ONLY BRIEFLY DID the slam of the shutting door echo in the waiting SUV as Isaac secured his seatbelt. Seconds later he spoke, “Sir, I have GPS that’ll take us directly to Miss Collins.”

There wasn’t any need to fill him in. He’d been with me since we took off for Savannah. He’d witnessed my tirade and the subsequent return to my senses.

Shedding my suit jacket, I settled against the backseat. The damn Georgia heat only added to my angst, each degree pushing my temper higher and nerves tighter.

“Just a minute. I’m getting Deloris on speakerphone. Let’s find out if there’re any new developments.” It was wishful thinking, but that’s what had happened since I learned of Charli’s decision to enter her stepfather’s car—I’d wished. I’d wished she’d waited for me. I’d wished she wouldn’t have done it. I’d wished I’d find her waiting in our hotel suite, a silky nightgown covering her petite body, with a glass of whiskey awaiting my arrival.

However, according to the blue dot on my app, none of those wishes would come true. I’d told Charli once that life wasn’t a fairytale and I wasn’t Prince Charming, but in my wishes, I imagined storming the castle and freeing the princess. That’s what she was to me: my princess.

“Yes, sir,” Isaac answered, keeping the SUV idling in place.

As we waited, the hum of the air conditioning created a cooling breeze, slowly changing the interior from stuffy and unbearable to merely uncomfortable. Deloris’s phone began to ring over the artificial cool, its chime coming not from the speakers but from my phone.

Her voice came through loud and clear. “Lennox, you’ve landed.”

“We have. Now I want to get Charli. I see on the app that she’s still there.”

“She is,” Deloris admitted. “I still can’t reach her by phone. It appears to be turned off. As I told you, the house has a gated entrance. I was told in very specific terms that we wouldn’t be admitted onto the grounds. The guard even knew our names. He mentioned you and said he had orders not to allow your entrance either.”

My chest tightened as she continued to speak.

“Is there another way onto the property? Surely everyone doesn’t use the front gate.”

“Yes. I’ve been studying the maps and satellite images. I’d assume that every entrance is at the least monitored and at the most, guarded or gated.”

“Damn it. If nothing else, I need to get word to her, let her know we’re working on this, that we haven’t abandoned her.”

“Lennox, I’ve tried to reach Chelsea. Her phone is off too.”

I hadn’t thought of her. “Do you think she’s there? Why would she be there?”

“I don’t know if she is. She’s the one who sent Alex the text message about her mother. I figured if I reached her, we could confirm Alex’s safety. Right now, all I can tell you with one-hundred-percent certainty is that according to the necklace, she’s inside the manor, her pulse is still elevated, and her respirations are quick.”

Fuck! Fuck!

“Send Isaac your location,” I said, “We’ll meet you after we go to the manor. Just that word, manor, sounds like a fucking horror movie. I don’t like it.”

“Lennox—”

“Don’t tell me not to go.” I nodded to Isaac as he put the car in gear. “I have to make an attempt. I have to try. If I don’t get in, then at least I can tell her I tried. I can’t look her in the eyes if I don’t.”

Her golden eyes.

Deloris sighed. “I understand. I just sent Isaac the location of the hotel. You have a suite. I hope you bring her back with you.”

I hoped that too, maybe even wished it. How long had it been since I’d put my faith in things like hope and wishes? Those words had faded from my vocabulary after Jo. Now that they were back, they were anything but encouraging. They were a carrot dangling at the end of a stick, perpetually out of reach yet just visible enough to make me try. They were words of uncertainty and words I despised. Yet for Charli, I did hope. I did wish. But I knew that wouldn’t be enough.

If the positions were reversed—if I were the one who had Charli—I wouldn’t let her stepfather within fifty feet of her. I hadn’t. For the last few months I’d done everything possible to keep her safe and away from that asshole who was capable of casting unwanted shadows in her beautiful golden eyes.

I had to think about a plan, about the future. “In the meantime, what are you doing?” I asked, not allowing myself to think of Charli stuck in a place she loathed as much as she hated her childhood home.

