Legal Action - Box Set (42 page)

“Got it,” he said, “black-eyed peas it is then.”

“I have some interesting news, and I want to you to start calling me Dad,” Charles said, as Charlotte settled into the chair beside him.

Everything in the kitchen stopped and Finn and Charlotte stared at him.

“Dad? Alright, I’ll work on it, what’s the news, I hope it’s not something do with all that Christmas business. I don’t want to talk or think about anything negative on the first day of the year,” Charlotte said.

“It’s about your inheritance, from your mother’s family. I was back home in New Orleans for a few days and I did some checking, I hope that was alright. Anyway, the house should have been yours, it
is
yours, the old McCall estate on the Gulf,” he said.

“What the f…?” she said, stopping herself when Finn squeezed her knee under the table and shook his head. “What are you saying, I grew up in foster homes that were worse than slums and I owned a beach-front mansion all along?”

“Yes, I am. I’m not quite sure of the details yet, but it was held all these years by the Historic Society. Due to government funding issues they were forced to sell it and the buyers couldn’t get a clear title. It was never meant to pass out of the hands of a direct McCall descendant. I have a law firm in Mississippi working on it, but it’s yours, and then you’ll pass it on to Atticus someday,” Charles said, he lifted the baby from his highchair and held him on his lap. “Take some time to assimilate this piece of news, Charlotte, but no matter what, it can’t be legally sold while a McCall is alive. Of course there will be lawsuits, you’ve been severely wronged and someone’s to blame. You’ll receive monetary damages as well as the house and property.”

*

              Bly was on a conference call with Evangeline and Amanda, and he put the phone on speaker so Maddie could see what he had to put up with. She shrugged her shoulders and smiled, she had three older brothers and a mother who wasn’t at all a diva, so it was all new to her.

              “You would think after thirty years of being treated like family and allowed the honor of raising my dear children, Isadora would be a bit more considerate. Honestly Alexander, she packed her bags last night and said she’s found some Don Juan type character from her past on the internet, and she’s going back to Brazil to marry him. I swear, if she comes scratching at my door next month after her
beloved
turns out to be a toothless, one-eyed, street-dweller, she can march right back to South America!” Evangeline stopped talking long enough to take a breath and Amanda chimed in.

              Are you in love yet, Alex? We’re all dying to find out how it’s going with you two,” Amanda chirped like a happy little bird. “Charlotte and I just know Maddie’s perfect for you. Please say you love her and you’re getting married, because guess what? JP and I flew to Las Vegas and did the deed, he’s your new brother-in-law! We’ll be moving to San Diego and I want kids as soon as possible and they’re going to need little cousins!” she rattled on, and Bly could practically hear his mother having a heart attack.

              “Listen, both of you,” Bly said. “I’m sending West to Paris, he’s going to meet with the team that’s been gathering info on the whole Natalie debacle. Why don’t you make him welcome in your home, Mother? He can lend a hand with finding someone to help run your household while he’s there, and hopefully I can convince Maddie to come to Paris with me in a few days. Amanda, congratulations, JP is a good man, hurry up and make Evangeline a grandmother,” Bly said, and grinned at Maddie, who was fascinated by the whole conversation.

              “Oh Amanda, my only daughter and you ran off and had a tacky little ceremony. Do you know how many designers I’ve promised your wedding gown commission to? This will be a complete scandal, I hope your proud of yourself, I’ll never live it down,” the sound of ice clinking and alcohol pouring into a crystal glass as Evangeline made herself a cocktail was loud and clear.

              “Really Mother? I thought you cornered the market on scandals in Paris when you had me! Isn’t there still a betting pool as to who my biological father is?” Amanda was practically screaming.

              “I’ll have West take a car from the airport, Mother. Try not to forget that he’s coming tomorrow,” Bly said, and he clicked the phone off.

              “Wow,” Maddie said, “you are for sure going to think my family is boring!”

