Surrender (23 page)

The Westmorelands were a private bunch, very eccentric most people said, carefully avoiding publicity of any kind because they liked their privacy, guarded it ferociously, but it would have been hard to find anyone who didn’t know who they were

… because the Westmorelands were one of the wealthiest families in the world.

SURRENDER Kimberly Zant 103

I felt weak all over when Kaelen helped me from the car, so weak I could hardly stand. I braced myself as I pulled Ashley from the car, uncomfortable about Kaelen carrying Alexis in, although I didn’t see an alternative. I damned sure wasn’t going to leave her in the car out front, and I couldn’t carry both of them.

I didn’t even know why we were here, but I was too numb with shock to think about asking. I just followed Kaelen.

The mansion of ill repute that I had been staying in for weeks must have been a

‘get away retreat’ because it could have been set down, I was pretty sure, in the grand foyer. A sweeping curved stair spiraled up from it, each side every bit of six feet wide. I glanced up and reeled dizzily as I glimpsed a dome high above the foyer. Focusing carefully on the steps after that, I shifted Ashley in my arms as she roused sleepily and then looked around the place owl eyed.

“Mommy, where’s this?” she whispered as I clutched her tightly with one arm and the banister with the other. Her voice echoed eerily, and her eyes widened with delight.

“Not a peep,” I hissed at her, knowing instantly that she would be shouting just to hear her voice echo.

Kaelen glanced back at me as he reached the second floor landing. Alexis, I saw, was awake, too, staring around her with a mixture of fear and awe. Kaelen set her on her feet and took her hand, leading her down the broad upper hall that looked big enough to land a 747 in it. I hurried to catch up and take her other hand when she looked back at me with wide frightened eyes.

“Where’s

daddy?”

“At his house,” I answered her shortly. “I didn’t want to wake you up when I came to get you so we just carried you to the car.” Kaelen sent me a glance but evaded his gaze.

We arrived finally at a set of double doors. Depressing one of the lever handles, Kaelen pushed the door open and stepped back for us to go in.

Alexis and Ashley both gasped with awed delight.

I felt pretty much the same emotion wash over me like a tidal wave.

It was a playroom filled with everything imaginable.

On the far side, a woman who looked to be around my age was sitting with a dark haired boy who looked about Ashley’s age. The little boy’s face brightened as we came in. “Daddy!” he squealed racing across the room and launching himself at Kaelen.

I covered my mouth with my hand. “Is there a bathroom …?” I asked a little desperately.

The woman took one look at my face and jumped from the rocking chair, moving quickly toward a door at the other end. I dashed toward it, sweating with the fear that I wasn’t going to make it. Ashley and Alexis, babbling excitedly, were right on my heels, trying to race me to the door. and I nearly fell over them. I managed to lock the door behind us and dashed for the toilet. I didn’t actually make it, but I was close.

SURRENDER Kimberly Zant 104

Ashley and Alexis stood on either side of me while I barfed, their fingers in their ears to block out the gagging noise, keeping a running commentary going while I emptied my stomach.

“Eew,

yuck!”

“Are you sick, Mommy?”

“That

smells!”

“She ate something that didn’t agree with her tummy, didn’t you, Mommy?’

I leaned my head weakly against my arm when my stomach finally stopped heaving. “Please, girls!” I moaned.

Ashley patted my back. “Poor mommy.”

Alexis went to get a bath cloth for me. She came back and handed it to me, dripping with water. I was grateful to have it anyway. When I had rung out the excess water, I mopped my face with it.

There was a tap on the door. “Anna?”

Before I could stop the little snots, they raced each other to the door and snatched it open.

“Don’t come in!” I yelled.

Thankfully, he didn’t. “Are you all right?” he asked from the doorway.

“Mommy barfed,” Alexis announced.

As if she needed to! “I’ll be ok in a minute!” I muttered.

“Why don’t you girls come out here and meet Kael?” When everybody had finally left, I mopped up the mess I had made with toilet paper and flushed the toilet. Feeling too weak to worry about finding cleanser to finish the job at the moment, I crawled over to the wall and sat with my back against it, my head in my hands.

