Legal Heirs - Box Set Edition: Books 5-8 (Surrendering Charlotte Chronicles) (40 page)

They made love over and over through the day and into the night, always satisfied but never sated, each touch, each climax, spurring them on to the next.

“We have to stop,” he said. “You’re so swollen, I don’t think it’s possible to do it again. Are you sore, baby?”

“Yes, but I don’t care. God, how can it feel so good? No wonder lovers go insane from wanting each other. I need to say something and then we can just move past it, maybe it’s just the afterglow flooding my logical mind. I think I… I might…” Hadley started the sentence a half dozen times, but she was afraid to say the words, let alone think them.

“You love me? You might love me? We’re too young to love each other? Please say you’re in love with me. I know I love you, and if you love me back, I don’t care for how long or short a time, give me your heart and it will be enough. I’m in love with you, Hadley, and it’s not a passing thing, it’s the real thing. If you love me right now, even if it’s only for this moment, it’s still a gift from you to me. I want to be your first love and your last love and your
only
love. If you tell me I’m the first man you’ve ever loved, well, I’ll be happy. At least I’ll be happy until you’ve finished conquering Hollywood and the rest of the world and you’re ready to make your real life with me.”

“I love you, now and probably forever. Can I say it that way? Does that sound too iffy, too self-centered? I’m eighteen… who am I kidding? I love you Holden. Someday… someday you and I will live by the sea and swim naked and I’ll be the mother of your children. Oh… I mean, if that sounds good to you.”

“That sounds
so
good to me, you can’t imagine. It’s a deal then, let’s swear it, we’ll live the dream someday. My father and your mother, they messed each other up. You and I will make it right. Your babies will be my babies, just us, the two of us, when the time is right, no one comes between us.”

“I swear it, Bly, you are my forever love.”

*

Charlotte’s dinner party at the McCall House went on in spite of everything. Finn was not quite himself, Amanda was already drunk when she and arrived, Mia and Skyler had both slammed the front door and left. But Ava’s words especially had struck a chord of anger deep inside of Atticus. Part of him knew it didn’t matter—it was for the best, most likely, that Holden and Hadley were in New Orleans together, falling in love, making love, whatever the fuck they were doing. Why should he care? His sister was eighteen and he doubted that she would ever set foot inside New York University as planned. Stardom was calling her. She’d made huge splash with a tiny part in her first film, and it was only the beginning, that was a given. So why should he care if it was Holden who showed her how sex could be? If not him, then that privilege would fall to some hard-dick actor wanna-be in Los Angeles who’d never be anything but a bartender or a pizza delivery jerkoff. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered if Holden hadn’t agreed to keep an eye on Hadley. He’d done that all right, and from the sound of excitement in Ava’s voice, he’d done a hell of a lot more. Fuck! What did it matter, really? He was out his head with frustration over Skyler—that might account for his viciously bad mood. She was too fucking young, and she looked at him with eyes filled with not just lust, but… love. That scared the hell out of him, because he knew he could very easily lose his way with her. He could fall hard and fast for Sky, and he didn’t have room in his life for a love affair. Maybe later, he kept telling himself. She was the kind of girl you gave your heart to, not just your body. He was twenty and she was seventeen, those numbers didn’t add up, they were too young with too much of life ahead, maybe later… maybe, maybe.

“Atticus, what’s going on, son?” Finn asked. “Let’s sit on the porch and talk, okay?”

They sat in painted rocking chairs on the front porch while Charlotte entertained assorted friends and family inside. Finn started to say they should walk around to the back of the house, to the side that faced the water. It was a dark night, too dark to see very far, but they would feel the Gulf breeze, and hear the soothing sound as the waves hit the shore.

“This isn’t about Hadley and the fact that she and Holden are… together, is it? You want to be with Skyler but you’re not ready. You have a career as a pilot ahead of you, the timing’s all wrong for serious feelings. Is that about right?” Finn asked, looking out across the lawn. Its hulking, moss-draped trees stood like eerie sentinels in the humid night air.

“I’m not going to be a pilot, so don’t get all preachy about it, Dad. I’m dropping out of the Academy and going straight into SEAL training, my mind’s made up, so just save the speech. It won’t do any good.”

