Page 21

21

KIT

T he following afternoon, I’m on the patio making him a shell necklace he’ll never wear—he’s told me outright he’ll never wear it, and I’m bartering with sex acts to convince him.

He slaps my bare ass—the bartering led to sex on the chaise once already, with no concessions made on his part, which is why I’m currently naked and he’s only in boxers. “There’s nothing you can offer that’s going to convince me to wear a shell necklace at a social event. There’s also nothing you can offer that I can’t persuade you to give up willingly , as I believe I just proved.”

“There are a few things I haven’t given up,” I taunt, continuing to string shells onto the thread, raising a brow at him. “Doggy style was low-hanging fruit.”

He laughs. “If I hadn’t just come five minutes ago, I’d take that as a challenge. Ask me again in ten minutes.”

He starts typing on his laptop again. I can always tell when he’s working by the speed with which he types—there are no pauses; the keystrokes are hard and decisive. I can’t tell if this is simply because he’s a decisive boss or if it’s because he resents having to email anyone when he’s on vacation.

“Do you like your job?” I ask when he slams the laptop shut.

He startles, as if doesn’t understand the question, and then shrugs. “I do. I mean...it’s not fun the way it was at the start but I’m in Turks and Caicos with a naked woman at my disposal?—”

“I’m not at your disposal , cocky bastard. I might say no at any moment.”

He slides a finger between my legs. “I don’t see you saying no, Kitten.”

I huff an exasperated, needy exhale. “I still could.”

He removes his hand with a grin. “As I was saying, I’ve got a naked woman at my disposal, willing to do every filthy, degrading thing I demand of her?—”

“You’re seriously pushing it.”

He laughs. “So I can’t complain. And the company’s at a point where I can tell them ‘my phone is off, only email if it’s an emergency’, as I have now, and they mostly manage without me. It’s a good gig.”

I roll over to face him. “It is a good gig. That doesn’t mean you can’t complain.”

He sets the laptop on the ground beside him. “It was more fun at the start, I’ll admit. Back when I was just getting it off the ground and there were a million things to do. I think the part I like is the development stage. And that’s really over now.”

My head tilts. “Then why haven’t you started something new? You’ve got the money. You’ve got the time, clearly .”

He glides a hand over my hip. “I think I prefer spending my time the way I have for the past few days.”

I look up at him from beneath my lashes. “The swimming? Making avocado toast?”

He leans down, his breath grazing my skin as he pulls my nipple between his teeth. “Those are okay, too.”

A breathy sigh eases out of me. We’ve talked enough, I think...

The purr of a golf cart jolts us both.

“What the fuck,” groans Miller, sitting up and covering me with a towel. “I canceled everything this week.”

“Mr. West?” calls a voice, and then one of the hotel employees appears.

“Hey,” says Miller, his palm pressing the towel flat to my back. “I canceled all the regular services this week.”

The man nods. “Yes. Your guest? Someone is asking that she check her cell.”

Miller thanks him, and I scramble upright the second the guy is gone, rushing to my room for the phone I’ve left on silent since last weekend.

There are multiple missed calls and dozens of texts, which are telling me the same thing.

Miller walks up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist. “Is everything okay?”

My legs wobble. “No. My mom is in the hospital. They think she’s had a heart attack.”

“Fuck,” he whispers. He pulls me closer and presses his lips to the top of my head. “It’s going to be okay. You get dressed and pack. I’ll get us back to New York.”

My hands shake as I pull on jeans and a T-shirt and throw my stuff into the suitcase. I shut my phone off because I knew my mom would keep texting and calling and there was some vindictive part of me that felt as if I deserved the break. Because a piece of me was and still is so outraged that I can’t keep Miller, though none of that was her fault.

I pick up the phone and force myself to open her messages now, sick to my stomach. If this goes badly, these may be the last words I ever hear from her.

