Torn Between- Seduced by the Billionaires Page 15

  Cami nodded.

  “Miss Hill, you must talk to Tyler, you must confess and make him understand something.”

  “There’s nothing about this Tyler is going to understand.”

  “The cure doesn’t work,” he said bluntly. Cami’s mouth fell open.

  “What?”

  “The rats are sick, something is wrong. I am trying to fix it, but we must get him to understand the cure doesn’t work.”

  Cami took another big sip of her wine as she looked around the empty bar. Dr. Sovich broke the silence.

  “If you are so loyal to Tyler, why did you take Dunning’s deal?”

  “For the same reason as you,” Cami answered honestly. “To protect someone I love. Only, she actually did the killing. Still, I love her.”

  “Glasnost is lost,” Sovich said and rose to leave.

  “Can you tell Harold I’ll be up in a moment? I need to make a phone call,” she asked. There was no point in promising him this meeting would be kept confidential. He already knew. The large man nodded and walked up the stairs, oddly silent for a man of his height.

  “Hi! You’ve reached Tyler Bach. I can’t answer you right now…” the answering machine droned until Cami got to the beep.

  “Tyler, it’s Cam. I have something I want to tell you,” she said. “Call me!”

  She saw the bag with her clothing on top of the bar and as she picked it up she noticed Eddie’s office door slightly ajar. Her first terrible thought was that he was in there listening and Sovich had betrayed them both, but the office was empty. She turned to leave when curiosity got the better of her. If Maralee’s file were there, Cami could at least confess knowing she wasn’t putting her best friend in danger.

  Cami walked to the desk drawer and slid it open. She thumbed through several folders. There was Andrew’s, and one on Steve, Harold’s partner, and a few names she didn’t recognize. No Maralee. She pulled Sovich’s folder off the top and looked at the pictures again. His face clearly showed the agony of a grieving father.

  Flipping through the documents and evidence she came to the pictures of the mob men she hadn’t seen after Eddie put the folder on her desk. They were truly terrifying and she couldn’t imagine standing up to them. Then she got to the last picture, the newest in the stack. It must have been taken in the last few weeks because the new ADT alarm sign was visible in the front yard. The woman who was like his daughter stood in her doorway waving goodbye at someone—probably Sovich—when the picture was taken. The woman in the picture was Maralee Snow.

  “We really do have the same reason,” Cami thought as her stomach balled up in knots. She put the folder away and left Eddie’s door just as she found it. She grabbed her clothes and walked out of the bar without a word to either Harold or Steve.

  “She’s a brick….HOUSE.” Cami’s phone rang just as she was pulling into the driveway. She barely heard the song. All she could hear was Andrew Sovich’s clear, deep, voice saying, “We must protect the ones we love.”

  “Hi Cami,” Tyler chirped. “You said there was something you needed to say?”

  “I just wanted to say goodnight, Tyler. I miss you.”

  Chapter Six

  Andrew Sovich’s hulking shadow enveloped the three grave stones set out before him. With strong hands he broke apart the bouquet into three smaller bundles of flowers.

  “I only need two,” Maralee corrected as she took one of the sets from his hand and placed it in the inset vase in front of the oldest stone. Dr. Sovich made no effort to replace the bundles, instead ensuring there were three separate entities.

  “I need one,” he mumbled mysteriously.

  “Katelyn was always the sweet one,” she mused as she sat beside the tombstone and brushed her hand lightly across it. “When we were little and all four of us were at home we would play cards or games on rainy days. Being the youngest, it was easy for me to be conned out of the good cards. Jennifer always wanted to win, and Dawn kept trying to make her own rules, but Katelyn played fair. When she could see I was getting a little blue or frustrated, she’d let me win.”

  “I can see you four in my…um…inside vision…um…”

  “Imagination?”

  “Da. I can see you four in my imagination. Little blonde sprites playing and laughing with each other.”

  “Only in your imagination would that be the case,” Maralee nodded and patted Katelyn’s stone again. “We were the Snow girls, all right. Blonde and bright, but never really blissful. Jennifer was practical, serious, and strong. Katelyn, sweet and surprising while Dawn was ridiculously talented and powerful. I guess I got whatever was left over.”

