Lured In (Dark Paradise, #1) (2 page)

“Something like that,” I replied under his tight squeeze.

“I am so happy to see you,” he repeated.

I was one hundred percent sure that Carmen had discussed my highs and lows with Matt just by his reaction to my presence. Matt was definitely the brother I’d never had. He was athletically built and the same height as Carmen, with brown eyes and dark hair. The last time Matt had seen me, I had been overweight, depressed, devastated by betrayal and infidelity, and still trying to cope with my past.

“Damn, Abi, if it wasn’t for Carmen, I would’ve thought you fell off of the face of the fucking earth. You just cut everything and everybody off. Why?” Matt asked with great concern.

In response, I gave him a tight smile, hoping it sent the message not to push the issue.

“OK. But one day soon we’re going to sit down and talk about this shit, in detail and in person.”

I looked to my right, narrowing my eyebrows at Carmen, who quickly gave me an apologetic glance from the corner of her eyes.

“Don’t give me that look, Abi,” Carmen said.

Matt turned to Carmen and again apologized for not being able to honor his agreement to watch their daughter that night. Carmen narrowed her eyebrows and gave Matt a scolding look as he collected documents for his meeting that had ruined my first real night out in god knew how long.

Racing out the door at 10:13 p.m., Matt yelled, “Carm, Meg is in the playroom. Tell her Daddy loves her and apologizes for running out on her, and I’ll make it up to her really soon.”

“Tell her yourself, asswipe,” Carmen countered.

“I’ll make it up to you, too, then,” he said with a mischievous grin.

Carmen grinned widely and just as mischievously at the thought of Matt making it up to her. I looked squarely at Carmen and gave an approving, blithesome smile.

“What the hell is that for?” Carmen asked.

“What?” I countered with a shrug. My smile only widened.

“You and those inquiring eyes of yours. You know that look you give people when you are internally scolding—that size-you-up-I’m-going-to-figure-you-out look.”

“You and Matt are bumping and grinding and in love again, and don’t even try to deny it,” I said lovingly, gently bumping shoulders with her.

I’d always hoped they would work out their differences because they had been such an amazing couple in the past. They were so perfect for each other. Matt was the only one who could tame Carmen, and Carmen was the only one who dared to put Matt in his place.

“It was just a couple times. Nothing serious, and no, we are not getting back together,” Carmen said. Her composure was broken when a ginormous smile broke out across her face.

That smile was another reason they were perfect for one another. She had never smiled like that until she met Matt.

Shrugging, I let the matter drop for the moment, and we both smiled as we walked out of the office. Carmen showed me the rest of Matt’s beautiful home before we headed to the playroom where Megan slept. Carmen scooped Megan off the plush pink futon. Carmen turned on the security system and locked up the place, and we headed home.

I dropped Carmen and Megan off at their home in the Spring Valley area, not far from Matt’s home. My own home was only a ten-minute drive from there. My penthouse, which was in the same neighborhood, took up three full floors. It was about 18,850 square feet, with six bedrooms, six and a half baths, and a three-level, 8,750-square-foot wrap-around terrace with an enormous swimming pool and hot tub on the lower level. My mom, Gloria, had been babysitting my daughter for me while Carmen and I were out. She was patiently sitting in my living area, watching something on the CMT channel with my daughter asleep in her lap. My mom and I had a complex relationship, partly because she had always refused to believe me when I spoke the truth about the darkness of my past.

Without a doubt, I loved my mother, but I hated the hell out of her for not choosing to believe me. My mom was a lovely and stunning woman with a kind and generous heart. She was very pretty, with black, wavy hair. She was of Tennessee Melungeon and white descent. She had fair skin, full lips like my own, big green eyes, and an amazing smile that she knew how to use to redirect my hate away from her.

“How’d it go?” my mom asked in genuine excitement.

“It was perfect and refreshing,” I responded, kicking off my heels and walking toward her and Gabi.

I leaned over and laid a big juicy kiss on Gabi while she was sleeping before I surprised my mother with a loving kiss on her cheek.

“Thank you for keeping an eye on Gabi. It means a lot to me.”

My mom reached over and returned the gesture with a motherly kiss to my left cheek.

“I’ll do anything for you, Abi. Besides, sitting here with Gabi is no big deal. I am just glad to see you go out and enjoy yourself. That’s all a mother could ask for.”

I smiled in response. Not my usual tight don’t-bother-me smile, but the way I used to before she had married my stepdad, Dr. Richard Shannahan, when I was twelve. Her eyes widened.

“There’s my daughter,” she said with a tremulous voice, nearly crying. It had been a very long time since I’d shown her such affection.

“Let me get her up so she can go to bed, Mother.”

I had to change the subject immediately to avoid reliving the past and changing personality on my mother in a blink of an eye, as I often did because of the past. I had accepted the fact that my past would always keep us at arm’s distance with each other, and my mother had learned that trying to get sincerely close to me in such a way would trigger friction. The lack in our mother-daughter relationship was evident in my mother’s eyes and face when I looked at her.

I woke my daughter to go to her bedroom on the second level of my penthouse. When I came back down, my mother was collecting her things, getting ready to leave. I gave her a tight hug to reassure her that I loved and appreciated her and meant no harm to her heart. We talked more about my day, and my mom was pleased to hear that I had really enjoyed myself. We said our good-byes and I love yous and called it a night.

The alarm went off at 7:00 a.m.
That will be the sweet sound of Friday morning
, I said to myself. I went into my daughter’s bedroom to wake her.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” I said. She was still half-asleep.

