Chadwick's Rare Find (An Intriguing Romance Novel) (2 page)

“I am going to ask one more time.  What is your name?” he ground out between clenched teeth.  She uncrossed her legs, pushed her feet against the bumper, and scooted further up on the car.  She looked nervous.  Good.  She needed to realize that she was all alone on an isolated street with a man she did not know.  

“Oh, I’m sorry. It’s Brittany.”  

He could only blink stupidly.  She did not pronounce her name the way an English-speaking person would.  She rolled the “r” off her tongue making a sound mostly associated with foreign languages like French or Spanish.  It was sensual.  She was sensual and he would be glad when Brittany with the rolling r’s was away from him.  Something about her was very different from what he was used to in women, which in his experience wasn’t a good thing.  

He cleared his throat. Leaning against the bumper of the car, he said, “Well, Brittany, what were you doing out here--”

“Oh, wow!! I need to use your phone to call my client!  I can’t believe I forgot to call my client.”  

That was the second time she had interrupted him, as if he wasn’t saying anything worth listening to.  Did she say client? 

“What kind of work do you do?” he asked with real curiosity and a little bit of incredulity.  She had better not say she was an attorney.  All his preconceived ideas for stereotyping women would be thrown out the window.  

“I’m a massage therapist,” she said in a clipped tone.  Chadwick smiled.  It actually looked more like a smirk.  So, he was almost right.  He had first pegged her as being a cosmetologist.  

He could not help himself.  He looked down at her hands. Her hands were beautiful.  They were soft and creamy looking.  Her short nails were manicured.  Fluffy wasn’t a necessarily appealing word to describe her hands, but they were just that.  He instinctively knew that her hands held the power to please. Squeezing his eyes shut, he backed away.  

There was definitely something unusual going on here.  He had never in his life been hacked up so emotionally by one encounter with any woman and it was not for a lack of female companionship.  Chadwick knew he was attractive.  He was thirty-five, handsome, and financially secure.  Women loved him.  He loved women.  His mother and sisters liked having him around.  Not one woman in his life had ever been indifferent to him.  But this woman with her beautiful lips, silky-looking skin, caramel-cat eyes, and lush massage-therapist hands treated him as if he was a ten year old boy.  Maybe things were off kilter for both of them because of the accident.  He would see her safely into the ambulance, exchange insurance information and be on his way.  

The ambulance siren could be heard in the distance.  He decided not to alert his family until he was off the road and somewhere they could get to him safely.  So, he stood waiting, with the now stonily silent Brittany, as the ambulance pulled up.  The minute the EMS got out of the ambulance Brittany came alive again.  She jumped off the car. 

“Oh thank God, you got here so quickly.  I’m worried about him”, she said pointing at Chadwick, whose mouth fell open.  “He swerved off the road and took my car door completely off.  He ended up over there on the opposite side of the road in that ditch.   I went over to him and his airbag had deployed.  He was completely out.  I think he may have a concussion. He has been acting kind of strange.  I had to slap him to wake him up.” She gave a nervous glance in his direction and thought it best to add, “I didn’t think it would be good for him to stay asleep in case he had a concussion.”  Brittany was giving a very good impression of a scared woman when only seconds earlier she had been shooting darts at him with her eyes. 

The EMS were jotting down every word she said and before he knew it, they whipped out their stretcher, lowered him onto it, and strapped him down.  They put him into the ambulance and were pulling her in as well. She was resisting, but the EMS made it clear that she would not be left on the side of the road and she could call her family to come get her from the hospital after she was thoroughly assessed. Relaxing on the stretcher Chadwick smiled up into her evil caramel eyes as she was pushed gently down onto a bench next to the head of his stretcher.  He turned his head towards her lap and stared at her beautiful wet-looking legs.  He was subjected to another round of silence.    

