Monster (14 page)

Too soon they were at Helen Mercer’s grave, and Eden was taken aback by the beautiful flower arrangement that was already there. They certainly weren’t from her, seeing as she hadn’t visited in quite some time, so she was rather curious as to who might have left them. Her mother hadn’t had many friends, and the few she’d had, Eden knew wouldn’t be so generous as to do this.

“Hi, Mom,” she greeted, smiling as she took Liam’s car seat out of the stroller and set it beside her as she took a seat. “I’m sorry I haven’t come to see you in a while. Life’s been crazy.” Setting down the three arrangements she’d chosen earlier, Eden raised her hand to the thick, marble headstone, tracing the engravings of Helen Parker, Beloved Mother, with her fingertips. “I brought someone very special to meet you,” she said with a watery smile, reaching for Liam. “Mom, this is Liam, your grandson.” Eden raised a hand to swipe at the tears on her cheeks before releasing a sound that was both sigh and laughter. “He’s four months now. He’s such a sweet baby boy, Mom. He reminds me of you sometimes. There’s so much I want to tell you about him, about me…just everything.” And she did; she spoke of her pregnancy and delivery, and how she’d wished that she’d had her there to share the joys along with the pains of motherhood. How she’d wanted guidance, especially in those first few precious weeks when hormones, emotions, and fatigue had run extremely high. She refrained from divulging her marriage issues and how, hopefully by the end of the year it would all be over, nothing more than a bad memory. She kept to the subject of Liam, spoke of the simple things he did that awed her and made her smile and laugh for no particular reason sometimes. Eden spoke of nothing and everything that encompassed her child and expressed how desperately she was missed and loved.

“I promise to come see you more often. I’ll bring Liam every time I come.” With a sigh Eden rose to her knees and set Liam back into the car seat. “I love you so much, Mom, and I miss you. But I know you’re in a better place and probably looking down on us. I know you’re probably worried sick about me, but I promise I’m okay, Mom. I have Liam now, and he and I will be just fine.” With a silent prayer, Eden came to her feet and commenced her trip back to her car.

Sometime later, after a long leisurely walk around the park Eden found a nice shaded spot beneath a tree to set up her little blanket. The weather had grown increasingly warm over the last few hours, so the tree provided ample shelter from the scorching sun and had the added benefit of concealing Eden as she nursed Liam. But for added protection, she’d taken his swaddling blanket out of his bag to cover herself. While he fed, Eden sat back against the tree and amused herself in people watching. There were joggers, mothers walking with their children or pushing their strollers, elderly couples walking hand in hand around the park or sitting on benches feeding the geese over by the pond. There were others, like herself, who’d found prime real estate beneath other trees and had laid out blankets for picnics.

It was while her gaze veered back around that she saw him and tensed; even at a distant Eden was instinctually aware of him. She had only moments to assess him while his long, even strides brought him that much closer to her. Eden wasn’t even sure the word jeans and casual was part of Dominic’s extensive repertoire of vocabulary, but then if one could wear a tailored suit as well and impeccably as he did, one wouldn’t bother with such menial things. Grey sharkskin suit, royal blue silk tie, pristine white shirt, and trousers that accentuated his long, powerful legs that reeked of wealth and power made him look wholly out of place. More than a few heads turned to look at him, but it seemed he only had eyes for the lone woman seated beneath the tree, holding a covered bundle in her arms.

He was breathtakingly handsome and her heart skipped a beat as he drew nearer, thudding in her chest when he finally came to stand before her. She was at a complete disadvantage seated as she was on the ground with her child nestled to her chest, but Eden would not crane her head back to stare up at him, and he instantly figured that out as seconds later she found that he’d lowered his immense frame to the blanket, not quite sitting but poised on his haunches. “Hello,” he greeted after a moment.

“How did you find me?” she fired back, angry, but not at all surprised that he’d recanted on the promise he’d made of not following her. “You told me you wouldn’t follow me.”

