House Of The Billionaire (The Billionaire's Contract Series) (3 page)

The road led for a mile through the trees before the trees gave way to a large lawn and Kirsty could see Darkmere House. It was a big place with Victorian architecture and its size, along with its secluded location spoke of wealth. Kirsty had always assumed that Tyler came from a wealthy background, despite the fact that his success came from his own efforts. She pulled up in front of the house, noticing that although there was a closed garage door next to the house, a green Lexus was parked outside. Parking next to it, she wondered if the car belonged to Tyler.

Leaving her suitcase in the Corsa, she climbed the steps to the wooden front door and pressed the doorbell button. She heard a chiming sound somewhere within the house but no one came to answer to the door.

She waited a few minutes and rang the bell again. Nothing. But someone must own the Lexus and there wasn’t anywhere else they could be unless they’d gone for a walk in the woods surrounding the house.

She turned the doorknob and the door swung open, revealing a dark corridor beyond. ‘Hello?’ she called into the darkness.

From somewhere within, a low murmur sounded.

‘Tyler?’ Kirsty said loudly, stepping into the house.

The murmur again. It sounded like a woman trying to call out. Kirsty paced along the hall, listening for the sound and following it to a door that opened into a living room. The walls were lined with bookshelves and a low fire burned in the fireplace. Lying on a sofa near the fire, a woman who looked like she was in her sixties looked at Kirsty with blurry eyes. On the rug next to the sofa, a bottle of vodka lay half empty. ‘Who are you?’ the woman drawled.

‘I’m Kirsty. I’m here to meet Tyler.’

‘Oh, Tyler,’ the woman said, sounding disappointed. ‘What about Dwayne? I was dreaming about Dwayne.’ She looked around, confused.

‘I don’t know Dwayne. I’m sorry.’

‘I need to lie down for a while,’ the woman said, getting up unsteadily. She held onto the edge of the sofa for support. ‘Well, are you going to help me?’ she asked Kirsty.

Kirsty go the woman’s arm around her shoulder and led her out of the room. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘Upstairs. I need to lie on my bed for awhile. I have a headache.’

‘OK,’ Kirsty said, thinking that the half empty bottle of vodka had more to do with this woman’s headache than anything else.

‘Didn’t you say Tyler was here?’ the woman asked as they climbed the wide dark wood stairs to the second floor. ‘Why isn’t he helping? Dwayne would help me.’

‘Tyler isn’t here yet,’ Kirsty said. The woman was growing heavier in her arms and she hoped the bedroom wasn’t too far away. ‘Are you Mrs Blake?’

The woman eyed her suspiciously. ‘I might be. And who might you be, coming into my house unannounced?’

‘I already said. I’m Kirsty. Kirsty Moore. I’m a friend of Tyler’s.’

‘The bedroom’s here,’ the woman said coldly. ‘Just let go of me. I’ll be fine.’

‘OK, if you’re sure.’

The woman nodded curtly and entered the room, closing the door behind her. Kirsty stood in the hallway, wondering what to do next. Should she go back out to the car to wait for Tyler to arrive? She hadn’t been invited into the house but she supposed helping a drunken Mrs Blake to bed qualified her to be here.

She went back downstairs and wandered into the living room. The dying fire seemed to be spluttering its final sparks so she put another log onto it from the pile next to the hearth. The house felt cold and Kirsty shivered slightly but she wasn't sure if the cold she felt came from the actual air temperature or the unfriendly atmosphere of the house, She wished Tyler were here.

Unable to sit and relax while she waited, she paced the large room, hugging herself both to stay warm and to give herself a feeling of security. It didn't seem to work on either counts.

On the windowsill, she discovered a line of framed photographs and peered at them to see if she recognized Tyler. There he was, a boy of no more than eight, wearing a cowboy hat and carrying toy pistols, looking over at an older boy who slouched on a swing in a garden. Kirsty assumed the picture had been taken here because the house in the background of the picture looked like Darkmere House. Was the older boy Dwayne? His strong good looks resembled Tyler's so she guessed he was an older brother.

