Uncovering You: The Complete Series (Mega Box Set) (88 page)

“Lilly, honey, come here. Warm your hands.” She takes me by the shoulders and positions me in the direct line of heat. “Now you just stay there and keep warming up, okay? I’m going to go change out of these clothes. I’ll bring you something warm to wear. Okay?”

“Sure, mom. Thanks.”

She leaves me with a smile and goes into the other room.

I get my first real chance to look around. The place is cleaner than I expected it would be, but not by much. Maybe it’s because there’s simply so little
stuff
.

Mom has a foldout futon against one wall. A rickety coffee table in front of it is strewn with magazines.

“I wonder…” I look the way mom went, but see no sign of her. I walk over to the table. I leaf through the magazines, looking, looking, looking. Then I see it.

We don’t make the main feature, but here is a side story on the front page.

‘Industrial tycoon spotted with mystery woman,’ read the headline. Below, a two-line snippet: ‘Mega Billionaire Jeremy Stonehart courts a stunning employee of his firm amidst growing allegations of insider trading and regulatory non-compliance just weeks before the IPO. Details on the identity of the woman, and their shocking love-life on page 46.’

“
Shit,”
I curse. This is the type of stuff I was in charge of keeping quiet. I look at the date on the top right corner of the magazine. It’s from—Jesus, it’s from this morning!

I sit down and rifle through the pages, landing on 46. And right there, smiling back at me, are the photographs Jeremy claimed to have retrieved from whoever followed me to the café.

I scan the article. There’s nothing alarming there. Just the regular, unfounded hyperbole that is so typical of these publications. However, when I turn the page to continue reading, my heart lurches.

Taking up a good two-thirds of the page are photographs taken of me and Jeremy on our vacation. The ones
Hugh
gave me. The ones that were
not
in the envelope that Jeremy handed over at the end of the day.

I feel sick. Nauseous. The room starts to spin. I have to grip the sides of the coffee table to keep it from slipping away from me.

Jeremy
lied
. That’s the only explanation I can think of. He
lied
. I wasn’t going crazy. He just…planted things to make it seem that way.

How else do I explain the photographs? The ones of us kissing on the beach? The ones of us on the yacht? The ones that
Hugh
handed to me?

I still can’t explain the video. But the memory of Monday recurs, stronger than ever now. Hugh was not a figment of my imagination. The collar he took from his desk was not a sign of me breaking. It was all real. It happened. I’m sure of it. I can still remember it clearly, while the false memory that came from whatever I saw on tape is fuzzy, fading. Like a hint of a dream or a programmed simulation.

Something sketchy…something deeply suspicious…is going on inside Stonehart Industries. Jeremy is at the heart of it. But, somehow, I’ve become involved as well. It’s something past his vendetta for me. Hugh
was
real. These photographs are proof! They have to be. But Jeremy wanted me to believe otherwise.

Oh, my God. I nearly smack my head as I realize how stupid I’ve been. Jeremy did not fly me off to find my mother from the goodness of his heart. He did it to get me away from the company! Away from Stonehart Industries, while he did…whatever it is he’s been meaning to do.

Unless…oh, Jesus, unless
Jeremy
leaked those photographs to the press. I refuse to believe that a man as obsessed with privacy would be careless enough to let a photographer this close to his island. There is no way it could have happened. Not without his knowledge. No way.

I feel more lost right now than I’ve ever been. I’m tangled in something much greater than myself. How deep does Jeremy’s thirst for vengeance truly run? Has everything that’s happened to me based only on the discovery that Robin made…or is there more, much more, here at work?

I know one thing. I won’t get answers from afar. I need to get back to California, back to Jeremy Stonehart, as soon as possible. The time for diplomacy is over. The time for demands is now.

I need to go to Jeremy and
demand
answers. He claims he loves me? He can prove it then. And if sending me away was his misguided attempt at
protecting
me, at
shielding
me from whatever is going on inside Stonehart Industries—

No. I stop short. I can’t forget myself. Neither can I forget the man I’m dealing with. He’s Jeremy
Stonehart
, and Jeremy
Stonehart
never makes mistakes. He does not miscalculate. He does nothing that can ever be called ‘misguided’.