He wasn’t just rich. He was married. I felt a little hysterical, more than a little hysterical, actually. As if it
mattered
whether or not he was married! That was his problem, not mine! He was the one in the wrong. I hadn’t made any vows to his wife, as if men
ever
paid any attention to vows! The minute their dick sprang to attention, they followed it where ever it led them!

The fear seized me abruptly that his wife might be home.

It flickered through my mind that the woman who had shown me the bathroom might be his wife, but I dismissed that. No one that lived like this tended to their own children. She must be the nanny.

I hoped to
god
she was the nanny!

Why had he brought us here, I wondered?

It was my fault, I realized. I had just sat in his car like a stone and let him figure out what to do with us when I should have been making some kind of suggestion.

I had cried all over him, I realized, feeling humiliated that I had completely lost control.

Kaelen tapped on the door again. “Anna?”

“I’m ok! I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

I didn’t want to go out and face him, but I couldn’t very well leave my children unattended by anyone except strangers. It took all I could do to get up. My knees still felt like water. The room spun for a moment when I had finally gained my feet, but I caught myself and moved to the lavatory, splashing cold water in my face until the SURRENDER Kimberly Zant 105

dizziness finally passed. A short search turned up toothpaste. It was kiddy toothpaste, but I didn’t care as long as it would get the horrible taste out of my mouth. When I had brushed my teeth with my finger and gargled, I began to search for some kind of cleanser.

Not surprisingly, there wasn’t any, because this was a child’s bathroom.

His

son’s.

I smeared soap on the washcloth I had used to wipe my face and got down on my hands and knees to scrub the area around the toilet. This time Kaelen didn’t knock. The door opened. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m cleaning up the mess I made,” I snapped irritably.

Kaelen crossed the room and crouched beside me. Catching my shoulders, he made he me sit back on my knees. “Leave it. The maids can clean it.” I refused to look him in the eyes. “I’ll just rinse it off. I don’t want to leave soap on the floor.”

He took the soap cloth out of my hand by two fingers and pitched it in the general direction of the lavatory. Catching my face in one hand, he forced my head up. I kept my eyes averted.

The fingers of his other hand stoked along one cheek and then settled on my forehead. “Alexis said you were sick.”

I bit my lip, fighting the hysterical giggle that surged in my chest. “She said I barfed.”

“Everything’s ok now, baby,” Kaelen said gently.

I felt my chin wobble. He was wrong. Everything wasn’t ok.
Everything
was never going to be completely ok for me again.

I had my girls back, though, I reminded myself. I was going to be all right now.

I looked up at him finally, feeling as if my heart was breaking. I wanted to throw myself at him like his son had and hold on for dear life, but I couldn’t do that. “I don’t know what I’m going to do now,” I managed to say finally. “Is there a hotel around here, you think?”

He gave me a look. “The girls will be fine here for now. Your mother’s here, and Marion can help her out.”

“My mother’s here?” I echoed.

He frowned. “I told you I’d sent her ahead to meet us.” I stared at him blankly. He had meant to bring us here all the time? “We really shouldn’t. I can get us a hotel room until I can find a place to stay.” He studied me for a long moment. “You still owe me two weeks.” If he hadn’t been holding my jaw it would have hit the floor. I couldn’t believe he was crouched here in his
home
with his little boy right outside, demanding that I finish up the two weeks I owed him!

I realized as I stared at him, though, that I was a horrible person, a really horrible person because my heart had leapt when he had said that. I shouldn’t even consider going back when I knew now that what I had been doing was wrong.

On the other hand, the only thing that had changed for me was that I was
more
desperate for money than I had been before.

I cleared my throat, tempted to point out to him that he was liable to find himself in the middle of a nasty divorce, but it dawned on me abruptly that he had been with me a solid month. If his wife hadn’t shown up screaming bloody murder in all that time, she SURRENDER Kimberly Zant 106

couldn’t care what he was doing, could she? She’d have to have figured out something was up.

