Utterly Yours (Book Three) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (2 page)

              Nathaniel busied himself with volunteer work; he had to do something to keep himself distracted.  All he could think about was Lillian, and it was starting to drive him insane.  He did whatever he could to stay busy.  He would dust, sweep, serve food, organize donated clothes, and prepare the beds.  Anything.  He would also occasionally do a conference call with Adam, but Adam was pretty much handling everything smoothly without him.  He could always take a lunch with Tony, but slowly he was starting to feel like he was in a rut.  Tony was also growing impatient.

              “So we’ve been here for almost three weeks now,” Tony said at lunch the morning after Nathaniel had delivered his little screaming routine.  “We were supposed to go home five days ago.  How much longer are you planning on staying to look for this woman?  She obviously doesn’t want to be found.”

              “I guess we can’t stay too much longer,” Nathaniel admitted.  “Let’s say nine days.”

              “Seriously?” Tony groaned slightly.  “All right, fine.  But I’m holding you to that.  Nine days.”

              Lunch ended, and the two of them headed back to the shelter.  Nathaniel knew he was not getting much done this way.  He was wasting his time.  While he knew he had to do at least a little volunteering at the shelter to keep Adam from questioning why he had yet to return, he felt like it was wasting valuable search time.  And finding Lillian was the real reason he was staying in Troy.

              After lunch Nathaniel spent some time with the people who were just finishing up enjoying their free meals.  The homeless were starting to recognize him by name at this point since he was there almost every day.  He spoke with a few of them as he did every day, but today the conversations would prove to be quite useful.  “Mr. Lynch!” a homeless woman waved him down, and he approached her, offering her a smile.

              “What can I do for you?” he asked.

              “I’ve heard you been looking for Ace?” she asked.

              Nathaniel perked up immediately.  “As a matter of fact, I have.  Have you seen her?”

              “She took the bus to New York City,” the woman said and then went into a long discussion about what she believed Lillian was up to, and it did not sound good.  Apparently the neighborhood Lillian had intended to travel to was quite notorious for prostitution.

              “I don’t like the sound of that,” Nathaniel said.  It was hard to believe that Lillian would stoop that low, but then again she did seem fairly desperate –and he had clearly made her far too uncomfortable to come to the shelter.  He thanked the woman and headed towards the back office to take a look at the map of the inner-city neighborhood the woman had been talking about.

             
Yikes,
he thought.  He knew the area, but he had a hard time believing that Lillian would honestly go there.  Just as he was pulling up the map on his phone to save it, Tony walked in.  “What are you doing?” he asked, looking over his shoulder.  “Ooh, that’s a bad area.  I wouldn’t go there.  What were you doing, looking for places to eat in New York?”

              “No.  Someone told me that they heard Lilian was going there,” Nathaniel said.

              “Well, that’s her loss.  There’s no way you’re going there,” Tony said. “You’ll stick out like a sore thumb unless you’ve picking up a girl, you know what I mean?”

              “That’s just what I plan to do –pick up a girl.  I just have a specific one in mind,” Nathaniel retorted.

              “No way.  There’s no way I’m letting you go there,” Tony argued.

              “Deal with it, Tony,” Nathaniel said, standing.  He looked at his watch.  It would be dark by the time he got there.

              “If you do that-”

              “What?” Nathaniel asked, spinning around to face Tony.  “What are you going to do, kid?”

              “I’ll quit,” he said and crossed his arms.

              “You’re not going to quit, Tony, but I appreciate the concern.  I’ll be fine,” Nathaniel assured him.

              “I’m not going to come get you if you get in trouble.  I’m telling you that right now,” Tony said firmly, but Nathaniel knew he would if he needed him to.  That was just the way Tony was.

              “Fine,” Nathaniel said.  “I respect that.  Now I’m going to go before it gets too late.  I have to at least try, Tony.”

              “Take your Rolex off before you go,” Tony advised.  “And leave the t-shirt and jeans on.  Please, for the love of God, don’t go there in a damn suit.”

              Nathaniel laughed.  “Will do, Tony.”

