Savage: A Bad Boy Fake Fiancé Romance Read online

  I gritted my teeth. “Is there anything I can do to make a good impression?”

  “Get her into a good preschool. Live in a secure home, preferably somewhere out of the city. If you can’t move immediately, simply show that you’re interested in purchasing. That you want to settle down. All the trappings a family would usually have.”

  “Understood,” I said, and excitement trickled down my spine in spite of the situation.

  This might be fun. It might be the start of a new stage of my life, one without Beckett Price and our weird pseudo-obsession. Mine, at least.

  Thinking of that snuffed my excitement right out.

  “And no scandals,” Goldschmidt said. “No more of this fake fiancée stuff.”

  “I—that was a mistake. A lapse in judgment.”

  “If these people are after Penny’s money, then they’ll use every lapse in judgment they can find.”

  My eyes widened. I hadn’t even mentioned the whole “freeloader” thing, or the fact that George had mentioned Penny’s trust fund.

  “I can’t see any other reason they’d come all the way out here,” the lawyer said and shrugged his shoulders beneath his suit jacket. “They have no connection to Penny, other than the fact they’re distantly related to her.”

  I nodded. “I was worried about that.” I told him, briefly, about my conversation with George in the park and how he’d mentioned the money.

  “Ah, that’s good information to have. We might be able to use that against them should they serve you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” Goldschmidt replied. “Whatever the case may be, they clearly don’t have Penny’s best interests at heart.” He gestured to the toddler. “She’s clearly settled into life with you. She seems happy, Olivia.”

  “Thank you,” I breathed. And I meant it. I didn’t need anyone’s approval, I realized that now, but it was still nice to hear it from somebody. I’d done my best, and it was finally paying off. “And thank you for your time.” I rose from the seat and walked over to Penny. “I’m going to take your advice and drive up to Ithaca. My parents have property up there. It technically belongs to me and my younger brother, now, but I’m pretty sure he wants nothing to do with it.”

  Nathan was only interested in the next party or fuck. He’d hardly care if I bought him out and turned that house into a home for Penny and me.

  That house. Oh, god, could I really do that?

  I’d have to.

  Finding another home on short notice wouldn’t be possible, and prices upstate weren’t exactly cheap.

  “It’s a pleasure, Olivia. You take care now.”

  We said our farewells, and I headed out. First stop? Fetching Penny’s new silken teddy from the seamstress. She’d done an amazing job, and Penny was officially in seventh heaven. Or the toddler version of it, at least.

  “Beck poo,” she said and hugged it to her chest.

  It made me ache inside and helped me make the decision off the cuff. I had to leave New York City as soon as possible, if only to put him behind me. Penny was my focus, and once everything with this custody issue was sorted out, I’d try starting my business.

  God, I’d have no idea where to start, but I’d get there, somehow.

  The next day, we packed our bags—ha, I packed them while Penny fiddled with my clothes and hers, and managed to pull a pair of her training pants over her head—and set off for Ithaca in a rental car.

  That was another issue I’d have to take care of, and soon.

  The four-hour drive became a six-hour one. Penny and I took plenty of breaks along the way for a bite to eat or a potty break, but we arrived and pulled up outside my parents’ house in the late afternoon.

  My insides folded in on themselves, looking up at the house. At its decorative, embellished eaves and the vast wraparound porch, the iron gates guarding it from the outside world. The yard was perfectly maintained, thanks to the landscaper—paid by my parents’ estate—and the porch lights had been left on.

  “We’re here,” I whispered and didn’t dare look at the Price house next door.

  Well, it wasn’t technically the Price house anymore. It’d been sold years ago, when Mr. Price had moved to the Bahamas to “retire.” I had no idea who lived next door, now.

  I swallowed and studied the gates, hesitating.

  Finally, I drove up to them then rolled down my window and pressed the intercom button out front.

  The buzzer rang inside, a beat passed, and then a voice warbled through the speaker. “Ms. Abbott? Is that you?”

