Unmasked (New Adult Romance) (The Unmasked Series) (2 page)

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The shower felt good.

Very good.

Hot and steamy, the pounding droplets massaged
away the tension that gathered in Alyssa's hips from six hours behind the
wheel, and a day of wrestling with excited little siblings.

But what she really needed was the thirteen or so
hours that she cratered immediately following that wonderfully indulgent,
exceptionally long shower.

When she finally woke up, two angry looking Jays
outside her window went back and forth, snapping at one another over what
looked like half a beetle. It was chilly, so she pulled her fuzzy blanket tight
around her neck, yawned, and popped her shoulders, then her neck. In the next
part of her morning ritual, she stood up, stretched her arms as high above her head
as they could possibly go before bending down to put her palms on the cool,
wooden floor.

A quick set of push-ups and sit ups later, she
looked back out the window, to catch the end of the rumble on the tree branch.
The birds had departed, but there was a new contest between two chipmunks to
laugh at.

"Get him!" She cheered for the fatter one, on the
left end of the branch. "He took your nut! Don't let him treat you like that!"
The laughing felt almost as good as the sleep.

She took a deep breath, letting the air from
outside fill her lungs. That was one thing about the city she didn't miss – and
probably never would. "I need the space," she told one of the squirrels. "I
can't handle the crowding and all the...I donno, go-go-go kinda stuff."

"Holy hell! It's ten-thirty already! I'm sure
there's something I need to do, but, well, maybe there's not. I should probably
be wearing pants though, at any rate."

Tossed across the back of the chair next to her
bed lay the nice, loose jeans from the day before, but they'd been washed. So
had the shirt, and apparently everything else, since her duffel bag was empty
and sitting in the bottom of the closet.

Dressing, eating a late breakfast with her dad,
and a Saturday full of squealing kids running around the woods outside the
house took Alyssa back a long way. Every weekend as a kid, she remembered her
daddy's pancakes, which was the only thing he was both willing and able to cook
without starting a minor fire incident and that she liked to eat.

Half the kids within five miles of their house
would be there every Friday night for pizza and a whole bunch of movies with
Lys's mom, Jena, and then in the morning, dad took over while mom went off to
one of her many sewing classes, then an exercise class.

"She deserves it," dad always said. "She takes
care of you, doesn't do much for herself. So I'm happy to give her Saturdays.
I'd give her whatever she wanted, but she doesn't ask for anything else."

Ryan Barton sat on the porch and alternated
between drinking black coffee so strong that Lys and her friends teased him
that it was going to melt the cup, and chasing them around, playing whatever
humiliating games they wanted him to play. On special occasions, he agreed to
jump rope, and on very special occasions, he even Double Dutched.

"Hey Lyssie," her dad said, just as she was
pouring him another cup of that same strong, intense, black coffee. "Remember
that one time when you and, oh, who was it? Libby from down the street, and
that other girl, the little one with black hair who always brought her yippy
little dog over..."

"Oh that was Sarah."

"Right, that's right, Sarah Martin. Anyway,
remember the time you three were cavorting around the fence to Webb's oil
field, doing something you weren't supposed to do, but would never admit, and
you came home screaming and excited about finding those mushrooms?"

"Oh God," Alyssa laughed a little, but felt her
cheeks heat up. "We thought we'd been given the most exquisite knowledge on
earth by some roving hobo."

"Ha! I'll never forget it. You had that little
sack full of mushrooms, tied around a stick like it was a bindle, and you were
about to ride the rails." Her dad slapped the table. "Oh man. You had – you
came in with that bundle, and you guys were so excited. Covered in mud, black
sludge halfway up all you guys' pants, your arms were covered, it was in your
hair. God that was gross."

"Yeah well, we got those mushrooms. And that old
man did tell us what they all were!"

"He sure did. You guys came back with a clutch of
oyster mushrooms, those yellow ones, morels, and those big white ones that
would have cost three hundred bucks if you bought them."

"Boletes," she said. "The big white ones. They're
bolete mushrooms."

"Why didn't you go to school to be a fungologist?
Is that what they're called?"

"I donno daddy," Lys giggled. "I think mycology."

"What's yours?"

She groaned and he laughed again.

"But," he said, "remember the most important part
of all that. Remember who it was that told you all about picking the right
mushrooms?"

"How could I possibly forget?"

"After all those stories you girls made up about
him, old Preston Webb Sr. turned out to be a half decent guy, if a bit
eccentric. I guess it takes a little bit of eccentricity to build a giant,
sprawling estate in a nowhere town, dead in the middle of a massive oil field.
I don't know the numbers, but I'm willing to bet there aren't many billionaire
oil men who live in their fields."

"Oh, speaking of that." Lys had her memory jogged
and remembered the letter she found on the table the previous day. "Sorry I
opened this. I remembered those constant offers to buy the land and got a
little scared you finally gave in."

