Blindsided (20 page)

One more day, she vowed.
 

A knock sounded on the door, followed by a slow creak. Willis, of course.

“You ready, Miss Idyllis?”

“Yes.” She twisted in her chair, giving him a smile. Of everyone, Willis was who she’d miss the most. Leaving him behind scared her as much or more than the places she’d go, the means she’d have to go through to live in hiding. From before she could remember, he’d been a constant in her life.

“I’ve brought the Lincoln around.” Willis took her arm, helping her up and leading her out of the room and down the grand staircase.

The Lincoln. A classic American car from the last stateside producer, it was not just a popular car for the elite, but was the most inconspicuous of her fleet. It also had the darkest glass and a bulletproof exoskeleton. Like herself, Willis was uneasy, waiting for a shoe to drop. It wasn’t only reflected in his actions but his temperament as well. Like a mama bear protecting her cub, he’d been snarly and ever vigilant since the first visit to Garret’s house. He probably wouldn’t appreciate the comparison, but regardless, it was true.

They made their way out of the mansion and down the front steps. Willis tucked her into the back seat and went around to the driver’s side where the door closed firmly behind him, sealing them inside.
 

He didn’t turn the engine. Moments passed, ticking quietly away in the silence.

“What is it, Willis?” Aria shifted uncomfortably on the slippery, simulated leather seat.

“You haven’t told me where to take you, miss.” His tone was low and even, seemingly unfazed to anyone who didn’t know him. Aria could tell he was tense. His stillness was too absolute, too controlled.

“The studio, of course.” She tried to sound legitimately perplexed at his comment, but a bubbling giggle gave away her nervousness. Damn. “Why?
 
Am I forgetting an appointment or something?”

There was a low decibel squeak—the sound of vinyl being ground under a tightened grip. According to all the research she’d hacked into, it wasn’t possible for a Viadal to distinguish the difference between certain emotions through scent alone. Excitement was much the same as arousal; fear rode close in hand with anxiety; anger, for whatever reason, could be mistaken for calm or more explicably agitation. Faulty data or faulty tests, she’d always known their conclusions were bull. Right now the air in the Lincoln practically reeked with Willis’ anger.

He knows you’re running. And he’s betting it will be today.

She’d never tried to hide the fact that she planned on leaving. From the moment she’d asked him to drive her to Garret’s house they’d both known it was a possibility, that in trying to aid the ex-V-10 it might become necessary for her to flee. The whole way there he’d grilled her on her plan: how, where, who—if anybody else—would they take with them or bring into their confidence. Knowing he’d simply turn around, bring her home, and lock her in her room indefinitely if she told him she was going alone, she’d let him believe he’d be coming with her, that she was working out the details and would give him as much notice as possible. What she hadn’t told him was the notice would come
after
she’d left, not before. There was no way Willis would let her go unless she had a head start, and she’d hoped to have at least a half day before he realized she’d flown the coop without him.

“Well? Am I forgetting something?” she asked, hiding behind her haughty heiress impersonation, hoping to hell it would earn her a lecture or a snide remark and distract him from his thoughts.

“Don’t,” he snapped. “You’ve never been able to lie to me, Aria. I’ve known from day one that you planned to leave me behind.”

Research indicated a Viadal couldn’t sense heart-rending pain either. They were wrong on that, too.

“Willis,” her voice cracked with a reciprocating ache, “please don’t make this harder—”

“Stop!”
 
He took a deep breath, his heart rate leveling marginally as if he drew from some deep inner calm. “I knew after Evans visit yesterday, and then your subsequent visit to your lawyer, you were planning to bolt last night.”
 

His words picked up speed, losing some of the hard fought for calm. “I placed an extra sensor on your windows in case you tried to turn off the system and slip out that way, and then stood outside your door all night waiting for you to try and sneak out or the alarm to ring. Did you know? Is that why you didn’t try? Because you knew I’d try and stop you, or at the very least try and come with you?”

She shook her head, dashed away a tear.

“Which? Which one, Aria?” He pounded the steering wheel, emphasizing his frustration. “No, you didn’t know, or no, that’s not why you didn’t try?”

“No I didn’t know,” she said, thankful that she could answer this truthfully at least. It killed her to think about Willis standing vigil all night long. He wasn’t as young as he once was—sixty-two—old injuries made his knuckles and right knee swell painfully if he pushed himself too far or became over exhausted.

“You think I’m too old. Is that it?”

Her heart raced, wondering how he could have read her mind so well. She immediately chastised herself for the thought. He
knew
her. “I worry for you, you know that, Willis, but that’s not why.”

“Then why, Aria? Why?”
 

In his voice she could hear his confusion, his hurt. And wondered if all the problems and pain she’d been trying to spare him by not allowing him to come with her could compare to the wound she was inflicting now. Willis was a proud man. And he cared. She didn’t doubt that. To ask him not to do his duty by her was akin to cutting him down at the knees.

She scooted forward on the seat, putting her hand on his shoulder; the best gesture of need and comfort she could show him at the moment. He clasped firmly onto the offering, the strength behind his grip surprising enough to make her doubt her concerns over his premature arthritis.

“How long have you worked for my family, Willis?” She immediately went on, answering her own question with a shake to his hand. “Thirty-three years. Twenty-six of them caring for me. You’ve guarded our secrets as if they were you own, protected me from harm, taken care of me, been…well, everything to me that my father wasn’t. I can’t hope to repay you for everything you’ve done. But I won’t ask for more. It’s not right, it’s not fair.”

The seat squeaked, dislodging their joined hands from his shoulder onto the seat back as he twisted. A second hand clasped down over the first, the force of his frustration grinding her bones, not enough to truly hurt, but enough she might actually bruise.
 