“I went back to Magnolia Woods,” Deloris explained. “The staff was unusually uncooperative, but that wasn’t why I was there. I was there to infiltrate their internal database.”

“Tell me that you were successful.”

“I was. I had to manually extract information; firewalls prevented it from being accessed online. Now that I’ve breached those, I can see everything, including all of Mrs. Fitzgerald’s records.”

“And?”

“I’m sifting through it all as we speak. I’ll tell you more in person.”

“So this wasn’t a ruse just to get Charli here? Her mother really is sick?”

“She is. They have her on some strong medications. I’m trying to learn more about them and some of their other notations as we speak. I’m much better with hacking than I am with these medical terms.”

I nodded as the scenes outside the windows changed. As the large trees and Spanish moss grew thicker along the side of the road, I imagined having Charli beside me, the two of us, together, on the way to visit her mother. That’s how it should have been. If only she’d have waited.

Imagining.

Wishing.

Hoping.

This wasn’t me. I was a man of action.

Clenching my fists, I vowed not to stop until those words were replaced with the reality of Charli Collins being where she belonged.

 

 

“SIR, WE’RE GETTING close. Mrs. Witt sent a few alternative entrances. Do you want to try those or go to the front gate?”

“Front gate.” I almost said that I don’t do things through backdoors, that I’m too open and upfront for that. I almost asked if Isaac had me confused with my father, but before I could say any of that, I realized that for Charli, I’d fucking climb a fence or maneuver under a gate.

Could that be the difference between Oren and me? Could it be that I’d never had the motivation to sneak around and do backdoor shit? I’d been too hung up on appearing better than him, when in reality I wasn’t. As the SUV moved forward, I knew without a doubt, there was nothing I wouldn’t do to get Charli back in my arms.

Nothing.

If that made me like Oren Demetri, then fuck it.

The SUV slowed as we turned onto a lane lined with oak trees draped in Spanish moss. The house—or fucking manor—wasn’t visible, only trees and a tall wrought-iron fence with a guard building beside the gate.

Of course, it wasn’t just a speaker. Alton fucking Fitzgerald had an actual guard at his gate. What the hell? Did he think he was like the King of Savannah?

Suddenly, I recalled introducing Charli to Oren. I remembered him saying that Charli was royalty, genuine American blue-blooded royalty. I’d had no idea. Even after I’d learned that about her lineage, I never imagined this type of money or home.

The reality set my blood to boil. How the fuck did someone from this heritage end up at Infidelity?

Because of Alton Fitzgerald, that was how.

As the SUV approached, an unfamiliar churning began in the pit of my stomach. Royalty. Fuck. Charli wasn’t someone who should have been at Infidelity. She was someone who deserved the best. My bloodstream filled with a sense of inferiority I hadn’t felt in years. It was the memories of Jo’s parents and their low opinion of me.

If I was no better than Oren’s son, hailing from a family of dockworkers, then who the hell did I think I was demanding Charli’s release?

Before I could consider my answer, the SUV rolled to a stop as it pulled up to the gate.

“Mr. Demetri?”

Isaac’s simple use of my name was exactly what I needed. I wasn’t the simple son of a dockworker. I was Mr. Demetri, Lennox Demetri. I’d worked hard to get where I was. Fuck, even my father had worked hard. We may not have come from generations of money, but we earned ours. I’d paid for it with hard work and sacrifice, and I sure as hell wasn’t sacrificing Charli.

I nodded in the rearview mirror toward Isaac as my window lowered and a man stepped from the small guardhouse with a tablet in his hand.

“Do you have an appointment?” he asked.

“No. I’m here to see Char-Alexandria Collins.”

“Your name, sir?”

“Lennox Demetri.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Demetri, Miss Collins is not accepting guests at this time.”

“At this time?” I asked. “When do you anticipate she’ll be accepting guests?”

He looked down at his tablet. “Your name again?”