              “So I
do
get to meet your family? I’d like that, I’ve been all over the world, but I haven’t been to Niceville. Maybe it’s time,” Bly said, pulling her down on his lap in a roomy chair in the bedroom, and nuzzling his favorite part of her soft, fragrant neck.

              “I do want you to meet my family,” Maddie said, curling up next to him, “and I’d like to get to know your mother and sister. I saw your mother in Karlovy Vary, but only just a glance, she’s incredibly beautiful just like… well, you know.”

“No, I don’t know. Who is just like my mother?” he asked, sitting up and studying her.

“I’m probably completely imagining it, forget I said anything,” Maddie said, and Bly could tell she was nervous and unsure of herself, like she had been when they first met.

“Maddie, I’m crazy about you and more than that even, it’s happened fast between us, but you’re safe with me. Your heart is safe, and you can say whatever you need to say without worrying that it will change things.”

“Okay then, here goes… Charlotte. Physically, Charlotte and your mother are similar, like they were touched by the God’s with this beauty that the rest of us mortals can only admire from afar,” she said, and she watched a look of pain cross his face. It was gone in an instant, and he smiled and kissed her passionately, fanning the flame of lust that could burn Maddie into his soul.

              They rarely left the guest house while they were on the island. Once they went to a secluded cove to snorkel, and they ended up fucking in the sand. Then he moved down her body and tasted the salt of the sea mixed with the sweet taste of her pussy, and when they returned to the resort they were sunburned and satisfied.

*

              “I want you to come with me to California,” Bly said, as he wandered through Maddie’s flat in London.

              The apartment was cold, and she’d asked him to light a fire in the bedroom fireplace, but he wanted to get back on the jet and fly away from the dreary, freezing rain. He held a match to a pile of logs, then looked around while she was busy sorting through her mail and watering comatose pot-plants. There were pictures of her in war-torn countries, brown, bleak, inhospitable looking cities. She was smiling in every one of them, her blonde hair fell gently over one eye, or her head was tossed back in laughter. In most of them she knelt beside ragged, dirty-faced children, her hand ruffling their hair. In one she held a baby while an old woman cried over the broken body of a bloodied soldier at her feet.

              “Hey,” she said, leaning in the doorway, “quite a reality check, huh? London in winter after our island paradise.”

              He stood and placed his hands on either side of her against the door and she wondered how she could already be so deeply in love with him.

              “I love you,” he said, “I’m in love with you, Maddie. Everything about you, and I know it’s too soon and you think I’m on the rebound, but that’s not it at all. I love your face and your heart and your body and your humor…”

              “Okay,” she said, lifting her mouth to his, as tears ran down her cheeks, “I’ll go to California with you, I’ll go to the moon with you, I’ll go anywhere you want to take me.”

*

              Maddie had always heard how the notoriously wealthy lived their lives in Paris, but surely Evangeline Bly put a whole new spin on the concept. Her townhouse on the Avenue Foch was what the French referred to as “
ancien
.” Meaning it was old, as in two or three hundred years old, as well as huge, and scandalously decadent. She couldn’t imagine how many rooms there were in the lavish residence. When she told Alex she was afraid to sit on the magnificently embroidered duvet in their bedroom, he pushed her onto it and made love to her, and the evidence of their love left a stain.

              “I’ll know not to marvel over the fine furnishings in your mother’s townhouse from now on, and by the way, this “townhouse” is five stories high and enormous!” she said, when they lay side by side, sweaty and panting.

              “Was it really that awful?” he asked, smiling and pulling her up to stand and look out the tall, narrow French doors at the view of Paris.

              “It was
really
unbelievable, and I’m kind of picturing that gilded daybed in the first floor library now,” she said, and truth be known, she felt as she was suddenly living in a fairytale.

