Give in to Me (14 page)

She looked past me again toward the house and smiled. “This is a lot of property for just one gardener. Do you think I should hire someone to help you?”

As I shook my head to let her know I didn’t understand what she’d said, she stared up at me, as if she was studying my face for the real answer. Something told me she wasn’t sure about the man she’d hired to handle her gardening.

“Ethan, I just realized other than knowing you’re Ethan Cole, I don’t know anything else about you.”

Her tone possessed a sharp edge, but she didn’t sign her words. She was trying to catch me lying. Always my Nina, she hid a great brain behind those innocent blue eyes and gentle smile.

I shook my head and signed
I don’t know what you’re saying
to indicate I hadn’t been able to lip read her words, stifling my smile at her cleverness.

With great effort, she signed what she’d just said, and I signed in return,
Ask me anything.

She signed
How old are you?
and looked more like Daryl tugging on his beard as he thought about some great question than making the sign to ask how old I was.

Before I could think about my answer, I signed the number 29 and my eyes grew wide at my slip up. I really should have been better at lying by now, but just being around her made all my defenses melt away. My age being the same as her fiancé’s didn’t seem to register with her, though, and she simply smiled.

Do you like gardening?
she asked, fumbling over the sign for gardening and making it look more like a dog scratching for fleas than her fingers raking over her left palm.

I nodded, which was a complete lie. To be honest, I couldn’t wait for the moment I wasn’t Ethan Cole, mute and deaf gardener. Every night I waited for Daryl to call and let me know that he’d finally figured out the secret of what Karl wanted so I could finally return to my life as Tristan Stone and the woman I loved.

You’re doing a nice job
, she continued, this time doing much better with her signing.

Thanking her, I added,
And thank you for learning to sign. You’re very thoughtful.

In front of me, Varo stood about twenty yards away impatiently yelling Nina’s name. She didn’t even bother to turn around to answer him, preferring to stay facing me.

“Time for me to take the stage,” she said without signing.

Shaking my head, I shrugged to let her know I didn’t understand.

Smiling, she signed,
It’s nothing. Just my pretend life.
Nina turned to leave and stopped short to sign one more thing.
Have a good day, E-t-h-a-n.

It wasn’t what she signed but that I got to hear her speak those sweet words, even if her voice was tinged with unhappiness. I hated knowing what I’d convinced her to do was making her miserable, but I had to tell myself that it was what had to be done.

That didn’t make it any better, though.

She walked away, her pace a little slower than when she’d approached me, I thought. My mind immediately began to spin out of control thinking about where they were going, what they’d be doing, and how I’d be standing there raking. Taking a deep breath, I told myself I couldn’t let that affect me. This was the way it had to be, and that was that.

By six o’clock, I hadn’t seen Nina or either of her bodyguards return home, so I left, needing a hot shower and something in my stomach. I had a newfound appreciation for the people who’d worked on my family’s properties. I’d always been so spoiled that I never once considered what their lives were like. Where did they live? Where did they eat lunch? What did they do when they weren’t landscaping the gardens or cleaning up after my family and me? My stint as Ethan the gardener had made all those people who’d been invisible to me for all those years suddenly come into sharp focus. To say that I didn’t like what I saw was an understatement.

It’s not that Nina or anyone at the house mistreated me. Quite the opposite, in fact. Nina was welcoming, and although Varo and West weren’t altogether friendly, they weren’t nasty or rude. I was, however, invisible there, for all practical purposes. Unlike in my life as Tristan Stone, no one wanted to spend time with me for meals or clamored to hear what I had to say about anything.

The change in my status was enlightening, to say the least.

Standing in the shower, I let the water sluice over me, loving the feel of its stinging heat on my skin. Working as a gardener was much harder work than I’d ever believed, and my body already showed the signs of its effects. Muscles that had atrophied for months when I was in exile now grew again, the result of hours of manual labor. I hadn’t seen a gym in nearly half a year, but I couldn’t remember my body being in better shape. Those muscles didn’t come easily, though, and the hot water only did so much to ease the ache of my day job.

Scotch did the rest.

I relaxed on the couch and put my feet up on the coffee table, groaning as I stretched the tired muscles in my legs. A slice of Tony’s pizza filled my stomach, and I washed it down with a gulp of scotch. Not exactly the right pairing, but I’d forgotten to ask for soda when I placed the order. It wouldn’t have been the same, anyway. Tony’s was great not because it was the best pizza in the world but because it symbolized something far better I shared only with Nina.

My phone vibrated across the top of the table, signaling I had a message. It was the one Nina used, and my heart leaped in my chest at the thought of what she might say. Scooping the phone up, I read her message and instantly felt like someone had my heart in a vice, turning the handle until there was nothing but the purest pain I’d ever experienced.

I miss you. I’ve taken to talking to almost complete strangers because I’m so lonely. Please come back to me.

Fuck. How was I supposed to keep this up? She was tearing me apart. All I wanted to do was text back that I wasn’t that far away. That I was as lonely as she was and missed her more than I could say.

Daryl’s telltale banging on my door shook me from my misery, and I trudged my aching feet and legs over to let him in, ready for him to add to my shitty moment.

“Nice to see you, Tristan. I hope you saved some of that drink for me,” he announced as he brushed past me to take a seat on the old chair that filled out the living room set he’d gotten me.

“Tell me you have something, Daryl. I can’t do this for much longer. Nina’s texts are killing me. She’s miserable, and I’m the reason she’s miserable.”

Grabbing my bottle of Lagavulin, he looked around for something to pour his drink into. “Get me a glass, would you? I’ve been working all day. I need this.”

I found a glass in the kitchen cabinet and returned to hand it to him. “You’re work is nothing like mine, I’m willing to bet. I ache all over.”