“Well, that is a surprise. You’ve had this course set in your mind since you were a little boy. All of a sudden a girl makes you feel something that’s completely unfamiliar and you do a complete one-eighty? Why not finish school, have a few years of adventure, then come back for her? I know Sky pretty well, she’s not a frivolous girl. She’ll wait for you, Atticus,” Finn said, leaning toward his son, trying to read his face in the dim porch light.

“Yeah, like Mom waited for you? Maybe I give Sky a chance to fall in love with me, and I go on doing what I need and want to do before I settle down, then I come back for her… I don’t want to hurt you, Dad, but your love life sucks. Sorry that’s so clear to everyone except you and Mom and Alex, but three people in a relationship is fucking
not
okay. I will not fall in love with that girl, or give her the chance to get attached to me and play out your entire train wreck again.”

“Well, I see the years we spent trying to hide the awful truth didn’t work too well, huh? Not much we can do to fix that now, Atticus. Your mother is not an ordinary woman. Two men fell in love with her and she couldn’t help but love them in return. I thought my work was the most important thing in the world and because I turned my back on true love, my true love met Alex Bly. The way it is with Charlotte is that she breaks your heart and mends it at the same time, and you’re never the same after that. You see, she’s the piece that holds you together and makes you stronger. The love she gives you is worth so much more than some small bit of pride or bargain you might make to keep it. Her love is worth sharing, Bly and I both know that. It took us some time to get there, but it’s the way our lives have played out. Don’t try and judge what you haven’t yet experienced. As for you, Atticus, you’re absolutely right not to get involved before you’re ready. Don’t give up the Naval Academy because you don’t trust yourself to stay away from Skyler. Hiding yourself in special ops will not save your soul, take my word for it.”

“It’s what I want to do, Dad. What chance do I have to be a Navy pilot, anyway? I have to take the reins of Bly International in ten years, and that is not the life I had planned for myself. I want to go to hand to hand against the enemy, I want to make the world a better place, and I want it now. You know how that feels, it’s what you did; it’s who you are. Yeah, you gave it up, but did you want to, or did you do it for her? You miss it, I see the look in your eyes when you watch all those SEAL movies. You’ve been there; you were the best.”

“I’m lucky that I lived through it, you have no idea. You’d better harden your heart if you can’t resist the pull of abuse and misery and intrigue. It’s not romantic, Atticus, its bloody and its hell and it gets pretty real when you’re in the thick of it. Can you cut a man’s throat while his child watches? Can you torture him within an inch of his life, then save him so you can do it again if he survives? Better take the rest of the summer to think about, it can’t be decided in haste. And maybe it would be best if you steered clear of Skyler, at least until you figure it all out. There are chapters to life, Atticus. It seems to me that I was your age just a short time ago; it goes by fast. Don’t jump off the cliff too soon. Your mother and Charlie, Hadley too, they need your strength, son. Now, where is Bly, at your house? He and I have an issue to talk over. Are you going back into the party?”

“I’ll drop you off, then I’m going to New Orleans. Hadley can do as she pleases, but Holden gets the big brother speech anyway,” he said, and he and Finn both laughed for the first time that evening.

“Go easy on him, Hadley
is
her mother’s daughter after all. I really doubt that Holden instigated this… relationship. You know your sister, she wants what she wants, and she usually gets it. Maybe you’d better hurry and warn Holden to… what is it they say? ‘Be afraid, be very afraid.’”

Cruz de Leon, Holden’s bodyguard, appeared out of the dark just then, huffing and puffing as if he’d been running. He was a large man in his mid-twenties, overly muscled, pumped up and fierce looking, as a man in his line of work should be.

“Hey,” he said. His voice was unsteady and he was pacing nervously. “I’m supposed to be watching out for Mia tonight and she’s gone, just disappeared. Fuck man, Mr. Bly is gonna have a shit fit and fire my ass for sure. Her car is right out there in the driveway, but I ran up and down the beach, I’ve looked everywhere. Billy Kipling keeps an eye on her when she’s home in San Diego, but I’ve had to be responsible for both her and Holden since we got here. Shit, it’s not an easy job.”

