Stolen Hearts

by M. O’Keefe

  “Okay.” I nodded like we’d signed a deal, and Caroline sat back, eyeing me with a careful smile.

  “It wasn’t kind of me to put you on the spot like that. But I knew if we’d run that by you—”

  “I wouldn’t have done it?” I interrupted.

  “No. You would have. But you would have spent two weeks thinking about it. Hurting yourself with it.”

  That was undoubtedly true.

  “Don’t be angry with me, Pops,” she said. “I was only trying to do what had to be done. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said because what else was I going to do? Hold a grudge? Against Caroline? Impossible. She smiled, sitting back in her seat.

  “But you have to understand that it’s different now. I’m different.”

  Caroline shook her head at me, a smile spreading across her face. “God, your mother would be so proud of you right now.”

  The compliment stroked me like nothing else in the world could. “I suppose it’s about time,” I said.

  “I’d say.”

  “So?” I said. “Are you going to tell me about this foundation we’ve started?”

  “Yes.” She checked her watch and stood up. “But I have to go into the city for a meeting. I’ll have Justin send over the details. Jim signed the paperwork before he died. You can step in as executive director as soon as you’re ready.”

  “Executive director?” I said, stunned.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I have zero experience.”

  “You worked for Jim’s foundation.” She shrugged.

  “Yeah, as like a glorified fundraiser.”

  “That’s not true,” Caroline said. “You had big plans.”

  “Caroline,” I said and shook my head. They were hardly big plans. It was an idea that with enough money we could solve small problems. Make big changes in small ways. Micro-loans for single mothers. Breakfast programs for smaller school districts. Rural bus route improvements. Fidget toys for diagnostic kindergartens. Classroom wish lists for public school teachers. The kinds of programs that weren’t sexy and didn’t make the news, but that would really matter.

  “They were creative, and you are capable. I’ll be right behind you making sure nothing goes wrong. But I have total faith in you.”

  Total faith. Had anyone ever had total faith in me? Had I ever had total faith in me?

  I got to my feet. “Monday?” I asked.

  “Do you feel like you’re ready to go to work?”

  “Past ready. But—” I was really feeling myself here.

  “You want to negotiate salary?”

  “No.” I didn’t need money. I had more money than I knew what to do with. “But you’re not lying to me anymore, Caroline. I’m not a pawn you can push around to get what you want. I owe you so much, but I don’t owe you my pride anymore.”

  She looked at me for a long time, completely unreadable. And then she smiled, not the soft fuzzy one I usually got, but the one she saved for her bloodthirsty children.

  “What’s gotten into you?” she asked.

  “I don’t actually know,” I said. But Ronan was the answer. Ronan and burning my clothes.

  “Well, I like it. When you’re ready, call me.”

  On the tip of my tongue was a question about Ronan, about who he really was and why she trusted him, but she was all but pushing me out the door. And I didn’t know how to ask about Ronan without giving everything away. Every conflicted feeling I was wrestling with when it came to him.

  Just thinking his name made me blush.

  There were moments last night when I hated him as much as I ever hated Jim. But I never wanted a man the way I wanted Ronan.

  No man had ever made me so curious. Or reckless.

  And the way he seemed to know the power of asking for what I wanted? What was I supposed to do with that kind of man?

  “The foundation’s offices are in the Halcyon building. When you’re ready, we will get you all set up.”

  I wondered briefly why the offices weren’t in the brownstone, but in the end it didn’t matter. My future was happening.

  There was a memory, dim and fragmented, of my two years at college. How I’d ridden my bike around Union, feeling that excited . . . possibility. This feeling in my chest didn’t feel like that, but I wasn’t a girl anymore.

  That excitement was behind me. But maybe I had a chance at being useful again. At doing something good. And if I wasn’t excited, I was challenged. Interested. Ready.

