Ridge Creek Reunited (Ridge Creek Duology) (8 page)

Apparently oblivious to my anger, Jake continues his ablutions by conditioning his hair. It shocks me even more that he doesn’t seem to give a flying fuck that I’m about to self-implode

“Jake,” I ask quietly, venom spitting from my tongue. “Are you
implying
that I might have given
you
something just now?”

Rinsing the conditioner from his hair Jake chuckles. “I’m not
implying
anything. Chill out wildcat. We both know that if you were carrying anything we’d know about it by now. I’m just pointing out that if by the long shot either of us had anything, you are
more likely
to have something than I am. Now chill the fuck out.”

Finally deciding I’ve had enough, I
lose
it. Lifting my hands, I plant them firmly on his stomach. Tamping momentary thoughts on how ripped his stomach is, I shove with all my might. “Asshole!” I screech as I literally bounce off his abs and make a move to slide the shower screen open so I can exit. Right now I don’t think I can even look this son of a bitch in the eye. How could he possibly say such horrible things and not even be concerned?

Grunting at my shove but not budging
an inch
, Jake continues to rinse his hair casually with one hand, while the other snakes out to grab my wrist as it hovers near the screen door.

“Whoa there woman. I said
chill the fuck
out.”

Attempting to shake him off, I groan my annoyance as I soon discover that even one handed, Jake can immobilize me with minimal effort. Far out he’s strong.

“I did
not
say you were dirty. I did not imply anything. I was just stating facts.”

Narrowing my eyes angrily at him I snap out, “I don’t have anything, I had myself tested after I saw him banging that skank in her lounge room. All my tests were clear. I never slept with him after that, he repulsed me.”

“Then what the fuck are you getting so fired up about?” Jake continues letting go of my hand so that he can lean on the wall while he soaps his body.

“I don’t know. Maybe the fact that today I made a monufuckingmental decision to come back here and be with you and this is what happens. We spend less than twenty minutes together and you are pretty much calling me a disease ridden whore.”

Jake pauses his soaping regime to look at me. His eyes now look concerned. “I’m not sure how to respond to a statement like that.”

Realizing this is most definitely not the time and place to be having the conversation about what happened to me today
, I falter. Without taking his eyes from mine, Jake slowly places the soap on a shelf and turns to place both his hands on my shoulders. Twisting me gently he stoops slightly to get closer and peer into my eyes.

“One thing I am sure of is that you are freaking the fuck out. Again. You may not think you are but right now Arianna, whether you realize it not, you are. Your perceptions are out of whack and you’re missing the important shit and focusing on the crap. Now I’m not gunna spell it all out to you but here’s a few things I wanna make sure we’re clear on before I let your angry hands anywhere near my bullet wound.”

My eyes flick to his bandage before sliding back up to stare at his. Apparently
his
plan hasn’t changed.

“One. Not once have I
ever
thought of you as a dirty whore bag. I’m sorry if that’s what you thought I was saying and I can now see that this shit is clearly a sore spot for you. In my defense however, I really
was not
concerned. At all. Which is why my words came out the wrong way and made you react the way they did. In future I’ll be more careful about the shit I say and make sure I’ve got a good handle on your pulse before I decide to write them off in my head as a nonissue.”

Okay then.

He’s apologizing. This is good.

“Two. I’m not sure how deciding to come back here became
monumental
but I’d like to hear more about that. Just not yet. Right now I’m starting to shut down. My body is getting stiffer by the minute from being shot and then getting its ass dragged to Melbourne and back on a motorbike. Although I should add that I like your response to my telling you I was getting stiffer earlier, even though you may have taken it out of context.” He’s smirking now.

As realization dawns on me about his ‘stiffer’ reference I find myself starting to grin too. He doesn’t wait for me to say anything before continuing.

“And one final thing, for now.
Never
pull that shit you pulled with me before again.
Never
for one second do you need to feel embarrassed or nervous about the scars on your back. They are a part of you Arianna. They are like of a map of your life and are there for a reason. That reason is to remind you of how strong you are and what you are capable of. They are not ugly and they are not something you need to hide from me or anyone else for that matter. Those scars represent you. They represent the damage that was done and they show you that you can heal. Like the damage to your skin, you can recover from whatever life throws at you. Don’t
ever
forget that.”

Holy shit.

What do I say to that? Blinking slowly I stare straight into Jake’s bright green, very serious eyes and sigh. His eyes soften and he nods. I give him a small smile.

