Broken Bonds (Club Imperial Series) (5 page)

“Are you up for a little work?” Victor peered at her.

“I’m bored out of my gourd. Judge Judy is a raging bitch and I love her, but if I have to hear one more word out of those ingrates’ mouths, I’m liable to shoot the television.”

“Well, I guess we can shut that off.” He laughed and pressed the power button. He pulled the laptop out and started plugging everything in. “You okay with this?”

“I wish you and your brother would stop spoiling me.”

“No, I meant with doing a little work while you’re sitting here.”

Emmy laughed. “I’m fine with it! I’m bored, I told you.”

“You really think we’re spoiling you?”

“Yes, and you’re ignoring me when I tell you to quit it.”

“We will continue to do so. You can’t pull that Domme stuff on me, young lady. I’m your boss, and we run a vanilla lumber yard.” Victor paused, then turned to Emmy who had a hand over her mouth giggling. “Well, then. Let’s get down to the business of my wood.”

Emmy burst out laughing. “Victor! Stop! It’s only going to get worse!”

He shook his head, laughing with her. “Yes, Mistress.”

Emmy pursed her lips. “Victor, please don’t call me that. How much did you see in there?”

“Enough to have to Google ‘sounders’.”  He grimaced. “People enjoy that?”

“Some do.”

“I’m just glad we found that in the off-limits closet.” He laughed. “That would have been way TMI for me about my brother. I love him, but damn, I don’t need to know that.”

“I’m sorry you had to find out at all.” Emmy had never meant to let her boss know what she enjoyed in the bedroom, but when he’d been part of the group who saved her ass, she supposed it didn’t really make much of a difference.

“I’m sorry I went berserk on my brother about it.” He sighed heavily. “I, of all people, should know better.” Victor put the laptop down on the tray table and rolled it over to her. “Ready to go back to work, Ms. Westerly?”

“Yes, Mr. Walsh, I believe I am.”

“Good.” He sat on the bed. “Because this is what we’ve been waiting for. These are reports from the yard and the results of the investigations. I need you to correlate the data in some sort of readable format so we can start thinking about how best to take these guys down.” He smiled at her. “I thought working here without anyone walking around behind you to bother you would be the best use of time.”

She smiled at him. “I’d crack my knuckles, but I’m working one-handed for now.”

He winked. “Knowing you, that’s all you’ll need.”

Chapter Five

“Got it?” Nathaniel asked.

“Will you stop?” Emmy snapped. “My arm’s broken, not my legs. Not like you’re doing any better.” He stuck his tongue out her. “Don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep.”

“I do intend to keep it, just not right this moment. So please get in the car?” Nathaniel gestured broadly to the open door. 

Emmy lowered herself onto the back seat, careful of the bruises and stitches in her side. The ribs still hurt badly, but she had improved so much the doctor had discharged her one week after she arrived. She was glad for it; she was tired of being in that bed and in that hospital.

She didn’t really look forward to having to fend for herself in the apartment. She was also displeased she wouldn’t be able to do much of anything at all for another week, and with severe restrictions continuing after that for another four weeks. Which basically meant no club, no having a little fun here and there, no touchy-feely. Nothing sexual at all. For five more weeks.

She settled into the seat and grimaced. Shouldn’t have thought about the sex thing. Now she was going to be thinking about it constantly.

Nathaniel climbed in the back seat as well and pulled the door closed. “This is the last time I want to see the inside of Magee-Womens for a very long time.” 

“I second the motion,” she breathed a long sigh.

“I’m sorry your mom can’t get the time to visit next week,” he said. “I was hoping she’d be out.”

“I love my mom,” Emmy explained, “but this is going to work out better. Trust me. She’s a handful, and I’m really in no position to deal with her.”

“She seems so nice,” Nathaniel said.

“She is,” Emmy agreed. “Too nice, really. It was very sweet of you to offer to fly her here.”

