My Billionaire Stepbrother (14 page)

“Yes. I’m keeping it.”

After all…even if Remington doesn’t
love me, I loved him.

It’s crazy, but it’s true – I have
no idea how it happened. It still seems like something out of a dream, a
fantasy, or maybe even a tabloid. But this pregnancy is the result of the
wildest, craziest, sexiest, strangest adventure of my life. And I know the baby
will be very special to me because I loved its father – loved him so much I took
huge risks, leaps of faith, and nosedives. And I lived more fully this last
month than I ever had before. Remington Wilde brought me to life, with all its
extreme highs…and lows.

And I love him for it.

This is the first time I’ve
admitted it to myself, but I know without a shadow of a doubt that it’s true; I
know I love Remington because if I didn’t, it wouldn’t hurt so much to have to
walk away.

“It’ll be hard to be a single mom,”
I say, “But thanks to Diana I won’t have to worry about money for a while – as
long as she and my Dad stay together, anyway. But even besides the money, it
feels like it’s just time for me to get on with my real life. Build my own
story. My staying here wouldn’t help anyone.”

Shereen nods slowly, and I can see
her mind is whirling.

“Are you sure, Mademoiselle?”

I’m glad she asked. It gives me
another chance to think, to check in with myself. And I come up feeling strong.

“Yes. I’m sure. I’m starting my
own, new life. Tomorrow.”

Chapter Seventeen

Remington Wilde

Victoria

I’m in the middle of a meeting with the Wilde Hospitality
Corp. board of directors when my phone buzzes. Normally I’d ignore it, but the
name catches my eye: it’s Veronique. A spike of hope shoots through my blood.

Maybe she’s ready to give me another chance.

Opening the message, my hope is
quickly replaced with concern.

Your Mom is missing. Can’t find
her anywhere. Worried. Please do something. My Dad is waiting at for her on
North Island. Least you could do is try to fix the fucking mess you made.

Missing?

Diana Wilde is not the kind of woman to just disappear, to
run away from a fight. Something is wrong.

As if that were not enough, it’s
clear Veronique isn’t feeling any more forgiving of me. Her words leap out at
me from the text, haunting me:
Least you could do is try to fix the fucking
mess you made.

Damn it, she’s right.

There she goes again, making me
want to be a better man. None of this would have happened if I had behaved
better, if I hadn’t undermined my mother’s decision about Jacques and hired a
detective to dig up his dirt. If anyone has the responsibility to try to fix
this problem, it’s me.

“Excuse me,” I say, dismissing
myself from the meeting.

Within a few moments I am pacing in
my private office like a man on a mission. I
am
on a mission. I have to
fix this problem between my mother and Jacques. And then, hopefully, I’ll have
more ground to stand on with Veronique.

I try to call my mother, just to
check, but of course it goes straight to voicemail. She has switched off her
mobile. Her assistant doesn’t answer, either.

When Diana Wilde wants something,
she gets it. Even when what she wants is to disappear.

So I try Veronique, but Veronique is also not answering her
phone either.

“Dammit!”

Why do women make things so complicated? Why can’t they just
answer their mobiles?

Three calls. Five.

I resort to texting Veronique, desperate for more
information.

Have you checked Governor’s Mansion?

Asked Alice?

Asked Mathilde, her maid?

Is Jacque ok?

Where are you?

After twenty minutes it’s clear Veronique is just either not
by her phone anymore, or choosing not to answer. Which I would understand,
given the situation. But it doesn’t seem likely. Something must have happened.

God, Veronique must be worried. She must be terrified. She
must be concerned about her Dad, questioning the safety of his future,
wondering how to take care of him and solve everything.

All because I was a dick.

Again.

I feel terrible. The last thing I wanted to do was make
Veronique’s life even harder after all the nonsense I’ve put her through the
other day in our conversation about her being pregnant. I still haven’t even apologized
for the way I handled her news, and now I’ve gone and thrown her whole support
system into chaos.

I have to fix this.

Not just for my mother, but for
Veronique.

I lean against my desk, thinking fast. Veronique and Jacque
know enough about my mother’s holiday habits to have probably looked at all her
favorite haunts: the beach, the sail boat, the Governor’s Mansion, the main
resort.

They don’t know about her favorite retreat in times of
stress.

But I do.

I toss my useless phone on the desk, giving up on Apple and
Google. They can’t help me now. Technology can’t help me now: this is a problem
that I’ll have to solve face-to-face.