“We agreed that my security wouldn’t follow you,” he countered smoothly. “We said nothing about me doing the following.”

“It’s always a technicality with you,” she said reproachfully, glaring at him.

“The devil is always in the details, my pe…Eden.”

Eden looked at him for an eternal second after that, and he stared back at her evenly, not entirely open with emotion, but showing enough that she knew the utterance of her name had been done to please her. “What do you want?”

“Far more than you’re willing to currently give me,” he murmured, reaching out involuntarily to tuck a tendril of hair behind her ear, his index finger lingering on a caress down her cheek. “But for now, I simply wanted to spend time with my son.”

Eden tilted her head away from his touch. “You could have waited until I got back to the mansion.”

He shrugged his broad shoulders, finding interest in the picnic basket she’d packed. “I lost patience.” He retrieved a roll of crackers and went on to tug it open. “How is he?”

“Sleeping,” she said curtly. “You’re not leaving, are you?”

“Not just yet, no.” And just to prove his point, he sat down on the blanket. “When was he born?”

The unexpectedness of the question surprised Eden but she quickly recovered. “March, twenty-third,” she answered quietly.

“Tell me about him.”

“I’m sure you have a folders filled with information about him.”

“Yes,” he admitted, “but not with what matters. I want to know more about him. Tell me.”

Forced to look beneath the order to the quiet desperation she heard in his voice, Eden sighed. “What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you wish to tell me.”

“He was born on March, twenty-third, at five-thirty in the morning. I was induced and ten hours later he was born. He weighed just under six pounds, but he was very long. He was very colicky at first, but we got through it. The thing with the hospital…” Eden swallowed hard, looking at everything but him, “it…it was an accident,” she murmured. “It was a few weeks after I had him. I was still trying to get used to being a mother. I was exhausted and I…I would never do anything to purposely hurt him.”

“Go on,” he urged succinctly, his green eyes focused on her completely.

“I overslept and when I woke up he wasn’t breathing. But someone came to help, and he got Liam to breathe again. We took him to the hospital soon after.”

It was as the report read, and as Dominic listened to her retell the story now with her own words, he tried not to condemn her for her mistake, but still, the thought that her actions had nearly cost him the life of the child he hadn’t even known he’d wanted until he’d finally held his son, made him want to lash out at her, use this in some way to make her pay. He filed the information for later, to further contemplate when he was alone. For now he simply looked at the mother of his child, fresh faced and astoundingly beautiful and tried not to compare her actions with the woman who’d given him birth. “Tell me more.”

The situation was quite surreal, and she didn’t know how to process it. She never would’ve imagined this in her wildest dreams—this outing, Dominic and herself and their child sitting beneath a tree, the appearance of a perfect family. It was too strange and it was probably that strangeness that kept Eden from losing her head. This wasn’t normal. She and Dominic were the furthest thing from a family, and regardless of the fact that they had a child together, there was nothing between them but a sham marriage and a contractual agreement that would come to an end in a few months. She would be a
foolish woman if she allowed herself to buy into this fantasy, this misconception of bliss that was creeping in.

They returned home some time later in the afternoon, with Eden arriving at the mansion first and Dominic pulling up behind her in a sleek black car that was quiet but radiated power, he parked behind her Nissan and was there to help her unload Liam, holding him in a cradle at the crook of his elbow. “Leave it,” he said in reference to the other items that remained in the car. “Someone will come get them.”

“I can do it—”

“You’re stubbornness is unparalleled,” he pronounced with scathing frustration, putting a hand on her arm to lead her away.

“Yes, and you’re still a brute. Let go of me.”

He released her only when they were the foyer. “I’ve gone from monster to brute; I’m not sure if that’s a step up or a step down,” he drawled. “In any event, you will have ample opportunity to further assassinate my character this Saturday.”

“It’s not slander if it’s true,” she retorted, glaring at him. “What’s this Saturday?”

“The Armstrong Charity Dinner. You will accompany me.”

“I’m busy.”