“She really wanted to come out,” he said. “We’ll get her here, soon.”

Emmy nodded. She didn’t want to deal with her mother coming to see her in this condition. She would inevitably start making negative memories on everything around her, tainting the life she had very carefully built without her. Alyssa-free. She did want to visit her mother, but on her terms, away from the safe zone of Pittsburgh.

The front door opened and Quinn climbed in. He looked back and nodded. “All set, Mr. Walsh?”

“As set as we’re going to be.” Nathaniel clicked the seatbelt in on himself after locking Emmy into hers. “Let’s get going.”

“Yes, sir,” Quinn said, and pulled away from the front entrance of the hospital. Emmy watched the city go by outside the window. She stared and let her mind drift a bit as the buildings flickered by. A tree or two caught her attention as the view went from thick city to thinning suburbs. She watched more and more trees zoom by and realized they weren’t crossing the Allegheny to get back to her apartment. They were much further east and were crossing to catch Route 8 North.

“Nathaniel, I don’t live this way,” she said.

“You’re not going back to your apartment,” he stated. “Not while you’re all laid up like this. You’re going to stay with me.”

“Nathaniel—”

“Emmy. For the love of Christ, don’t argue with me about this,” he grumbled angrily, turning in his seat. “You have been fighting me tooth and nail since you woke up. I’m not letting you go back to that apartment while Greg is out there and we’re still clueless as to who the other guy was. Victor is staying there as well. It’s easier for everyone if the security is condensed in two places. So stop arguing with me.”

Emmy stared at him. He was really sincerely worried about her, and he was right. Having more people around, security in one area, and procedures in place until they caught Greg and her other attacker, just made a lot of sense. She sighed and sat back in the seat.

“Thank you.” His tone was relieved.

“Just because I’ve agreed doesn’t mean I like it,” she muttered.

“I didn’t ask you to like it. I just asked you go along with it.” He placed a calming hand on her knee. “I don’t like it. Security details, people knowing where I am at all times. That eerie feeling of being followed because you are, and no clue if and when someone is going to pop out of the bushes at you. But right now, this is what it is, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” He sighed. “I’m not moving you in. It’s not my intention to cramp your style. I just want you safe.”

“Cramp my style,” Emmy parroted softly. “That’s an interesting way to put it.”

He whipped his head around, and whispered fiercely, “What do you want me to call it? Kinky fuckery?”

She started as his words. “You’re going to throw this at me?”

“No, I’m not, because guess who’s in the bedroom with you?” She could feel his anger simmering below the surface. “But the term works, doesn’t it?”

She narrowed her eyes. “I’m not used to being ordered around.”

“I’m not used to having people question my decisions on their safety,” he answered. “You can question me on just about anything else, but when it comes to safety, I do
not
screw around. I had a subordinate who didn’t listen to me in the service and when you see someone burnt over seventy percent of their body because of that, you don’t expect to be disobeyed again.”

“We really do need to talk,” Emmy said, quietly.

“We’ll have plenty of time at North Hills to do that.” He was still seething. 

“You’re angry with me.”

“You begged me to accept the security, but you fight me on yours.”

Emmy blinked. He was right. She wanted to huff, fold her arms and sink into the seat, but she wasn’t going to be folding her arms for a while. “Fine. Fine. Security it is.”

The car rolled along in silence as they both stared out into the fields starting to crop up more and more, between the dense copses of trees on either side. Emmy pursed her lips. She didn’t like the quiet with him. She didn’t like sitting next to him and feeling a million miles away.

Damn it, I’m really falling in love with this guy.
Emmy thought she knew better. Girls like her—fubar’ed, kinky, twisted, dark girls like her—didn’t get the fairy tales, they didn’t get the beds of roses and stars of diamonds. They just hoped for the three-day-old grocery store bouquet and some holes poked in a black sheet of construction paper taped over the ceiling light. 