  “You got the spirit. The will to survive.” The doctor beamed at her like a proud father.

  The statement made Maralee pause for a moment. Looking at the graves of her sisters Maralee nodded its truth. “My oldest sister is still alive.”

  “Yes, but,” he reasoned, wanting her to see her own strength above all others, “she quit being a Snow to do that. She didn’t live through your family horrors, she left them for you.”

  “She had her reasons,” Maralee mumbled, looking up at the sky to keep her tears under the rim of her eyes. “When my father would start beating my mom, it was Jennifer who would try to stop him. Katelyn wanted to try to help Mom afterward, Dawn would flake out and climb out a window and I’d hide in the closet and pray for the goddess to help. But Jennifer, she’d stand right up to him, and get her own thrashing for the effort. I don’t think she quit being a Snow. I think it was beaten out of her.”

  “Do you ever see or hear of her?”

  “No. Not in years. I don’t even know where she is. She has her own life, whatever it is, and I pray it’s peaceful. She deserves it.”

  “Would you like me to find her? I know people…”

  “No, thank you.” Maralee smiled at the grand gesture. She knew he would turn heaven and earth if she asked him, and she loved him for it. “Best to let her go. Not these two, though. They stay here, watching from the heavens.”

  Andrew handed her the second bunch of flowers and watched as Maralee placed them beside Dawn’s headstone, kiss her hand, and hold it to the rock. Looking up with tears no longer hidden, she wrapped her arms around the big man. He held out the third group of flowers, softly placing them in her hands.

  She glanced with distaste at the grave of her father, and threw the flowers over her shoulder into the creek adjacent to the Snow family plots.

  “When it became my game, I made sure my sisters won.”

  ***

  Cami watched from Oak Street as Maralee and Andrew walked arm and arm down the grassy hill to Mar’s waiting car. She wasn’t quite sure why she followed them. On her way back from Super Save she noticed the pair in Maralee’s vehicle curling toward Mill Valley Cemetery and just slipped in behind them, turning off on a cross street.

  To say that a man wanted by the Russian mob for betrayal was creating a relationship with her best friend was troubling would be like saying a hurricane was a little too breezy. Her emotions mixed, Cami tried to find solace in the fact someone seemed to care about Maralee for more than her sex or her money. However, visions of her soul sister being killed over Sovich’s shady past held any satisfaction at bay. Grabbing the ice cream from its perch in a bag on the front seat, Cami sat back and watched them pay homage to the victims of Jim Snow’s brutality.

  I wonder if she’s told him. Cami’s jealousy rose to the surface with such force even Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia couldn’t hold it back. When he looks down at the old bastard lying in the grave, does Dr. Sovich know he’s hugging Jim’s killer? Would he care?

  “She’s a brick…HOUSE…” Cami jolted in her seat, causing her knee to hit the windshield wiper lever and dump Ben and Jerry on the floor.

  “Son of a bitch!” she exclaimed as she hit the button to answer her phone, batting at her steering wheel to stop the wiper’s dry screeching. “I’m changing this damn ring tone.”

&
nbsp; “Well, well,” Eddie’s sarcasm dripped out of the receiver. “Aren’t we feeling classy this morning?”

  “Hello, Sir,” Cami cooed. She’d been avoiding Eddie ever since the night she watched him blackmail Dr. Sovich into betraying Tyler. No matter how good what he did felt to her body, she just couldn’t get her mind to bow down to him anymore. But he had the evidence on Maralee, and she knew sooner or later she was going to have to do his bidding until she could figure out a plan of her own.

  “I’m getting a little lonely, Camellia.” Eddie said. It wasn’t a newsflash; it was a warning.

  “I’m so sorry, Eddie. It feels like forever since I’ve been allowed to kneel at your wonderful feet,” Cami softened her voice and tried to fill it with desire. The sound was saccharine—way too sweet and obviously artificial.

  “It’s not my feet I’m worried about,” he responded dryly. “I’ve got a collar with your name and a cock that needs your attention.”

  “I know, and I am sorry. It’s just a crazy time. I can’t tonight.” She stopped the sentence there, praying he wouldn’t ask for any more information while simultaneously thinking of a lie.