Another picture showed the same boy, now much older, maybe eighteen, in a tank top and jeans, working on a car engine in a garage hung with tools and car parts. Dwayne - if that's who he was - grinned at the camera mischievously and his face and clothes were covered in muck and oil.

The next picture in the line showed a similar scene. Dwayne was leaning out of a half-built red car and putting his thumb up to the camera while behind him, sat on a pile of tyres, a young Tyler sat watching with a cracked-open copy of Catcher In The Rye on his knee and a look of awe on his face.

The final picture in the row was a portrait of Dwayne. He wasn't quite as good-looking as Tyler. The features were all similar but the symmetry of Dwayne's face wasn't as perfect as  that of his younger brother's.

The throaty sound of a car pulling up outside the house made Kirsty look up guiltily. She wasn't sure why she felt like she had been caught doing something she shouldn't but this place made her feel uncomfortable. Through the window, she saw a white soft-top sports car park near the front door. Tyler! At last!

She almost flew out of the house and reached him just as he was climbing out of the car. Dressed in jeans and a tight dark blue sweater, he looked gorgeous and he was definitely a welcome sight. Kirsty threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. Surprised, he held her tightly and looked into her eyes.

'Are you OK?'

She nodded, unsure why tears were welling in her eyes. 'I just missed you,' she said.

An older man who had climbed out of the passenger seat cleared his throat purposefully and Kirsty let go of Tyler. 'Oh,' she said. 'Hello.'

The man looked to be in his sixties but also very fit. He wore a close-fitting sweater and jeans and his face had a rugged handsomeness. Although he was old, his grey eyes shone with bright life.

'This is my dad,' Tyler said. 'I saw him walking along the road from the village. Kirsty Moore...John Blake.'

John came around the car and shook Kirsty's hand with a firm grip. 'Nice to meet you,' he said. 'Any girl who can get Tyler to visit the homestead is alright in my book.'

'Nice to meet you,' she replied. 'You were walking along the road?'

'Taking my daily constitutional. At my age, it's good to stay active. Still, I couldn't resist a ride in a Lamborghini Spyder when Tyler pulled up next to me in this beauty.' He patted the sports car and chuckled.

'You been here long?' Tyler asked her.

'No, not really.'

'Where's Evelyn?' John asked.

'She's...lying down on her bed.'

A dark, knowing look passed between Tyler and his father.

‘I’ll go and make sure she’s OK,’ John said, heading for the door.

Tyler turned to Kirsty and said, ‘You want to go see the lake?’

‘Yeah, sure.’ She definitely wouldn’t mind spending some time away from the house and she didn’t want to be around when Evelyn Blake came downstairs.

Tyler took her hand and the contact made her forget everything else. The way his strong fingers wrapped around her hand protectively made her feel safe. He led her along a narrow path that wound through the dense trees until it reached the edge of a small lake. The lake was bordered by trees along most of its circumference but on one side a high, sheer cliff rose out of the dark water and pointed jaggedly at the sky. The water lay flat and still like a piece of dark glass.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Kirsty said.

Tyler looked out over the water, his gaze distant.

‘You OK?’ she asked him.

He nodded solemnly. ‘Yes.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I just haven’t been back here for a long time. It brings back memories.’

She wasn’t buying it. She had never seen him so distant, as if his mind were lost in a world of its own. ‘Tyler...’

‘Yes?’

‘Remember why we came here?’

He looked at her and frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You brought me here so I could learn more about you. That isn’t going to happen if you clam up on me.’

‘I had a brother once,’ he said, looking out over the lake. ‘His name was Dwayne. He drowned in this lake fifteen years ago.’

‘Oh my God! Tyler, I’m sorry for pushing...’

‘It’s fine. Like you said, I brought you here so you can find out more about who I am. This lake and Dwayne are part of who I am.’ He walked to the water’s edge and looked out over the dark stillness. ‘He was my older brother. When I was a kid, I idolized him. My mother doted on him but she never seemed to have time for me. My dad tried to balance out our family life by paying more attention to me but the fact that my mother obviously preferred my older brother affected me a lot when I was a kid. I never blamed Dwayne, though. He was my hero. Great with cars, popular with girls...he was everything I wasn’t.’

