When Romance Prevails (The Dark Horse Trilogy Book 3) (5 page)

“Oh, thanks.” The door finally opened. “As I said, please forgive us for our intrusion. I hope you have a good day. Say goodbye, Holly.” The door closed again as soon as the woman sat in the driver’s seat.

The girl gave a lackluster wave. “Bye. Say hi to your girlfriend for me.”

“Holly!”

Before anyone could say anything else, the car pulled out of its spot and disappeared down the road.
What is that all about?
The woman had been coming from the direction of the Hall residence. Was she a volunteer?

Predictably, Terrence stood on the stoop of the manor and surveyed what he hoped would one day be his future kingdom. “Amazing, isn’t it?” he said to Hunter as his son ascended the steps to the door. “Of all the people in the world, it’s amazing which ones come into your life.”

Hunter didn’t know what his father was talking about. But he understood, and that was enough to make him sour for the rest of the day.

Chapter 4

Kerri received a call from Hunter one week after she last saw him.

It was strange answering another person’s phone, and she wondered where he was calling her from. “Prepaid phone I picked up a few days ago,” he explained. “I told my parents my old one stopped working and I sent it in to be fixed. So far so good.”

Kerri waited to hear the inevitable. It came after a few platitudes, the usual greetings, and a frantic plea to be able to see her again. “Everything’s ready. Are you going out tomorrow?”

As a matter of fact, she was. “My mother is taking me shopping.”
Even though we don’t have the money.
“The Evening Boutique. Do you know it?”

“Yeah. The one across the street from that bakery, right?”

“Yes.”

They were silent for a moment, Kerri’s heart pounding beneath her chest. “What do you want me to do?” She couldn’t believe she was going along with this.

“Pack light. Like only one or two bags you can carry and won’t raise suspicion. What time will you be there?”

“Probably after lunch.”

“I’ll text you when it’s time to go. I’ll be parked and need you to sneak out and get in my car as fast as possible. If we leave early, we can get where we’re going by nightfall.”

“Where are we going?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow. Just in case someone happens to hear this conversation.” Kerri opened her mouth to protest, but Hunter then continued, “It’ll be clean and safe. Somewhere we can hide out for a little while. Away from the media and from our parents chasing us down, at least. Don’t worry about money. I’ll take care of everything.”

Good, because I don’t have any.
Kerri had been bailing her mother out of situations lately. Little things, like paying the electric bill or getting groceries. Where was their money going? “I’m scared, Hunter. I’ve never done something like this before. What if it blows up in our faces?”

“It might. There are no guarantees. But we have to try.”

Kerri didn’t want to agree. But the longer she was confined in her home, never to be let out of anyone’s sight again, she realized how dire her situation was.
They can’t keep me contained like this.
She wished she were willful enough to walk out on her own. To give her parents the middle finger and walk out the front door right in front of them. What would they do? Illegally restrain her?
Probably.
It was easier to say she would leave them than to actually do it. This would be her first real action against her parents, and it scared the soul out of her.

“I will contact you when we’re ready to go. Please be careful. I love you.”

I should be saying that to you!
Kerri held onto the phone long after Hunter hung up. Maybe if she kept it to her ear, it would ring again, and she could hear his reassuring voice in a room of self-doubt.

But she couldn’t. Kerri had to put the phone in her bag, pick herself up off the bed, and get to work packing her things.

Only small bags.
She would stuff her handbag to the brim with small things, like soap, medicine, and all of her IDs. If she got creative, she could even stuff a Ziploc bag full of underwear and socks into the bottom of her bag. It was heavy, but bearable. And her mother would never notice a large handbag stuffed with items.
For everything else…
She only had the tote bag that zipped on the top. Taking a backpack was not her usual style and would stick out. Suitcases were out of the question. She only had enough room in the tote to pack a few shirts and a pair of sleep pants. She would just wear the same pair of jeans every day.
I will live.
Unlike if she stayed in that house that was determined to break her spirit.

By midnight she was packed. By dawn she was still tossing and turning in bed, fearful for the future.

“What do you think of this one?” Brenda held up a blouse dotted in rhinestones. “It would look good for election day. Flashy for the cameras, but casual enough that you don’t look, I don’t know,
scary.
”

“It’s fine.” Kerri kept her hand clasped over her side pocket, where Hunter’s phone threatened to buzz into life at any moment. “Although I don’t know why we’re shopping for clothes when we don’t have any money.” She was testy today.
It’s the nerves.
Still, she didn’t mean to say that, and Brenda looked at her as if she had grown a pair of fangs and was about to rip her mother’s throat out.

“We have money,” she insisted in a hiss. “Not much right now, but I tucked some away just for today. Your father can’t get to it. Family has to eat…”

“And you haven’t found out what’s going on yet?”

“What is there to ask? Your father must be using it for the campaign. Ever since that… event… he’s been working doubly hard to rebuild his image. Our more conservative constituents threw a fit to find out about… oh, never mind.”

“I’m sure.” Kerri hoped it would end there.

Of course it didn’t. “I just don’t know what you saw in that boy.” Brenda continued searching through a rack while her daughter sat in a chair. “He wasn’t even that good looking.”

Turn around and say that to my face.
Hunter was gorgeous, with his fit body, his kind face, and the handsome way he kept his hair.
And those eyes.
Kerri had never noticed a man’s eyes so much before she fell in love with Hunter. Truly the windows to the soul.