  Eddie growled into the phone. “The next moon is in two weeks. If I don’t see you before then, I’m going to fuck you so hard your screams will make the people at that gathering think the town siren is going off.”

  He wasn’t playing and she knew it.

  “Mmmmmm,” she hummed, picking at the sticky ice cream on her pants. “That does sound hot. But, I can’t stop thinking about the way you make me feel so I know I’ll be under you before the next moon shines.”

  “See that you do,” he snorted and hung up the phone. Turning to Harold, who was pouring over The Wine Loft’s accounts on the other side of the desk, Eddie sighed heavily. “I’m losing her.”

  “Perhaps Miss Hill wants to hear sweeter nothings than being fucked so loud she sounds like a tornado siren,” Harold mumbled, never taking his eyes off the spreadsheet.

  “Oh, she likes the fucking just fine. It’s the motivation that’s messed up.”

  The next thing out of Eddie’s mouth not only made Harold look up from his accounting; it made his mouth drop wide open.

  “I made a mistake with her,” Eddie confided, biting his lower lip and furrowing his brow. Even his assistant’s clear shock didn’t pull him from his fugue.

  “What kind of mistake?” Harold’s normally soft voice went down two more octaves with the nervous question. He’d never heard Eddie admit to an error or seem to experience regret. He felt the conversation firmly root itself in the twilight zone.

  “I let her hear me blackmail that Russian shithead. I had her in her hood so he couldn’t see her. I wanted her to hear about his past. It was supposed to be insurance for me, because Sovich would think I had some poor sex slave somewhere who would run to the cops if something happened to me. And, I thought…well….I thought my power might turn her on.”

  “And it didn’t?”

  “No,” Eddie slapped his hand down on his desk. “It had the opposite effect. She’s been avoiding me ever since and, what’s worse, I think it’s driven her even farther into the arms of Ty the Guy. I need her in my pocket, now more than ever, and I’ve just set up a roadblock.”

  Harold finished up his notes on the accounting and slowly replaced the binder on Eddie’s shelf. He hoped Eddie wouldn’t notice The Wine Loft was making twice the money The Spreader Bar was pulling in. Eddie didn’t care about money, but he hated to lose.

  “Do you have feelings for Miss Hill, Eddie?”

  “I like her, yes. Camellia’s like me, a scraper from the bottom who worked her way up. I have a certain appreciation for that. And she fucks like smooth, chocolate icing made with real butter.”

  “I’m not sure I know what that means,” Harold squinted. Not being from the South, and knowing he was gay since the time he was five, he hadn’t experienced women or butter in quite the same way as his employer.

  “It means, well, never mind. I don’t need her to bring Tyler and Dyes Industries down, but it would be sweet to have her as one of the cards in my deck. This is a high stakes game, Harold. Stacking the deck is the best way to win the deal.”

  “Steve and I? Are we in your deck this time around?”

  Eddie laughed for the first time all morning. “Of course, my friend. You two are a pair of kings.”

  “And you? What card are you?” Harold had a morbid fascination with the shifting ethical codes Eddie experienced on a daily basis. Eddie gave him a perfect Cheshire cat smile.

  “Card? I’m not a card, Harold. I’m the dealer. It’s the only way I play.”

  ***

  Once Harold was gone, Eddie picked at the salmon cakes his cook prepared for lunch. His mind went back to the first time, the first game. The game that gave him everything.

  It was one of the hottest summers on record, and Eddie hated Grafton in the sweltering heat. Although his father worked his way up to Senior Account Manager at Benloch Pharmaceuticals, they still lived in a modest home at the base of the mountain and the smell from the plants that hung over Lower Grafton made its way to their house with every passing breeze. Still, Frank had secured Eddie an internship at Benloch, quite a prize for someone who was only a sophomore in college, with middling grades at best.

  The position at Benloch gave Eddie a lot more than Frank Dunning ever intended from the summer job designed to keep his son out of trouble. It showed Eddie how the corporate world worked, gave him the tools for his own upward climb, and best of all—allowed him to meet the beautiful Jacqueline Beverly Benloch, devoted daughter of Roger Benloch, Sr., CEO.