“Good morning, Mom. I tried waiting up for you with Granny, but I fell asleep. Did you have fun?” Gabi asked.

“I did have fun, but I kept thinking about you all night,” I said, nuzzling her nose.

I’d had Gabrielle when I was sixteen. It was a huge disappointment to my parents, who’d had high hopes for me. What parent didn’t have such hopes for his or her child? I was home alone one Friday night until Connor, my stepbrother, had come home from college for the weekend. I had pulled away from his drunken grip, fallen down a flight of stairs, and busted up my head, which knocked me unconscious. I was transported to Sibley Memorial Hospital, where my dad and stepdad, both medical doctors, worked. Although I didn’t know it, part of the routine blood work performed that night revealed that I was pregnant. I woke up later with a hell of a headache and a pair of very concerned and angry parents.

My dad had sat beside me on the hospital bed and asked, “Do you know what beta hCG is, Abigail?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Tell me what it is, Abigail.”

I frowned at my dad. It was not like him to interrogate.

“Dad, I’m fine. I know who I am, where I am, the date, everything. I just have a killer headache. And maybe I feel a little nauseated.”

“What is beta hCG, Abigail?” he demanded again, ignoring me.

“Gosh, Dad. It’s a hormone that is detected when a woman becomes pregnant.”

He handed me a printout of lab results and asked me to read it. The beta hCG level was 5020. It was high enough to confirm a pregnancy. However, that didn’t explain why my dad was pushing. I thought my stepmom was pregnant and they were trying to cheer me up with good news.

“Dad, is Elizabeth pregnant? Oh, my God, this is great news! I am so happy for you two!” I said ecstatically.

“Liz is not pregnant, Abigail,” my dad replied.

I looked over to my mom.

“Don’t even look over here at me,” she said angrily. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked away.

“Then who?” I asked.

“Read the damn name,” my dad said in a harsher tone.

I turned my eyes back to the report. There, in black and white type, was my name. I gasped, but my lungs didn’t fill with enough air.
Pregnant?
I began hyperventilating, which did not help my nausea. I tried to cover my mouth with my hand, but I was too late. My vomit flew all over my dad, and he recoiled in disgust. I hadn’t thought it possible, but he looked even angrier at me. I shook my head, looking back and forth at my dad, mom, and stepdad. Everything got hazy, and I went unconscious again. The last thought I had was that at least in sleep I could escape the disappointed stares.

I was a zombie for the next few days, and my parents rarely spoke to me. When they finally did, they told me that they agreed with Dr. Epps, my psychiatrist, about terminating the pregnancy immediately.

On Friday, September 7, 2012, I was in my well-earned big corner office preparing for an out-of-the-blue merger of our company, Capitol Health, with Health Choice. A knock at the door announced that my dad and stepdad were in the building.

My father, Adam Winterfield, was of Cajun and Atlantic Creole descent. He was tall with a solid build. He had golden skin, hazel eyes, and brown hair. My stepfather, Richard Shannahan, was tall but not as tall as my dad, with a medium build. He had blue eyes, pale skin, and sandy blond hair. Both men were handsome and sociable and loved wearing the best fabric and shoes and sporting all the finest accessories that money could buy.

The corporate office was on the twelfth floor of one of the McConnallay Enterprises high-rise buildings on Seventh Street NW. As physicians, my dad and stepdad worked primarily in various hospitals and the private practice they had built together four years ago. They came to the headquarters once a week to discuss business, administrative issues, and other concerns.

“Three thirty,” my dad said with cheer in his voice. He was excited about the prospect of the merger and the meeting that was about to start in fifteen minutes.

“Almost done!” I replied without looking up. I was concentrating on a few proposals I had concocted to make sure my dad and stepdad got a fair deal when the two companies merged. I’d been hard at work since hearing of the merger when I had arrived at work at 8:30 a.m. during a quick morning briefing with my dad, stepdad, and other execs. The talk of this spontaneous merger had apparently started last night, without my knowledge, and for some reason, my dad and stepdad thought that merging would benefit us greatly. Needless to say, I had been given virtually no time to research Health Choice and its board members. I took what little information we had on the company from Ernie, my stepdad’s brother and the chief financial officer, and worked from that.

Health Choice was successful and had all the resources to thrive on its own, which puzzled the hell out of me. Why would this well-established company want to merge with our small company that was relatively in its infancy? They’d been in business for twelve years, far longer than we had, and were ten percent owned by a group of five physicians and ninety percent owned by a silent partner, an angel investor who had become majority owner of the group practice seven years ago. Furthermore, it was this ninety-percent owner who had proposed the merger in the first place.

I had no business degree—in fact, no degree at all—but I was shrewd and savvy enough to know how to manage the hell out of a $32.7-million-a-year business. I’d started working for my dad and stepdad about ten months ago. Back then the practice had not been in the best shape, financially and publicly. The practice saw a ton of patients daily, but despite this, cash flow had been a major issue.

After a few weeks working there, I put together what little knowledge I had gathered from Georgetown and my God-given common sense to write a new business plan. The financial proposal required $10 million to restructure a “thriving” private practice. Without my dad’s and stepdad’s knowledge, I falsified the company’s financial and business information and presented the financial proposal to Right Choice Bank. After three weeks of back and forth, they granted me the funds, under a few conditions. With the $10 million in hand, I called my family for an unusual Wednesday dinner.