‘I think you’re being a little hard on yourself,’ Kirsty said. ‘I’m sure you were popular with girls.’

He shook his head. ‘I was a bookish geek when I was younger. Dwayne would be fixing up cars and I would be hanging around with my head stuck in a book.’

‘So...how did he drown?’

‘You see that cliff there? There’s a dirt road up there that leads nowhere. Dwayne drove up there one night and sat on the cliff edge drinking and smoking. They found empty bottles and cigarette butts up there the following day. They aren’t sure if he fell or if he jumped into the lake. My father was out walking the dog the following morning - we had a border collie called Max - and he found Dwayne floating face down in the water.’

‘That’s terrible!’

'My mother took it very badly. She became an alcoholic. She withdrew from me and my dad and when she did talk to us, she was nasty. She had decided years before that I was never going to be as good as Dwayne but now she believed I wasn't good enough to be her son.'

'That's awful. How old were you?'

'Fifteen.'

'Tyler, that seems a very cruel thing to do to a fifteen year old boy.'

He shrugged. 'When Dwayne was born, my mother got what she always wanted...a child. When I came along four years later, I was just an added inconvenience.'

'You shrug it off but it must have affected you terribly.'

He bent to pick up a stick from the ground and tossed it into the lake. It landed with a splash, sending out concentric rings of ripples and disturbing the calm water. 'In truth, I've been affected every day of my life since. I looked up to Dwayne all through my childhood. When he died, I tried my best to become like him. I suppose a psychiatrist would say I was trying to please my mother but it wasn't that at all. In my mind, if I became like Dwayne, he wouldn't really die. Come with me, I'll show you something.' He set off back toward the house.

As she caught up with him, it seemed obvious to Kirsty that Dwayne's death fifteen years ago had affected Tyler's entire family. The house still held the dark atmosphere of death and Evelyn seemed to be trying to drink herself into oblivion. When she had woken up earlier, she had said she was dreaming of Dwayne. Perhaps Evelyn Blake could only be happy in her dreams.

But it was Tyler that Kirsty worried about the most. Coming back to this house had pulled buried memories to the surface. Even now as he walked toward the house his lean jaw was set in a determined manner. She felt guilty. He was doing this for her.

'Tyler, if it's too painful to stay here, we could find a hotel...'

'No,' he replied grimly. 'I've been running from this place for a long time. It wasn't until I met you that I realised it’s time to face this.' He stopped at the garage and grabbed the handle, pulling the door up onto its tracks and revealing the interior.

The air that came wafting out of the shadowy garage smelled of mould and dust. Inside, the walls were festooned with tools hanging from pegs. A scarred wooden shelf ran along one wall and old tins of red paint and motor oil stood in a row like bleeding soldiers along its length. The small space was dominated by a car underneath a huge old dusty beige blanket. Tyler walked forward and grabbed a corner of the blanket, pulling it backwards and revealing the car underneath.

It was bright red - like the crimson of freshly-spilled blood- but apart from that it looked like an ordinary car from the nineties. Kirsty had been expecting something like a Porsche or a Ferrari.

‘It’s nothing special,’ Tyler said, as if reading her mind. ‘Just a 1980 Datsun Cherry that Dwayne found one day in a junk yard and decided to rebuild. He died when it was only half finished, which is how I know his death was a terrible accident. He didn’t jump from that cliff. He wouldn’t have left his Cherry unfinished. He loved this car and he loved working on it.’ As he spoke, Tyler ran his hand over the edge of the car door. He seemed lost in thought a moment then he said, ‘After he was gone, I continued on where he had left off. I didn’t know anything about cars but I learned for him. I spent hours in here, usually at night, working under that bare bulb.’ He pointed to a bulb hanging from the dirty ceiling. ‘It made me feel closer to Dwayne.’