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Bash swiveled his chair toward hers and reached for her hand. The sincerity of the gesture stunned her.
“I’m truly sorry I ruined your vacation with my drama. It hasn’t helped the situation that I’ve been a complete ass. You could have walked away and left me to fend for myself last night, but instead, your quick thinking saved our lives. I’m not making excuses for my behavior, but you’ve seen firsthand why I was hesitant to reveal my identity. Bash is the nickname my close friends call me, and I am a writer. In my defense, I didn’t lie about any of that. Since you obviously didn’t recognize me, it didn’t seem important to elaborate. It never occurred to me the cottage break-in could be linked to me. I shudder to think what might have happened had you been there alone.”
She shrugged her shoulders and flashed a mischievous smile. “It wasn’t a complete disaster. I had a delicious dinner with a bestselling author. Took a little midnight swim. Got to spend the night on a luxury boat. All in all, not a terrible 16 hours.”
He shook his head. “Only you would see it that way.”
“I’m a glass half-full kind of girl.”
“I see you are.”
“So, why don’t you tell me what’s going on. Why are those men after you?” she asked, hoping she had earned his trust.
Bash ran his hands over his face, scratching his unshaven beard, trying to figure out how much he wanted to reveal. For some reason, he looked younger in the sunlight despite the fine lines on his forehead and around his eyes. Maybe it was his unguarded smile that brightened his handsome features, making his rainforest-green eyes gleam. His wavy, sun-streaked caramel hair curled just under his ears with a light sprinkle of premature gray woven around his temples. She hadn’t noticed any of those things last night, perhaps because he seemed so unapproachable, merely tolerating her presence. Maybe he still was, but she hoped not.
Bash took a deep breath. “An extremely powerful man, Maximillian Fontana, who is rumored to have ties to organized crime, has asked me to write his memoirs. Or maybe it’s a complete biography. I’m not sure of the details. He’s been extremely persistent about it and doesn’t seem to want to accept my refusal. I don’t want to be privy to the man’s secrets, nor does it make sense that he would come to a fiction writer. My friends, who also manage my business, cooked up this elaborate plan for me to disappear. No one, including them, is supposed to know exactly where I am. Imagine my surprise when, less than 36 hours later, you showed up at my door.”
“Wow. Sounds like your friends need to stick to what they’re good at and engage a high-risk security company to handle your safety. I promise you I had no idea that you would be in the house. Beth called me literally minutes before I turned into the driveway to tell me she wasn’t coming and that her dad had rented the house to someone else. Then, she offered me the cottage as an alternative. Everything went downhill from there. I’m not handy with household repairs, so the man I saw standing on the deck next door…” With her free hand, she flipped her pointer finger at him and cocked her head “…looked like my only option. And that’s the honest to God’s truth.”
He released her hand and sat back in his seat. “I believe you. I’m just not sure what to do at this point. We can’t go back to the lake house, and I’ve got to get as far away from those guys as soon as possible. Somehow, in this elaborate plan, someone was compromised. Now I don’t know who I can trust.”
“Pops told me when I was faced with a problem without all the facts, I had to rely on the things I was 100% sure of. You don’t know who you can’t trust, but do you know one person who you can trust? Someone you would stake your life on?”
“Another Popsism?” he asked. She nodded.
“Gray, for sure. He’s a lifelong friend and my agent,” he said without hesitation.
“Good. Then that’s your only contact for now,” she suggested.
He rubbed his chin and met her eyes. “You have this way of simplifying things.”
She gave him a wide grin and stuck out her hand. He cautiously took it. “Hi! I’m Morgan Skylar, kindergarten teacher. Breaking complex things into simple terms is my specialty!”
He chuckled. “I guess it is. Keeping all my communication with Gray sounds like a smart idea. One of many you seem to be good at coming up with. Let me ask you something. You’ve made a few offhanded comments about your grandfather being suspicious and overprotective. When those men showed up, you muttered about preparing for something like that all your life. What exactly did you mean by that?”
If he could open up to her, she figured she should do the same for him.
“I’ve never told anyone this. Not even Beth. I mean, she knew Pops was crazy paranoid, but she never knew why. Just thought he was over the top. In all the years we’ve known each other, she’s never once been to my house. Or even met Pops.”
Bash’s eyes narrowed. “How is that even possible?”
“He’s talked to Beth and her parents on the phone, but it took years for him to develop that trust. They’ve never met face-to-face. I usually went home with her after school. If Pops dropped me off at her house, he never got out of the car. She was my only friend, and her house was the only place I could go. Pops even paid to have a background check done on Mr. Worthington before he allowed me to play with her.”
He looked confused. “That’s extreme. I don’t understand. They didn’t see each other at school events? You know…plays, school picnics, football games?”
“The only time Pops went to my school was to enroll me in kindergarten. After that, his communications were either through mail, online, or a phone call. He never attended any of my school activities. I didn’t either unless it was required. Thanks to Beth, some of that changed when I was fifteen.” Saying it out loud brought back the pain she had felt being alone among the families of her schoolmates. The looks of pity. Feelings of being an outsider.
“What did Beth do to change his mind?”
“Found out where Pops’ bike repair shop was and called him. She told him he was ruining my life. I was lonely, and he only had himself to blame when I ran away from home. Not if but when. She said she would help me, too. Either he loosened his grip on me, or she was going to the school counselor. And she wanted me to spend my vacations at the lake with her family. Beth can drive a hard bargain. Of course, she made up the running away part, but it worked. He admired her moxie. I could go to school activities, but only if I went with her. And he begrudgingly agreed to the vacations after he talked to Mr. Worthington. I didn’t have any real freedom until I went away to college. That’s where I had my first date.”
“Did he have a valid reason? Or was he just overprotective?”
She took a deep breath and blew it out. No one knew about her family. “A bit of both, I think. My mother died of a drug overdose, and my father was in prison. Still is, as far as I know. Pops wouldn’t tell me why he went to prison but said it would be for a long time. His biggest fear was if my father got out early, he would come looking for me.
“Pops got in trouble a lot when he was young, and he wasn’t married. He knew the courts would never let him have guardianship of me. He didn’t want me to go into foster care, and he never wanted me to be in my father’s custody, so he took me away. He changed our names, bought a house in a rural area, and he opened a bike repair shop twenty miles from where we lived. It was a cash only business. We didn’t live off the grid, but Pops went to great lengths to stay off the public radar. I don’t even know my real name.”
She could read it on his face. It was too unbelievable. Or perhaps he suspected the same thing Beth had feared. Had Pops kidnap her from her real family?