Brittany sat in the chair fuming.  Chadwick was acting crazed for real.  He would not wipe that smile off his face and he was staring at her legs.  She knew she should not have made that speech to the EMS when they arrived, but he had infuriated her with his high-handedness.  It seemed she had been working all her life.  People generally respected people for that.  She was independent.  She made really good money being a masseuse.  She knew that Chadwick came from money by the way he dressed and the way he talked.  All of her clients were wealthy and only a few of them really knew how to treat people.  People tended to think the amount of their bank account validated their worthiness.  Well, she knew the difference. She’d seen the rich women who had everything except self-respect and self-esteem.  The majority of them were alcoholics.  What an ugly thing a drunken woman could be.  She almost laughed out loud.  Even though she made her living off wealthy people, they sickened her.  They and their assumptions were asinine.  Things did not make an individual. She glanced down her nose at Chadwick and almost giggled as she remembered how his mouth had fallen open when she started talking to the EMS.   She looked at him watching her legs and slowly she crossed one leg over the other making a big show of wiggling around to get comfortable.  She saw the smile leave his face.  He gripped the side of the gurney and jerked his head away.  She smiled to herself and thought, “Now little rich boy you know how it feels to want something you can’t afford.” 

Chadwick was released after two hours in the emergency room.  He was cleared.  There was no concussion. He was given a clean bill of health, but he felt as if something huge had happened to him.  He went to the desk to sign his release papers and asked if he could see Brittany.  He was told that she had already been released and since he was not related to her they could not give him any information.  For some reason, this almost sent him over the edge.  Not to mention the fact that Adanna had arrived and was upset.  She was blaming herself for his “near-death” experience and was nearly hysterical when she heard the details of the accident.  His head still hurt and he just wanted to go into a dark room and think.  He didn’t even get Brittany’s last name.  They had not exchanged insurance information.  There was no police report.  They hadn’t even called the police.  Well, he had not called the police.  How could he neglect to call the police in the face of an accident?  Had he gone completely loco?  Where were their cars? He did have the number to the towing service.  He would call first thing in the morning.  

#

Daylight brought with it more aggravation for Chadwick.  He awoke to hear people in his bedroom talking loudly and fiercely.  His youngest sister, Vana, had arrived.  She was the one he was closest too.  Vana was thirty-one and she had Chadwick wrapped around her fingers.  But he could make the same claim on her.  She rarely ever disagreed him and she was his alibi for absolutely everything.  She was there no matter what.  So, when he heard Vana and Adanna’s loud voices, he knew exactly what they were arguing over.  

“I’ve put everything into this house and I will not have you denigrating it based on logistics!”  Adanna screamed. 

“Adanna, you can live anywhere you want to live, but you need to stop dragging all of us up here so many times every year.  Why can’t you just have one gathering a year?  People can’t even find this place.  You know how easy it is for Chadwick to get lost.  He could have died.  You will not have another gathering this year.  Do you hear me?” Vana said coldly. 

“He could have let me pick him up from the airport.  I picked Momma and Daddy up from the train station.”  Adanna started crying.  Chadwick was here because of her.  She would have been devastated if he had been hurt. 

“Chadwick does not have time to wait around while somebody escorts him here and there. You are so selfish.  You have always been selfish. Momma and Daddy make us come here. They say you need to be validated and who better to validate a person than their loved ones.  Selfish and needy -- what a pathetic combination.”  Adanna was crying in earnest now. She was sobbing and hiccupping and Vana was showing no mercy.  It was time for Chadwick to quit playing sleep.  He needed to intervene. 

“Vana, please leave Adanna alone.  I come here three times a year, because I love my family and Adanna is the only one with the power to get us all together under one roof.  I wouldn’t miss being here for the world.  Please let’s just try to be happy.  I had the accident with the woman I am going to marry anyway.  So, some good came out of it,” he said with a sly smile and distant look as he remembered Brittany’s beautiful eyes. 

“What?!” They screamed in unison.  He knew this would cut the tears off.  They were in his bed within seconds crowding him and begging for details.  

“Leave me alone. Go away and let me get dressed and eat breakfast and then I will tell you whatever you want to know.”   There was a lot of protesting and more attempts at begging before they realized that he was serious about getting dressed and having breakfast before he said another word.  

Brittany’s sisters were staring at her across a table of pancakes, bacon, and eggs.  Their twin expressions of bafflement would have been amusing under different circumstances.  But their looks of wonderment could be attributed to Brittany’s own predicament, which was far from humorous.  

“Let me get this straight.” Amber, who was older than Brittany by fourteen months and the family head so-to-speak, began, “You were in a car accident last night with a wealthy man.  You and he rode in the same ambulance to the emergency room, after he called for an ambulance and towing services.  Then after being examined and told you were okay, you left the hospital by taxi without checking on him or asking for his insurance card or the towing service number or anything.”