  From Caroline’s office I went down all the stairways and out the side door. I passed a dozen servants as I went, each of them smiling and following me with their eyes like I’d done something suspicious. Outside the sun was burning off the fog, and I walked across the lawn to the treeline and the small gate that I’d used to get here.

  At the sight of a man standing there, I stopped, apprehensive. What was the deal with all this security? I wondered. But then I realized it was Ronan, and my apprehension morphed into something far more complicated. Fear and anger and a desire so strong I felt drunk.

  “This is how you got through all the security?” he asked, pushing the wooden gate open and closed. The squeal of its rusty hinges startled birds from the forest behind him.

  “How’d you find it?”

  He gestured behind me, my dark tracks in the dew spangled grass. “Well, congratulations,” I said. “You caught me infiltrating the compound. Whatever will you do with me?”

  He licked his upper lip in a move that was so outrageously sexy, so . . . dirty, I felt my nipples harden under the baggy coat I wore.

  “You got a mouth on you,” he said.

  The better to bite you with, I thought but definitely didn’t have the balls to say. “What do you want?”

  He lifted his eyes.

  “You forgot something at the gala,” he said.

  My pride?

  He held out my clutch. The dark indigo silk beautiful against his skin and the white of his shirt. I took it, careful not to touch him, but he held onto it for a second.

  “Poppy,” he said.

  “What?”

  All that deadly stillness, that careful practiced impenetrable mask he wore every time I saw him since that first meeting here, two years and a lifetime ago, it dropped, and I recognized the beaten, slightly baffled man I’d met in the shadows. The man who wasn’t sure why he was here, or who he was supposed to be inside this house.

  You, I thought. I recognize you.

  “You need to be careful, Princess,” he said.

  “Of you? Lesson learned.”

  He tugged on the purse, and I fell off balance towards him. My body collided with his, and I gasped, affronted and unimpressed by his little tricks.

  But also stupidly turned on.

  “I’m not what’s coming through your door.”

  “You’re not coming through anything of mine,” I snapped back at him, and his lips curled, heat settling between us.

  “Sweetheart,” he whispered, his breath against my mouth. “If I came through your door, we both know you’d spread your legs for me so fast—”

  I grabbed the purse and shoved away from him.

  “I survived the monster under my bed,” I said. “And I’m rich now, or haven’t you heard?”

  “Your money won’t keep you safe,” he said. “And there is more than one monster in Bishop’s Landing.”

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I’m no one, Princess. I’ve told you that.”

  “I’m not a fool, Ronan. You were at my house. You talked to the senator. You’re living in Caroline’s pocket. Who. Are. You?”

  He stepped closer, and I stood my ground, not about to cower. Those days were over.

  “Try it, asshole. See what happens,” I growled at him, and his eyes opened wide for a second as if surprised. As if impressed.

  “I’m no one,” he said again. “You need to concentrate on your own life.”

  “Y
ou need to fuck off.”

  He was repeating himself, and if he wasn’t going to bring something new to our conversation I was done. Done with him. Done with who he’d turned me into. The gate was cockeyed and open, and I pushed past him and slipped between it and the fence heading into the forest, down the trail back to my house.

  I didn’t turn around despite the fact I could feel the burn of his gaze on the bare skin of my neck. That had to win me some points, right?

  One thing was clear – he was the danger. Ronan was the unknown. The new monster in my life. And I’d learned some valuable lessons from my last one. Information was key. I wouldn’t be walking into anything blindly. Not again.

  Once I was out of sight of the compound, I opened my purse and pulled out my phone.

  Four texts from Zilla. A missed call. I had enough battery left to call her back.

  “Hey!” She answered halfway through the first ring, and it did not escape me that our roles for the moment were reversed. “You had me worried.”

  “Sorry, I left my phone at a gala. I just got it back.”

  “A gala,” she said. “Sounds awful.”

  “It was. It really . . . was.”

  “What’s wrong, Poppy?”

