Tempest Tossed: A Love Unexpected Novel (29 page)

Chapter 23—Rene

It
was
a busy day. Busy and glorious. Of course I’d been to Bloomingdale’s in Florida but it was way more exciting to be at the original fifty-ninth street store. It was also a lot more fun to shop without limits. That was something I’d never experienced. My life had been comfortable but whether in my parents’ home or on my own there was always a budget.

It was hard to know where to begin. Figuring out exactly what the girlfriend of gazillionaire was supposed to wear was a bit of a challenge. I didn’t have ‘a style’ of my own unless you counted baggy pants and stiff white coats. Dylan laughed at my difficulties.

“You do understand that every item is not a life or death purchase, don’t you? If you get home and don’t like something just return it. Or give it away. Trust me, you aren’t going to put a dent in Daddy Warbucks’ wallet.”

I finally picked up the pace and put together a respectable start on a wardrobe. We bought a set of luggage down the street at Louis Vuitton. I went pale looking at those price tags.

“Don’t you think that travelling with this kind of luggage just screams ‘rob me, please’?” Or ‘lose my luggage Mr. Baggage handler. You can sell it and pay off your mortgage.’”

“Maybe so, but if theft was that common how come these folks still sell so many products? Word would surely get around it wasn’t worth the risk.”

After a few hours of blowing money non-stop, we went for some lunch. After that, Dylan put me in a cab with all our purchases and told me to relax at the St. Regis spa for the afternoon.”

“I’ve got some shopping to do myself and I also want to look up a friend from school who might be able to point me to a good law firm. I’m going to need more than Spencer’s advice and I want a second opinion on that will sooner rather than later.”

“I think I can manage an afternoon at the spa. I’ll have a massage. I’ve never had one before.”

“You’re in for a real treat. Have fun. Spoil yourself rotten.” When I looked doubtful he said, “get used to it.”

The bellhop had to use a huge brass cart to schlep all our new stuff to the room. I planned to change into one of my new outfits so that when I went to the spa, I at least looked like I belonged there. My cheap sundress looked a lot more charming on a rustic island than it did in a luxury hotel.

Dylan’s e-notebook was still on the desk where we’d left it and I idly jiggled the mouse and refreshed his email. Sure enough, Mr. Spencer had already responded. I scrolled down through Dylan’s inbox to see what other kinds of email he got. It was pretty mundane stuff; not that I had expected any big surprises. I would have been shocked as hell to find out he was corresponding with some other woman. He just didn’t seem the type.

Nope, for the most part it looked like he got a whole lot of junk. There were a couple of fishing related subject lines but they really didn’t interest me.

I went back up to Spencer’s email. The temptation to open it was very strong. Not that I would understand much of the legal speak Jackson Cruz’s will contained; I was simply curious. It would be easy enough to cover my tracks by marking the email as unread after I took a look. I knew how to delete the download afterwards. Sure there was an off chance that Dylan would go poking around his history, but I seriously doubted he’d find any reason to do that.

My nosiness got the better of me. I felt guilty, but not very. The note from the lawyer was very short. He thanked Dylan for his confidence and assured him that he would be available to render any assistance—blah, blah, blah.

I opened the attached PDF of the will. I was right, there wasn’t much in there that I could make sense of. I certainly didn’t have any opinion about it, but one thing did stick out. Dawn’s name. My previous internet research had turned up the usual overload of irrelevant information and I hadn’t taken it much further than the one night’s quickie poke around. Without middle names, it was pretty tough to sort out the results.

Even Dylan Cruz was also the name of a pro skateboarder and several women! Armed with the fact that his name was Dylan
Jackson
Cruz might net me a lot more information on my sweetie when I got around to looking him up again.

Now I knew that his sister was Dawn
Penelope
Cruz I could dig deeper. I got my own tablet. No sense in leaving more history for Dylan to accidently discover. “Dawn Penelope Cruz” I typed in quotes. No results.