Maybe…maybe starting to think of him as ‘Jeremy’ was the biggest mistake I’ve yet made. It personified a monster. It made me forget. It made me underestimate.

I cannot be dumb enough to give Jeremy—or Stonehart—that advantage.

“Lilly?” My mom calls out. She emerges from the bedroom holding a pile of clothes. “I wasn’t sure what you’d like, or what would fit—”

“Mom,” I cut her off, closing the magazine, and stand up. If I’m to leave tomorrow, there’s no more time to waste. “We need to talk about Paul.”

Chapter Fourteen

For as long as I can remember, Renee was not one to handle uncomfortable topics well.

She feigns ignorance. “Paul?” she asks, scrunching up her forehead. “Who’s Paul? You don’t mean
Paul
Paul, do you?” She gives a forced chuckle. “I don’t even know how you remember him, Lilly. The last time you saw him, it was so long ago…”

“I know he’s my father,” I say softly.

Mom stops short. For a second, she looks on the verge of tipping over.

Instead, she just takes a step to the side and sags against the wall. “Oh, God,” she breathes.

A rush of excitement runs through me. I know it’s probably wrong, but her reaction confirms my father’s identity. The lingering shadow of doubt is cast from my mind.

She meets my eyes, then, and suddenly looks more helpless than I’ve ever seen her. It makes me want to rush over and comfort her. But…I can’t.

We’re both adults. We need to treat each other as such. More than that, more than being adults, we’re practically strangers. Both of us have changed so much that we might as well be starting from scratch. And with this revelation, that’s exactly where we stand.

She pushes off against the wall and walks away.

“Wait,” I say. “Where are you going?”

“I need a cigarette,” she mutters. She bends beneath the kitchen sink, and resurfaces with a box of smokes, a lighter…and an unopened bottle of Johnny Walker.

“I promised myself that I wouldn’t,” she says under her breath. “This was the last bottle I ever bought. I swore that if I could keep it in the house and not touch it…I’d know I’ve gone clean.”

She laughs. Her hand hovers over the neck, trembling. “I’ve managed it for three years, Lilly. Maybe I was just saving it for a time like this.”

My gut clenches. I don’t want to be the reason she breaks sobriety.

She breaks the seal before I can speak. All her movements are tense and jittery. She takes out a tall beer glass, and all the memories of scenes exactly like this, playing out in our many apartment kitchens, come rushing back.

“Mom, wait,” I say. I search desperately for something to distract her with. “Wait. Don’t. Why don’t you just…just have a cigarette first?”

“Hah!” She barks a laugh. Her eyes are glued to the bottle. I can see the internal struggle unfolding in the shifting expressions of her face. “Have a cigarette, you say? I never thought I’d hear the words from you. You were always so much about
clean living
.” She fills the words with a touch of scorn, but I think that’s just to mask the envy. “Drop one bad habit, and pick up another, am I right?” She picks up the bottle and brings the lip over the glass.

Don’t
. I beg in my head.
Don’t
,
don’t, don’t
.

I’d never be able to live with the guilt of knowing I pushed my mother back into alcoholism.

Slowly, she tips the bottle. Starts to pour. And then—at the last second—jerks her hand sideways over the sink, and flushes all the alcohol down the drain.

She looks at the empty bottle, completely impassively. “Or maybe,” she says, “I was saving it to do
that
.”

With a quick motion, she tosses the glass container in the trash. She snaps up the cigarettes and walks back to me, sits down, and lights one.

“Don’t judge me,” she warns, and then inhales deeply. The smoke seems to take a little of the edge off. She closes her eyes, takes one more deep puff, savoring it before she lets it out. Then she leans back and looks at me.

“So,” she sighs. “Paul.”

“Yup,” I say. “Paul.”

“Your father,” her mouth twists. “What he would say, were he to see me now… How long have you known? Is that why you came to find me? Wait,” Renee holds up on hand. “Don’t answer that. Let a mother believe it was just from the goodness of your heart.”

“I’ve known…for a month or so,” I say. “And no. That’s not why I came. I came to fix things. To make amends. To say…” I avert my eyes. “To say the thing I told you back at the diner.”

