Star Promise (29 page)

The passive aggressive approach was wasted on her. She only responded to aggressive. “This had better be quick,” I told her, opening my door and ushering her through. “Some of us have real jobs.”

Olivia walked to the window. When she set her red purse on the couch, I wondered if it was the one I’d paid for.

“I think it’s time you and I cleared the air,” she said.

I sat and opened my laptop. “What do you want, Olivia?” I asked. “That’s all I need to know.”

It was all I’d wanted to know from the very beginning.

She slowly turned to face me, frowning. “I don’t want anything. That’s the point.”

I was sick and tired of playing games. I told her to clarify her statement or get out.

“You started this, Adam.” She folded her arms. “If I’d wanted Charli in my life, don’t you think I would’ve done something about it years ago?”

I swallowed hard, trying to quell the disgust rising in my throat. “So why didn’t you just leave it alone?”

She shrugged. “I realised that she’s useful to me.”

“How?”

The smile that crossed her face was ice cold. “She’s a Décarie now.”

Ryan was my kind of shopper. He didn’t dally. We grabbed a cab, headed to his favourite tailor and began the short but particular task of choosing a suit.

“What colour?” he asked me, wandering around the small exclusive store. “Charcoal or black?”

“White,” I replied. “With wide lapels.”

“If you’re not going to take this seriously, you’re of no use to me.”

“Ryan, you’re not going to pay any attention to my opinion anyway,” I said pointedly. “Just pick whatever you like.”

“You’re absolutely right.” He began eyeing off the small number of suits on display. “Sit down and be quiet while I choose.”

I’d been to some upmarket stores in my time, but none that served tea and cake. I sat in a small lounge area while a man with a tape measure around his neck and a mouthful of pins fussed with Ryan’s pant leg.

“We should come back here again, Ryan,” I teased. “Free snacks.”

He glanced at me. “You can take the girl out of the boondocks….”

“I like the boondocks.” Being in snooty boutiques that served morning tea reminded me of just how much.

“You’re going back, aren’t you?” he asked seriously. “To the Cove.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because you all belong there,” he said simply. “I’m surprised you’ve stuck it out here as long as you have.”

Jean-Luc referred to my job as an art adventure. Truthfully, our whole existence in New York was an adventure. Adam got to test the waters of a career in law, Bridget got to experience life in a big city, and I found my feet with a career I loved – and then completely lost my footing by stumbling upon my mother. Home was starting to call to me, and thoughts of packing it in and jumping ship were growing stronger by the day.

“You’ll miss us when we’re gone,” I teased.

His reply astounded me. “I will.”

I took a sip of tea, purely as a distraction. I wasn’t quite sure how to continue the conversation, or even if I wanted to. Taking Bridget away from Ryan was going to be impossibly hard on my heart. They were close, and both were going to feel the loss.

“I won’t miss all of you,” he added. “That repulsive doll your kid drags around needs to be put out of its misery.”

I smiled. He’d dug us out of a serious conversation that I wasn’t up to having. “Treasure’s a delight,” I insisted.

“Every time I see it, it’s uglier,” he returned. “First she drew on its face so it looked like an accident victim and now it’s warped like its been firebombed.” He twisted his arms and cocked his head, pulling off an awesome Treasure impersonation.

“She got a bit waterlogged,” I explained. “She drowned in a pool.”

The man pinning the cuff of Ryan’s jacket whipped his head up.

“Oh, she’s fine now,” I said, waving a hand at him. “Nothing to worry about.”

Ryan let out a dark laugh. “You’re a fruitcake.”

I set my cup down. “Will you miss me when I go home?”

“Like a hole in the head,” he muttered.

“You’ll be preoccupied anyway. A married man,” I announced with reverence. “Imagine that.”

He glanced at me again, grinning like a big kid. “She’s amazing, Charli.”

“Chocolate cake is always amazing.”

“She’s pecan pie,” he corrected.

“Whatever floats your boat, Ryan.”

“And not crazy,” he proudly added. “Unlike my little brother, I found a normal girl. We’re going to have normal children who play normally with normal dolls.”