Mom

Do you know how much work I put into this party? I gave up MY birthday in order to make your special day a surprise. Maren gave up a trip to Aspen to be here for it.

I’ve tried to call and you’re not answering. Call as soon as you get this.

Why are you not calling? I need you to talk to someone at the IRS on my behalf. They’re saying I didn’t file my taxes. There’s something in this letter about taking the house.

I can’t believe you haven’t replied. I can’t go to the accountant because then Roger will find out, and he’ll be furious with me. You’ve got to fix it before it gets that far.

Call me this instant. Or is your father the only person good enough to be included in your life now?

If she dies, she’ll leave the world thinking I just didn’t care enough. She was in an unbelievably stressful situation, and I made it worse. My ambivalence didn’t cause her heart attack, but it sure didn’t help.

I text Maren to tell her I’m on the way and drag my suitcase into the family room. Miller’s in the clothes he was wearing the night he arrived at the club—jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. His jacket sits beside his bag.

I’ve gotten accustomed to shirtless Starfish Cay Miller, but I love Winter New York Miller just as much. I’m pretty sure I’d love all the versions: On The Way to Work Miller, Off To The Gym Miller, Black Tie for a Wedding Miller.

I’d love all of them, but this is the last one I’m going to get.

“It’s gonna be okay, Kit,” he says, pushing my hair behind my ear.

“She was having some issue with the IRS she needed me to fix.” My voice wavers. “I never even saw the texts.”

“Your mother is a fifty-five-year-old woman who’s been working since she was sixteen. She also has a husband and an accountant. She didn’t need you to fix anything.”

I shake my head. “She didn’t want Roger to know, though.”

His jaw clenches, then relaxes. He presses his mouth to the top of my head. “Kit, she was asking you to fix a problem she’s just as capable of solving because she wanted to lie to her husband about the whole thing. You’ve gotten so accustomed to taking care of her stuff that you don’t even see how insane that is.”

Maybe he’s right, but that doesn’t change the fact that I played a role in what happened to her. I contributed to her stress and then wasn’t there for her when it worsened.

Miller slides the back doors shut. I take one final look out at that white, white sand and the endless blue water.

He joked about me coming back as his guest, but there’s no way. It could never be as a friend now, and to continue this behind Mare’s back…it’d just be going too far. Even for me. Even with what I’ve already done.

Miller carries my bag and his and tucks them into the trunk of the waiting car. I spend the entire ride to the airport with my head against his chest. Because we’re about to be in public, so it can’t ever go there again.

* * *

He’s booked us beside each other in business class. I wouldn’t have taken the risk, but I suppose the odds of being seen are slim. When he reaches over to squeeze my hand, I don’t have the heart to pull mine away, because this day consists of so many lasts. The last time I’ll sleep with him, the last time I’ll shower with him, the last time we’ll sit together over a meal, that he’ll kiss me, that he’ll carry my bag or hold my hand.

I couldn’t have treasured them more than I did, but I still wish I had. Maybe if I’d known it was going to end today, this goodbye wouldn’t feel as hard as it does.

When we land at JFK, we walk toward the exit a few feet apart, just in case we’re seen. I’m the daughter of one famous model, the sister of another, and the eventual heir to a fortune. It’s enough to merit the occasional photo, and I need to make sure Miller isn’t in the frame if it happens.

We climb into a waiting limo and head straight to the hospital. Occasionally, I get the sense that he’s about to say something, but when I look over, his mouth closes.

And what is there really to say? We both know it’s over.

The limo pulls into the hospital’s circular drive and he squeezes my knee. “Do you want me to come up?” he asks. “I said that wrong. I want to come up, but I know that will lead to questions.”

I want him to come up too. I would give anything to have him there with me, but of course I can’t. I lean over and place a kiss to his cheek. “That’s okay,” I tell him, “but thank you. Thank you for all of it. I will never forget this.” I turn, reaching for the door, but before I can open it, his hand is sliding around the back of my neck and pulling my mouth to his.