  “It’s me, Damon,” I said. He was part of the staff my parents had determined would stay on after their deaths.

  “Wonderful, I’ll let you in,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I called out, as the gates swung inward on the gravel drive that wound up to the front of the house. It was short, not as ostentatious as the one at the Price house, with its fountain and lawn ornaments, but it was enough.

  It was home.

  Still. Even without my mom and dad here. Without Michael.

  I pictured them on the front porch, all sun-haired and smiling at me, and choked up. Oh god, this wasn’t nostalgia, this was just…it was history. It was history, right here in front of me.

  Three of the people I’d adored the most in the world had lived under this roof, and all of them were gone now.

  Keep it together.

  I checked the rearview mirror and smiled at Penny in the back seat. She gave a great big yawn.

  “Tired,” she said. “Want Beck poo. Time for nap.” She cuddled the purple silk teddy against her cheek and shut her eyes.

  “Don’t sleep yet, honey. We’re almost there. Once we’re inside, we can nap, OK?”

  “OK, Libya.”

  I parked in front of the steps that led up to the house and its porch then opened the door. The yard had always seemed more of a forest to me, with verdant foliage all around, and crabapple trees, sugar maples, and oaks bordering the property. The great old oak stood in the center of the yard, right next to a small pond I’d dipped my feet into as kid, even though my mom had explicitly told me not to.

  How many times had I sat there daydreaming about Beckett and what it would be like to hold his hand? To kiss him?

  Teenager dreams. Fairytales, of course.

  I clunked open the car door then shuffled around to the back and got Penny out. I propped her car seat up on the stones and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.

  “Well? What do you think?”

  Penny studied the thin white columns, the steps that led to the porch, and the two French doors with misted glass that let in on the entrance hall. Bay windows, also white, and roses in the yard.

  “Pretty!” Penny said. “Pretty house.”

  “Yes,” I replied and hefted her little travel bag from the backseat. “It’s home.”

  “We live here?” Penny asked and hugged her bear tighter.

  “We might. If you like it. We’re visiting for the weekend to see how it goes.”

  “Yes,” she said, in that slurry way of hers.

  I picked her up then and hugged her almost as tight as she hugged the bear. I could only hope this wasn’t too little, too late, and that the constant ache for Beckett would fade over time.

  Though, how it would fade in a house that contained so many memories of him, I didn’t know. This place practically rang with Mikey’s laughter and with Beckett’s gruff voice. With my mom’s humming as she cooked dinner, and my dad’s yells as he watched the Super Bowl.

  The front doors opened and the caretaker, an elderly fellow wearing a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans, stepped out onto the porch and opened his arms, grinning. “Welcome home, Ms. Abbott.”

  I forced a smile. “Thank you.”

  “Let me help you with your luggage.” He hurried down the front steps and to the car and I let out a tiny sigh.

  It was strange, but after all this time, I wasn’t used to somebody else doing anything fo
r me. As long as I didn’t get a nanny, it was fine. Or a maid, for that matter.

  Damon led the way up the front steps, and Penny and I followed. Her with Beck poo the bear in her arms, and me with Beckett weighing down my heart.

  Chapter 25

  Beckett

  My office was the picture of minimalism. No room for passion or decoration. Nothing but a massive walnut desk in the center of the room, a desk phone, and my work. No pictures on the walls, which were glass—misted when I pressed the button under my desk—and only a sofa in the corner for when I stayed late instead of going out to party.

  The only other item in here was the bar in the far corner, stocked with the best whiskeys money could buy.

  I’d chosen an office chair that was styled for comfort. I spent a lot of time sitting at this desk. Or I had before I’d run into Olivia and Penny in the Granite Room.

  I rolled my chair forward and tried focusing on my laptop’s screen. No dice.

  Nothing but her image in my eyes.

  Fuck, maybe it was burned into my retinas.

  This office, which had been my home away from home was strange now. It was empty and quiet. This was what a week of no work and all Olivia had done to me? I was a stranger in my own skin.