  I bit my lip and stared up at the sky. This was a big dangerous step. “If you needed to find out something about a Constantine, how would you find it?”

  “None of this sounds like a good idea.”

  “There’s a guy working for Caroline, and I just need to know his story.”

  “Have you tried asking him?”

  “You’re hilarious.” This was crossing a line; I was well aware of that. But I couldn’t live like this anymore. The girl left in the dark. And I couldn’t wait for people to decide to tell me what I needed to know.

  I had to get my own answers.

  “Well, you won’t like my answer,” Zilla said.

  “What would you do?”

  “Call a Morelli.”

  “I don’t know any,” I said.

  “I do. But, Poppy, are you sure you want to do this? You might start another Morelli and Constantine war, and you’ll be right in the middle of it.”

  “Zilla,” I said, stepping through the tall grass. I hit the top of the hill. The senator’s house . . . my house, down below. “I don’t have that kind of power.”

  “Well, you’ve never been a good judge of how much power you have, Poppy. But stay by your phone. I’ll be in touch.”

  10

  “Another?” the bartender at the Red Hook dive bar asked me. He had a t-shirt on with the sleeves cut out. I could see his armpit hair. It was revolting. And fascinating.

  “No, thank you,” I said, thinking I needed to be on top of my game. Whatever game that was. One very cheap Pinot Grigio was all I was going to have before meeting my sister’s mysterious Morelli.

  This was a bad idea. I could see that from my vantage spot on this hard stool in this shabby bar. But since the second I decided to find out what I could about Ronan, I’d been obsessed. What happened the night of the gala had been running through my mind on a loop, forcing me to live in this sort of anguished, disbelieving and constantly turned-on place.

  And I didn’t know a single thing about the guy other than how his hand felt against my throat. What his voice sounded like in my ear. How his wrist felt against the bare skin of my belly.

  Sex wasn’t something I thought about. Not for a long, long time. And now, the brush of my clothes against my skin put me on edge. The seam of my jeans between my legs had me halfway to orgasm. I wanted to forget everything he did to me. But I replayed every moment like my sister played Pink’s Greatest Hits when she was eleven. Nonstop.

  “You want food or something?” the bartender asked, sliding a plastic menu at me. He could not seem less invested in me wanting food.

  “I’m fine. I’m just meeting someone.”

  “Whatever,” he said and turned back to the baseball game playing on the television over the bar.

  I’d never been in a bar like this. Sticky floor. Neon signs. There were bowls of peanuts, and people just threw the shells on the floor. It was unhygienic, disrespectful, and dangerous for people with allergies and . . . amazing.

  All these people who just did not give a shit? I mean . . . I didn’t want to know them, but it was fun to see it happening.

  Zilla had told me to dress down. To try and not stand out, so I wore jeans I hadn’t worn in years and a sweatshirt from Union College, my alma mater. My hair was back in a ponytail, and I had no makeup on my face. Not even mascara. I found an old pair of Converse tennis shoes in the back of my closet from my days before Jim, and they fit just like they used to.

  I felt like a kid doing something really wrong.

  And I kind of liked it.

  The bell over the door rang out, and the bartender looked over and threw his hands up in the air.

  “No way, man,” he said. “Again?”

  I turned as a man walked in wearing a suit and a do-not-fuck-with-me expression. His silence was seriously the most threatening thing I’d ever experienced, and he just stared at the bartender and his armpit hair.

  “Everyone clear out,” the bartender finally shouted. People ignored him until he brought his fingers to his lips and split the air with a whistle that got everyone’s attention. “I said get out.”

  I’d already paid my bill, so I grabbed my purse and went to walk out with everyone else. Was it some political thing? Was the president coming in? Oh my god, was it the mob? It hardly mattered, I was just happy to get out of this suddenly tense bar. But the silent man at the door stopped me. “Not you,” he said and pointed me back towards the bar stool I’d just left.