“The gazebo,” Finn said, standing, then running across the dark lawn, even before they heard a blood-curdling scream.

Atticus and Cruz followed him, and Atticus moved quickly ahead and made it to the gazebo first. Mia and Skyler were slumped on the wooden floor side by side, bound together by a pair of handcuffs. Skyler was unconscious, her clothes torn to shreds, her face bruised and swollen. Mia’s clothes had been ripped away, and she too, was badly beaten. She tried to hide her nakedness as Atticus and the others reached the gazebo. Charlotte’s brother, Christopher, appeared out of the darkness, pulled off his t-shirt, and covered her with it. Christopher, still ghost-like with his quiet demeanor, squatted next to the girls, as Mia managed a small smile.

“The key… in my purse,” Mia whispered, and Atticus knelt down and riffled through her purse, then unlocked the cuffs. Finn and Christopher went right to work handling the situation. Finn checked Skyler’s pulse and his hands moved over her quickly, checking for knife or bullet wounds and broken bones. “Call 911, tell them we need an ambulance and at least one female police officer,” Finn said calmly to Cruz de Leon.

“Skyler, is she okay, Dad? Is she breathing, what the fuck happened here?” Atticus was shouting by the time he finished the sentence. “Mia, who did this? Please, please hold on, Mia, I’m here and I’ll make whoever did this pay.”

Finn had laid Skyler flat on the ground and he and Christopher nodded in agreement that she would recover. Only her face was beaten, her wounds were not life threatening. Then Finn moved to Mia to ask her what had happened.

“That guy, Angus from the beach club, was beating the hell out of Skyler on the beach. I left Charlotte’s house and went for a walk earlier and I… stumbled across them. He hit Skyler and knocked her out. When he was trying to carry her off the beach, I got the handcuffs out of my purse,” she said, then she groaned as Finn touched her ribs. “He and I struggled and he handcuffed me to Skyler and brought us here.”

“You have a couple of broken ribs, Mia, whatever else he did to you… a female detective will be here soon, you can talk to her,” Finn said, and he saw fury ignite in Atticus’s eyes.

“Fuck!” he yelled, standing up and pacing. “Let’s go, Cruz, we need to find him before the police do, I’m going to kill him. I don’t care what happens, he’s a dead man.”

“He didn’t… he tried, but someone stopped him,” Mia said, shocked by her brother’s fury, his desire to punish the man who’d hurt her. “He was so mad that I caught him before he could rape Skyler, I guess. He started beating me and he stood up and kicked me with his boots, over and over. He didn’t stop until a man showed up and….”

The group hadn’t realized Angus was lying in the shadows, soaked in blood. He moaned just a little as sirens wailed and an ambulance and police cars sped across the lawn so that his body was illuminated by the headlights.

“He isn’t dead,” Christopher said softly, “but he won’t have the balls to touch a young girl again.”

“Oh shit,” Finn said, as he watched the blood spreading in a wide circle across the front of Angus’s pants. He looked at the little group assembled around the bloodied and beaten girls, and the newly castrated would-be rapist. He turned to Christopher and spoke quietly, but he made sure everyone understood. “You know what to do, lose the weapon, clean the evidence, and stay low and quiet.”

Christopher hesitated, searching Finn’s eyes in the dim light, then he nodded. He was not in a position to be in the limelight or go to trial for any crime. He didn’t exist—better to keep his identity under wraps, especially with the drug wars raging out of control. Many of his former employers were taking blood baths in Mexico and South America, it was lucky he’d gotten out of the business alive.

“It’s dark out tonight. Who did you see, Mia, anyone you know?” Finn asked, kneeling down and holding her so that she lay against him.

“No, someone came out of the dark, I couldn’t make out a face. Then Angus screamed and I saw all of you running toward us,” she said, and Atticus reached for her hand and held it until the paramedics took over.

*

At the hospital, Atticus divided his time between Mia and Skyler, with an emphasis on Skyler. He didn’t let Mia know he spent a little less time with her. She had just been through a nightmare, and each time he sat beside her on the bed, her smile was radiant.