“No good can come from someone in that family. Not just because they’re like that either.” Brenda sniffed as if just thinking about them gave her allergies. “Who’s to say they even have any real morals? I heard his mother was quite loose in her day. Who knows if that boy is even really his father’s son? You don’t want to get roped in with someone like that. Not only will they ruin your reputation, but they’ll just break your heart when they use you.”

Kerri stared at the back of her mother’s head as if she could ignite it.
I don’t even care about his parents.
She had never met them, and wasn’t sure if she would like them any better than her own parents from what she heard.
I only love Hunter.
Just like she was independent of her parents, he was too. Perhaps that was the biggest thing bringing them together. At the end of the day, they were the only ones who could understand that about each other. “I don’t know why you’re bringing this up. You did a pretty bang-up job of putting an end to it.”

“Thank goodness too. But this is why I suggested you get out and explore the world a little. Stay too close to home and you’re bound to go for the wrong guy. Not like you have a lot of choice in our circles.”

“So you’re saying that you don’t even want me to date one of Father’s friends’ sons?”

Brenda chortled and tossed a blouse back on a hanger. “It would be more preferable, but I’m not gonna line up to tell you it’s a great idea, especially in this day and age.”

“So who
should
I date? Because I hate to break it you, but any Italian guy or whoever I hook up with isn’t going to pass muster.”

“I didn’t say bring him home for all to see. I said have some
fun
away from the local media. Don’t let your dirty laundry air out at home.”

Kerri crossed her legs. “What do you know about that? I bet you haven’t had any dirty laundry in your life.”

“Now that’s not true. Not lately, sure, but I was young once and got into quite the bind a time or two. But that was in another era when it was harder to get caught. Back before camera lenses could find your pimples from a mile away, or the whole world knew two seconds after the fact. Thank goodness too, or else I may have never made it as far as I have now.”

Kerri still didn’t believe it. Her mother had always been too straight-laced to actually be alive. As a child conceived shortly after marriage – and as far as she knew, Raymond was her mother’s first – there wasn’t a single thing Kerri could think of in regards to her mother kicking up a huge scandal somewhere.

“Don’t give me that look. I was young and dumb just like you once. You think hormones didn’t exist twenty-five years ago? I had boyfriends. Some of them secret because I knew my parents would explode. I met your father through one of those boyfriends.”

Kerri couldn’t bite back the question she was dying to ask. “Yeah, but you didn’t sleep with any of them, did you?”

Her mother’s voice rarely sounded so curt. “It was a different time. Young ladies didn’t do that.”

“You’re full of shit.”

“Kerri!”

She stood up, hoisting her large bags over her shoulder under the pretense of going to the bathroom. “Hate to break it to you, Mother, but Hunter wasn’t my first. Not by a long shot. You don’t want to know how much dick I’ve had.” It wasn’t
that
much. But let her mother stew in it for a few minutes.

“Don’t say that so loudly! Do you want someone overhearing you?”

Kerri looked around the boutique. Aside from a couple of employees talking in the corner, there was no one else in there. Oh, look, a security camera in the corner. Now everyone knew she had been there. Scandal. “Maybe I do. Stop trying to sell me as some virginal princess who belongs to my father. I can’t play that game anymore. Let someone find my birth control in my purse. Maybe they’ll think I’m a full-fledged human being. The kind that has sex and
likes
it.”

“The hell did that boy do to you? You’ve never talked like this before.”

Not to you. Not to anyone but myself.
And now Hunter. He would love to hear her talk like that, and say it right back to her. “This will shock you, but I actually want to make my own choices. I’m not against getting your blessing, and God knows it would be better for all of us if you would accept some things or at least overlook them. And in return I really don’t want you knowing about my sex life. No thank you.” Kerri opened her mouth again before her mother could retort. “Hunter didn’t ‘do’ anything to me. Other than make me fall in love with him.”

“Oh, Kerri!”

“That’s okay. Because he loves me too.”

The look on her mother’s face was everything Kerri could have hoped for. Shock, anger, disbelief… who knew Brenda’s lips could curl like that and her eye twitch with such conviction?
Is she going to say it?
That Hunter couldn’t possibly love her? That he had only been using her? That he had taken what he wanted and would never want to see her again? There were so many possibilities. As much as Kerri was dying to hear them all in one breath, she took her bags and flew off to the bathroom. Latching the handle behind her had never been so satisfying.

Perfect timing. The cell phone buzzed in Kerri’s pocket.

“I’m here. Sneak out into the alley by the west exit as soon as you can. It’s dark enough that you should be covered. Better hurry. Text back if delayed.”

Kerri splashed some water from the sink into her face.
You can do this.
All she had to do was sneak out of the bathroom, then the store, and hope no one noticed. So simple in theory.

She cracked open the bedroom door and saw Brenda sitting on the other side of the boutique, facing the window with her head pointed down. None of the employees seemed to be around. Kerri opened the door wider and didn’t see a single soul. Now was her chance.

Footsteps as quiet as a mouse’s crept across the store, careful to hide behind a rack here and a display there.
I’m so close to the door.
A few more feet and she would be out in the sunshine. Kerri pulled a hat over her face – because that worked so well before – and stepped out the door, her eyes constantly on her mother who continued to be dead to the world.

I probably hurt her feelings.
That was the last thing Kerri thought before letting the sunshine hit her skin.

The alley wasn’t too far away, but she had to keep her nose pointed down and her steps quick if she wanted to avoid detection. This late in the campaign season, there could be reporters anywhere. Kerri wasn’t taking her chances now. She definitely wasn’t going to give her mother any time to realize she was missing.