There’s a bicycle leaning on the
front of the office building, and I hop on without even caring whose it is –
I’ll return it later. Now I find myself speeding down the hill of Victoria town,
the salt air whipping against my face, the tropical night cool whizzing by like
a mist.

It doesn’t take me long to get to the part of Victoria where
the craft market meets during the day. In the evening the booths are quieter. I
hop off my bike and walk past the booths selling tropical fruit, exotic spices,
tiny souvenirs, French lavender, English tea, and pictures of Seychelles sea
turtles. Even though it’s getting late, some tourists are still milling around.

I walk through the hubbub and straight to a small booth in
one of the more abandoned sections of the market, a cloth tent selling dried
fish. A chubby woman is sitting at the front, and she nods at me as I approach.

“Remington,” she says, recognizing me instantly.

“Aunt Helene,” I greet her.

My Aunt Helene is not a true blood aunt, but her family grew
up working for my mother’s family, and the two women were the same age. She has
always been my mom’s best friend, in spite of their different circumstances.
She’s always the first one my mom runs to in times of crisis.

“Where is she?” I ask.

“Upstairs,” says Helene. “Don’t say anything stupid, boy.
You are walking on eggshells.”

“Yes, I know,” I say. “Merci.”

Leaning my bike against the tent, I pass through to the back
where rickety wooden steps lead up to a small upper room in the building behind
the market, where Helene lives.

And there she is, Diana Wilde, one of the richest women in
the world. She is sitting on the dirty floor, cleaning fish. It almost makes me
chuckle. She is in Helene’s clothes, looking frumpy and lost and completely
disguised from the powerful, put-together Diana Wilde the world is used to. Now
she looks like a normal townie, tired and busy.

“What are you doing?” I say.

She doesn’t even look up at the sound of my voice.

“What does it look like I’m doing,” she hisses. “Have you
gone blind as well as dumb? I’m cleaning fish.”

Yup. She’s definitely still mad.

Shit.

I don’t even know what to say at first. So I just sit down
on the floor next to her, watching her for a few minutes. Her hands work
steadily, and after a while I see a pattern to her work, a sort of meditative
calm. This is her self-therapy: cleaning fish.

What wouldn’t People Magazine give to know that?

“Mum,” I say. “Jacques has been looking everywhere for you.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“Veronique, too. They are worried about you.”

She cuts through a fish violently.

“I am worried, too.”

“You, worried? Didn’t your
detective do a good enough job for you? What is there for you to worry about?
Now you are smarter than the rest of us.”

Her words sting, but I accept them.
She’s right. I did think I was smarter than everybody else.

“I am so sorry that my mistake has
hurt you so much. Please, forgive me. I didn’t mean to hurt you or Jacques. Or
Veronique. At first I was trying to protect you. I really thought I was doing
the right thing. And then I just forgot to really listen, to really see how
happy you were. I can see now that I was wrong. I hope you can believe me that
I didn’t mean for you to get that envelope. It was for me.”

At last she drops the fish and glares at me.

“Son,” she says, “I am not mad at you for trying to protect
me. Or even for being suspicious of Jacques. Or even of second-guessing my
choices. I am angry that neither of the most important men in my life trust me
to be able to handle the truth. You, with your subterfuge and detectives.
Jacques, with his lies of omission. It’s frustrating when the people you love
won’t let you in. It’s exhausting. I’m exhausted.”

“I’m sorry. I just wanted to
protect you.”

“I don’t need protection. I need
love!” Her eyes flash, cutting me to the bone. “Love includes respect and trust,
son. Without trust and respect, love dies.”

She is so right. I look at her, amazed by her wisdom,
realizing something new.

“I’m afraid of trusting anyone,” I say.

My mother nods. “I know. You have been overly pampered,
overly protected. But you have to let go. You can’t control everything. You
can’t live without love. And love always trusts.”

Love always trusts.

That’s the thing I’ve been missing, the thing I’ve been
holding back from Veronique: trust. I’ve even held it back from my own mother,
and from myself.

Trust. It’s hard to learn to trust when people start selling
your secrets to the press when you’re nine years old, when your best friends
turn out to be spies, when everyone only wants to be seen with you to make
themselves look and feel better.

Trust. It’s a foreign concept for me.

I’ve built so many walls, I didn’t even realize until now
that I’d completely isolated myself from my own family.

Tears start to stream down my face.

