she glanced in her mirror again, afraid she’d see a pickup truck with her three men in it pursuing her.
And partly afraid she might feel disappointed if they weren’t.
Fuck. Them.
As she neared the turn-off for the Skyway, her determination faltered.
I should have had it out with them there.
Then the scared voice fought back. You haven’t doubted yourself for quite a few years. Why would you start doubting yourself now?
She resisted the urge to pull off into the southern rest area just before the bridge. If she stopped now, she knew her determination might falter. Instead, she pressed on, all the way to Tampa International, where she ditched her rental car.
She didn’t have a return ticket. She’d booked the flight one-way, not sure how long she’d be there. As she approached the airline ticket counter she realized she didn’t even know when the next flight to Spokane was.
After waiting a few minutes in line, the ticket agent was able to book her on a flight to Denver leaving in two hours. From there she’d have to spend the night before catching an early-morning flight to Spokane that would get her on the ground before eight o’clock local time the next morning.
Essie nodded. “Perfect. That. Give me that.” She handed over her photo ID and credit card.
Hell, I can even make it in to work tomorrow.
* * * *
“What the hell?” Mark said, his hands planted on his hips.
He turned on his brothers. “What the hell did you guys do?”
“Us?” Ted protested. “We didn’t do anything.”
Mark and Josh both whipped out their cell phones. Mark assumed Josh was trying Essie’s phone, too. “Dude, I’m trying to call her,” Mark told him.
“Screw that, I’m trying to call her.”
“Both of you, stop it. I’ll call her,” Ted ordered as he pulled out his phone.
It went straight to voice mail.
Mindful of the film crew and microphones, he was careful. “Essie, it’s Ted. Please call us.”
Loren had returned to their house. She emerged from the front door, carrying the mic and battery pack Essie had been using. “All her stuff is gone. This was on the bed.” Purson took it from her and headed for the production trailer.
A moment later, he returned, frowning as he walked over. “I think I know what happened.” He led just the three men over to the production trailer where their equipment was set up.
Purson ordered everyone out of the trailer except the three brothers. Once they were alone, he motioned to them. “Switch off your mic packs.”
They did.
He queued up a feed on a laptop. “This is from Essie’s mic.” They heard sounds, like she was walking, indistinct voices in the background that came into focus.
It was the conversation between Purson and his film crew member.
“Shit,” Ted muttered. “She heard that.”
Purson paused it, nodding. “Oh, it gets better. I bet she got the wrong end of the stick on part of our conversation.” He queued the feed again and hit play.
From the sound of it, she had approached the backyard right in the middle of Purson’s discussion with them.
Ted looked at his brothers. “She only heard the tail end of it. She thought we were talking about—” His mouth snapped shut as he looked at Purson.
Purson held up both hands. “Hey, I don’t judge, okay? I’m pretty kinky.”
“I was talking about her rescuing the dogs,” Josh said. “You guys were there, y
ou know that’s what I meant!”
“Yeah, we know that,” Mark countered, “but she didn’t.”
Ted ran a hand through his hair. “Mark, keep trying to call her.”
“Why can’t I call her?” Josh asked.
“Because we all can’t keep trying to call her. Text her if you want, but if we all bomb her phone it’ll just keep going to voice mail.” He turned to leave.
“Where are you going?” Mark asked, his phone already to his ear.
Ted paused. “To call Tracy and have her make us plane reservations for first thing in the morning.”
“What?” Mark and Josh echoed.
“Duh. She’s going back to Spokane. Obviously, we have to go to Spokane, unless Essie picks up or responds. Which, considering how she left, I sincerely doubt she will.”
“Can’t we tell her mom?” Josh asked.
Ted and Mark both rounded on him.
“Oh, brilliant,” Mark said, pausing only to hit speed dial again on his phone and wait for it to go through. “Yeah, let’s tell her mom what we’ve done and why she left. Because Essie thought we were going to put our sex lives on the fucking air. Dumbass.”
Josh reddened. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Josh,” Ted said, yanking off his mic pack, “get our work crew set for tomorrow. Get the foreman up to speed with the schedule, and tell him we’ve got an emergency consultation or something we have to take care of.” He handed the mic pack to Purson. “You can handle it from your end, I take it?”
“Yeah.”
Ted stepped in close and jabbed a finger at Purson. “You keep that crew member of yours under tight wraps. I find any fucking hint of him putting our private lives out there for the world to see, and I will personally show up in Ryan Ausar’s office and give him holy fucking hell about it.”
Purson snorted. “Well, we wouldn’t want that,” he drawled.
“What?”
“Sorry, I’m just…Sorry. Go after her. My mic was live and caught the whole thing. Lucky for you guys. I’ll e-mail you an audio file of the full conversation from my mic feed so you can play it for her and she’ll understand what she didn’t hear. And I’ll take care of the crew. No one will breathe a word.”
Purson set the mic pack down. “You just be careful from now on. Show a little more discretion.” He reached under his shirt, grabbing his bloodstone amulet as he walked. “I’ll go do what I do best,” he muttered as he headed out of the trailer.
Chapter Twenty
It was late that evening at a hotel in Denver when Essie finally turned her phone back on. As she’d expected, she faced a barrage of concerned text messages and voice mails from her men.
Well, not her men anymore.
She deleted the men’s voice mails and texts, unread and unplayed. She was in no mood to deal with them. Once she was back home and settled and feeling stable again, she’d e-mail them and tell them off and make it absolutely clear that she was ending things with them.
And that she didn’t want them to contact her again.
It was her mom’s plaintive tone in her voice mails, however, that made her break down.