“Dawn Penelope” netted lots of results with all kinds of last names: Davenport, Hulke, Smythe and so on. Most were in England so I dug a little deeper. Since Jackson Cruz had been living in London, there was a connection. No dice. All of the English Dawn’s were far too old.

On a wild hunch I typed in “Dawn Penelope Jackson”. Bingo.  A picture of graduating seniors at Sacred Heart University in Stamford, Connecticut included a young woman in the nursing program there. I made the picture as big as I could get it on the little screen and found the face that belonged to Dawn Penelope Jackson. She was a pretty girl, taller than most of her classmates and she looked a whole lot like the man whose bed I’d been sharing.

But she graduated in the spring. She’d had an entire summer to move away from Connecticut and take a job. Nurses could go just about anywhere and find work. The chances of her still being in Stamford were slim.

I did a Facebook search. “Dawn Jackson”. Nope. “Dawn Penelope Jackson”. Yes, I was on a roll. One result was all I needed or wanted. She was there. Her privacy settings were high, but the profile picture said it all. There was no doubt in my mind that I had located Dylan’s sister. Her ‘about’ section listed her location as still being Stamford and her ‘works at’ still listed Sacred Heart University. So she either hadn’t updated or she was still there. She had a respectable amount of friends, so she obviously didn’t live a reclusive life. Dylan didn’t even have a Facebook page. He thought the whole social media thing was a ridiculous waste of time.

My investigation had netted me what I wanted to know. The question now was what was I going to do with the information? I was excited as hell and my first instinct was to tell Dylan what I’d learned as soon as he came back to the hotel.

It’s a good thing I had several hours to think about it. First instincts can be so wrong in so many ways. Dylan had back-pedaled after his initial endorsement of my offer to be a go-between and he’d given me grief about being the ‘inspector’ and looking everything up. The way he said it made me feel he wasn’t quite as comfortable with accessing all the public knowledge there was about just about anyone as I was. I’d always figured if there was something I could learn on the internet, it was fair game.

In my opinion, if you wanted to keep your private life private, don’t go on line, don’t get your picture taken and don’t get mentioned in the paper. Dylan had done pretty well hiding the details of his life. I’d only seen some stuff about the tournaments he’d won with Stephen. He appeared at no charity galas with any of his sometimes famous dates. There might be more to find now that I knew his middle name, but I kind of doubted it.

I couldn’t get Dawn off my mind in spite of the delicious massage that should have melted all my thoughts into a vanilla scented puddle under the padded table. Instead, the hour long indulgence gave me that much more time to focus on her. The more the soft music tried to relax all thoughts out of my head, the more I drilled down on my curiosity.

Maybe I was nosey and maybe I was prying where I didn’t belong. But Dylan was eaten up with the problem of what to do about his sister and I wanted to help. Maybe if I found her, I could sort of observe her from a distance and report back to him. If he knew she was thriving, had a profession to follow and looked ‘normal’ maybe he wouldn’t fret about waiting three years to make contact.

It seemed perfectly obvious to me that Jackson had to have been providing for her after death just as he was providing for Dylan. Spencer must have contacted her and given her the same carte blanch as her brother. So, she wouldn’t be suffering financially.

Not that she ever had. Sacred Heart wasn’t cheap. Daddy had to have been footing the bill for her $20K plus bill just like he had supported Dylan and the El Loco. And Spencer, who obviously knew where she was, continued Daddy’s largesse.

“Honey, I’m home!” Dylan announced seconds after I heard the click of the keycard in the slot. I was on line looking for the best way to get up to Stamford and hoping I’d be able to steal some time to go. I quickly closed the screen and turned my face up to receive his hello kiss. I could never tire of that delicious mouth on mine. Even a few hours apart kindled a longing to be with him that amazed me.