  “But—” I looked up at his face and shut up. This unassuming man was nothing but dark inside. Dead. His eyes were reptilian. A chill ran down my spine.

  I turned and sat back down on my stool.

  “You know every time this shit happens, I lose thousands of dollars,” the bartender said.

  “Abe,” a woman said as she came walking in the door. If I was dressed down, she was dressed to the nines. A fur coat and long dark brown hair. Diamonds in her ears, more on her fingers. Leopard print Louboutins. “Every time this shit happens, I pay you more than this place makes in a year.”

  “It’s the principal, Eden.”

  “It’s a shithole, Abe.”

  “Well, it’s my shithole. And I’ve got some pride.”

  “Here.” Eden made her way over to the bar and pulled from her Coach+Billy Reid Crocodile Tote a stack of bills and put it on his bar. “That should help with the pride. And bring me a bottle of whatever passes for vodka back there.”

  Abe rolled his eyes but pocketed the bills and brought over to where I was sitting a bottle of Grey Goose and two rocks glasses filled with ice. He set them on the bar, and I sat back like they were alive and going to bite.

  So, clearly, I’d made a few mistakes in asking for this meeting.

  “Thank you, Abe,” she said in a sing song voice as she walked across the bar to me. Prowled really. I felt like I was being stalked by some jungle cat.

  This was my sister’s Morelli. She had the signature dark looks and the same frantic energy just under her skin. The same fuck-you-world way of moving through a place. The fur coat parted as she walked, sliding down over a shoulder. The mink grazing across the floor, through the peanut shells.

  I winced on the mink’s behalf.

  “You look like a tourist,” the woman said. Eden? That was what the bartender called her.

  “I’ve never been here,” I said with a shrug.

  “No shit.” The skintight black dress poured over her impressive Morelli curves and ended at the very tops of her legs. She was sex walking, and I felt stupid in my jeans. In my body.

  She walked past me to the jukebox in the corner, and I swivelled on my stool to watch her. It felt dangerous to take my eyes off her.

  She held out her hand towards me.

/>   “Quarter?” she said, still looking at the jukebox.

  “I . . . ah . . . I don’t have any change.”

  “Jacob?” Eden said, and the man standing at the door put a hand in his pocket and pulled out some change. He walked across the room and put a quarter in her palm. “You like Dolly?” she asked.

  I glanced at dead-inside Jacob and then looked for Abe who wasn’t behind the bar.

  “Are you talking to me?”

  “Oh my god, honey, yes. I am talking to you. And now you don’t get a vote.”

  Eden punched the buttons with a lot of enthusiasm, and within minutes Jolene was coming through the speakers.

  “You know, if I wrote music,” Eden said turning away from the jukebox. “I would write a song called Dolly entirely from Jolene’s point of view and it would be like, why do you want such a shit guy? If I can take him, just because I can, don’t you think it’s worth looking for some other dude?”

  Eden sat on the chair next to me. Her knee hitting mine. Her fur slipping over my leg.

  “I don’t honestly understand why no one has done that yet,” she said, looking at me with her eyebrows up.

  “Me neither,” I said, having given this question zero thought.

  “You must be Poppy,” she said, filling each glass with Grey Goose. She picked hers up and held it out for a cheers. But I didn’t pick mine up. This was all moving a little too fast. She tapped the edge of her glass against mine before draining hers. “You don’t look at all like those pictures of you in the news.”

  “No?” I asked, oddly curious if this was a good thing or a bad thing.

  “You look like a human. In the news you looked like a paper doll.”

  I laughed.

  “Did I say something funny?”

  “I was a paper doll. Exactly a paper doll.”

  “What can I say? I’ve got a way with words. You going to drink with me, or what?” She picked up my glass and all but put it in my hands. “Cheers Big Ears,” she said and touched her glass to mine and shot down another glass full of vodka. I took a sip and attempted to set down my glass, but she put her fingers against the bottom of it. Tipping the glass so I had to drink or it would spill all over.