              Nathaniel drove up and down the neighborhood that Lillian had supposedly travelled to.  He did not see her anywhere, and truthfully he was a bit too nervous to roll down his window and start asking around.  The sleazy looking characters on every other street corner had him nervous.  Eventually, though, he realized he was running out of options.  He drove around a bit until he saw a group of what he assumed to be prostitutes who were not being guarded by a pimp; the last thing he wanted to do was piss off a guy toting a gun by talking to his
merchandise
with no interest in purchasing.

             
I should have bought a gun
, he thought to himself as he pulled up on the curb and rolled down his window.  A woman in fishnet stockings popped her head in the window, her elbows propped up on the door.  “Hey hon,” she said with a surprisingly charming smile.  “Looking for some fun tonight?”

              Nathaniel pulled out his phone and showed a picture of Lillian he had snapped during one of their dates.  “Sorry to disappoint,” he said, attempting to smile at her, “I’m just looking for a friend.”

              “Your friend a whore?” she asked and snatched the phone right out of his hand.

              “No,” Nathaniel said, knowing damn well he would not dare get out of the car to get his phone back if she decided to steal it.  “But I think she’s about to do something she’s going to regret.”

              The woman frowned, and she seemed legitimately concerned as she looked at the picture.  “Hey girls,” she waved the other three women over who had been standing with her.  “Any of you recognize this chick?”

              Nathaniel was a bit taken off guard, but apparently women on this side of town looked out for each other –even if they weren’t fellow street walkers.  “Shit, I saw her three hours ago,” one of the women say.

              “Really?” Nathaniel asked, sitting upright.  “Can you tell me where?”

              The woman pointed, “Three blocks down that way.”

              “Damn, that’s Rodney’s corner,” the woman who had originally taken the phone said as she handed it back.  “Rodney’s a pimp.  He’ll beat your ass if you piss him off.”

              “I’ll take my chances,” Nathaniel said, although he certainly planned to heed the women’s warning.

              “Go get her, hon,” one of the women said with a wink.  “She looks like a keeper from that picture.  Don’t let her get drug into this shit.”

              “Thanks,” Nathaniel said and peeled out, heading down the three blocks the women had pointed him towards.

              Some incredibly whorish looking women eyed his car as he made his way up towards the curb.  He kept his window rolled up, and almost instantly he spotted the women’s pimp over in a corner watching him.  He assumed the guy was Rodney.  He certainly looked like the kind of guy who would beat someone’s ass.  One of the women approached his car, but he kept his window rolled up.  The woman seemed hesitant.  Nathaniel looked around, and then he realized Rodney was talking to someone.

              He whipped his head around, and there she was.  The man had Lillian pinned up against the side of a building, and he was talking to her with a finger in her face.  She looked scared.  An instinctive anger rose up inside of Nathaniel, and he flung open the driver’s side door of his car and jumped out.  The other women scattered; the man, Rodney, did not seem to pay him any mind.  Now that he was out of the car, Nathaniel could hear the man’s voice shouting at Lillian.  “You’re my bitch now, got it, Lilly-girl?  You’re my bitch!” Rodney shot his gun up in the air as though it was nothing –apparently a single gunshot was not enough to get the police called in this neighborhood.  It had merely been a show of force.

              Nathaniel walked with a quick pace around his car and towards Rodney, and the man spun around the moment he realized Nathaniel had started in his direction.  Nathaniel could see Lillian holding her hands to her ears and shaking her head, and he realized she was having an episode likely brought on by the gunshot.  “Rodney!” Nathaniel shouted, hoping this was the right guy.

              “Who the fuck are you?” Rodney waved his gun in Nathaniel’s direction.

              “You need to back up, man.  She’s having a flashback, man.  She’s going to hurt you,” Nathaniel said, honestly trying to warn the asshole.

              “What the fuck?” Rodney seems very confused by the interaction, which Nathaniel understood.  To Rodney, Lillian was probably just fresh meat for the market, and he was just some random man coming up to him trying to tell him his meat was no good.  “Back up, asshole,” Rodney warned.  “You want one of my girls, you got to pay.”