“This isn’t done, Kit,” he whispers as he releases me. “Get through whatever is going on up there and then come back to me because this isn’t done. I can’t fucking stand for it to end here.”

His eyes are burning, pleading with me to agree, and my stomach sinks. I can’t stand for it to end here either, but I’m not sure what option I have. I slide out of the car and take one last glance backward, committing him to memory, before I shut the door behind me.

Inside, they direct me to my mother’s floor. I’m surprised to discover she’s not in the ICU, and the nurse who leads me back to her room is cheerful and has no sense of urgency. I’ve spent enough time in hospitals to know the staff isn’t normally super upbeat when a patient’s life is on the line.

She opens a door and there my mother is, sitting up in bed, hooked to a blood pressure cuff but nothing else. I see no leads for an EKG, and she and Maren are both scrolling on their phones as if this is Starbucks and they’re waiting on friends.

What the fuck?

I drop my bag on the ground. “What’s…going on?” I demand of Maren. “The messages you sent made it sound like?—”

Maren raises wounded eyes to mine. I guess my tone was abrasive, but she has no idea what I gave up to get here. “Mom thought she was having a heart attack,” she says, “but now they think it was just a panic attack.”

“Did they do an echocardiogram?”

My mother looks blankly at Maren, and Maren looks at her. “They did some tests?” my mom says. “But I was already feeling better by the time I got here.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, praying for patience. If it was only a panic attack, she wouldn’t still be in the hospital, and if it was something worse than that, she should damn well be monitored in more ways than she currently is.

Air whooshes out of me. “Did it not occur to anyone to tell me they thought it was a panic attack?”

My mom shrugs. “We assumed you were on a plane by then.”

Wow. I’m not at the point where I think they set the whole thing up, but their decision to just not update me was absolutely punitive. “So you’re saying it was a panic attack and that you felt better by the time you arrived this morning. Then why are you still here?”

“We don’t really know,” says Maren. “They haven’t told us anything.”

I look around me. “Where’s Roger? Is he finding a doctor?”

My mother shakes her head. “The hospital dinner was awful, so he’s getting us carry-out.”

I walk to the wall and hit the button for a nurse, who comes in at the leisurely pace of someone who knows there’s nothing wrong with my mother—not that I fault her because that certainly appears to be the case.

“I’d like to take a look at any tests my mother’s had today,” I tell her.

“Oh,” she says, her mouth forming a cartoon-like circle. “I’ll need to check with the doctor.”

This irks me—my mother doesn’t need a doctor’s permission to see her own fucking test results—but I let it go because Roger and Charlie are entering the room, and Charlie will definitely ridicule me later for starting a fight with the staff.

“There’s our little runaway bride,” he says, loping over to wrap an arm around my shoulders.

I shrug him off. “Were you with your dad just now or were you off with a hot nurse in an empty room?”

“They have no empty rooms at the moment,” he says. “Regrettably.”

I roll my eyes. “That makes it even more confusing that Mom is staying overnight when it appears she shouldn’t be.”

“We knew you’d come in and clear it all up for us, Kitty Cat,” he says with a grin. “Though I’ve got to say, for someone who’s normally so on top of everything, you’ve certainly been a little messy of late yourself, haven’t you?”

I silence a twinge of guilt. He couldn’t possibly know I was with Miller—my dad is a bit of a shit-stirrer, but he couldn’t out us without admitting his own role.

Besides, he has no idea how far it went.

The doctor enters the room with the weariness of someone who’s been dealing with my mother for several hours in a row and raises a brow at Mom’s carry-out container.

“We don’t normally suggest people who’ve entered the hospital with a possible cardiac issue dine on red meat and potatoes,” he says.

She bats her lashes at him. “I was starving. The dinner was so abysmal.”

He smiles only because she’s still hot, and this gambit continues to work on men of all ages. “That’s how they make sure you don’t want to stay.”

