Simple Perfection Read online

  “I fired the board. I’m choosing my own. My father’s board isn’t for me. I want you on my new one.”

  Grant set down his glass and stared at me a minute. “What did you just say?”

  “The club has a board of directors. The old one has been let go. Will you be on my new board?”

  Grant motioned for Mitch to refill his glass. “Damn, I’m glad I’m back. Crazy shit happens here all the time. No place is as drama-ridden as Rosemary. Not even fucking LA.”

  “Does this mean yes, you will be on my board?” I asked, taking a sip of my bourbon.

  Grant grinned over at me. “Hell yeah, I will.”

  I knew he would. That made four. I still needed to talk to a few more. “I have paperwork in my office for you to fill out. But tonight, let’s drink. I need a distraction.”

  Grant pulled out a stool and sat down. “Where’s Della?”

  I had been expecting this question but hearing her name jolted me. She had met with her birth mother today. Braden was supposed to call me tonight and let me know how it went. I was anxious and needed to think about something else until I got that call.

  “She left.” I couldn’t bring myself to explain anything else.

  “She left? What the fuck did you do?”

  “Screwed up. Missed some signs I should have noticed. Got too busy to see what she needed. Smothered her.” There was a long list of things I had realized I was guilty of.

  “Damn. Last I saw you two, you were worshipping at her altar. How the hell did it go south so fast?”

  “It’s not over. I’m waiting. She’ll come back. I’m letting her decide if she can do this. In the meantime, I’m drinking a lot and living for phone calls from Tripp.”

  Grant put his glass down and let out a low whistle. “Ah, hell no. She left with Tripp?”

  I just managed a nod.

  “Shit, dude. I’m sorry. If you want my help kicking his playboy ass I got your back.”

  At one point that would have been exactly what I wanted, but not now. Tripp was taking care of her. He was making sure she was safe. It was all I had. I shook my head. “No. It’s okay. He’s keeping me updated. He’s making sure she has what she needs to be free.”

  Grant frowned and leaned toward me. “Am I understanding you right? Your woman is off with Tripp and you’re okay with this?”

  “She loves me.”

  Grant nodded. “Yeah, she does.”

  “She’ll be back. This hand isn’t over. It can’t be. I went all in.”

  I didn’t have to explain that to Grant. He got it. He smiled and leaned back with his drink in his hand. “You got this one, Ace.”

  My phone rang and I pulled it out to see my mother’s name on the screen. I stuck it back in my pocket. I wasn’t talking to her. I was sure she was aware that the old board members had been released. She wouldn’t be happy about that.

  “Is Nan coming back?” I asked.

  Grant held the glass to his lips a moment longer than necessary. He was stalling. I knew that move. When he finally set it down he turned his head toward me. “Yeah. She’s coming back. I’m heading over to Rush’s when I leave here to tell him. He needs to be prepared.”

  “You ask her to come back?” I asked. Grant’s attraction to Nan made no sense to me. He had seen how evil she could be. He had seen her at her worst. How could he want that?

  “Hell no. But she’s coming. Kiro bought her a nice, big, fancy house. The light blue one that sits over the hill on the south end of the beach.”

  Kiro was the lead singer of Slacker Demon and Nan’s father. “Damn. I like that house. How’d she get that out of him?”

  “He’s trying to get rid of her. She hasn’t been easy to deal with. She gives him hell every chance she gets and he’s pretty desperate.”

  “Can’t say I blame him.” I would have done whatever I could to get away from her, too, if I was him. Nan was dangerous when she wanted to be.

  “I feel bad for her, man. She knows he bought it for her to move her as far away from him as possible. She just wants his attention.”

  “He’s the lead singer in the biggest, most legendary rock band of our time. He ignored her for most of her life. He isn’t daddy material.”

  Grant frowned and I could see he was dealing with something. “He has another daughter. He treats her differently. He’s affectionate with her. He loves her. It’s obvious. But she’s not like Nan. She doesn’t demand things and she’s quiet. I think that’s what he wants. A meek, sweet daughter. Nan will never be that.”

  “Another daughter? Really?” I’d never heard of Kiro having a daughter.

  “Yeah. She lives with him, too. She has what Nan wants and will never get. Because Nan can’t be her. She can’t be what Kiro wants. It sucks for her. She’s always just wanted attention. Both her parents denied her that. Rush is all she ever had and now he has Blaire and Nate. She lost him, too. I can’t help but feel bad for her.” He took a drink and set it down, then stood up. “I get that no one understands why I have anything to do with her, and I’ll be honest: at times, I don’t know either. She’s all kinds of fucked up and mean.”

  I nodded, because he was right about that.

  Della

  “I shouldn’t have got you. If it hadn’t been for you crying and keeping me up all night I wouldn’t have been needing a nap. I wouldn’t have let my little boy go to that store. It’s all your fault, Della. All your fault. He knows it, too. He wanted to stay with me but I was so sleepy. So very sleepy. You wouldn’t let me sleep.” Mother roared and reared back and slapped me across the face. I stumbled backward and grabbed the edge of the bed before I fell down.