I was still giggling when some prospective customers walked in. The middle-aged pair seemed to object to laughing in public. The woman looked at me as if I was something she’d scraped off her shoe. The man nudged her to keep moving forward. Ryan stared at me through the mirror. When I rolled my eyes at him, he winked.

Some of the best mischief I’d ever undertaken involved Ryan. Adam didn’t have wicked tendencies. He was good and law abiding; his brother, however, could be as crooked as a bent stick.

“Remember a few weeks ago when we stole that bloke’s wallet?” I spoke as if it was the most casual question on earth.

The woman spun around so quickly the oversized string of pearls on her neck rattled.

“Yes.” Ryan chuckled. “Good times.”

“And that time we conned a hundred bucks out of that shady waitress?”

His laugh grew louder. “Of course.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw the woman clutch her handbag a little tighter. Her husband seemed to be covertly surveying the exits. The only one who didn’t look concerned was the tailor, who’d probably heard enough nonsense in the past half hour to last him a lifetime. He kept pinning away as if nothing out of the ordinary had been said.

“Those are the things I’ll miss most about you when I’m gone.”

His smile through the mirror was minuscule, but it was there.

“When are you leaving?” asked the tailor, speaking for the first time.

I couldn’t answer. Nothing had been decided. Adam and I had barely discussed it. Ryan answered instead, with words designed purely to rattle the shoppers on my left.

“Her lawyer thinks it could be as early as next week,” he loudly announced. “Not going to get off with probation this time around are you, princess?”

The woman gasped, which was all the encouragement Ryan needed to continue. “A long stretch,” he drawled, putting the weirdest spin on his accent I’d ever heard. “At least I’ve got a nice suit to wear to court. Wait ‘til the judge sees. He’s bound to go easy.” He brushed his shoulder as if dusting it off. The tailor tapped his leg, signalling for him to step off the podium. “Now we’ve just got to figure out how we’re going to pay for it.”

The appalled couple were hanging on every word. When Ryan slowly turned to face them, the man grabbed his wife by the elbow and rushed her out the door.

It was the tailor who spoke first. We were too busy laughing. “I think you just lost me a sale,” he said dryly.

“I suspect you might be right,” replied Ryan.

Olivia wasn’t big on small talk unless she was trying to win Charli and Bridget over before brutally turning on them. She sat on the chair opposite my desk and got down to business. Her posture was rigid and straight, just like her words. “Charli is hell-bent on making this work out. She has an idealistic view that we’ll eventually build a relationship befitting a mother and daughter.”

Unfortunately, she wasn’t too far off the mark. Charli wasn’t prepared to accept that running into her mother was nothing more than dumb luck. She was convinced there was an element of magic in it.

“It’s never going to happen,” I said bluntly. “You know nothing about being a mother.”

“Nor do I have any desire to,” she replied. “Playing happy families was never my forte.”

“No one says you have to love her, Olivia,” I snapped. “But you don’t need to hurt her. What do you get out of doing that?”

The corner of her mouth lifted, and at that moment, I’d never felt more hatred for anyone in my life.

“I enjoy the game,” she said simply. “She’ll forgive anything I do because she’s desperate to make it work. I’ve proven that.”

After weeks of trying to figure it out, the big ugly picture was suddenly crystal clear. Olivia’s games were nothing more than research – testing just how far she could push before Charli called it quits. Clearly she’d moved onto to phase two, safe in the knowledge that Charlotte was no quitter.

“I could drag this out indefinitely, you know,” she threatened.

“Over my dead body,” I told her. “This ends today.”

“I was hoping you’d see it that way,” she replied. “I have a proposition for you.”

I leaned back in my chair and listened as she spelled out what she wanted. Not a word of it took me by surprise.

“You said you were prepared to pay me to go away,” she reminded me. “I’m open to that idea.”

Given her penchant for head games, I felt it necessary to ask for clarification. “Are you telling me that I could cut you a cheque right now and you’d walk away?”

She didn’t pause. “Yes.”

“And if I don’t?”

Her shoulders lifted. “Then I’m going to enjoy getting to know my daughter, and the benefits associated with that.”

The thought of Olivia being a permanent fixture in our lives made me feel sick. There was no way I’d subject Charli to that kind of damage.