“Okay then,” he continues. “Now that I’ve got that shit out I need you to unwrap my bandage. I’m getting ready to drop from exhaustion here. The clips are on my back.”

Turning his back towards me, water continues to course over his shoulders as I spy two tiny clips holding his bandage in place. Shaking off thoughts of Jake’s latest revelations I decide to focus on the job at hand and think more about his words later.

Shifting my attention to the bandage, I can see that it
’s not only soaked with blood, but it’s also soaked with water. Sopping wet, there is now rose colored water coursing down Jake’s back, across his most magnificently muscled butt and down his powerful legs to the floor.

I gasp at the rivers of blood as I reach out and flick the ends of the two clips to release the bandage. Immediately it starts to fall and unravel from the weight of the water and blood swelling its fibers. Snatching to catch the first loop as it falls, I unwind the bandage from around his chest, slowly and carefully, unsure where his bullet wound will be. Leaving me to it, Jake sighs heavily and leans forwards and places both hands flat against the tiles in front of him a
s he continues to let the water spray down his back.

Winding the bandage around him three times, the last two loops drop away of their own accord. I am now staring at what looks like a burned gash across his lat just forward of where his arm would naturally hang. There are half a dozen steri-strips hanging off it. Bloody is steadily oozing from the gash.

“The strips have let go and it’s bleeding heavily,” I announce as I stare at the wound horrified at how the bullet has torn its way through skin leaving blackened edges from the heat of its travel.

“I figured that. Rip off the ones that are there and I’ll give it a quick rinse under the water. There’s another First Aid kit in the bathroom cabinet. There should be more Steri-Strips in there and a some proper wound dressings. I didn’t have any back at the house.”

“On it,” I mumble as I drag my eyes from the wound to turn and slide the screen door open.

“Ari,” Jake announces as I step out of the shower, “I don’t yet know what choices you were given today, but I want you to know that I’m glad you made the decision to come back.”

Pausing to look back at him, I sigh heavily. “So am I,” I murmur before I step out of the shower, slide the screen door shut and grab a towel to dry off before I start searching for the First Aid kit.

Stephen Bradford

Six hours later, Arianna…

Jake and I are sitting back at the bar in the communal room with Zane and Emma after everyone has finally managed to get a few hours
of sleep.

“You have to be fuckin’ shitting me,” Jake growls as he leans forward onto the bar. “You sure he’s not a bullshit artist?”

“Well I can’t be sure…” I reply hesitantly as I roll our conversation through my head again. “But why would he go to so much effort if he wasn’t telling the truth?”

“True,” Zane mutters from my left where he has been sitting quietly listening as I explained the events of my morning. “It looks to me like he’s put a lot of money and effort into this. Letting her walk away seems sincere.”

“A better explanation on why that dipshit didn’t shoot straight enough to kill me,” Jake muses staring at the beer on the bar in front of him.

“Gotta agree with that. I just thought they weren’t very good at what they were doing,” Emma adds from my right. “I thought they were fumbling about when in fact they were avoiding excessive force.”

“I shot my own father,” I mumble as I face plant on the bar. “Who does that?”

“In your defense you didn’t know he was your father at the time,” Emma says as she starts rubbing small
, comforting circles between my shoulder blades.

“Who points a fuckin’ gun at their own daughter? And who lets one of his goons whack her on the back of the fuckin’ head?” Jake snarls from above me as I hear the telltale sound of his bottle thumping back down onto the bar. “And shoots her fuckin’ boyfriend?”

“In his defense he didn’t know you were my boyfriend,” I point out lifting my head from the bar to look at Jake again.

“A guy with the resources your so called fuckin’ dad has at his fingertips should have had a better idea what the fuck was going on and realized you were fine where you were,” Jake snarls angrily again. “His dipshit friend could have killed you with that blow to head. That, no matter which way you look at it, is unacceptable.”

“Aaargh,” I groan as I drop my face back to the bar. “This is like a ‘Who’s on First’ conversation.”

“Arianna, don’t try to defend this mother fucker to me. He came to
my home,
shot me and then kidnapped my girlfriend. Just because he’s explained his reasoning for this to you does
not
make it right. If he hadn’t have fancied himself as a Goddamned James Bond 007 he would have known you were fine exactly where you were and things would have gone very differently.”

He’s so right.