  “If you had slept at night and let me be a good mommy to my little boy he would be alive. But you ruined everything. I didn’t want another baby. Your father wanted a little girl. He said it would complete our family. You didn’t complete us! You destroyed us!” I braced myself as Mother hit me again. I tried not to cry. I tried not to whimper. If I whimpered she would get angrier. I had to stay calm. I had to let her scream. She would cry soon and go to her room.

  “Get on that bed and don’t move. The monsters under it will get you. They will come get you for being such a bad girl. They know it’s all your fault. They know what you did to me.”

  I never understood her when she blamed me for my brother’s death—I was a baby when it happened—but I let her yell and hit me. If I fought back she only got angrier. Once she had hit me at breakfast and I didn’t wake up until the middle of the night. I had been on the kitchen floor with a pillow under my head and a blanket over me. She had put two plates of food beside me.

  I didn’t fight back anymore. I was scared to.

  “Get on that bed!” she screamed as I scrambled to do as she commanded. “Don’t come out. I don’t want to look at you,” she said before walking away and slamming the door behind her. I heard the familiar click and I knew she’d locked me in. My door had always locked from the outside. She controlled it.

  “Good night, Momma,” I whispered as I pulled my knees up to my chin and rocked myself back and forth while I pretended that I had a better life. One where I could go outside and ride a bike.

  I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling fan. I was in the guest bedroom at Braden’s house. I hadn’t woken up screaming. I had never dreamed of my mother and not woken up screaming with imaginary blood on my hands. Something had changed. The memory was one I’d forgotten but her words that day made sense now. I sat up and swung my legs over and stood up. I had dreamed and not screamed. I was afraid to hope, but I had never been able to do this. I opened my door and stepped out into the dark hallway. Braden would be asleep and I didn’t want to wake her. But I needed to process this.

  I walked to the kitchen to get a drink of water.

  Braden was standing at the counter with a glass of milk, staring straight ahead in deep thought, when I walked into the room. Her eyes shifted to me. “Della? Are you okay? I didn’t hear you.” />
  I stood there as it really sank in. I had dreamed of her. Yet I hadn’t had a night terror. “I dreamed about her. About my life then. And . . . and . . . I just woke up. No blood. I never saw the blood. I just woke up.”

  Braden stared at me as she processed what I had told her. Then she set her milk down on the bar and ran over to me. Her arms wrapped around me. “You’re getting better. Already, you’re getting better,” she said in a teary voice.

  I wanted to cry, too. I wanted to cry because I realized I might just have a chance at happiness. What if I was strong after all? What if, underneath all that fear, I had buried someone deep inside who was brave and could take on life without someone to lean on?

  “I think I’m going to be okay,” I said out loud, because I needed to hear myself say it.

  Braden squeezed me tighter. “I know you’re going to be okay. I know it.”

  We stood there holding each other in the kitchen for several moments before I pulled back. “I’m not going to go crazy. I won’t snap one day and become her.”

  Braden wiped at the tears streaming down her face. “I know. I’ve always known that.”

  “But I didn’t. I had seen her. I knew what she could be. I didn’t want to be that too.”

  “She was the woman who raised you but she wasn’t your mother.”

  I nodded. I knew that now. I was going to be okay. “I want to meet my . . . I want to meet my birth father. I need to see him. I need to see his family, too.”

  Braden nodded. “Good. I think you should.”

  I stepped back and turned to go back to the bedroom.

  “Della,” Braden said.

  I glanced back at her. “Yes?”

  “Call him. He needs to hear from you.”

  She wasn’t talking about my birth father. She was talking about Woods. I would have given anything to hear his voice. But I couldn’t. He had moved on. He hadn’t looked for me or tried to contact me. I had let him go and he’d walked away. I couldn’t bother him now. “I can’t.”

  “He misses you,” she said.

  “You don’t know that. You assume it because you think what we had was a forever thing. But Woods has plans and I’m not in them. I gave him what he wanted. I’m not going to bother him again.”

  Braden let out a frustrated growl. “Della, a call from you wouldn’t be a bother to him.”

  She loved me and didn’t understand what I was trying to tell her. I knew better. “No, Braden. I’m letting him live. I’ll find my way soon. First, I have to figure out my past.”

  She didn’t say more as I walked back to the bedroom. I closed the door and waited a minute to make sure she wasn’t following me before I let the tears fall. I didn’t want her to see me cry. She would call him. She would try to fix this. There was nothing there to fix, but she didn’t see it that way.

  But now I knew I was going to heal. I was going to be okay. I had a future. I had to face what I’d lost. Losing Woods was my biggest mistake. I shouldn’t have left him. I should have been stronger then and fought harder. But I hadn’t. I would deal with that the rest of my life.

  Woods

  The ringing was in the distance. I heard it but I couldn’t find it. Everything was dark. My eyes snapped open and the ringing started again. Shit! It was my phone. I sat up and grabbed it. It was after three in the morning and Braden was calling me. Della. God, please let her be okay.

  “Is she okay?” I asked the moment I answered the phone.

  “Yes and no.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked, standing up and looking for my jeans. If I needed to go to her that night I would.

  “She had a dream about her mother. She didn’t wake up screaming. She just woke up.”