Renee looks me up and own. She glances at the cigarette, makes a sound of disgust, and smothers it against the coffee table. Then she looks back at me, her eyes filled with warmth, and she smiles. “To say that you love me?”

I give a little nod.

“You don’t know how much that means to me,” she admits. She sits up, and suddenly becomes much more business-like. “So, Paul. What do you want to know?”

“Is he… really my father?” I say. I know better than to still wonder about that. But I need verbal confirmation from the one person in the world I trust to give it without bias.

“Yes,” she says. “He really is your father.”

“Then why… why did you tell me all those horrible things about him? After the two of you broke up? I mean, I have my theories…”

“You have your theories.” She chuckles. “There’s my Lilly. Always so analytical. I bet that’s served you well at Yale, huh?” She adds casually.

I stop short. “Wait. You know?”

“The whole world knows, honey.” She sorts through her magazines and finds the one that I was looking at earlier. She tosses it to me. “There. Go on. Have a look. It’s got pretty much everything on you. I was waiting for you to bring it up yourself, so I could say how proud I am of you. But, since we’re sharing secrets…” She shrugs.

I leave the magazine unopened. “I already saw the story. I’m sorry for not telling you about Yale, mom. But I got in such a long time ago…so much has happened since then…it just didn’t seem all that important.”

“Not that important?” She scoffs. “Imagine the conversation at work: ‘Oh, hi Renee. I heard your daughter is going to graduate from the Ivy League this year, no big deal, right?’”

She looks at me…waiting…and then she starts to laugh.

The tension oozes out of me. “You’re teasing?”

“Of course I’m teasing! I’m so proud of you! To think, my daughter, an Ivy League grad, and now linked with a certain Jeremy Stonehart? You’ve got your whole life set. And me?” She glances down at herself. “What you must think of me. Some example I am, huh?”

“Mom, don’t,” I say. “I’m not here for that.”

“And I’m changing the subject as usual. Back to Paul. Right? To your father? The reason I told you those things about him, Lilly, is because …because he hurt me. I was upset, and angry. You don’t understand. How could you? You haven’t experienced heartache of the kind—”

She stops, and looks at me. An eyebrow goes up. “Or, have you? I hope
that’s
not the reason you showed up. You and Jeremy Stonehart, you’re still…”

“Joined at the hip,” I say drily.

“Where is he? Is he here with you? Do I get to meet him?” She barks a harsh laugh. “Yeah, right. As if you’d introduce me to someone like him.”

“It’s not that, mom,” I say. “Jeremy’s in California. Working. Where I should be. In fact, you and I don’t have much time. I’m going back tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? But you just showed up! We’ve got five years of catching up to do, Lilly. I don’t know what you’ve been doing, how you’ve been—well, aside from the stories that were printed this week. But you told me not to trust them…”

“You shouldn’t,” I say. “They always blow things out of proportion. Wait until you hear it from me.”

“I’m here, aren’t I? I’m listening? That’s what we’re doing.” She sighs. “But I guess you want to know more about your father. About Paul?”

“Yes,” I say. “Why did he leave after I was born? How come he never stuck around?”

Renee exhales. “Drugs,” she says. “He was always chasing a high. I thought I could change him. I thought I could
fix
him, help him heal.” She gives a sad, little laugh and shakes her head. “As all women do when they’re young, in love, and don’t know any better. Men don’t change, Lilly. If there’s one thing you can learn from my pitiful life, it’s that. God knows it’s taken me too long to figure it out myself.”

“And…where did he go, after I was born?”

Renee makes a vague weaving motion through the air with her hand. “Away. Somewhere. I don’t know. I didn’t keep tabs. In fact, I thought it best for us to have a clean break. When I got pregnant with you, Lilly, I hoped that a child could unite us. I hoped that
you
would be reason enough for him to change.” She looks away, at the far wall. I can see her fighting the emotions that threaten to rise up.

“I was stupid,” she announces finally. “Stupid and wrong. There is no changing men like that.”

“And after?” I probe softly. “How did you guys…get back together?”

“He found us,” she says with a sigh. “Claimed he’d cleaned up. Said he couldn’t stop thinking about—well, about you. About the family he left behind. He begged me to give him a second chance.”