              She was with Alexander Bly, and he loved her and she wanted to live happily ever after with him, or never wake up if she was dreaming. They made love, “fucked,” as he liked to call it, because he said it was too intense to call it by any other word. They fucked a lot, and she came a lot, and she was so stupidly in love with him, that she didn’t care about her career or world peace or anything accept the smell and taste and feel of him.

Once in a while, when Maddie watched his sleeping face, so handsome that it took her breath away, she wondered if he still dreamed of Charlotte. They were both so beautiful, Alex and Charlotte, so implausibly attractive, as if they were two parts of a single being. She worried that someday Charlotte would look at Alexander Bly and realize she belonged with him.

“The daybed was made for Louis the fourteenth or fifteenth, I can’t keep my mother’s furniture sorted out in my head,” he said, grinning at her, as they continued to admire the city, “but I’d definitely be willing to give it a try with you. It doesn’t look very comfortable or sturdy and if it breaks beneath us and scars that sweet ass of yours, I’ll never forgive my mother for buying rickety antiques.”

“Shut up,” she said, smiling and kissing him and feeling his heart beat against her heart, and sinking with him onto the priceless rug.

*

              “Something’s different about West,” Maddie said later, after they’d fucked on the Aubusson rug, then dressed and gone out to dinner at a restaurant with Evangeline, “did you notice?”

              “He’s sleeping with her and I don’t want to talk about it,” Bly said in a tone she hadn’t heard him use before, he sounded both angry and resigned.

              “Alright,” she said, as they walked along the sparkling streets of Paris, “what do you want to talk about?”

              “Let’s go on to San Diego, honestly, I’ve had enough of Europe. I need to get back to work, of course I don’t actually have to go to work, because that’s the power of the internet. Alexander Bly doesn’t ever to have to show up anymore, with just the tap of my finger on a screen, billions of dollars continue to pour in, and I’m basically useless,” he said, as he stood at the base of the Arc de Triomphe and buried his face in her hair as she hugged him.

              “What is it really, Alex? Tell me, please.”

              “I love you, and I haven’t been very lucky in love and you’ve never said… how you feel about me,” he said, his voice falling to a whisper at the end of the sentence.

              She looked up at him, tall and handsome with that insanely sexy dimple in his chin and his incomparable blue-green eyes, and she couldn’t believe he didn’t know.

              “I love you. Of course, I love you, I don’t mean of course like I
have
to, but I do. I’m in love you, I thought you already knew,” she rambled on in her very ‘Maddie’ sort of way, and he began to smile and even laugh as he kissed her.

              “Enough to marry me?” he asked, holding up a small box from his coat pocket. He opened the box and on a cushion of velvet, a brilliant canary diamond sparkled, catching and reflecting the lights along Champs Elysees. He plucked the ring from the box and held it in front of him, waiting for her answer.

              “Yes, enough to marry you as many times as you ask me to. I love you Alexander Bly, more than you can imagine. Now let’s go home to America because you’re needed there to run your business, and I need for you to meet my parents, and my mother is going lose her mind over you!” she said, and he slipped the ring on her finger and they knew it was meant to be because it was a perfect fit.

*

              “So, I’m giving you my resignation, but I have someone to take my place. I know you’ll like him and he’ll do a great job, no hard feelings, Alex, please?” West was standing in the study near Evangeline’s bedroom and Bly was tapping his foot wishing he was anywhere else in the world.

              “I don’t suppose you’ll need a job reference, looks like you’ve found someone to “work for,” Bly said, and gave West a hard look.

              “She’s ten years older than I am, Alex, it’s not that much. You can only see her as your mother, but there’s so much more to her than that. I love her, if it makes any difference,” West said, and as Evangeline walked through the room and sat gazing coolly out the window, Bly watched West’s eyes come to rest on her, and he could tell that it was damn well true.

              It was also true that his mother was elegant and graceful and unreasonably beautiful… just like Charlotte. So how could he blame West for being a victim of love.

CHAPTER SIX

              “I know I don’t want to live in that house,” Charlotte said, as they drove from New Orleans to Pass Christian.