I struggled to think if I had ever heard anything about a wife, but the fact was, even though I now knew who he was, I still didn’t know anything about him. Would he cheat that openly, I wondered? Or was there no wife for him to worry about? How could there not be when he had a son?

And how was any of that my problem or my business?

I had been hired. I had signed a contract. If he really wanted to push it, he could legally force me to go back. I didn’t believe he would. That sort of thing would produce some seriously nasty publicity, and I didn’t believe he was like that anyway.

But what did I know?

Rich people didn’t get rich from being soft hearted idiots like me.

And everything else aside, he had rescued my children for me. I owed him a hell of a lot more than two weeks! I dismissed my qualms. I had realized going in that I wasn’t in a position to quibble over morals, that I couldn’t afford to have them. If he was married, he would handle it. “You want me to leave them here for two weeks?” I asked finally.

“They’ll be safe. There’s plenty of security—both electronic surveillance and round the clock security personnel.”

The girls were playing with Kael when we left the bathroom. Alexis ran up to me when she saw me. “His name is Kaelen, too!” she exclaimed, pointing in the general direction of Kaelen’s son.

I smiled at her uncomfortably. “That’s because Kaelen’s his daddy and boys are named for their daddy lots of times.”

“Why?”

I stared at her speechlessly. “Because.”

“Oh. Can we stay a while?”

I leaned down to hug her. “Yes. Kael … Mr. Westmoreland invited you to stay, and Grandma, too. Will you be a very good girl if I let you stay?” She grinned at me. “I’m always a good girl. Ashley’s bad.”

“You’ll have to make sure Ashley behaves, too.” I looked back at them as we reached the door of the playroom. The nanny was trying to round them up and get them off to bed. She had her work cut out for her. I doubted Alexis or Ashley would sleep a wink with a playroom like this just waiting to be fully explored.

I think I was still pretty much in the grips of shock as I got into the car to return to the other mansion with Kaelen. A sense of unreality had swept over me. I was uneasy about my reasoning in my decision to return with Kaelen, but I couldn’t dismiss my own needs or concerns, so I dismissed the part I couldn’t deal with. I was emotionally exhausted more than anything and fell asleep with my head against the window before we had driven very far. A tug on my hand drew me in the other direction after a while, and I dropped my head onto Kaelen’s hard shoulder instead.

I roused when he parked the car, fumbled with my seatbelt, and finally managed to get loose as Kaelen opened the door. He slipped an arm around to lead me inside, and I leaned against him gratefully, allowing him to guide my footsteps.

Gareth was laying in wait when we got inside. Cameron and Dev appeared in the SURRENDER Kimberly Zant 107

door of the parlor, as well, but Kaelen shook his head at them, walked me upstairs to my room, and helped me to undress. He smiled faintly when he discovered I had nothing on but my jeans and t-shirt. I wasn’t sure what he found amusing about it, but I was too tired to take umbrage and merely staggered to the bed and climbed in. I was already half asleep when Kaelen climbed in beside me, dragging me across his chest.

I shouldn’t, I thought, and then didn’t think of anything else.

****

The sense of walking through a dream didn’t really leave me. I suspected it was because I didn’t want to let go of it because it comforted me. Oddly enough, the routine of the mansion of ill repute comforted me, too. I hadn’t really gotten used to the ‘new’

routine before my life had fallen apart, but it was familiar enough to give me something to hold on to.

And I relished the time I spent with them. The dream like state that held me actually seemed to make it easier for me to enjoy it … all of it. Where I had dreaded being alone with any one of them, I opened myself to enjoy it to the fullest. I didn’t try not to think about when it would all come to an end, I just didn’t.

Kaelen saved the best for last.

I thought so, anyway. In some ways, I was sorry that I couldn’t have one last night alone … with Kaelen, but what we did instead allowed me to be with all of them one last time and that was actually very nice.

Very

nice.

I was a little unnerved when Kaelen escorted me upstairs after dinner and I discovered
everyone
was following. More than a little unnerved, actually a little petrified. I thought at first that they had just decided to watch while we did three way, though, and I tried to block out the fact that I had an audience.

I saw, though, as Kaelen helped me out of my dress, that they were undressing, as well.