“Sweetheart, please, I don’t know what happened, but call me, okay? I love you. I don’t want to lose you again. I’m worried about you, and so are the boys.”
Essie suppressed a bitter snort at that term. They were no “boys.” They were coldhearted assholes concerned only about their image, obviously.
After taking a deep breath to calm herself, she called her mom’s cell phone. She answered almost immediately.
“Essie? Sweetie, are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Mom. Couldn’t make it all the way to Spokane tonight, but I’ll be there in the morning.”
“Where are you?”
“Layover in Denver.”
“What happened? Why did you leave?”
She couldn’t tell her mom about the guys and what she’d done with them. “It’s a long story. You didn’t do anything wrong, Mom, I promise. Once I get everything situated on my end, I’ll let you know when I can come back and visit you again. It won’t be long.”
“Please, Essie, talk to me. I know I wasn’t there for you when you needed me but please don’t shut me out like this now.”
Essie barely succeeded in holding back her tears. “Mom, I promise, I’m not shutting you out. It’s…complicated. Very complicated, and it has nothing to do with you, I swear. I can’t get into it.”
Maybe the men would talk about what they’d done, but she wouldn’t stoop to their level, if nothing else. “I need to get off here, my phone’s almost dead. Love you, and I’ll call you when I get to Spokane tomorrow.”
She hated how sad her mom sounded. “Love you, too, sweetie.”
Once Essie ended the call, she shut the phone off again, rolled over, and sobbed into her pillow.
* * * *
The next morning, Essie turned her phone on only long enough to delete texts and voice mails from the men, as well as to text Amy.
Landing 7:46 a.m. Spokane from Denver. Can U get me?
She held her breath, just about to gasp for air when her friend replied.
What happened?
Nearly sobbing in relief, she texted her back.
Can’t talk now. Pls?
Amy responded almost immediately. Ok. Want deets later.
Will do.
She started to shut her phone off again, but not before another text from Mark arrived.
Will you please call us and talk to us? We’re worried. Love you.
She angrily deleted it and turned her phone off.
I’ll have to dump that crap off my Kindle, too. I was stupid to think those kinds of fairy tales could really come true. Idiot.
Essie thought Amy would be sitting in the cell phone lot and awaiting her text to pick her up at the terminal, but instead she was standing just outside the security zone inside the terminal, waiting on her and holding two Starbucks cups.
Essie thought she might break down crying right there but somehow struggled to keep it together as she carefully hugged her friend before taking the cup Amy offered her.
“Thank you,” Essie said. “For this and especially for the ride.”
“Let’s go get your bags.” She draped an arm around Essie’s shoulders and led her toward the baggage claim area. “And then I want to know what the hell happened.”
“I want to get home and changed and get into work.”
“Work? Seriously? After what you’ve been through? How about a recovery day? And lucky you Pete’s on forty-eight. I, however, was planning on sleeping late and enjoying my day off.”
“Sorry.” Now she felt even worse. Once again, she’d totally upended her friend’s life.
“Naw, it’s all right.” She held Essie’s coffee for her while Essie pulled her luggage off the carousel and transferred it to a cart. “But I do want the story.”
“I was stupid,” she said as she pushed the cart toward the doors. “I trusted not just one guy, but three, and got my heart broken.” She stopped and turned to Amy. “I just want to get back into my life as soon as possible. I want to go to work, forget what happened, and resume my routine.”
Amy frowned before leaning in for a hug. “When you get home tonight, we’ll go out to eat and you’ll spill your guts over a bottle of wine and get shit-faced and tell me everything. Okay? I’ll be your DD and hold your hair when you puke before you pass out.” She smiled.
Essie smiled back. “That sounds like heaven.”
Amy blinked, shock evident on her face. “Wow. You really did have something fucking bad happen, huh?”
“No, just something really fucking stupid.”
Amy left Essie on the curb while she got her car. Twenty minutes later, they were on the elevator back to their apartment. Opening the door and walking in felt like…
Heaven.
She closed her eyes and inhaled. They both loved the scent of vanilla and had reed oil diffus
ers scattered around the place.
While it was tempting to fall onto her bed and cry, she knew she needed to get back into her routine as soon as possible. It would be the only thing to keep her sane. And as much as it killed her not to start doing her dirty laundry immediately, she knew there’d be plenty of time for washing as well as telling Amy her personal dirty laundry later.
She changed into work scrubs, grabbed a spare pair for her bag in case of an accident at work, and headed back downstairs after hugging Amy. When she reached her car, she paused only to call her mom and tell her she was there and safe and that she was heading in to work.
Her boss was surprised to see her, but glad she’d come in. They’d had three emergencies arrive already that morning, and they were short-handed because one of the other tech’s kids had come down with the flu.
By the time lunch rolled around, Essie knew this had been the right decision. She kept her phone turned off and in her purse, locked in her locker in the back room. She didn’t want to look at it.
When two of the other techs asked her to go to lunch with them, she readily accepted, glad for the additional distraction.
I knew it. I needed this. I needed it more than anything else. To get back to where I belong.
It might not be with a Dom, but at least I know what I’m getting.
And she’d keep repeating that to herself until she finally believed it.
Maybe, one day, she would believe it.
* * * *
The men were quiet that morning as they emerged from the terminal a little before noon. They’d gained a couple of hours, but were starving because they hadn’t taken time to eat since before they flew out of Tampa.
After getting their rental car, with Josh navigating and Ted driving, they found Essie’s apartment building.
“Do we call first?” Josh asked.
“We call Amy,” Ted said.
“What?” his brothers asked.
“Amy. Her roommate.” He pulled out his phone and found the number he wanted.
A Clean Sweep [Suncoast Society] (Siren Publishing Sensations) Page 20
