Tempest Tossed: A Love Unexpected Novel (32 page)

Chapter 28—Dylan

“Slap me if you catch me being so stupid again. Of course that’s it. She thought I was dead. I thought she was dead.” It was obvious. My sister wouldn’t have looked for me if she thought I was long gone.

“You weren’t being stupid, Dylan. Sometimes the dust has to settle before a person can make sense out of a situation.”

“True. Just like the will. I was in shock and just swallowed Spencer’s act and his version of the will as the gospel.”

“Your lawyer really doubts him?”

“On his counsel, I called Spencer today from the office. I told him I needed money in order to get set up here, clear my head and get ready to jump into Monarch fresh and energized. I told him I needed a vehicle, a place to live, yada, yada.” He took off his watch, fished around in the shopping bag he carried and put it back in its box. “I really don’t like this thing at all.”

I took mine off and handed it to him. “I don’t either. What about Spencer?”

“He’ll wire—and I quote him here—a few hundred thousand dollars—into my account tomorrow, first thing. Once that’s in place, Blake Harrington will move. He felt it was important for me to have a safety net in case things get ugly.”

“I like the way your lawyer thinks.”

“That’s why I bought the coins and watches. If it turns out that I get screwed, I’ll have something to fall back on.”

“Does Harrington think you could get screwed completely?”

“Are you worried that I might have to work for a living?” I asked.

“I hope no matter what happens you’ll work. I couldn’t stand it if you did nothing but spend money for the rest of our lives.”

I took her hand. “I like the sound of that, baby, ‘the rest of our lives’.
Our
life.”

“I didn’t mean to assume anything.” She drew her hand out of mine. “I just  . . . well, never mind.”

“I will not
never mind
. And what makes you think I’d object if you made the assumption that we’d be together for ‘the rest of our lives’? I mean it. Have I given you reason to think I wouldn’t want a commitment to you?”

“No. No, you’ve given me no reason to think that.” Rene wouldn’t meet my eyes and it bothered me. A lot.

“So, it has to be coming from your end, this hesitation,” I said angrily.

“Dylan, we’ve been all over this. I’m not hesitating about anything. Every time you want me to tell you I’ll be with you forever, your life is in such flux that we can’t plan past the next twenty four hours. I love you. I love you completely. You are my only. Can’t that be enough for you?”

Of course she was right. I was pushing her and the timing was pretty awful. I might or might not have a fortune. The two options offered a slew of different possibilities. Any discussion of our future was kind of ridiculous under the circumstances. And, it was enough to know that she loved me completely and exclusively.

“It is enough,” I kissed her and immediately wanted more. “Loving me
is
enough. I’m grateful for every moment. What you say to shoving all this bling into the hotel safe and going shopping?”

“Again? How much shopping can a person do?”

“I’m just following my attorney’s wise counsel. He wants me to spend until I reach the limit.”

“You realize that as soon as you walked out of the store with that watch on the value plummeted? Jewelry is like a used car. I know. A couple of years ago I tried to pawn some diamond studs my parents gave me.”

“I pointed that out to Blake and his response was that at this point I wasn’t spending my money at all. If the worst happens I have all this shit to sell or enjoy. His second statement was that if the fortune does settle on me, it’s so vast that whatever I spend on the credit card won’t matter.”

“Strange but logical. Okay, where to?”

“Wherever your heart desires, my princess.”

Rene was thinking hard. “I’ve got a sneaky and possibly brilliant idea.”

“I love seeing that mischievous grin in your eye.” She looked beautifully wicked.

“Gift cards.” She announced smugly.

“You mean like a Bloomies gift certificate?”

“No, I mean like a gift card like you’d give to someone that’s like cash. We can use your credit card to buy gift cards until we can’t buy any more! Once the approval goes through and the card is in your hand, there’s no going back.”

“That is a very, very brilliant idea.”

We found a drugstore a few blocks from the hotel and bought every card they had loading them with the maximum of $500. 00. When they ran out of cards, we took our stash of eighty thousand, five hundred dollars back to the hotel and added it to the gold and watches in our safety deposit box. Then it was on to the next store and the next.

In less than an hour, we racked up $203,500 in cards and finally hit the wall.

“I’m sorry, sir, but your card has been declined,” the last wide-eyed clerk informed me and Rene and I burst into maniacal laughter.

“Oh no!” Rene cried in mock horror. “This is terrible. How dare they decline your card?”

I hung my head. “I’m so sorry darling. How embarrassing.” The clerk handed back my now useless credit card and around sixty thousand in gift cards.

Keeping a few cards in my wallet, I made the last deposit of the day into our now quarter of a million stash in St. Regis’ safe.

“I hope Spencer doesn’t get wind of my orgy of charges before he sends the money,” I told Rene as we lay on the bed. We were both staring up at the ceiling and feeling a little spent from all that spending.

“That has got to be one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever been part of,” she said with a giggle.

“It was an inspired idea, my love. Give yourself a pat on the back.” Rene sat up and did exactly that.

“Now, I’m starving. For you and for dinner. Which comes first?” She got up and began to casually strip her clothes off. I loved seeing her undress in front of me so comfortably. Naked had become natural and it suited me just fine.