I’d always cherished my time away from both Nathan and Jake, for different reasons. Nathan could be a real pain to be around and his temper kept me on edge. When we were apart, I got a rare chance to relax. With poor Jake, it was just the opposite. I used my time away from him to socialize with more stimulating company. I knew that eventually the first blush of my fascination with Dylan would fade and I would probably want ‘alone time’. That was natural and healthy. But that hadn’t happened yet and I just couldn’t seem to get enough of the man.

He had ditched the outfit I’d gotten him and was dressed in a button down Oxford cloth shirt, a pair of gray dress slacks and black suede loafers that looked like they cost a mint. I hadn’t seen him in anything so formal since his meeting with Jackson in London. He wore expensive, elegant clothes very well. The pale blue shirt made his deep cobalt eyes look brighter. The pants hung on his long legs perfectly and the shoes were elegant and understated.

I got up and wrapped my arms around his neck and he hoisted me up to kiss me with his two strong hands. I kissed him again, deeply, winding my tongue around his and lacing my fingers through the dark curls that grazed his collar. His hair was slightly long for the ultra conservative duds and that just made him look that much sexier.

“Nice outfit, Handsome. You look all grown up,” I told him.

“I couldn’t exactly go lawyer-hunting looking like a refugee.”

“Did you have any luck?”

“Well,” he said as he put me softly on the edge of the bed, “my friend was able to hook me up with a top-notch firm and I think they’ll be a good match. One of their main areas of expertise is estate planning.”

I glanced over at the pile of packages he’d dumped by the door. “Looks like you also got some serious shopping in, too.”

“Yeah, well I’m kind of starting from scratch. Real shoes feel weird. Even Gucci’s.” He sat down beside me and slipped off his shoes. “I figured I couldn’t go wrong with a classic. I think my grandfather may have had a pair of these. I know my old man did.”

“They look very classy. What else did you buy?”

He walked over to gather up his packages and I had to admire how nicely he wore those trousers. I couldn’t get over how masculine—how utterly manly—the classic clothes made him look.

“I basically just got the same pair of pants in different colors. Same with the shirts. I guess I’m not real creative when it comes to dressing up,” he said as he pulled garment after garment from the shopping bags. He lifted up a suit bag. “Blue blazer. Also not very original. If clothes make the man, I’m one boring dude.”

I laughed out loud at that one. “You are many things, Dylan Cruz, but boring is not one of them. In your case, the man makes the clothes.”

He produced a laptop case from another bag. “I had to have something I could actually use. We can leave those foul little e-notebooks as tips for the maids or something.”

“I kind of like mine. It’s light.”

“Suit yourself, sweetheart.” He put his new machine on the desk and fired it up. “The guy in the store set it up already for me. I hope Spencer got the will sent. I’ll need it for my meeting tomorrow.”

A little twang of guilt pinched me as I watched him connect to his email.

“Yep. He’s on the ball. It’s here.” He opened the attachment and took a few minutes to scan the document. “I haven’t got a clue as to what half of this means. Why do lawyers take twenty words to say something that could be said in five?”

“It’s what they do, I guess.” I was being as nonchalant as possible.

He put a stick into the USB and copied the file. “All set. I can let the experts take over tomorrow.”

“What time is your meeting?”

“Eleven.” He rummaged in the bag from the computer store and brought out a couple of Galaxies. “One for me and one for you. We can charge them up and stay in touch tomorrow. I don’t know about you but I’ve felt a little naked without my phone.”

“Thanks,” I said as I took the white phone he held out to me. “Glad you got two different colors.”

“I think of everything, don’t I?”

“Yes you do, my love.” I kissed his cheek. “You’re wonderful.”

“Speaking of wonderful . . . How was the massage?”

“Fantastic. I am officially spoiled rotten.”

“And I intend to keep you that way.”

“Dylan, about tomorrow. Would it be okay with you if I got up early and went to the MoMA? You didn’t seem particularly enthused about it and I’d rather see it without feeling, you know, rushed.”

It was the beginning of a string of lies that would tangle my life in a choking knot.