Capture Me: Alpha Billionaire Romance (Hollywood Dreams) (7 page)

My scattered thoughts began to focus, as if my subconscious latched on to my accounting background to help keep my thoughts in order. “Where exactly were you last night?” I asked.

“Why does that even matter?”

She was right. “That’s not the point. How could you not be there for them?”

“If I had been there, I’d be dead, too.” There was a long pause before she said, “I was at Jason’s.”

“God, Dani.” I was about to give her hell for staying at her boyfriend’s all night. She was only eighteen. But I wasn’t her mother. Either way, we were all each other had now. “I’m coming home.”

The moment I hung up the phone, my thoughts scattered again, like the rain splashing on the pavement below. I couldn’t quite focus on Betsy as she came over to me. Her clickety-clack heels were about the only thing getting through to my brain at the moment, and not in a good way.

The moment she shuffled beside me she said, “Honey, breathe. Tell me what happened. Was there an accident? I told your father to stop having the driver go through—”

I shook my head. There was no way I could get the words out of my mouth. That would make it all too real again. “I’ve got to go.”

“You just got here.” She led me away from the window. “Why are you so upset, honey?”

In my head, I imagined Betsy gasping at the news. Maybe she would crumple into a ball or wrap her arms around me. We would sit there for a long time, with the fountain keeping the outside world from us. Her poofy hair would flatten on one side from pressing her head against mine. I could almost see her midnight-blue mascara streaming down her cheeks, giving her a look to rival The Joker’s. Maybe she’d ask something like,
Is there anything I can do for you?
because that was what I wanted her to say.

Though I wouldn’t have an answer for her.

I looked at Betsy. Her eyes pleaded with me to tell her what happened. She knew it was something bad, but there was no chance in hell I could deliver this news to her.

From outside the room, an annoying, high-pitched grinding of metal on metal broke the silence.

A courier stepped into the waiting room wheeling an overflowing cart of letters. The faulty wheel scraped the side of the frame to the point that it overpowered any relaxation the fountain could ever achieve. The courier took one look at me, slid to a stop, tossed a package onto the desk, and did the fastest about-face I’d ever seen.

I left the room on his heels.

Everything had just been turned upside down, and I didn’t know what was next for me in this game called life.

CHAPTER 11

Tessa

The drive from my father’s office to our family estate in Connecticut felt like the longest hour of my life. Though I traveled to a different state, Greenwich was just on the other side of the New York border.

At the time, I hadn’t thought about calling the car service, but it probably would’ve been faster than hailing the taxi. It was clear the driver probably preferred to stay around New York City, so I dished out a couple hundreds. I didn’t care. I just wanted to get home.

Besides each other, the one thing my sister and I did still have was money.

I could see the flashing lights as we entered the gated community. Until that moment, there was a part of me that had hoped Dani had lost it. That she was going through some serious teenage issues and just needed her big sister there.

Red lights flashed against the white columns of our house and the driver offered me a short, black umbrella. I looked outside and realized that the rain had followed me here. It splashed onto the concrete and gathered into puddles. It fell on the cheeks of the crowd that had gathered on the lawn and in the streets. Curious neighbors, officers, firefighters, and who knows who else. It seemed like more people lingered than there should be in a gated community.

I needed to get out of the cab but my legs refused to move. The driver held the door open, I couldn’t even look at him. I knew that the moment I got out, I’d face a crowd of strangers with pity in their eyes.

Then all of this would be real—Mom and Dad would be gone forever.

“Miss.” The driver stood at my door as the rain beat down on his head. “You do have my umbrella.”

I looked at him for the first time. He was younger than I expected. Early twenties, with skin fairer than mine. His shoulder-length blond hair reminded me of Liam’s, except that the rain had plastered it down his face and neck.

Normally, I’d feel bad for carting the guy all the way out here when he probably had some class he needed to get to. But I couldn’t today, not when I didn’t want others to look at me that way.

The moment I unfolded myself from the car, Sadie came out of nowhere and pulled me into a big hug.

“I thought that was you. God, Tessa, I’m so sorry.” She wore a knee-length raincoat with ruching that hugged her hips in a very European way. The oversized hood kept her long hair from getting drenched. Always prepared, even in a rainstorm. “Tessa?” She cupped my cheeks in her hands. “Are you with me?”

“Sorry.” I shook my head. Some things were coming in clearly and others I couldn’t focus on at all. It was like my mind wasn’t sure what to think about. “My brain just isn’t working right.” I wondered if I had repeated myself, I had no idea what I’d said aloud.

“I completely understand. I’m here for you.”

“How . . . how did you get here before me?”

“We have the same lawyer, remember? I was going over some modeling contracts with him when he got the call.”

“Edward is here?” I craned my neck to see through the crowd but doubted I’d be able to find anyone who barely hit the five-foot mark through the sea of ponchos and umbrellas.

“Of course he is, how else do you think I got here? He tried to leave me in his office but that wasn’t happening.”

Any other time, I would have laughed at the thought of Sadie barricading herself at our stuffed-up lawyer’s door to keep him from leaving the building. I was glad I wasn’t in that car coming up here.

A fireman stepped from my front door and crossed the lawn toward the Browns’ house. It seemed unnatural for someone not to step onto each stone to get to the driveway. Dad had helped Mr. Brown lay them out between our homes years ago. Not that they couldn’t afford someone else to take care of it. Dad had explained that it was good to do something with his hands after working with numbers all day. Every year, he took on a new project just to say he did it himself.