“Life as a washed-up ballerina must be tough,” I mused. “I guess you’ve got to do what you can to get ahead.”

Her blue eyes flashed with anger, but she kept herself in check. “Don’t pretend to know me, Adam.”

“But I do know you.” I grabbed her prospectus from my top drawer. “Remember this?”

The only hint that her demeanour was slipping was the way she wrung her hands in her lap. Her expression remained flat, even after I spent the next few minutes calling her out on her fake credentials.

“Not one thing is true,” I concluded. “You started as a fraud, and you’re still a fraud. I could expose you and you’d be finished.” I dropped the folder down in front of her. Olivia didn’t even look at it. Her glare was reserved entirely for me.

“You could,” she agreed. “But in turn, I could finish you.”

“My qualifications are good.” I laughed. “They gave me a certificate and everything.”

“Everything you think you have could disappear in a flash, Adam.” Her monotone voice was completely void of any emotion. “Poor Charli’s very vulnerable.”

I wasn’t the least bit intimidated. I knew what I had – I’d spent seven years building it. “Give it your best shot.” I leaned forward and lowered my tone. “I dare you.”

“I’m not talking about you, specifically. It’s evident that the silly girl’s more than content to live the life of a wealthy society wife.”

That comment alone proved how little she knew Charli. It was almost heartening that she had her pegged so wrong.

Olivia stood up and stalked back to the window, staring at the view for a long time before speaking again. “I could never turn her against you.” She glanced back at me. “Believe me, I tried.”

Leading Charli to believe that I’d refused to let her make contact with her mother had been a hard blow to deflect, but we got through it because we were absolutely tight.

“You’re not that powerful, Olivia,” I said strongly. “And Charli’s not the least bit vulnerable.”

When she slowly turned to face me, I was hit with the sinking feeling that my upper hand was gone.

“She’s very insecure when it comes to dealing with Bridget, isn’t she?” she asked. “That’s natural considering she had no mother of her own – no experience to draw on.” I could think of a hundred ways of describing Olivia, but stupid wasn’t one of them. Charli’s confidence wasn’t always high where Bridget was concerned, and she’d picked up on it. “Bridget doesn’t enjoy being let down by her mother,” she added. “It seems to happen a lot in my presence. Poor Charli doesn’t do well when faced with parental challenges.”

“You’re twisted,” I spat. “You need help.”

“No, what I need is financial incentive to leave,” she replied calmly. “If I don’t get it, little Bridget’s relationship with her mother might take a turn for the worse.”

I didn’t doubt for a second that she could do it. She’d already backed us into a corner where Bridget was concerned, which is why she was still attending her stupid dance studio.

“You were hoping Charli would pull her out of class, weren’t you?” I asked.

Her laugh was as cold as the rest of her. “It would’ve broken Bridget’s heart,” she said. “And it would’ve all been Charli’s fault.”

I shook my head, trying to shake free of the bigger picture coming to mind. “This is about more than money,” I realised. “You’re going out of your way to hurt Charli. What did she do to you?”

Olivia turned back to the window. “Plenty,” she said sourly. “I’ll enjoy returning the favour.”

My first inclination was to pay the hateful woman off and get her the hell out of our lives. My second was to dig a little deeper. “What could she possibly have taken from you?” I demanded. “You gave her up at birth and got on with your life. She never sought you out – neither did Alex.”

She turned to face me again, looking far less smug than before. “Charli told me she has little to do with her father,” she said curiously. “I don’t believe her.”

If that was the line Charli had gone with, I wasn’t about to enlighten her.

“What do you care?”

She almost smiled. “I’ve always cared for Alex,” she replied.

My mind kept rejecting the picture I was trying to build of the two of them together. It was impossible to imagine. Alex was the most decent person I’d ever known. Olivia was the most twisted.

“He chose Charli over you, didn’t he?” I guessed. “You lost the lot because he fell in love with his daughter.”

“Just write me the cheque, Adam,” she instructed, sounding totally bored and disinterested. “And then we’re done.”

Perhaps I wasn’t feeling charitable, or maybe I knew that no amount of money was going to stop her coming back for more. I walked to the door and held it open. “I’m not giving you a cent. We’re done here.”