Why am I even trying to defend this man? A man who until this morning I didn’t even know existed. I don’t even know him. I’ve lived my whole life accepting that I didn’t have a father and now, pop, one appears out of nowhere like a Fairy God… father.

Which I suppose, is why I
’m feeling this way. Somewhere in the deep dark recesses of my mind I’ve always
wanted
a father. I even remember when I was young fantasizing and dreaming about him. He was supposed to be my knight in shining armor and he would come and save me from my evil fire-breathing dragon mother. Sadly from the story he told me today, if he’d have known where I was, this may actually have happened.

That’s if he’s telling the truth.

But why wouldn’t he be? And who else but a father would go to such an effort to find me? I can’t help think that at least some of his story is true. Or maybe I just want it to be.

He managed to answer every single question without blinking Arianna.

I can only trust that he was sincere. And truthfully, I’d only spent a couple of hours with the man this morning, but those hours had flown. They’d flown because Stephen Bradford was
likable.
He was a good conversationalist, he was a good listener and he genuinely seemed to care about me. Me, the daughter he hasn’t seen since I was two years old.

Two years old.

“Aagh,” I groan as I rerun his story in my head, again. Having just told it to my friends no wonder they’re dubious. It seems like a tall tale indeed.

Stephen Bradford is seemingly a wealthy man. A very wealthy man. Born into money, he
’s the son of Australian metal mining magnate Richard Bradford and current Chief Executive Officer of his father’s company.

Stephen Bradford also has an older sister,
Elizabeth Bradford. According to Stephen, Elizabeth Bradford is not a nice person. Unhappy being a female born to a father who is a strict advocate for patrilineal inheritance, she despises her lack of placement at the head of her father’s company. She believes that as the oldest child, she should be in the position of power.

Carrying a huge fire in her belly to fight against her father’s traditional patrilineal ways,
Elizabeth Bradford is a bitter and twisted person. Devoting her life to proving herself a better candidate to take over the leadership of her father’s company, she’s been fighting hard to discredit and remove
Stephen at every turn. As an intelligent, wealthy woman in her own right, she’s also a woman with the time and the resources to cause both her brother and father considerable grief. And this grief has been going on for
decades.

Examples of
Elizabeth’s style of grief (never proven of course) had been near miss car accidents for both Stephen and his father (unusual mechanical failures) and unusual mining explosions when one or both of the Bradford men were on-site at a mine. There have also been two separate incidences of fraudulent dealings exposed within the company. Both of these incidents, if undiscovered could have led to stockholder takeovers that would have removed both Stephen and Richard from their positions of power. They would also have placed Elizabeth
in one.

These incidents if Stephen is to be believed, are taken by both he and his father like water off a ducks back.
Seemingly the two Bradford men have learned to accept they have an evil sister and daughter who is Hell bent on killing them and they have learned to treat it as a game. A sick game, but a game nonetheless. A game where security tactics are employed to prevent her attacks and spoil her offensive maneuvers. A game where the entire family (including Elizabeth) sits down together at Christmas to discuss the various crimes committed against them throughout the course of the year. A discussion where with strained civility, every person in the room knows who was behind all of these seemingly random events. A discussion where mostly, the whole family laughs. Except for the one particular unsolved crime that
nobody
laughs about.

The disappearance of Stephen Bradford’s two-year old daughter Penelope Bradford off a beach near Cairns while he and his wife were holidaying twenty-eight years ago.

A crime so horrific that after two years of unsuccessfully searching for their gorgeous baby girl, Stephen’s wife Carolyn decided she could no longer carry both her own and her husband’s constant grief and she suicided.

Although never proven, Stephen Bradford
was always suspicious that his sister was behind the kidnapping. Never sure what her motivation was, he was suspicious Elizabeth had expected him to fall into depression and either go mad or fall victim to suicide. He was suspicious that she saw Stephen’s suicide as the answer to all her patrilineal inheritance problems.

Which was
very
close to true and within an inch of fruition when her plan backfired. Stephen’s wife suicided first. His wife’s death was enough to snap him out of whatever grief riddled hell he was living in long enough to increase his resolve to live and
never
stop searching for his little girl. The only avenue he could take to spite the horrible woman that was his sister and ensure that his wife’s death was not in vain.

Knowing all this, one can imagine Stephen’s surprise the night he was sitting on his couch in Sydney watching the National News and the spitting image of his wife appears on the screen before him. Arianna Lovett, missing from her home in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. One look at the screen and Stephen knew exactly who I was.

