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I’d had my father. He was absent and sometimes mean, but we’d wanted for nothing. “What happened to you?”
“What happens to kids in the United States who have no one? Foster care until I aged out at eighteen. Feels like it was a million years ago, not just two decades.” He finished his wine. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Layla. I decided the day they picked me up totake me into the system that I’d never need anyone to take care of me again. It’s a great feeling. From the moment I became an adult, I’ve controlled my own destiny. That’s what you can do, too. You’ll see what I mean. I promise.”
I leaned forward. “Why did you tell me?”
He held my gaze so long that my cheeks heated, but I refused to look away. Not until he answered me. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll never tell a soul.” I meant that to the depths of my own.
“I know, and I don’t know how I know that either.” Well, at least I wasn’t alone in my confusion.
8
“Hey, Layla,” Zeke called to me on my way up the stairs to go to bed. I kept trudging upwards. I shouldn’t have been tired again, but I was. Had I ever felt this old before? Ancient, really.
Finally, I got to my room, and I turned from the door to regard him from where he watched me from the top step. Despite my being tired, I knew I wouldn’t sleep. Too much had happened in one day, I had too much to digest in my brain. Not to mention, I really wasn’t used to that much food.
My body might outright reject it.
“Yes?”
“You have security, usually, correct?”
I nodded. “Yes, but my dad took it away.”
“My feeling is that we are probably paying for that through the company, so he can take it away, and I can give it back. Why did you have it? Stalkers?”
I shook my head. “It was never about me. Dad has people after him. He assumed that they might come after us to get to him. But I guess now that he’s done with me, he figures he won’tpay my ransom anyway. So why bother trying to keep that from happening?”
Zeke narrowed his gaze for a second, but I couldn’t read his thoughts. I wasn’t sure what he was considering. “I’ll speak to Michael Li, and I’ll see if he thinks you need security. He isn’t going to let you get hurt because your father is being an ass. If you need a detail, you’ll have one.”
“I’ve never had a detail. I had one person who used to follow me around. It changed all the time. Michael stays with my dad, but he sends others out with us.”
Zeke nodded. “Let me know if you need anything tonight. Otherwise, sleep well. We start at nine.”
“Right.”
Tomorrow, I would go to work—be his girlfriend until it made my father crazy enough that he gave up all his secrets to the people Zeke had trying to get that information.
In the meantime, I managed to put away all my clothes, since it looked like I’d be staying for a while. My clothes that would work for a beach vacation I would not be taking. I smiled. I could go romping around in my bikini if I really wanted to make a splash. For a half a second, I considered looking online to see what kind of write up I was getting after today, but I left it alone. There would be time for that pain and angst tomorrow. Better to not scroll before bedtime.
I washed, scrubbed, and moisturized my face before I dressed in a nightie I’d bought because I thought it might be sexy on my honeymoon. I remembered shopping for it online and thinking it looked like something a person should wear for such an occasion, not that I had wanted it. Always with the should.
Grabbing my phone before I plugged it in next to the bed, I shot off a message to Hope and Bridget. We used to have a group text going all the time, but lately, it had been silent. Were they talking to each other and just not me?
I wasn’t going there tonight.
Hope you got home okay. Did I make a terrible mistake?
I shot off the note and then silenced it. I’d read their responses in the morning. I didn’t suppose it mattered. It wasn’t like I could hit rewind and undo anything. Potential terrible decisions didn’t work like that.
The bed was comfortable. Someone had come in and made it while I’d been eating. Zeke’s silent staff. It was weird that he was just down the hall and even stranger that I didn’t find it odder than I did. He was a big presence. Always thinking, always circling back around, looking at angles. Then all of a sudden, he’d be funny or quirky. Followed by a mean remark.
Oh, and he was physically beautiful.
Alone in my room, I let myself dwell on that. The first time I’d been aware of him in the way that women noticed men was when I was thirteen. He’d been with my dad on the boat we were spending a week on for vacation. We’d hardly seen my dad. The nanny must have suggested the trip. She liked to fish and was trying to teach us how. Bridget had taken to it in the way that she did everything. Hope wandered off to read on the deck under shade, Justin was sleeping all the time, and I had spent the night getting sick because it turned out I suffered from sea sickness when on a boat. Having never been on one before, I’d had no idea, and it seemed no one particularly cared that it was happening to me.
They’d thought it would go away eventually, and fortunately it had, one day before we had left the boat.