  I stopped searching for my jeans. “What?”

  “She had one of her dreams but she didn’t have a night terror. She didn’t get lost in her fears. She just woke up. She’s already getting better.”

  “I’m coming there. I’ve had enough with waiting. I’m on my way. Tonight.”

  “No! You’re not. You have to give her time. She’s meeting with her birth father next. She met with her birth mother and then had dinner with her family all on her own. She needs to do all this alone. She’s realizing she can do this. She’s also finding out that she was crippled by her fears. She’s overcoming that. Don’t come here and confuse her. She has to come to you this time, Woods. She thinks you don’t want her. She needs to face that fear on her own, too.”

  Fuck no! “You can’t expect me to stay here and let her think I don’t want her. That’s not okay, Braden. It’s not fucking okay. She shouldn’t have to overcome a fear that’s pointless. How can she think I don’t love her? That she isn’t my heart, my soul, my future? That’s the one thing she should never doubt. That, she needs to know.”

  “Listen. I know this is hard and you’ve been great so far but give her just a couple more days. Please. She needs this. Remember this is about what she needs, not what you want.”

  I started to hit the wall again and stopped myself at the last minute. That wasn’t going to help anything. I had to calm down. “When she left here she took my soul with her. I will always belong to her. I don’t want her to ever think differently.”

  “Trust me, I know this. But she doesn’t. She thinks you haven’t tried to contact me or Tripp and you don’t care that she’s gone. That you’re relieved she left. Before you run out to your truck, take a deep breath and remind yourself that you’ll get to correct her belief in a few days. Just give her a few more days. She doesn’t need you here messing with her emotions while she’s facing her demons and figuring out that she’s going to be okay. When she sees you again she needs to feel like she can be what you need.”

  “Two days. That’s it. She comes to me in two days or I’m coming there. I can’t do this anymore. It isn’t for me that I want to come. It’s because I can’t let the woman I love believe I don’t want her. I’ve done this for as long as I can stand it. Two days is all I’m promising,” I told her.

  “Fine, two days.”

  I dropped the phone to the bed and sat down beside it. Della had overcome her night terrors. She was getting better. She was going to be whole. If I could make it just two more days.

  My mother had called and woken me up that morning. I told her I’d be at her house in an hour to talk. She was furious and I had been avoiding her calls. It was time I talked to her. She would know soon who the new board members were when I held a party at the club to celebrate their new positions. Everyone would know and she wasn’t going to be happy about it. Dean Finlay might send her into a rage. She should be prepared.

  When I arrived at her house, Harry, the chauffeur I’d hired for Mother after I fired Leo when I returned to Rosemary, was loading my mother’s bags into her Benz. She was going somewhere, obviously. Good. That was probably best.

  I nodded as I passed Harry. He was my employee. Leo had been my father’s. Leo had also left Della in handcuffs for five hours in the back of a car and hadn’t let her use the restroom. I’d fired him before I could get my hands on him.

  “She’s leaving, I see.”

  Harry nodded. “Yes, sir. I’m taking her to the airport at nine,” he replied.

  “Thanks, Harry.”

  I headed to the door and didn’t knock. It was standing open. The house cleaner, Martha, was standing there, wringing her hands nervously. I was sure she’d seen and heard my mother’s anger. I smiled at her reassuringly. Stopping at the bottom of the stairs, I called out, “Mother. I’m here.”

  Then I turned to look back at Martha. “It’s okay. You can finish doing what you were doing. She won’t kill me. Even if she’s threatened to.”

  Martha didn’t look too sure but she nodded and scurried off.

  Mother came to the top of the stairs with her purse over her arm. “I’m leaving,” she stated, as if I hadn’t figured that out already.

  “I see that,” I replied.

  She walked down
the staircase and I waited for more of an explanation.

  “You have chosen to defy your father’s memory. You have taken everything he set into place and thrown it away. Those men you let go were a part of the Kerrington Club for over thirty years. They are trusted confidantes. You thumb your nose at that. You’re a foolish child. I don’t want to stay here and watch you destroy this legacy. Your grandfather was a silly man. He shouldn’t have left anything to you. A twenty-five-year-old boy isn’t old enough to run a business like this one. You know nothing.”

  I let her angry words seethe from her mouth. She needed to get this out and it was time I let her. When her furious gaze leveled on me and stayed there I decided it was my turn to speak.

  “Those men were my father’s confidantes. Not mine. I put in place those who are close to me. It’s time for a change. The club will be run differently now. I’m not Father. But I strive every day to be like the man who built this club. I admire my grandfather and hope to be worthy of his legacy one day. I hope you travel safely and will check in with me so that I know you’re doing well. I love you, Mother. You may not believe me or even care, but I do. You’re my mom. That will never change.”

  She opened her mouth, then snapped it closed again. I believed, deep down, that she loved me, too. But right now her pride was too big to accept that emotion where I was concerned. She pulled her purse up to her shoulder and looked at the door. “I’m going to our apartment in Manhattan. I have friends there, and I prefer to live there now. Rosemary has changed.”

  Yes, it had. And I hoped it would keep changing. “I wish you happiness,” I replied.