Within minutes of seeing my face on the television, Stephen organized for two of his security investigators to fly to Melbourne and find out more. Unable to identify the exact reasoning behind my disappearance, Stephen’s men decided to keep an eye on both Tony Giotti and his boss Vincent Altieri. Not taking long to find out who Tony and his boss were; an assumption was made that I was kidnapped as some sort of leverage over Giotti and Altieri’s business.

Although the men were following a wrong assumption, their eyes on Tony led one of the men to witness Jake and Zane’s arrival and departure from my house in Melbourne. It was not however until the next day when they discovered that Tony was dead in his lounge room, that the importance of the two bikers was realized.

At that point, with nothing further to go on, the two investigators moved their full attention to finding the two bikers as well as keeping an eye on Vincent. It didn’t take many more days for them to discover more linkages and find out that Vincent was negotiating with two biker brothers from New South Wales for the return of one Arianna Lovett.

Letting Stephen know of their suspicions that I was with the bikers, Stephen became excited and flew down to join in the search. Using Stephens time in the air to their advantage, the two investigators started reviewing Land Titles attached to Jake and his family. Their interest piqued when a property listed under his mother’s maiden name suddenly transferred to a new owner that same day. It was this particular property they decided to explore first.

Landing in Melbourne yesterday with his personal army of security officers (one of the tactics in place to ward off offensive attacks from his sister), Stephen had ended up driving half the distance he’d just flown as he drove back out of Victoria and headed straight to the property of interest in New South Wales. His plan – to snoop.

This plan was far more successful than he could have imagined. This was because minutes after their arrival, one of the bikers who allegedly shot Tony walked out the back door of the house to toilet
a puppy. Planning on capturing him for questioning, Stephen’s men chased the biker into the shed while Stephen himself decided to find the poor confused puppy that had taken off into the trees among the melee. Having finally found Pierre cowering under a bush, Stephen had been carrying him back down to the house when lo and behold, I wandered out. Carrying a gun. And the rest is history.

Oblivious to my minds wanderings, Jake breaks back into my thoughts. “I can’t have that ass clown camped out the front of my shop. You’re gunna have to ring
Stephen
, and tell him to call off his pet monkey. It’s bad for business. Certain clientele are not gunna want to walk through the front door to pick up their boxes with what looks like an undercover cop sitting in his car staring at our front door.”

“He’s not an ass clown Jake,” I mumble against the bar again. “His name is Anton and he’s supposed to watching out for me.”

Although probably a fair call that certain customers won’t like his style of surveillance as they come and go.

“Get rid of the fuckin’ ass clown Arianna. We don’t need him.”

“I don’t think I have a choice on whether he stays or goes,” I sigh as I lift my head from the bar to look at Emma. “Stephen said our security was ‘insufficient’ so he had to stay.”

Emma rolls her eyes at me and then flicks a glance towards Jake. “I’m working on that. Believe me, I’m working on that.”

“Perhaps you could ring Stephen and explain that to him then?” I offer hopefully. “He understands a bit about security…”

“Emma is not ringing
Stephen
to talk to him about our security!” Jake suddenly booms and I swing my full attention to him. His eyes harden and his eyebrow ring draws down tightly. His jaw sets stiffly and I can see a small muscle twitching across the square cut of his jawline. Not a good sign.

Picking up his beer, he angrily drinks the last of it down and flings the empty bottle into a recycle bin with so much force that it smashes. The sound of breaking glass startles not only me, but Pierre and Jambo too. Jambo takes off from
the end of the bar where he’s been quietly eat cut fruit. Startled, he flaps and flies around the room screeching. Pierre, terrified by the loud noise flees with his tail between his back legs straight across the room to jam his head behind the couch. His butt remains in view and all we can see his tail pressed hard between both his back legs.

“Useless fuckin’ guard dog,” Jake growls angrily as he storms around the bar and towards Pierre. Pierre sensing Jake’s anger cowers further and starts scrabbling to push his huge puppy body in
to the small gap behind the couch.

“Jake!” I snap as horror washes over me. “Don’t hurt him!” I screech as I jump from my seat
to chase Jake who’s already halfway across the room.

“I’m not gunna fuckin’ hurt him. Back the fuck off woman!” Jake growls
loudly as he reaches the couch. Swinging down, he swipes a hand under Pierre’s belly and lifts him to his chest. Pierre looks terrified.