Authors: Rachel Cross
It went on and on.
He read with dawning horror. No wonder she broke up with him. He did a general search.
More nastiness, awful stuff.
Oh my God.
Those fuckers! He lifted up the laptop and hurled it across the room.
Then he picked up his coffee cup and threw it. It shattered on the opposite wall.
He looked around wildly for something else to throw. His phone, his fucking phone.
He enjoyed throwing it. Roaring, he swept his arms across the desk, dumping papers,
files and a vase full of flowers onto the floor.
Ding-dong.
Who the hell?
• • •
He stalked to the front door and threw it open so hard it bounced against the wall.
Three men and one woman stood on his stoop. Police officers. All four simultaneously
backed up a step and put hands to their side-arms at his threatening posture.
He stared at them, uncomprehending.
Oh yeah.
He had called the police.
“I’m sorry, officers.” He steepled his hands over his mouth. “Come on in.”
“Did you call the police, Mr. Lowe?” one officer asked, stepping over the threshold,
glancing around.
“Yeah.”
“What seems to be the problem?”
“My girlfriend took her car and left it blocking the sidewalk. I thought something
might’ve happened to her, but she just called. Everything’s fine.”
Varying degrees of suspicion were evident on each and every face.
“Please, come in.” Asher moved back a few steps.
The rest of the officers filed in.
The man standing closest to him stepped forward him and offered his hand. “Sergeant
Greene.” He introduced the rest of the group.
Asher strove for calm, eyeing the officer who stepped away from the group and mumbled
something into his radio clipped to his shirtfront. Asher caught the words “domestic
disturbance.”
Asher’s eyes widened.
Domestic disturbance
?
“Why don’t you all come in here?” He led them into the living room.
All four officers halted just past the threshold, staring past him.
Too late, he remembered the mess in the room.
“Mr. Lowe? Why don’t we step over here.” The sergeant said, standing well away from
him as he pointed to the area near the fireplace, an area that had escaped Asher’s
rage.
“So, where is your girlfriend, Mr. Lowe?” the man asked, conversationally, leading
him over to the couch in front of the fireplace.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “She left for a doctor’s appointment at nine thirty. At
nine forty-five the landscapers arrived to tell me the SUV was blocking the gates
and they were stuck open. I went out to see … ”
The sergeant was taking notes while the other officers looked around the room.
“Mind if I check out the house?” the female officer asked.
Asher raised his hands. “Be my guest. I’m the only one home.”
She and the mustached police officer left the room.
“So you went out to see about the car … ” the officer prodded.
“Yeah. And it was blocking the gate, unlocked, the keys and her purse gone. I was
worried so I called you people.”
“Didn’t the emergency dispatcher keep you on the phone?”
“Yeah, but I had a call coming in from Maddy — my girlfriend — so I told the operator
to hold on and took the call.” He stopped, remembering.
“And?”
“And she told me she left,” he gritted out, chest tight.
The officer indicated the mess across the room with his pen.
“Did you have a fight?” he asked, calmly.
“God, no!”
Did they expect to see bent golf clubs or a bloody knife?
“It’s nothing like that. After I hung up, I was mad. I … I threw some shit around.”
“Is this a relationship of long standing?” the officer asked, continuing to make notes
on his pad.
“I guess.” What did that mean?
“With the nanny?” the officer examining the mess across the room called out.
Asher and the sergeant glanced over. The man shrugged sheepishly. “It was on the radio
this morning,” he said, defensively.
The sergeant sighed.
“What was on the radio?” Asher asked.
“That you’re dating the nanny.” Finished with his examination of the disaster Asher
had made of that part of the room, he walked over and stood a foot away. “Two guys
on the radio were talking about the premier of that new action film and your name
came up. They were talking about your date.”
Asher groaned and covered his eyes. Hadn’t she said she’d heard that?
God
. He imagined the radio disc jocks were even harsher than comments on the Internet.
Poor Maddy. He would fucking kill those people. Grief turned back into rage and he
could feel himself flush with it.
Both men were staring.