“Dinner can wait. Your ripe body is the food I need right now.”

In my life I had known the great pleasure of many women’s bodies, but with Rene I knew communion. With this woman I finally learned the meaning of intimacy.

Chapter 29—Rene

Dylan had the power to remove me from myself. His lovemaking took me out of the preoccupation of my day and into a world where it was simply our two bodies wrapped up in becoming one. I was grateful for the miracle of discovery we shared.

We had a gluttonous dinner of small plates at a nearby bar whose interior was designed to resemble an underwater seascape. We happened upon the Shoreham by chance. We didn’t want to go too far, so we just walked a couple blocks and wandered into the first place that appealed to us. What the meal lacked in luxury and originality it made up for in sheer tastiness. I’ve always loved the Spanish tapas meals made of up small nibbles of many different things. Our meal was more or less an American version of that and it was a good choice.

Before we slept, we made the slow easy love of two people already satisfied but never quite sated.

Dylan’s body was a wonder to me. I lay on my side next to him and traced over his muscles with the tip of my finger exploring all the tight honed peaks and valleys of his chest, watching his nipples seize and my nail grazed their tips. Goosebumps broke out around the chocolate brown areolas and he shuddered a little.

“Sensitive?”

“What you do to me woman.”

“I like doing things to you.” I put my head on his chest and laid my palm flat against his belly. “I think your body is perfect. Did you know that? I never get tired of looking at you.”

“I feel perfect. It’s a big shiny present every time we make love.”

I slept in the shelter of the arms I loved, but it took me some time to get there. Once Dylan settled into a soundless slumber, my mind drifted back to the afternoon and Dawn. I was uncomfortable having a secret from Dylan. Well intentioned or not, it was a deception and it made me squirm. I knew I had to hold onto it a little longer, but I hoped it wouldn’t be too long.

When Dylan checked his bank account early in the morning, there was a pending wire transfer of three hundred thousand dollars.

“Wow. I honestly didn’t think Spencer would be able to pull that off,” he told me as he stared at his computer screen. “That is an impressive load of cash.”

“I’d be willing to bet my parents don’t have that much in their retirement account.”

“If all goes well, your parents won’t ever have to worry about their retirement account again.”

It was a generous thing to say, but the assumption that Dylan would be taking care of me and my family felt a little presumptuous. All that money was going to take some getting used to. “When you say ‘pending’, what does that mean?”

“I’m not exactly sure. My experience with wire transfers is pretty limited. I’ve lived off that piece of my father’s plastic we had so much fun with yesterday.”

“So there’s still a chance that the transfer won’t go through.”

“I’m going to call my bank and see what I can do about getting the deposit cleared ASAP. I’m sure for that kind of money they’ll be willing to push it along. The fact that I maxed out a quarter of one of Daddy’s millions on that credit card could alert Spencer or worse. I’m hoping he’ll get that news after the fact.”

The bank assured him that ‘pending’ was just a formality and that the wired funds should be accessible for withdrawal by early afternoon. We went for a walk and had breakfast in a typical New York coffee shop. I was fascinated with the wide variety of people eating there. There were a couple of Hassidic Jews with corkscrew forelocks, dark hats and long coats just a table away from an Arab woman and her daughter in hijabs. These folks were mixed in with plenty of men and women in immaculately tailored business attire, a smattering of construction worker types and store clerks in matching branded knit shirts. New York really was a unique place.

We stopped by a newsstand and Dylan was disappointed they didn’t offer Marlin Magazine. “I miss the sea already. The magazine would give me a fix,” he said.

“I don’t think that’s a terribly popular publication in Manhattan,” I told him. “I haven’t seen one person in this city yet in a fishing shirt and a pair of flip-flops.”

We passed by an optical store and killed some time picking out sunglasses to replace the ones that we bought in the Azores. Even a little thing like that reminded me that life had changed, at least for me, in a big way. It ate up one of our $500 gift cards just for mine. His were a card and then some.

We had lunch in our room while Dylan nervously checked his bank statement every fifteen minutes. Finally, around two the ‘pending’ label disappeared from the account and Dylan was able to call Blake Harrington and tell him that he was good to go on contacting Austin Spencer. The funds were cleared and securely in Dylan’s account. It made me feel a little guilty to sit beside him and listen to his half of the phone call. Dylan was hiding nothing from me and I couldn’t say the same for myself.

“So, Blake, I have more than half a mil in my hands. Whatever happens, I’ll make it thanks to your wise advice. It might not sit right with the eventual heirs . . .”

Harrington said something that made Dylan laugh. “Okay, I won’t give in to pessimism.” Dylan nodded several times. “Right then, go make your lawyer magic and let me know your take on it as soon as you can. And thanks, Blake. I feel lucky to have you on my side.”

He set his phone on the table and said, “Well, babe, now we wait and see. It’s nighttime in London right now but Blake said he already drafted an email that will greet our Mr. Spencer as soon as he gets to the office in the a.m. Blake seems to be enjoying the game. He told me the more thought he gave to the so-called will, as he put it, the more fishy it became.”