The Browns had come to the neighborhood about a year after my parents married. I couldn’t think of anyone my parents were—had been—closer to. The thought brought me back to the present, and seeing the fireman walk up the neighbors’ steps sent a cold chill down my back.

I nodded in that direction. “Something happen over there, too?”

Sadie shook her head. “Dani’s in there. I told them I’d wait out here for you and—”

Not bothering to hear the rest, I pushed my way through the crowd of wet ponchos. Nearly missing the first step, I went through the Browns’ front door and found everyone crowded in the first room of the house, which was also the last room I would have looked. I’d never seen anyone actually in the guest waiting area before. It was one of those done-up rooms that no one actually sat in.

But there they were, nearly a dozen wet people dripping on the pristine carpet. Mrs. Brown sat on the Victorian love seat, rubbing Dani’s back. She gave me a small smile as I stepped into the room. Sadie stepped beside me. I hadn’t even realized she’d followed me into the house.

“Hey, sis.” I sat on the other side of Dani and draped an arm around her shoulders. “I’m here now.” She turned to me and I wrapped my arms around her.

“I should have been here. Maybe then I would’ve . . .” The rest of her words were muffled against my shoulder.

“Dani, don’t. You were right. Then you’d also be—” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

The firefighter tipped his hat at me. “You must be Tessa. Sorry for your loss.” He gazed out the window to our house as if to prompt whatever he was about to tell us. “We did our air quality check and discovered that the CO detectors had been deactivated.”

I sighed. “I kept telling Mom that they weren’t connected to the smoke detectors.” I squeezed Dani’s shoulder, knowing he needed more of an explanation. I didn’t know how much she’d already said but I’d fill in where I could. The shock hadn’t hit me yet like it had her. “Every time Mom cooked, she set them off.” It was our family ritual. A bizarre tradition that started with a family gathering and ended with smoke billowing out the window. “She didn’t know which detectors were which so Mom always unplugged them all.”

The firefighter opened his mouth like he was about to lecture, but then looked at Dani. He nodded that he understood.

“He must have gotten tired,” Dani said in a raspy, faraway voice.

I frowned, wanting to connect what she was trying to say. “What—”

“Dad must have left the car running after listening to his tapes.” She wiped her nose. “Just left it running all night . . .”

Dad loved his old cassettes and had players installed inside both of his restored Mustangs—another of his pet projects. Mom always said those cars would kill him.

For once, I wished she hadn’t been right.

“I believe they’ve answered all your questions,” Edward said as he shooed the fireman out of the room. I hadn’t even seen the squatty man when I came in, but now he took control of the room in a flash with his booming voice. What he lacked in height he made up for in volume. “You too, officer. The family needs time to grieve.”

I looked over to the corner of the room where a cop folded up his notepad. Heading out, he turned to us sitting on the couch and pulled a card from his pocket. “If any of you think of anything else, please—”

Edward swiped it from the man and practically hoisted him from the room. “I’ll make sure they get what they need.”

CHAPTER 12

Liam

I pushed
decline
on my cell for the third time today.

Wasn’t that always the way? The person you wanted to call never did and the one you wished would leave you alone didn’t stop buzzing. How many times had Paisley called this week already? Five? Six? I’d turn the damn thing off if I wasn’t waiting for calls from ICE and Tessa.

I checked the clock on my computer—because I really didn’t want to look at my phone again. Six o’clock couldn’t happen fast enough today. Sadie was scheduled to model and I kept asking myself why the hell I hadn’t scheduled her for a morning shoot. I wanted to thank her for introducing me to Tessa and maybe get some kind of idea why she hadn’t called me back. I kept telling myself that maybe she went by the whole wait-several-days-to-get-back-to-someone-when-you-first-go-out-with-them philosophy.

My dad had always told me that if I liked a girl, go for it. I missed his advice that was anything but stereotypical. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what was generally accepted, but he figured that after making a billion with his communication companies, he could say his peace and make it mean something.

I glanced at the clock again. Sadie never showed up more than ten minutes late to a shoot without calling and it was already fifteen after. I pulled my phone out when I heard a knock at my door.

“I’m here,” Sadie said, then turned and went through the studio door.

I chuckled. If she thought she could get away before I gave her hell for her tardiness, she had another thing coming.

Sadie had always been one of my favorites. She was fun and didn’t try to complicate things by hitting on me. When she mentioned that she had a friend who I might be interested in, I figured what the hell, even after the disastrous last time a model tried to hook me up with one of her friends. She had promised that the girl was gorgeous. Problem was, her qualities stopped there. The longest conversation I had the whole evening was with the valet to pick up my car and get out of there.

I’d asked Sadie to bring Tessa by the studio sometime—to make sure we hit it off—and hadn’t thought more of it.

I was glad she had followed up on it. I just wanted to know that Tessa felt the same way.

I picked up my camera and stepped into the studio. Sadie must have already gone behind the curtain to change. The area was mostly cleared out since I had moved the props to the other side of the curtain earlier that morning to give me something to keep my mind occupied. I readjusted my green screen and paused, trying to remember what color corset I’d laid out.

“Hey, Sadie, what color—”

“Green.”

“Your mind-reading is getting better by the day.”

There was no reply except for the rustling of clothes. I set my camera down on my chair and walked over to the green screen, switching it to blue. Otherwise the corset would blend into the background and I’d be shooting little more than a few random body parts. “I was thinking about a new floating head series.”

I waited for her usual wit to kick in and reply with some quip, but there was nothing.

“You okay back there?”

“Yeah.”

I couldn’t remember her ever being so short with me. I blew out a breath and adjusted the lighting. Everything had to be twice as bright with the blue screen.