“Naturally, but you will clear your schedule to accommodate me. I wish to have my wife by my side, so you will be there,” he instructed with deadly calm, his eyes likes shards of glass daring her to deny him.

She couldn’t refuse him even if she wanted to. Just as she’d had clauses inserted into the contract, Dominic had also put in some provisos of his own, and it appeared he was enacting one of them now. She could deny him the use of her body all she wanted, but he required her full cooperation outside the bedroom. She was his wife in name only, and that meant several things when it came to the Armstrong name. She was to comport herself in a certain manner outside of the mansion. She was to play devoted companion and wife when she accompanied him to the events that required her by his side. There were other things, smaller things, but this one was what made Eden feel like a puppet, and Dominic relished tugging on the strings to make her jump.

It was with a great trepidation and wariness that Eden called Carver’s the following day to request a night off. She hated being
that
girl, the one who called out sick when she knew damn well she’d only been at her employment for a short amount of time. Lena chewed her out and demanded blood before Eden was allowed to get off the phone. Blood translated to a double shift for the next two Saturdays and temporarily stepping back into her waitressing duties so that another girl could take the night off. Later that afternoon, Eden, Jenna and Liam piled into her car and drove to the nearest boutique to shop for an appropriate dress for the event Dominic was forcing her to attend. She’d declined the use of his credit card, choosing instead to foot the bill herself. She had a specific price range in mind and was determined to stick to it, but that resolve seemed to crumble two hours later, as she had yet to find a dress that was affordable and suitable enough for this event.

“What about this?” Jenna held a frilly gold number that looked better suited for an eighties prom queen.

Eden wrinkled her nose in distaste. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh, this is cute.”

It was the furthest thing cute, but won hands down on the slutty factor. “Tasteful, Jenna. I don’t need any more reason to stand out among these people.”

“Did you enjoy yourself, yesterday?” she asked, needing to take her mind off this fiasco as she riffled through the racks with increasing frustrations.

“It was amazing, Ede. I so needed that. That spa, Euphoria, it was…magical.” She sighed happily, a wide smile gracing her lip glossed mouth.

“I’m so happy you got pampered. The massage therapists are amazing. Did you enjoy the milk bath?”

Jenna laughed. “It was luxuriant. God, I felt like a housewife,” she joked. “Dominic’s been really great. First the job, and then the spa treatment and shopping spree. I should really thank him.”

Eden peered at her best friend for a moment from beneath the veil of her lashes and was surprised to find Jenna looking back at her with a benign smile. “Don’t worry about thanking him, Jen. It’s the least he could do after uprooting you the way he did,” she said quietly, lying through her perfectly white teeth. Jenna didn’t need to know that Eden had spent this money on her, and she certainly didn’t need to involve Dominic in this.

“I’m just glad he decided to make me Liam’s nanny. I get to stay at the mansion and be closer to you guys. I’m really grateful, Eden. I know you probably had to bend over backwards to get me this job.”

Eden shrugged. “It’s nothing you wouldn’t do for me.” Which was decidedly true, Eden knew Jenna would do just about anything for her and she’d more than proven that already. “We need to stick together. Anymore contact with Alex?” she hesitantly inquired. She loathed broaching the subject, but she wanted to see where Jenna’s mental state was at. There was too much history with her and Alex to sever the ties so easily.

“I’ve deleted over a hundred voicemails in the last two weeks alone. I’ve listened to a few of them. He sounded bad, like he’s been binging on something heavy. He threatened to come after me…us…he begged me to call him.”

“Don’t.”

“I’m not going to, but I think maybe we should tell Dominic? Maybe he can help somehow?”

“Absolutely not,” she said bluntly, “listen to me, Jenna. Dominic is not the lesser of two evils here, he is the evil. Alex is bullshitting you, and even if he isn’t, there’s no way he will get anywhere close to the mansion to harm you or Liam. There’s too much security for him to get through, and he’s not clever enough to infiltrate Dominic’s security team.”