  My office phone trilled, and I lifted it, pressed to my ear.

  “What?” I grunted.

  “Mr. Price?” My timid receptionist, timid only because I’d yelled at her once for getting my coffee order wrong, swallowed.

  “You expected someone else?” I asked.

  “No, I’m sorry to bother you while you’re working, Mr. Price, but I’ve got a Mr. Cooper on hold. Would you like to speak with him?”

  I should’ve been angry that this prick dared call my offices. He was my main competitor. He’d sniped Dane Holmes from me, and the three potential investments I’d been considering. I should’ve fumed about it, but I felt nothing.

  Calm, quiet, cold.

  It wasn’t like me.

  “Mr. Price?”

  “What the fuck’s your name again?” I asked.

  “It’s Jessie, sir. Jessie Pinkney.”

  “Put him through, Jessie, and then take the rest of the day off.”

  “Sir? Are you sure I should—I mean –”

  “Don’t make me regret the decision.” I slammed the receiver into the cradle.

  Two seconds later, it rang again, and I lifted it, placed it to my ear, and waited in silence.

  “That’s what you’re going to do, Price? Mouth breathe into the receiver? No hello for your old buddy Coop?”

  “We were never buddies by any stretch of the imagination, Cooper,” I replied and held back a sigh.

  Cooper chuckled that dry laugh of his, like a snake slithering through fall leaves. “I’m sad to hear that, Price. Here I thought we were the best of friends. After all we’ve been through over the years, you still don’t want to share a bottle of whiskey with me?”

  “You can send me a bottle of whiskey, and I’ll drink it by myself.”

  “To celebrate your recent victories, I assume,” he replied, with another laugh.

  He was at least ten years older than me, more experienced in the game but also a hotshot. And he’d dominated this past while. He’d swept everything out from underneath me, and I’d let him.

  I didn’t care about the businesses. About the investors. About my image.

  For the first time since I’d started Price Capital, my will to work had totally dried up.

  “What do you want, Cooper? A medal?”

  “No,” he said. “Just to gloat a little. And to ask if you’re doing OK.”

  “Huh?”

  “Price, I’ve always considered our rivalry as friendly. Competitive, yes, but friendly, too. We’re in the same game, we must have a lot in common, even if you are still in diapers.”

  I laughed this time.

  “I heard you’ve got some issues in your personal life. I wanted to wish you all the best in resolving them.”

  “Why does that sound like a veiled threat?” I asked.

  “It’s not.” Cooper cleared his throat. “I must say that these past weeks have been boring without you snapping at my heels.”

  “You mean crushing your toes.”

  “Ah, there’s the arrogance,” he said. “I wanted to wish you luck and warn you. Just because you’re going through something doesn’t mean I will let up, Price. Bear that in mind.”

  “I’m truly terrified,” I said then put down the phone.

  It was a bullshit tactic to feel me out. He was a competitor, and he’d always taken things to extremes. The two times I’d personally met him, he’d acted like he was the big dog but pissed like a puppy when I’d opened my mouth.

  Cooper and his threats were the least of my worries.

  Before all of this, they might’ve even pissed me off, but now? Now, they fell on deaf ears. All that mattered was Olivia and Penny.

  And there was someone I had to talk to about it.

  Someone I needed to let go of before I could make things with O work how they should.

  I’d been a fool.

  I’d had her all along, her heart in my hand, and I’d let it lie there untouched.

  Claiming her hadn’t been physical, it’d been emotional, and that was the one area I’d refused to touch.

  I lurched out of my chair, bent on a course of action, then made for the door.

  An hour later, I stood in front of my best friend’s gravestone, reading the words etched into it again and again.

  Michael Abbott. 1989—2017. You kept me breathing until the last.

  Shelly-Ann Abbott. 1991—2017. I lived because of you.

  My throat closed up.

  They’d written those dedications for each other and placed them in Michael’s will a couple months after Penny’s birth. Michael had wanted to cover all his bases.