"No worries. I don't have anything to hide from
anybody. From you, especially." He took the letter from her, scanned the note
and tossed it on the table. "He really is a nice guy. I feel a little bad about
dwelling on whatever it is about his appearance that bothers him. He's taken
good care of us since Elena died. I was in a really, really bad spot, but the
younger Webb...anyway, he's a rare specimen of man, whatever hang-ups he's
got."

After another moment of silence, Lys asked what he
had planned for the day, if anything. Nothing much, he told her, just hang out
with the kids, maybe a movie later at night at the tiny theatre in town.

She told him that sounded well and good and that
she wanted to go with him. It'd be good to wander around the little town square
if nothing else.

"I'm gonna go check the email Webb set up for me.
Usually after letters show up, there's a little work he needs from me. Whatever
you want to do, do it. Okay Lyssie? If you want to sleep all day, perfect. If
you want to go to town and go to that little diner you like so much, the keys
are in the truck." Her dad got up, quaffed about half his cup of coffee in one
go. "I've thought about your offer, to help me and all that. This is gonna be
good. I admit it, I need the help."

"Good!" She grinned. "I'm glad you finally got
over yourself. Remember, you've got me for a semester, to do anything you need.
Taking care of the kids, earning a little money on the side, whatever you need.
Okay?"

"Yup. I'll get my mileage out of you. You're gonna
earn your bacon." He patted her softly on the shoulder and she stared out the
window into the woods.

Behind her, he poured another cup of his beloved
sludge, and in the tree where earlier she watched the squirrels fight, Lori and
Jake had managed to worm their way up a rope ladder and into a little box of a
tree-house Rick built them up there.

"This will be good," Alyssa whispered. "This will
be really, really good."

Someday, she might be able to admit to her dad
that her being here to help him was all a cover. It was all for show. She
needed to get to get away from the city, and away from the intense
responsibility of her life and her job and all of that. For a little while,
anyway, she needed to recover, to be a little girl again. She'd happily go back
to reality next term, but she had to come to terms to a world without her mom.

Alyssa wanted to tell her dad all of that. She
wanted to make sure he knew that he was helping her just by his letting her
putter around Newton and do his busy work. But for some reason, the words just
wouldn't come. She never was much of a talker, she figured, so it'd be okay.

A few minutes later, minutes spent watching the
two near-monkeys swing around tree branches and magically not plummet to their
deaths Lys looked down at the letter on the table, or rather the back of it,
which was facing upward.

"Now there's an idea," she said. "If I can't say
stuff, I can just write it all down. If I decide to give him the letter, fine,
if not, that's fine too. Take it easy on yourself Alyssa. For once, take it
easy on yourself. Okay?"

Reaching out across the table, Alyssa scooted the
notepad upon which her father habitually kept to-do lists, and ripped out three
sheets from the back of the pad.

"Dear Dad," she wrote.

After she chew her lip for a second, and scribbled
a swirl on the corner of the paper, her pen started to fly. Before long, she
ripped another page, and then another. An hour faded, then another hour and
three more pages.

As she folded up the surprisingly thick stack of
paper, she made the decision to sneak it onto her dad's nightstand at some
point. Not that day, maybe, but possibly the next. Or the next.

"Take it easy on yourself, Lys," she said again.
"Give yourself a break. Okay?"

"Okay. Just this once."

––––––––

"Everything is in order, Mr. Webb." Gadsen
Cartwright, the aged, hook-nosed, stiff-as-a-board butler who had worked for
the Webb family since long before Preston Jr. made his entrance to the world,
rubbed the sides of his beak with thumb and forefinger. "I think this a move
that would make your father a very, very proud man indeed."

From behind a massive oak desk that was faced away
from the door to his office, Preston Webb smiled as well as he could. He
scratched the scar stretching from his lip, across his face to the opposite
temple, underneath his hair.

It hurt him to smile.

"That's good to hear, Gadsen. Is there – I'm sorry
to ask you for something like this, but can you bring me some tea? My
throat..."

"Of course, sir. I'll bring the tea along with the
contracts. They should be arriving by courier shortly."

"Right, thanks."

"Peppermint?"

"Yes, please. Oh, one more thing Gadsen."

"Sir?"

"You said my dad would be proud. That's...good.
But would-"

"Yes sir, she would be very proud of the man
you've become. I'd never seen her happier in her life than when she was having
you."

Preston swallowed, his throat clicking from
dryness. "Okay. Thank you, that helps."

"Of course, sir."

Alone in his office after the door closed behind
Gadsen, Preston Webb ran his fingers backward through his inky black hair. His
blue eye, and his green one, both glittered as he looked through the huge
window in front of his desk over the massive courtyard in front of the estate.
He bent his head and smelled the miniature rose bush he had to keep himself
occupied when his thoughts got too dark.