              With Rodney’s back turned to Lillian, the woman lunged on him. She got him in a chokehold, and his gun fell out of his hands.  She placed her foot over the gun and proceeded to squeeze her arms around his throat.  “Lillian, let him go!” Nathaniel shouted.  Rodney was flailing around in her arms, but she had him trapped and was choking him out.  She was unresponsive; it was as though she was in another world.  Nathaniel saw the way she had gotten the gun into her possession, and he assumed that if he did manage to save the bastard from her that she’d have the gun in her hand the moment he came too close.  He thought fast.  He thought back to the conversation he had had about her life in the army, and a name stuck out.  Turns out, he had been listening much more intently than he had thought.  “At ease, solider!” Nathaniel shouted.  “Commander Jorgen wants you in the caravan!  We got to move!”

              By some miracle, Lillian listened.  “That way, solider!” Nathaniel pointed towards the car.  “Get inside and wait for me there, that’s an order!”

              Lillian seemed dazed and confused, but she still waddled over to the car and sat herself down in the passenger’s seat, closing the door behind her.  Rodney was on the ground coughing and gagging while his girls steered clear to avoid receiving the blunt of his frustration.  “You all right?” Nathaniel asked.

              “What the-” he paused to cough several times and gasp, “The fuck was that?”

              “She has PTSD,” Nathaniel said, slowly backing away.  “I’ll get her out of here.”

              “Fuck you!  I’ll shoot the bitch!” he said, jumping up to his feet.  He looked down and then cringed.  “Fuck, crazy bitch has my gun.”

             
Great
, Nathaniel thought.  “I suggest walking away because the crazy bitch thinks you’re a Libyan combatant.”

              “Fuck, man,” he said.  “I need my gun.”

              “I suggest forgetting about your gun,” Nathaniel said, and Rodney decided that this was his best option.  He and his girls put some distance between themselves and the car.

              Nathaniel made his way over to the car and slowly opened the passenger’s side door.  “Give me your sidearm, solider,” he said confidently.

              “Yes, sir,” she said and handed over the gun; he tossed it instantly and hurried to the driver’s side.

              He sat down and looked at her.  She looked out of her mind.  She was rubbing her temples and rocking slightly in her seat.  “Lilian?” Nathaniel beckoned.  She didn’t answer him, but she merely mumbled under her breath, still rubbing the side of her head with her fingers as though she was trying to rub the delusion away.  He pulled the car away from the curb; he felt a pain in his chest from seeing her like this. 

              On his way there he had come across a bit of construction, and although it was significantly later and he was certain the yard would be closed for the night, he still took the long way back to Troy just in case.  The last thing he needed was for a jackhammer to start her back over at square one.  After a while, she started to calm down.  She looked over at him, still slightly dazed.  “Where are we going?” she asked.

              He was not sure how to answer.  She seemed to be coming out of whatever delusion she had been in, though, so he decided to answer honestly.  “We’re taking you home,” he said.

              “Home?” she questioned.

              “To Troy,” he said.  “You can stay in my hotel suite, okay?”

              She nodded.  “Nate,” she said his name as though she was just now recognizing him, but there was a comfort in her tone.  She sounded relieved.

              “Hey, welcome back,” he said when he realized the Lillian he knew had made her way home.

              “Oh, God, you must think…” she paused.  “It’s not what you think.”

              “What?” Nathaniel questioned.

              She sat upright, shaking her head slightly.  “Rodney was a friend from high school,” she said.  “I thought I could trust him.  I went to see him to see if he could loan me some money to help me get out of town.  That’s it.  That’s the only reason I went to that damn neighborhood.  Then he just grabbed me and told me I had to earn it.”

              “I’m sorry, Lillian,” Nathaniel said.  “I hate that you felt like you needed to do that.”

              “I just wanted to get out of Troy, you know?” she said sadly.  “It’s been nothing but bad luck for me.”

              Nathaniel reached across the car and touched her hand. She grabbed his.  “Well, maybe we can change that luck around,” he said.  “I’m sorry I lied to you, Lillian.  I really am.  I treated our relationship like a game, and it was wrong.”

              “Relationship?” she questioned, but she laughed it off before he had to defend himself.  “Thank you for looking out for me.”

              Nathaniel brought her to the presidential suite on the top floor; she was too exhausted to act impressed.  Instead he helped her out of her dirty clothes and put her to bed.  She passed out on the hotel bed, and he watched her sleep –glad to have gotten her out of trouble for the time being.