  Jacqui was also home for the summer from her quaint, Presbyterian, woman’s college where she studied French history and was the social activities director of Kappa Delta. A mystery to most men, Jacqui Benloch had a well-toned athletic body diametrically opposed to her nearly translucent porcelain skin and deep, naturally red hair that clearly had never seen work or sun. She smelled like juniper and yet had the charisma of a juicy, ripe raspberry—dying to be devoured.

  “She’s so far above us we’d need a ladder to take the gum off her shoes,” Simon told Eddie one day as they lounged at the Tasty Freeze. Simon had been Eddie’s best bud through high school, much to Frank Dunning’s disdain. Simon grew up a few trailers south of Camellia Hill and received two pairs of work overalls to the chemical plant as his gift for high school graduation. A guy like Eddie was a king in Simon’s eyes, and Jacqui Benloch was no less than a goddess.

  “Speak for yourself,” Eddie smirked, his eyes never leaving Jacqui’s car as she drove by, on her way to finer cuisine than a double with fries. “Before summer’s end, I’ll have her begging to lick my feet.”

  The first date hadn’t been that hard to arrange. Separated from her Ivy League boyfriend for the summer, Jacqui was bored with tea parties and volunteering at the ladies auxiliary. He offered to take her to the lake, with some of her friends of course, and show her around. Roger Sr. balked at having his daughter fall into the escort of an employee’s son who had the unfortunate distinction of being known around Benloch as “Eager Eddie: Ass-kisser Deluxe.” Roger Jr., Jacqui’s big brother and only real friend in Grafton, thought it was a great idea and convinced his father that an underling was the perfect summer escort. After all, Eager Eddie would never make a move on the boss’s daughter and Jacqui wouldn’t dare soil herself by giving him anything more than some fake smiles and conversation.

  Eddie studied much harder than he ever had at school. Greedily he crammed French history, poetry, bird watching, and flower facts into his head, making sure he always went to her with a conversation plan. He spent about twice what he made that summer giving her everything she wanted.

  “I don’t get that,” Simon said, handing his friend yet another twenty for a night out. “She can buy anything. She can buy everything!”

  “She doesn’t want to buy it,” Eddie taught. “She wants it to be given to her.
But don’t you worry, she’s going to give me something, too, and it’s way worth the investment.”

  One by one, Jacqui dismissed the friends from their dates. All Eddie had to do was pay more attention to them than Jacqui and they became “too busy” to hang out. By the time Eddie had her alone in an abandoned gazebo-turned-clubhouse on the lakeside property, they were a solitary lock for the rest of the summer. He worked her slowly—a casual hand across her breasts, a kiss that wandered down her neck too far, an awkward position that accidentally led him to fall head first into her lap, planting a luscious kiss on her bikini bottom before regaining his balance. He didn’t so much talk her into sex as guide her there step by eager step.

  They both knew the day it would happen. Swimming together in the lake, she enticed him into racing, thinking it would get his blood flowing. She wanted the knowledge of an illicit summer love to keep her satisfied on the dull Kappa Delta nights to come. He pretended to be exerting much more energy than he was, distracted by the condoms in his gym bag calling him to speed this part along. They ended up on towels in the gazebo, drying one another off and making small talk between kisses.

  “You’re so beautiful, Jacqui, oh my God, you’re beautiful.” Eddie spoke sincerely as his rough hands ran across the skin of her legs, tanned by the summer sun but still ethereal. She stopped him just long enough to be clear.

  “You know this is just a summer thing, right?” she asked earnestly.

  “I know,” he smiled. She thought she was saving him from a broken heart. In reality, her reminder that a middle-class nobody like Eddie Dunning was never going to get a chance with a woman of her quality again for the rest of his inconsequential life simply strengthened his resolve to go through with the plan.

  “It’s…um…it’s my first time,” the young woman said honestly.

  “Mine too,” Eddie lied. His real first time came in high school in the back of a ratty trailer off 7th in lower Grafton. It cost him a bottle of MD, twenty bucks, and ten minutes. It didn’t take too many of those experiences for Eddie to figure out he liked it, he was good at it, and he wanted it for free.