“So the altercation with your girlfriend — ”
“There was no damned ‘altercation,’” Asher bit out. “I was pissed.” He gestured to
the broken laptop. “They were nasty about Maddy — my girlfriend. That’s why she called
to break up with me. Fucking
fuck.”
“Calm down, Mr. Lowe,” the sergeant said in a tone that managed to be both soothing
and authoritative.
“We need to speak with her. Do you have her number?” the other officer said.
Asher gave them her cell number. “She was on her way to a doctor’s appointment this
morning.”
The officer stepped a few feet away, took out his cell phone and dialed.
Dialed again.
“No answer,” he said, unnecessarily, putting the phone away.
“Can you try the doctor’s office?” Asher suggested. “Doctor’s name is Baxter, he’s
a rheumatologist on Camino Real. She won’t pick up the call if she’s in with him.”
While the other officer researched the number and placed the call, the sergeant asked
Asher to run through everything that transpired that morning.
Asher sighed and repeated what he knew.
“She never showed.” The officer walked over to stand next to his partner and size
up Asher. The other two police officers entered the room.
“No one here. No sign of a disturbance anywhere else in the house,” the female officer
relayed.
Asher reached into his back pocket for his cell phone. The officer backed up a step,
suddenly on high alert. He reached into the other pocket. Where was his … then he
saw it, across the room.
“I’d like to get my cell phone,” he told them, pointing at it. All eyes followed his
finger.
The woman walked over, picked it up and brought it to him. The phone was dead, the
screen cracked.
“Goddamn it.” Asher shook it and pushed buttons.
“Mr. Lowe,” Sergeant Greene said. “We’re going to need to take you downtown with us,
until we can talk to Madeline Anderson. It’s routine.”
Asher stared at the man, then looked at each one of the officers in turn before shaking
his head. “Not gonna happen,” Asher said. “If this gets out — and if I know you people,
it will — it could jeopardize my custody arrangement. I get how this appears.” He
gestured to the room. “If you can get hold of Maddy — ”
“We haven’t had any luck.”
Asher scowled. “Keep trying. Maddy and I will be happy to clear up any misunderstanding,
but if this gets out there will be hell to pay. Taking me downtown is guaranteed to
put this in the spotlight. If I have to, I’ll call my lawyer. Right now I need to
get my assistant, Justin Montoya, and let him know what’s going on.”
The officer took down the number.
The sergeant sighed. “I’m going to call my lieutenant off-radio and see how he wants
to handle this. Hold up, guys.” He pointed at the female officer. “Get a tow truck
to get that car back into the driveway.” He stepped away to mumble into the cell phone.
The house phone rang. Asher lifted an exaggerated eyebrow, asking permission to answer
his own damn calls. Sergeant Greene tipped his head to indicate permission.
Asher picked it up on the third ring.
“Man, I have been calling and calling your cell. What the hell?” Justin asked.
“My cell is busted. Listen, the police are here.”
“I figured,” Justin said.
His eyebrows shot to his hairline. “You figured?”
“Yeah, I’ve got Maddy here with me — ”
“
You’ve
got Maddy?” he parroted.
“Yeah. We’ll be there in five.”
• • •
“Oh my God!” Maddy rushed into the house and launched herself into Asher’s arms. His
arms went around her and he held her to him in an embrace so tight it bordered on
painful.
She pulled back, studied him and saw the desolation in his eyes. “Oh Asher, really?”
she said, pulling him against her.
He leaned down and captured her mouth — her breath — in a soul-stealing kiss.
Someone clearing their throat caught her attention, and she stepped back.
The officers were pretending not to look at them.
Asher draped an arm around her, pinning her to his side.
Justin stood grinning in the entryway, still holding Maddy’s purse. “How ‘bout I go
move the car?” he said.
“Yeah, keys are in there.” She gestured to the bag he held.
He held it out to her.
“Side pocket,” Maddy said, unwilling to tear herself from Asher.
With a grimace, Justin dug around, finding them. “Be right back.”
The female police officer pulled her radio to her mouth, identifying herself to dispatch.
“Cancel tow truck for Lowe residence.”