He poured himself a healthy glass of scotch and sat back in the chair, grinning broadly. “Never did an honest day of work in your life, did you? Now you know how the other half lives.”

Seated across from him, I watched him relish my physical pain and admitted he was right. I hadn’t worked like this ever before in my life. “Yeah, but can we get to how we’re going to get me back to my real life?”

“Right. I spent the last few days working on this Cordovex business. I still don’t know what I’m looking at, but I can say without a doubt that whatever it is, it’s buried under intentional layers meant to keep prying eyes out.”

“Do we know yet if it has anything to do with my family or Stone Worldwide? I’m worried you’re chasing shadows and wasting time when we could be much closer to finding out what Karl wants if we focused on something else.”

“Like what?”

Shrugging, I silently admitted I didn’t know. It just seemed too far-fetched to believe that some heart drug had anything to do with Karl or the reason why he wanted me and Nina out of the picture. “So what did you find out?”

Daryl took another swig of his drink and set the glass down on the table a little too heavily. The man was just clumsy. His lack of grace made me laugh, confusing him.

“Cordovex is a prescription heart drug, but it had a rough time of it after getting FDA approval. Seems it was killing some people. From what I can tell, it shouldn’t have gotten approval, but somehow it made it through the process in record time.”

“How’s it doing today, four years later?”

“That’s an interesting question. You know how it’s doing, or at least you should know. If you’ve watched TV at any time in the past few months, you’ve seen ads for it.”

“I haven’t seen any commercials for anything called Cordovex.”

“Yes, you have.”

“No, I haven’t. Stop talking in riddles, Daryl.”

“All right. Well, from what I can make out, Cordovex has been resurrected as Cardiell now. Ring any bells?”

Not that I had watched much TV in the past few months, but even the little I’d seen had been peppered with advertisements for Cardiell. Smiling middle aged men and women actively pursuing life and all its wonders were the hallmark of every Cardiell ad. They were slick and looked like they’d cost a fortune to produce, easily convincing sick people desperate for help with a heart problem that the drug was the answer to all their concerns.

“Who makes Cardiell?”

“A pharmaceutical company named Rider Pharmaceutical, but there’s a problem. I checked out Rider and it’s a front—nobody seems to actually work for Rider. There’s no physical address for the company. Some other company is the parent, but that’s going to take a little more digging.”

I grabbed my laptop from the end of the couch and began searching for the company’s website. What came up in my search was a site as slick and well-produced as their commercials, complete with success stories and implied promises drug makers always included. At the bottom of the page, Rider Pharmaceutical was given as the maker of the drug, but it was a facade hiding the true business that produced Cardiell.

Daryl leaned over to look at the screen. “Nice site, isn’t it? They spared no expense to make it look professional and welcoming, except for the fact that it’s meaningless.”

“How can a drug that was killing people a few years ago be back on the market with just a new name and some new fancy site?”

Daryl shook his head. “I have no idea. Makes you wonder about the drugs we all take, doesn’t it? Give me a few more days and I think I can find what company is behind Cardiell. Then we’ll know if it’s something or not, but my guess is that we’re going to find this is what Karl is worried about.”

“Fine, but I can’t wait much longer. Every time Nina texts me, I want to run across that field, jump the fence, and march right up to the house to find her. I don’t want to do this to her anymore.”

Standing from his chair, Daryl gave me his best “I’m working on it” look, but I saw in his eyes he didn’t understand what Nina and I were going through. “Give me a couple days. That’s all I think I’ll need.”

“Fine, but no matter what you find out, I’m going home after those couple days. This can’t go on.”

Rolling his eyes, he left mumbling under his breath about young lovers or something else he didn’t understand. At least now I could tell myself there was an end to this whole thing. Whatever happened, Nina and I would be together soon. That’s all that mattered.

Chapter Ten

Nina

An afternoon of pretending to have the hots for my bodyguard had left me feeling like a wrung out dishrag. While Gage seemed to be taking on the part of my boyfriend as if it were second nature, I still struggled with our fake relationship. In fact, instead of getting easier to act like he was the man I wanted, it was getting harder each time he and I had to parade in front of the press looking like two young lovebirds. Guilt did that to me.

I knew it wasn’t his fault, but I took it out on him anyway. In just a short time, what had been a budding friendship between us had morphed into something full of resentment for me. Gage wasn’t to blame, but it didn’t matter. Every moment I spent with him in front of the world playacting was a moment I betrayed Tristan. Each loving gaze and touch of his hand on mine filled me with guilt and added to my shame over kissing him in my bedroom.

He saw it too. It was in the way I had to stop myself from glaring when we were in public or wouldn’t look at him when we were alone in the car after our public displays. I nearly oozed contempt for him.

This was a great plan to Daryl, but to me it was torture. Thankfully, at least it seemed to be working. Karl hadn’t made any attempt to reach me, so perhaps it was all worth it, but every night when I laid my head on the pillow next to Tristan’s, I hated myself for what the world thought. One mention of Gage and me on Page Six after our first outing called us “Cinderella and Her New Prince.” The implication wasn’t lost on me—I was nothing but a poor working girl before meeting Tristan and now that he was gone, I’d taken no time at all in replacing him with another man.

Nothing like being seen as a heartless, disloyal bitch by everyone who read Page Six.

Skipping dinner, I headed for my room to curl up in a ball and dream about a time, hopefully in the near future, when Tristan and I were happily married, living in this house without bodyguards, maybe even with a baby. Would that time ever come? On nights like this, as I lay alone missing him like a part of myself was absent, I doubted we’d ever truly be together again. So much had happened since the last time we were in each other’s arms. Would we still be the same two people we were then?