I don’t have time to watch my mother work on seducing a sixth husband in front of her fifth. “I’d like to see the tests performed when she was admitted, as well as her labs,” I cut in. “I assume there was an echocardiogram?”

“Are you a doctor?”

My teeth grind. “No, I’m not, and as you’re well aware, I don’t need to be a doctor to demand to see the tests myself, with her permission, so I would like to see them.”

My mother gasps. “Kit.” She shoots an apologetic look at the doctor. “I’m so sorry. She’s been traveling all day and was very worried. She’s not normally like this.”

“She’s not?” Charlie asks drolly, and Maren covers her mouth with her palm.

The doctor hands me the file. “Knock yourself out, but it won’t mean anything to you.”

I ignore him and begin flipping through its contents. Her Troponin I and T were in the normal range—they’d be elevated for days afterward if she’d had a heart attack. “Your labs are fine,” I tell her. “The echo shows a bit of atrial fibrillation, but that might be associated with your possible panic attack and is more likely related to your intake of diet pills.”

“Diet pills?” the doctor asks, taking the chart back and flipping through it. “I don’t recall seeing anything about that.”

My mother shoots an angry gaze my way. “They’re not diet pills . They’re just homeopathic supplements.”

“That she gets illegally from China,” I add.

“We’ll need to know what she took,” he says, scowling.

“Regardless of what she took, nothing in these results warrants an overnight stay, so I’m confused why she’s still here.”

The doctor looks between us. “Mostly because your mother requested it.”

“Unbelievable,” I mutter. “Thank you.”

Ulrika needed attention. Apparently the whole maybe-I’m-having-a-heart-attack thing wasn’t enough. She needed all of us freaking here . She needed Roger rushing out to get her steak and me jumping on a plane and Maren sitting anxiously by her side for twelve hours straight.

The doctor backs out of the room, leaving us all facing each other. As usual, somehow, I’m the bad guy here and I don’t especially care.

“Good work, Mom. Glad I flew for four hours, sick to my stomach, when there was nothing wrong with you and you requested to stay. Hope it was a sufficient amount of attention.”

Maren’s eyes are wide. I tend to turn my ire on the people who hurt her and my mom…it’s very rarely directed at them. A frown settles upon her delicate brow.

“Kit,” she scolds, “you took off minutes before a party that Mom spent months planning, so you can climb off your high horse a little here. Especially when you left us to clean up your mess so you could go off to get a tan.” She waves a hand at me, as if my skin tone is enough to condemn me for pretty much everything.

Normally this might chasten me, but not today.

“I wonder if you can begin to conceive of how many of your messes I’ve cleaned up?” I ask. “Both of you. Mom, how many boyfriends of yours did I have to pull into line? Mare, do you not recall that it was me and not you who had to go break up with Ryan Nicoll because you were too scared to do it? Do you recall that it was me and not you who moved all of your stuff out of that apartment afterward? And you both know that’s the tip of the iceberg. So I’m sorry that, for once in your lives, you were left to clean up a mess of mine. But it would certainly be refreshing if you could’ve done it without this level of resentment, because I’m pretty sure I didn’t act resentful the one million times I did it for you.” I pick up my bag. “I’m glad you’re okay, Mom, but you don’t need to be here. I’m going to bed.”

I walk out and Charlie follows.

My eyes narrow. He’s not escaping my wrath either. “You, of all people, should have known this was bullshit.”

He holds up his hands. “I’m not going to be the person who denies Ulrika attention when she’s in need. And you realize none of this would have happened if you’d just stop fighting her battles. Maren’s, too, for that matter.”

I snort. “You’re either out of your mind or you’ve begun drinking again.”

“I never stopped drinking,” he says with a grin, “as I’m sure you’re aware. It’s my favorite pastime.”

I raise a brow.

“Second favorite pastime,” he amends. “But anyhow…let them fight their own battles for a while, Kit.”