  Clouds scudded across the afternoon sky, casting shade on the granite stones, the white lettering, and the set of doves touching beaks above their names. The wind tugged at my suit jacket, and I buttoned it, coughed once to get rid of that lump.

  “Bro,” I said, then laughed at the absurdity of the word in this place. The mirth died just after it left my lips. “Brother,” I repeated. “That’s what you were to me, Mike, still are. Listen, you know I’m not good at this shit. I’m not the emotional dude, that’s you, but I had to come here to see you.”

  I chewed on the next words, formed them in my mind and rewrote them again.

  “I don’t visit you enough here. It’s too—fuck, dude, it’s too hard. It’s too hard to come here and think about all the good times. It’s too hard to think about the conversations and the fights and the nights out drinking when we were young. And even worse when I think about you and Shelly and Penny together. Man, for the longest time I’ve been steeped in guilt. It was my fault you died. It was my fault you were in that car on the way to see me, and that’s part of the reason I’m here today.”

  I swallowed again because that lump was back, and I wouldn’t let it own what I had to say to this gravestone. If there was an “up there,” hopefully he was looking down at me and listening, shaking his head.

  “I’m here today for selfish reasons. You know me, always looking out for number one. Here’s the thing, Mike, I’m in love with your sister. I think I have been since we were kids. Since the day you two moved in next door and I saw her unpacking the car in her cowboy boots, with her hair tied up. Fuck, I won’t bore you with the sappy details.” Another gulp. “I made a promise to you that I wouldn’t touch her because you thought I wasn’t good enough for her. I tend to agree on that.”

  An elderly woman appeared just ahead, walking between the gravestones, clutching flowers to her chest. I should’ve brought a bouquet, but I hadn’t even considered it. Michael wasn’t a flowers kinda guy.

  I lowered my voice and continued. “But it’s different now. Olivia’s looking after Penny like you wanted, and she’s doing a fucki
ng amazing job. All she cares about is that little girl and right now, she needs my help. And I need her. So, I came here today for your blessing, even though you can’t give it to me. I want my conscience to be clear, man, because I have to be with her. I’ve spent years throwing myself at business and alcohol because I couldn’t erase her from my mind, and that’s over now. That’s done. She’s the one I want. I hope you can forgive me for that.”

  The clouds above parted a little, and sunlight slanted down from the heavens and landed on the name “Abbott.” I wasn’t a huge believer in signs, but I took this as one.

  “I swear, man, I’m going to make this right with Olivia. And I’m going to ensure Penny is well looked after and that she grows up real good, man. Just like you did. With lots of love and joy.” I pressed two fingers to my lips, kissed them, then touched the top of the stone. “I’ll be back. Next time, I’ll bring the girls.”

  And with that, I turned and walked back between the stones, my shoes squashing the green, green grass flat.

  I’d meant every word. I’d make this right with O if it was the last thing I did. Hopefully, that wouldn’t be the case. Maybe she didn’t want to admit it, but she needed me now. She was strong, but she wasn’t savage like me, and with people like that piece of shit uncle and aunt of hers, it was crucial to be a little mean.

  OK, a lot mean.

  I drove my Audi TT back into the city and into Manhattan, took it all the way to Olivia’s apartment and parked outside. Different car, different day, but the same feeling I’d had as when I’d run up there and taken her to her bedroom for the first time.

  Nerves, resolve, need.

  I slipped out into the street and walked toward the front of her apartment building, hands in my pockets, the setting sun on the back of my neck. This was fucking it. This was the moment I took her as mine for good.

  I shoved the glass doors inward and strode across the marble floor of her lobby. The guy behind the desk bobbed up and called out, “Mr. Price!”

  Fuck, I’d been here so often these dicks already knew my name. I swiveled and eyed the ratty dude. “What?”

  “Mr. Price, you can’t go up there.”

  “Watch me,” I replied and punched the button. “What are you going to do, kid, call the cops?”