“So, how do you want to kill time?”

“Would you mind terribly if I went and got a massage and took a sauna? I could use it.”

“Go right ahead. Mine was heavenly. Give yourself a treat.” He kissed me on the forehead and was out the door.

While I waited for him to return I called Dawn. She answered on the first ring.

“Hey, Rene, I was so hoping you’d call today. I can hardly think I’m so excited. Any news?”

I didn’t think Dawn needed to know about the shopping spree we’d had the day before or the wire transfer. My duplicity seemed to be multiplying by the day. Now I had secrets from both Dylan
and
his sister. I settled on telling Dawn that Dylan’s lawyer had started the process of unraveling the mystery of the will from his end.

“He won’t know anything until morning. Spencer’s already out of the office by now because it’s night time in London. Did you email him and ask for a copy of the will?”

“I did. As soon as you left I sent him an email. Nothing yet.”

“Let me know if you get anything. If I can’t answer, I’ll find a way to call you back.”

“Thanks Rene. Thanks for just everything. I’m walking on air just knowing my brother’s back in my life.”

“Well, he’s not quite back in your life yet, but hopefully soon.”

“Just knowing you makes him real for me. You’re the best.”

I hung up feeling
so
not the best. I called Hannah and got her up to speed on all that had happened since we arrived in New York but I left out the part about going to see Dawn. That was a secret I couldn’t share. I already knew that Hannah would not approve of me inserting myself into a situation that wasn’t mine to own.

Hannah got a charge out of my tale of the shopping spree and then the other shopping spree. She couldn’t quite wrap her head around the complications surrounding the will.

“All that legal jargon is like a foreign language to me. But even I can figure out that Dylan’s father was one sicko. Why do you think he kept the two of them apart all those years?”

“Girlfriend, I do not know. But I’m crossing my fingers that there’s something not kosher in the whole thing. Now that Dylan has a fat stash of cash, he may not be willing to wait three years to find his sister. He tends to be impulsive.”

“Then the two of you are going to have trouble,” she laughed. “Two impulsive people make for a roller coaster of a relationship.”

“I didn’t really know that about him at first. Not that it would have made any difference. Dylan more or less had me at hello.”

“Are you in love with him?”

“Yes.”

“Have you told him?”

“At least a hundred times. To tell you the truth, I think he wants to move faster than I do.”

“Wow.”

“But there’s so much extra drama going on . . .”

“I hear ya. Just hang in. You know my mantra.”

“Yes, buddy, I will chill. I will do my best, I promise.”

“You’re a big worrier, Rene. I know you. And you know what worry does? Not a thing. It is wasted energy. Life is going to be what it is.”

“Like Mom says: que sera, sera.”

“Speaking of mom, have you called them?”

“I haven’t talked to them since I left on El Loco. It hasn’t been that long, you know. It just seems that way. I just can’t face them right now, Hannah.”

“Shame on you.”

“C’mon. It’s not like I reported in to them on a daily basis. For all they know I’m out in the middle of the ocean taking it easy on a big ole yacht. Why worry them with details?”

“God, I don’t want to be around when you tell them everything that’s happened.”

“Maybe I’ll just write a letter,” I said sheepishly.

“Chicken.”

“Dylan wants to meet them.”

“Ooooh, this is getting serious.”

“Yeah. I guess it is.”

When we hung up, I sat and thought about just how serious ‘this’ really was. Somehow telling my best friend that I loved a man made it seem so much more definite. I’d told his sister and now I’d told Hannah.

I picked up my tablet and read some stupid stories about celebrities whose lives I couldn’t be less interested in. I put the tablet down and sprawled out on the couch and thought about Dylan’s sister. Meeting her had helped me see him clearer. I had another perspective on what their lives were like growing up.

Dawn was a far gentler person than her brother and apparently more forgiving but she helped me put Dylan and his devils in perspective. Dawn was warm and lively and sweet in spite of the nightmare she’d lived through. The horror she experienced didn’t define her and I wasn’t going to define Dylan by it, either.

My hesitation with Dylan came from me putting him in a box. The events that had given him nightmares or made him balk at too much sympathy were not the most important qualities of the man. They were part of him, but only a small part. Being with Dawn enabled me to see that clearly.

We are all more than the events that shape us. We are damaged by mistakes or cruelty but we’re also strengthened and enriched by the way we overcome those events. Part of what I adored about Dylan was his ‘live life to the fullest’ gusto. Another part was his sheer strength and physical bravery. Then there was the tenderness I had seen with Lady Delaney and his loyalty and care for Stephen and the crew. Without the extremes of his childhood, would he have been the man I fell in love with?

I couldn’t hold those things apart from the totality of the man. Projecting my fear and playing ‘what if’ was unfair to both of us. Demanding all the answers and asking for certainty was unrealistic and doomed me to being stuck forever waiting to be sure.

Dylan is the man I love. He’s the only person I’ve ever known who makes the hours seem short and fills life with endless potential. I want to spend my life with this wonderful man. I want to have the noisy family and build our own little world
.

The thoughts were as clear and right as the sun on the ocean. He was my destiny.