Motherfucker knew my name. Nevertheless, I kept my raging emotions in check. “Demetri, Lennox Demetri.”

His eyes opened wide in recognition. “Sir, she left a letter for you should you come by.”

I took a deep breath. “I haven’t just come by. I’m here for her, to get her.”

The man stepped back into the guardhouse and came out with an envelope. On the outside penned in female handwriting was one word: Lennox.

My brow lengthened. “You say that this is from Miss Collins?”

“Yes, sir. She gave it to me herself. She also asked me to tell you not to return. She said the letter would explain everything.”

Lennox.

There’s no fucking way that Charli would write a note or letter to Lennox. Hell, even Mr. Demetri would have been more plausible. “When Miss Collins handed this to you herself,” I asked, “what was she wearing?”

“Excuse me?”

“What was Miss Collins wearing?” I’d left before she was up and dressed for class. However, I knew her closet, her clothes. I knew how her dresses hung in all the right places, how fucking sexy she was in soft pants and a sweatshirt. I’d know if he were lying.

The man’s head shook as he looked back at the tablet. “Um, it’s not my job to notice her attire. It’s actually inappropriate.”

“Her hair? How was she wearing it?”

“Sir, your questions are inappropriate.”

“Are you an employee of the Fitzgeralds?” I asked.

“Yes, sir. Obviously.”

“And your job is in security?”

“Yes.”

“Yet you’re unobservant?”

“No,” he replied. “That’s not what I mean. I mean that looking at Miss Collins like that, paying attention to her clothes and her hair could…”

“Could what? Get you fired?”

“Sir, Miss Collins would like you to leave and not attempt to return. Mr. Fitzgerald has also stated the same wishes.”

I bet he had.

I nodded toward the guardhouse. “Do you have the ability to call the house?”

“Yes.”

“Do it. Call the house. I’m not leaving until I speak to Miss Collins.”

Perspiration dotted the security guard’s forehead and upper lip. “Sir, you can be escorted off the property. This is privately owned…”

I gripped the edge of the envelope tighter. “Call. If she tells me to leave, I’ll leave.” Isaac’s eyes caught mine in the rearview mirror.

As the guard stepped back inside the small building, I eased open the flap of the envelope. The one page unfolded as I freed it from the envelope.

 

 

Lennox,

 

I know this seems sudden, but it isn’t. My mother needs me. Don’t try to reach me. My phone is off. I need time with my family.

I need more than time and space. I need—no I want—to do what I have known I would do my entire life. I can’t do that and continue seeing you. We are done. Forget about Del Mar. Forget the rules.

Go back to New York. Send my school things. Everything else you can keep or burn. I don’t care. Move on with your life.

I am moving on with mine.

Goodbye,

 

Alex

 

 

Rules.

My eyes locked on that word as my teeth clenched. It wasn’t her, but who would know about the rules?

“Sir,” the man outside my window pulled my attention away from the letter, the writing, and words. I didn’t want to look away. No longer was I a CFO of Demetri Enterprises or even a concerned boyfriend. I was a detective, deciphering each clue.

Did the writing look like it could be hers? It could. It was similar, feminine. However, the wording made me skeptical. Fuck skeptical. I don’t know how in the fuck they knew about the rules, but in my heart, I knew this letter wasn’t written or even dictated by my Charli.

“Yes?” I finally replied, pulling my gaze away from the letter and narrowing it toward the guard.

“Miss Collins said to tell you that the letter is self-explanatory and to please leave.”

The ends of my lips rose. “Are we being recorded?”

The man’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Why?”

“It’s a simple question. I want to know if Mr. Fitzgerald will see this.”

“I’m not sure who will…”

I peered up to the roofline of the small building. Just under the eave was a protruding dark dome. I cocked my head to the side. “Please tell Alex that I got her letter and hear her loud and clear. This isn’t over.”

“Sir?”

I tapped Isaac’s shoulder. “We can go.” I turned back to the guard, his complexion paling by the second. “Tell Mr. Fitzgerald to rest assured, we will be back.”