“I’m sorry Mum,” I say. “I do trust you. I don’t want to be
so scared anymore. I trust you, and you know? I trust Jacques too. Because I
trust Veronique, his daughter, and I know that only a good man could raise a
woman like her. He will do right by you. If you give him a chance, I am sure he
will prove that he trusts you too. Please, let’s go back together. Let me help
make it right. Let’s start over.”

My mother’s eyes change from their hard anger to nurturing
care.

“Remington, I will give you another chance – one more chance
– to loosen the reigns and learn to open your heart. I’ll go back with you, but
only if you promise – promise! – to trust me to make my own decisions about my
marriage, and butt out.”

I burst out laughing.

“Did you just tell me to butt out?”

She frowns, not quite understanding why I am laughing.

“Yes! Butt out, butthead!”
I laugh so hard I snort – not just because it’s ridiculous to hear my mom using
such a silly word, but also because it is true. I have been an enormous
butthead!

I’m a butthead!

“I can’t believe you called me a
butthead!”

Now my mom is laughing too: first a
tentative giggle, then a full-on belly laugh.

“Well, you are a butthead!”

“Mum, you sound so American. It must be from spending time
with that Jacques.”

She shrugs, laughing. “I guess so. He is having a good
influence on me, no?”

It feels so good to see her laugh. It hits me for the first
time just how good it is to see her so happy.

“Yes, he is. He really is. I’m happy for you, Mum. I never
said that. But I can see that you’ve come alive, in a way. And I’m sorry for
not thinking of your feelings before my own. I’m sorry I’ve been such
a…butthead.”

This makes us both laugh even harder.

“You deserve to be happy,” I realize. “You deserve to have
someone take care of you, other than just me.”

She ruffles my hair, smiling affectionately.

“God, you’re right,” she jokes. “Who wants their butthead
son to be their only caretaker in their golden years? Not me!”

She laughs then sighs as she looks
around the ramshackle room as if seeing it for the first time.

“Ok, I’m done with Helene’s,” she
announces. “Enough of this. Back to my real world. Let’s get the hell out of
here, Remington. I love Helene but it stinks like fish and I need to go and reconcile
with my husband. And what about you? Seems you might have some more apologies
to make, no?”

Chuckling, I help pull her off the floor.

“Come on, I’ll take you to Jacques. He’s waiting at home.
North Island. I’ll sail with you. I need to see Veronique.”

My mom looks at me sharply.

“Yes,” she says. “You do. I don’t know what is going on
between you, Remington, but you better take care. That girl is special to me.
She is a sincere, talented person, like her Dad. Don’t be a –”

“Butthead,” I finish for her, rolling my eyes. “I know. I
won’t be a butthead.”

Not anymore.

“Veronique is very important in our family now, Remington.
You must trust her, but you must also give her reason to trust you. It is a
two-way street, love.”

Love?

Now it’s my turn to look at my mom sharply, but she just
raises her eyebrows pointedly, shakes her head at me, and then heads
downstairs.

Love
?

I hear her saying goodbye to Helene
and I follow her out, wishing that the boat ride to North Island wouldn’t take
so long. I need to get there
now
. I need to figure this out
now
.

If I can get over myself and just trust – trust my mom,
trust Jacques, trust myself, trust Veronique – who knows what is possible?

I used to think Veronique was
dangerous. Now I realize that she is probably the only way for me to be safe –
the only person I can try to open up with, the only person I can truly trust,
the only person who I can see myself learning to be vulnerable with.

I want to trust her. I want to open up to her. I want to
tell her how much I care about her, how important she is to me. How I think
about her when I am falling asleep, and when I wake up.

Will she listen?

I’ll have to try.

Veronique is on my mind as we walk
down to the docks, as we board one of our ships to sail back home. I wish I had
brought my phone, so that I could call Veronique now. As my mother and I sail
over to North Island, I keep trying to think of the right words to say to her
when I see her:
Forgive me. I’m sorry. I’m a butthead
.

It just doesn’t seem to cut it.
Something is missing.

But what?

What can I say to my hot, pregnant,
wounded, sexy, strong, powerful, intelligent, sassy, creative, unpredictable
stepsister? How can I make up for everything I’ve done wrong, for being a
privileged jackass butthead dick?

There must be something I can say,
some truth that can help me.

Staring up at the North Star, suddenly my mind clears. New
words form in my mind, a new way to try to make Veronique understand, to make
her forgive me:
I love you.