“Fight their own battles?” I ask. “Have you seen what just occurred here? No one in that room had a diagnosis or even knew what tests had been run!”

“I’m not saying they’ll be good at it,” he says, more gently. “And I’m not saying that you shouldn’t step in at a time like this, where it’s life or death, potentially, and you’re the only one with medical knowledge. But you’ve made them soft.”

“I haven’t made them soft. They are soft. They came into the world that way. That’s why I had to step up.”

“Everyone comes into the world soft, little sis. Life makes them hard.” He laughs. “That didn’t come out quite right, but you know what I meant.”

It’s possible, but that doesn’t change the fact that Maren and my mom are entirely unequipped to deal with the real world.

“I just don’t want to see them get hurt.”

He nods. “I know. And that’s because in certain ways you, also, are too soft. It hurts you to see them get hurt.”

I exhale, suddenly exhausted by the conversation and this day as a whole. “This is all pretty reflective for someone who just spent six figures getting an incriminating video scrubbed from the Internet.”

He laughs. “I was reading some articles about helicopter parents in the lobby and thought of you. But anyway…take it under consideration. It’s possible you could have stayed wherever you were if they didn’t assume you’d come rushing back to take charge.”

I walk downstairs and hail a cab. I’m certain that Miller is back at his apartment by now, probably in bed and definitely relieved to have this all behind him. But since he texted asking me to let him know as soon as I heard something, I tap out a quick message.

Hey, there. My mom is fine. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her, and I’m heading home now. I’m sorry it had to end like that. Thank you so much for taking me. It meant the world.

He doesn’t reply, which I guess is for the best. It ended as well as it could have—no long speeches, no false promises, no suggestion that we could somehow keep it going, even if I desperately wish we could. It was as clean a finish as we were going to get.

The driver pulls up in front of my building. I wave to the doorman and proceed to the condo I no longer want to be in.

I used to love this place. I loved the windows, and the way I could see the Empire State Building if I stood in the outermost corner. But it’s not Starfish Cay. It’s not a white-sand beach and the clearest water. It’s not Miller, following me as I climb into the shower.

Even the shower is disappointing. I want warm breezes blowing in and a skylight. I want Miller grinning at me, his dimple tucking in as he opens the shower door.

And then I want to wake with him warm and sun-burnished beside me, giving me a sleepy smile as his eyes flicker open, pulling me close, ignoring my objections about morning breath as his mouth moves to mine.

I’ve just turned off the water and reached for a towel when there’s a knock at the door.

It’s too late for a visitor. My father, Maren, and my mother are all on the doorman’s list, but my dad is across the country and the other two are, I’m sure, still at the hospital.

Which only leaves one other option—Blake. Shit. I have no idea how he knows that I’m here, and while I’m incredibly tempted just to turn off the lights and wait for him to go away, it’s probably best to get this over with.

I throw on a robe and, mentally bracing for Blake’s fury, open the door…only to watch Miller walk in instead.

I blink rapidly. “I thought you were Blake.”

His eyes fall to my robe, and his nostrils flare. “You were going to open the door for Blake dressed like that ?”

I glance down. I guess the robe is barely tied. “You were banging on the door…I just didn’t think. How did you even get up here? You’re not on the list.”

“I know a guy,” he replies.

My dad, I suppose. Meddling again. “Okay…why are you here?”

His eyes hold mine. “You can’t possibly think we’re done just like that. I’m here because I don’t want to be anywhere else.”

I swallow hard, leaning against the wall. “Miller,” I say softly, “this can’t end well.”

He closes the distance between us. “Who says it has to end at all?” he asks, flicking my robe open with his index finger and sliding his hand over my bare hip.

This isn’t how it was supposed to go, and it makes it all so messy. Now we won’t have a clean break, and it will end in some ugly way. I just don’t have the strength to send him back out the door when he’s all I want right now.

But I can’t imagine when I’m going to get any stronger.