The car turned off the road to a paved driveway that disappeared through the trees. They wound through the greenish midday light and the trees disappeared from her side of the car to reveal Nathaniel’s North Hills estate. Her jaw dropped.

There were acres of manicured lawns between them and the house. There was a stand of trees halfway there with a pond surrounded by carefully maintained cattails and native grasses that were starting to perk from their winter rest. She thought she saw a spigot in the middle for a fountain.

Beyond was an enormous white and brick Jacobean-style mansion. Three floors tall with huge windows over-looking the lawns, the front door was set back from the driveway, giving the house a u-shape to the front. There was tower—a
tower
—above the main entrance which rose to a fourth floor. The top of the house was lined with white cement railing and each of the two front wings had a parapet on the corners. She started counting chimneys and finally had to stop at twenty-five. As they drove further, she caught glimpses of the depth of the house, and there were more chimneys she hadn’t seen earlier. All of the windows were three panes wide and seemed to be floor to ceiling. Part of the back of the house looked newer, but had been added on in the style of the original. It had the traditional white puzzle cornering and there was some ivy on one wing, but it was carefully maintained.

Emmy looked at him. “Is there a ballroom?”

“Of course,” he said dismissively.

“You
live
in this?”

“Quite.” He smiled. “I’ll give you the whole tour when you’re feeling up to it. Your room is in the back overlooking one of the gardens and the pool house.”

“Pool house,” she mumbled. “You have a pool house.” She turned back and pressed her hand to the window. “It looks like Hatfield House.”

With that thought, the pang of loss hit her so hard she had tears streaming down her cheeks before she even realized what was going on. It had been years since she had thought about Hatfield House and the sudden realization that it was the last time she saw her father was like a bolt of lightning.

“Oh, my God.” Nathaniel pushed over to put his arm around her. “What’s wrong? Holy crap, please stop crying.”

She tried, she really did. But she couldn’t stop the gasps and hiccups that went along with the emotion. She looked at him. “You want to know more about me? The last time I saw my father was at Hatfield House outside of London. We were there for a benefit to try and save the Ukrainian Symphony Orchestra. He was there with Sarinya and had just proposed to her. I left the next day to go back to Boston, and he was killed in a car accident three months later, after playing out the season with the London Symphony. They were going to see Sarinya’s family for holiday, and he never made it.”

He just held her a moment while letting her cry. “I’m so sorry, Emmy.”

“I didn’t think a stupid house could do this to me,” she said, smearing the tears away indelicately. “I mean, I like your house, I just didn’t think it was going to make me think of my dad and get me all worked up like this.”

“You have had a very traumatic two weeks, Em.” He tried to console her. “I suspect most anything will set you off.”

“I hate being emotional,” she hiccupped.

“I can’t imagine why.” He smiled at her.

She smiled back, starting to feel a little more balanced. “You have a beautiful house.”

“I’m glad you like it.”  He lowered his voice and continued, “But you can’t go in the West Wing.”

“Why not,” she asked, confused.

“Because that’s where I keep my secret magical rose.” He laughed. “And sometimes the teapots talk.”

Emmy giggled. “So you’re telling me this is a reverse fairytale castle? What does that make Quinn? Or you for that matter?”

“I’m a handsome equine.”

“Oh, so you’re full of horseshit.”

~*~*~

It really was too good to be true, Emmy thought.

They had come in through the back of the house near the twenty-car, two-story garage. Only half the bays were full, one of which included Emmy’s little Echo sitting happy and cozy. She saw Victor’s practical Porsche Cayenne and Nathaniel’s usual Titan. There was a gorgeous Shelby two bays over as well as a mostly restored ’55 Caddy next to them. Quinn pulled the Bentley into the second bay, and Emmy saw her dream car sitting next to them—a Lamborghini Murciélago.

She pointed to it. “What now?”

“Oh, the Lambo.” He smiled. “Would you like to drive it?”

“Um, duh?”