It irritated Brittany that Amber was making her sound so imbecilic by the way she was recounting her actions of the previous evening.  With each word Amber spit out, it became glaringly clear that she had made all sorts of mistakes in her handling of the accident.  The police were not called.  How could two adults fail to call the police in the face of an accident?  She did not know Chadwick’s last name.  She didn’t even get his license plate number.  She had no insurance detail.  She didn’t even know what towing service had her vehicle.  She could have been a sixteen-year-old with a new driver’s license for all her apparent inadequacies last night. She was embarrassed.  

Brittany glanced at Christy, who had been very quiet through the exchange, and she saw the gleam in her eyes that suggested Christy had her own suspicions about why Brittany had made such uncharacteristic mistakes.  “I have one question.” Christy blurted out.  “Is this wealthy man cute?”

Brittany made a show of swirling a piece of pancake in syrup before putting it in her mouth.  Giving Christy her little-girl-I-am-so-much-older-and-maturer-than-you look, she said, “As a matter of fact, he was a cutie, but a little on the arrogant side.” 

Christy, who was eighteen and already showing an uncanny skill at getting to the heart of people and their issues, was the one you could never fool.  While, Amber still wore an expression of incredulity at Brittany’s stupidity, Christy wore a look of excitement and expectation.  

“Christy, before you start dreaming you should know that he is way out of my league.  His car, his clothes, the way he smelled, even his cell phone reeked of more money we have ever seen.  He is the real deal.  So, just get that look out of your eyes.”  

Amber, finally realized there was a reason for Brittany’s distraction and the haughty look left her face.  “Well, from what you’ve explained, Mr. Wealthy Man was at fault and of course, he will be making reparation for the damage.  I will get on this right away.  I only wish you had had the good sense to talk to me last night instead coming in and going straight to bed.  Now, that was a shade too crazy.”   Brittany was already feeling sorry for Chadwick.  Her sister, an aspiring lawyer, who had her undergraduate degree and had entered her first year of law school, could handle anything leaning towards a legal issue.  This definitely qualified as a legal issue.  She would not be surprised if Amber accused Chadwick of purposefully neglecting to call the police in hopes that once the cars were moved, doubt could be cast on Brittany’s version of what happened.  As a matter of fact, looking at Amber and the thin set of her lips, she knew she had already drawn that conclusion.  But with her car door missing,  she wasn’t worried about there being a question as to who was at fault. 

#

After they finished eating breakfast and cleaning the kitchen, Amber left the house in a whirlwind muttering under her breath something about “stinking rich people”, and Christy sailed out the door on her way to school with a smile and a wink for Brittany.  

Brittany took a deep breath and let it out.  She was glad her sisters were gone.  She bit her lower lip and frowned as she thought of Amber and what she would do to poor Chadwick.  Why was she feeling so sorry for him? He had made the mistakes.  If he had let her make the phone calls.....Oh, who was she kidding?  She would not have thought to call the police either.  Shrugging her shoulders, she got her appointment book out and settled down at the, now clean, kitchen table to call her clients.  She had four people on her list for today.  She would call the office and see if she could get Susan to take care of them.  Susan’s clientele was not as extensive as hers and she had expressed a desire to fill in for Brittany when she could not meet her appointments.  Of course, Brittany couldn’t meet them today, because she had no car.   The first order of business was to make sure Susan was available.  She was.  The next thing she had to do was call each client and find out if a substitute masseuse was acceptable or if they would rather cancel.  All four clients chose to cancel.  After making another call to Susan, Brittany slumped in her chair and envisioned Chadwick’s face again.  He really was very handsome.  It was too bad he was wealthy.  All three Bradfield girls distrusted wealthy people.  It could easily be said that Amber had more than distrust for the wealthy. She had pure, unadulterated hate for them. This was the only prejudice they had. Neither nationality nor skin color mattered.  The only thing that mattered was status.  Wealthy people aroused hostile feelings within the Bradfields.  The Bradfield girls knew from a very painful personal experience that wealthy people could be the cruelest and most soulless people on the earth.  Woe for Chadwick when Amber found out who and where he was.