One of the police officers, Sergeant Greene according to his name plate, stepped forward.
Maddy regarded him, then Asher before stepping away.
His eyes were narrowed, his face flushed and his hand fisted at his side.
“Maddy, what the hell?” Asher said.
“I’d rather talk to you about this in private,” she said softly, reaching for the
hand.
He shook her hand off, his face settling into furious lines. “Now that the police
are involved, that’s not an option. You know that’s not a good thing for me, Maddy,
not with the Ella situation.”
Yeah, it wasn’t. But neither was it the time to tell him about being kidnapped at
gunpoint. She didn’t need the police to hear that until she knew how Asher wanted
to handle her. It was his mother after all.
“Your mother — ”
Asher’s body jerked as if he’d been given an electric shock.
The officer standing closest to them put his hand to his gun reflexively.
Oblivious to their tension, he moved Maddy so she was facing him. His grip was tight
on her upper arms.
The female officer stepped toward them.
Maddy squirmed but met his gaze.
“Oh my God,” he said hollowly, understanding dawning.
“Yeah.”
“You wanna tell us what’s going on?” Sergeant Greene asked. He stepped forward, pad
in hand. Maddy pressed her right foot onto Asher’s toes, gently, meaningfully.
He let her go, his eyes boring into hers. “I’ll get them to pick her up.”
“Asher, maybe not the best idea with Sterling and the Ella situation.” Maddy turned
to the sergeant with forced smile. She looked back to Asher and caught his nodding
agreement to her cryptic words.
“When I went to leave for the doctor’s appointment, Jacqueline — that’s Asher’s mom
— was blocking the driveway with her limo.”
Sergeant Greene stopped writing.
“Apparently she wanted to meet me.”
She spared Asher a glance.
Rage sketched into his expression.
“So I left the car … I was upset about some things on the radio — ”
Asher made a pained sound, and two of the police officers wouldn’t meet her eyes.
Great. So everyone heard those men trashing her?
“I was with her for a bit, then I called Asher. I was upset. Not making sense. I’m
so sorry for the inconvenience.”
She reached to squeeze the hand Asher held in a fist by his side and laced her fingers
through his resistant ones.
Justin returned, keys in hand, and swiftly shut the door behind him. He tossed them
back into the purse sitting on the floor in the foyer. “I secured the gate. That’s
the good news. The bad news is paparazzi are swarming the street, some have come on
the property,” he said.
Sergeant Greene shook his head, clearly uncomfortable with the events. “Excuse me
a minute while I call my lieutenant again. Keep all communication off the radio.”
“Oh dear,” Maddy said softly. This had the makings of a real farce.
Asher reeled her back to his embrace. “Maddy,” he whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Heedless of their audience, they kissed again. Maddy stifled a moan as her lips met
the firm pressure of his mouth. He raked his fingers through her hair, gripping her
skull, holding her head firmly while he ravished her.
She pulled him closer, eager.
“Guys?” Justin called out. “Paparazzi. On the property.”
Maddy resurfaced, lethargic, lost in Asher’s hot, hazel, heavy-lidded eyes.
“Mmmm?” she said absently, resting her hands on his hips.
• • •
Asher pulled away from Maddy, taking a few seconds to get himself under control and
his brain reset.
“So she’s fine, everything is fine. Just a misunderstanding.” Asher told the three
police officers in his foyer. He looked meaningfully at Sergeant Greene, who was still
in a deep phone conversation, and indicated the front door with his head.
Sergeant Greene tucked his cell phone away.
“Here’s how we’re going to play this,” Asher stated. “Maddy, Justin, and I will walk
you all out. They’ll snap a few photos, shout a few questions. Sergeant, you tell
them it was a malfunctioning gate and security breach, and that has now become a trespassing
issue. I’ll press charges against anyone who is not off my property within five minutes.
Is that clear? We’ll all be very friendly.” He gave them his most charming smile.
Justin tilted his head. “Ah, we’re blaming this on them? Brilliant, boss.”
The sergeant gave them a harassed glance. “I’ll need to call the lieutenant back;
he’s on his way.”