Nathaniel laughed. “Once your arm is healed, we’ll take her out.” He helped her out of the car.

Emmy walked around the back and waited for Quinn to open the trunk, but Quinn just laughed. “I don’t think so, Ms. Westerly. I’ll take everything in for you.”

“Are you sure?”

“That’s why Mr. Walsh pays me,” he said.

Nathaniel walked her to the back door at her own pace. She was grateful for that at least; the stitches were pulling and her rib was very painful. The back door opened into a gorgeous mudroom style foyer with two benches and pegs on either side. Victor’s coat and Sylvia’s carrier were on one side and Nathaniel helped her out of her coat to hang on the other side.

They walked through the archway into a plush and comfortable looking den. There was a fireplace—
you never did get a good count on those, so they’re going to be everywhere—
on the left, the television was straight ahead, and there were three full size sofas in a u-shape facing the flat screen. There were two groups of windows on the right, each with three panes across. There were drapes that could, and clearly were, drawn across, but were open now to accommodate the cool spring breeze. The room was painted a soft gray and there were recessed lights in the ceiling as well as four table lamps at the corners of the couches.

He guided her forward and off to the left appeared a hallway in creams and dark woods with a staircase on its right, winding through a landing to the second floor. The hall continued out beyond the stairs to what looked like a breakfast room. They didn’t go that way; they kept on straight to a half-open dutch-door into the mostly wonderfully rustic and modern kitchen she had ever seen. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. There was a middle aged woman standing behind the island when they walked in and she smiled at the two of them. She put the chef’s knife down and walked around the table. “Ms. Westerly, how nice to finally meet you!” the woman declared, holding out her hand. Emmy shook it with her good hand.

“Emmy, this is Joanne,” Nathaniel said. “She’s the housekeeper and cook.”

“Nice to meet you,” Emmy greeted her.

“I’ll be helping you around for a few weeks, I understand.” Joanne winked. “Please, don’t be afraid to ask for anything at all.”

“Thank you,” she said, graciously. 

“Now, your room is at the top of the stairs.” She led the way, over to a set of stairs which Emmy hadn’t seen. They were narrow, but gorgeous with tiled risers. She pointed up. “Nathaniel, it’s the room next to yours.” She motioned them up the stairs.

“Thank you Joanne,” he said with a nod. “Dinner?”

“Will be ready at five thirty, as usual,” she answered. “You’re keeping me busy with all these guests, Mr. Walsh. I went from keeping three rooms to keeping seven, and cooking for all those mouths.”

“Seven?” Emmy questioned as she carefully started up the stairs.

“Victor has a nanny for the baby,” Joanne explained. “Laurel should be up there somewhere.”

Joanne had set up an amazing room for her. It was all white with diaphanous curtains and ruffling on the bedspread. The floors were dark cherry, and the area rug was ultra-plush and soft gray with hints of yellow. The furniture was white with the same gray shot through on the drawers. The king-sized bed looked small in the room, and was accompanied by a sitting area around another fireplace.

Emmy walked in slowly, looking around. Nathaniel strolled in behind her and went to one of the doors on the left and opened it. “Your bathroom,” he said, smiling. He pushed the other door open. “Your closet.”

“Why do I have a closet?” She walked over. “Oh my God, Nathaniel, is that my whole wardrobe?” She looked at him. “You moved all my clothes here?”

“I knew you’d be here for more than a day, so I hope you don’t mind.”

“Are you trying to move me in?” Emmy was indignant.

“Do you really think I can pick out your clothes for you?” He laughed. “It was easier to just bring it all here and let you deal with it. You have a very large selection of clothing, Emmy, and I didn’t want you to keep going back for new clothes every week. I just had them bring it all.”

“My own room, my own bathroom, all of my clothes...” Emmy deflated a little bit. “I feel like you want me to move in, and we still have so much to talk about and figure out and get to know about each other.” She sat on the bed and felt like she wanted cry. Again.