“I’ll tell you what’s not fair.” He gave her hand a sharp shake. “What’s not
fair
is that you think you owe me anything. What’s not
fair
is that you would even consider leaving without me. You’re right. I served your family loyally for years. Seven of them to be exact. But starting on the day you were born I stopped serving your family and started serving my heart.”

Serving his heart? “I don’t understand.”

Weight lifted off their clasped hands, fingers brushed across her cheek. “So much like your mother, but so much stronger.”

Aria winced a bit. She didn’t like being reminded of her uniqueness, Willis knew that.

“Not like that,” he chided. “Stronger here.” He took their clasped hands, briefly touching her chest above her heart, before settling them on the seat back once more. “I loved her, you know. And she loved me.”

Aria jerked back a bit, before catching herself. She couldn’t believe that. Never would she have guessed. Her mother had not been known for her sensitivity. Too concerned with being the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the perfect socialite, the perfect…the list went on. All that perfection had made her mother’s affection seem unattainable. As Aria had grown older, she’d come to realize it was her father’s expectations that had molded her mother this way, but Aria had always felt cheated of her childhood and the natural mother-daughter bond most other girls experienced. Could her mother have once had the emotional empathy to love and be loved?

She twisted her hand in his grip, threading her fingers through his and gave them an encouraging squeeze. “Tell me.”

“Not much to tell. I met her after she was married and she took her vows seriously. We never openly admitted what we felt, though we both knew. I stayed because I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving. I should have left. Each day I watched a little bit more of her die.” His hand shook in hers and he had to clasp his other down on top to steady them both. “I wanted to kill him. I wanted to take her away and make her mine. But by the time I had reached my limit and knew that I could actually do the evil deed, she was pregnant.”

“With me and Byron.” Aria gulped, imagining how much it must have hurt Willis to see the woman he loved grow with another man’s child.

He made an odd sound, half chuckle-half sigh. “It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The woman I loved was already gone. Your father had won, making her over into the perfect trophy wife. She hadn’t been strong enough to fight.”

Bitterness. Regret. Aria wondered if he wished he could go back in time and change things somehow. Take her mother away, even if it meant kidnapping her, or, more likely, not taking on the job in the first place. “Why didn’t you go then?”

She felt his hands lift slightly, as if he’d shrugged. “You were born and things became…hectic. Your mother was busy with her other duties, your father only paid enough attention to bask proudly over his strong boy, and the nursemaid was at her wits end trying to care for a pair of demanding twins. Once day I offered to hold you while she dealt with a wailing Byron. She practically tossed you at me. So I held you, rather ineptly I must say, and tried to sing you this silly off-tune melody my own mother used to sing. You actually gurgled out a laugh and clasped my finger. I was so shocked. I mean, I was hopelessly incompetent. I stopped singing and looked down into your sweet face. You smiled…and I fell in love.”

As if embarrassed, he abruptly released her hand, the seat scrunching as he turned back around to face forward.

Aria could only shift back in her own seat, clasping her bruised hand over her breast. More than the man who’d given her some of his DNA, more than the man who’d held her to impossible standards, Willis was her father. Until today she’d believed the bond to be one sided, that Willis stayed on out of loyalty, and, at most, perceived her with the kind of amused tolerance one felt for a charge they’d become fond of. But his words left no doubt in her mind now that the familial tie was there, that despite the lack of a blood tie, he considered her his daughter as well.

“Today then? Are we leaving today?” he asked softly. She could hear the anxiety in his voice. He held out hope she’d changed her mind and would ask him to come with her now. What he didn’t realize was that his unconditional love just added one more check to the list of things she owed him for.

She swallowed, closing her eyes to block out the hazy light. Some things were easier in absolute darkness. “Yes. Today. I’ve already put it off too long.”

“I’ll drop you off at the office.” The engine turned. “I’d ask that you give me an hour or two. I’d like to settle some of my own affairs, and then I’ll be back to pick you up.”

Determination. A dare to tell him otherwise. It was all there in both what he said and the way he said the words.

She had two choices. Let him come with her and then have him watch if and when they found her and dragged her back in…or lie to him and use the two hours to slip away.
Break his heart now or later? Which is more cruel?
 

Her chest clenched down like a clamp around her heart, making it difficult to give him her answer, yet somehow she managed to squeeze the words out. “Two will do.”

Chapter Thirteen

Aria stalked into her office, jerking the whimsical scarf from her neck and wrapping the silk around her hand, all the while imagining it was Willis’ neck. The stubborn man was ruining everything. Two hours! Barely enough time to make her escape in the first place, and now, here she was, a prisoner, in her very own studio.
 

The doors whooshed closed and her assigned guard—babysitter more like—planted his feet firmly on
this
side of the entry. Aria took a deep inhalation of breath, soothing the rising tide of frustration.
 

Calm. Relaxed. Act like this is just any other day.

She took five minutes of precious time to calm down and rack her brain for an escape plan, and with one hour and forty-three minutes left, made some calls. First her studio manager to see who was slotted to record today, then their customer rep to iron out some details of the latest deal, and finally her accountant to let him know there was some paperwork coming from the lawyer later today. At some point the temporary secretary—an elderly lady who smelled of roses and powder—breezed in and plopped a steamy mug of coffee on her desk with a “here you go, dear,” a platitude of daily advice, and a pat on the cheek before she finally shuffled out again. Aria resisted the urge to snap at the softly cushioned hand and growl, but only just barely. The woman was a sweetheart—of a grandmother, but as an assistant there were some definite issues—such as the coffee. Mrs. Benz seemed to believe everything in life was sweeter with sugar. The problem was Aria liked her coffee straight up, and black enough to clog a drain.