"Hm, one of you needs trimming," he said to the
tiny bush, taking up his scissors.

He clipped the browned leaves from the stem, then
the bud that had been there too long, and had not opened, that he suspected of
some kind of disease. Rubbing it between his fingers, he forced the protective
leaves open to reveal, as he thought, a malformed, dead flower.

"It's too bad that this sort of thing has to
happen," he said softly, in the voice of a parent comforting a child. "But we
can't all grow straight and tall and beautiful."

As he spoke, he ran a finger along the jagged scar
crossing his face, from lip to temple that rasped across the stubble of his
five o'clock shadow.

"That's alright though. It takes all kinds to make
the world such an interesting place." He couldn't help but laugh as two of his
dogs – Schala and Sky – charged across the grounds and one dove at the other,
missed, and rolled on her back before she went for another round.

Without thinking, he lopped off another rose, one
that was perfectly healthy, and leaned back in his chair, inhaling deeply its
scent. In front of him stood a three-inch thick pile of papers that, once
completed, gave him the rights to build a pipeline through Newton, and east
where it connected with a major pipe that ran north and south all the way from
Maine to Georgia. The idea of such a pipeline thrilled him on the one hand,
because it was the culmination of a great deal of work that his father, Preston
Sr. had left undone when he died five years ago.

At the same time, there was a sense of anxious
unease that such business carried. After thumbing his scar again, he took out a
notepad and scribbled a note to his newest employee, one Ryan Barton, from
Newtown.

The man lived on land that butted up against Webb
Oilworks' massive property, and Preston was aware that his father spent a great
deal of time courting him and his neighbors to sell to the company to make the
pipeline one step easier. For the vast majority of Preston's conscious life,
his father had been obsessed with the pipeline, and very little else.

He massaged his temples to try and calm yet
another headache that threatened to burgeon in the front of his skull and then
rubbed the bridge of his nose with the heel of his hand.

Before him lay the culmination of his father's
entire life, and when Gadsen returned with the contract from the Newton town
council, it was all done. No one had to sell their land. They only had to
permit a pipeline to be laid. And, because of his very persuasive pocket book,
the council decided that it would publish a decree that everyone had to abide
the ruling. No one was allowed to protest, or try and block the construction.

That's the part that Preston couldn't stand.
Gadsen convinced him six months ago to pursue it, because "you never know what
people who don't understand business will do," but it never sat right with him.
Even then, with everything finished and waiting for his signature, he wasn't
sure.

Another few moments spent clipping brown leaves
off his rosebush calmed his thoughts. He looked across the table to the three
mail boxes he kept. In the first one was a letter from Barton. Even though
Preston visited him from time to time, and they lived only a few miles apart,
Preston insisted that all correspondence be done by mail.

"Gadsen," he said as the butler re-entered with
tea in hand, "when did this letter arrive?"

"Which one is that, sir? Here's your tea and the
contract from the bumpkin council."

"Don't call them that, Gads. They're human, just
like us. Or, well, like me at least." He laughed at his own joke. Gadsen
stiffened.

"Yes, well. What letter sir?"

"This one here," Preston held up the letter.

"Oh, from that Barton fellow. Two days, maybe
three? I have trouble keeping up with your pet projects from time to time."

"He's not a project, Gadsen, he's a damned good employee."

"Right. Well I just don't understand the point of
going outside the company for backing up those ancient records. Why bother in
the first place?"

"Because it's the right thing to do. The numbers
he's recording are the entire history of this company – of my family – for the
last fifty years. I don't want them to be lost in a fire or something like
that. Also, I'm well aware of how internal things tend to work. I want honest
numbers, nothing fudged."

"Just so, sir," Gadsen pulled his lips tight across
his teeth, smoothing his wrinkled mouth for a moment. "Why him? Why not a
reputable accountant?"

"This isn't work that requires one. And anyway, my
father liked Ryan Barton's daughter. He relished those times he'd find her out
in the woods and teach her about mushrooms. They've fallen on hard times
lately, and he needed the work besides. Anyway, thank you for the tea. Three
days, you said? I should look into getting myself a computer."

"Will there be anything else, sir?"

"No, not right now. Thanks again."

As soon as the door closed behind him, Preston
tore open the letter.

"Dear. Mr. Webb," it said. "I'm writing to let you
know I've finished the latest round of entries and have them saved just like
you asked, on my computer, on one of those thumb-drive things, and online. Do
you want me to send these files to you at some point? I'm a little nervous
about keeping them, but if that's what you need, just let me know. I've never
even seen dollar amounts like this, much less had anything to do with them."

Another headache threatened. Preston had been
having them for as long as he could remember, but lately they'd been worse. Out
of nowhere it seemed, these pounding, crippling headaches cropped up at the
worst times. He set the letter down for a moment, rubbed his temples hard and
fished a pair of absurd pink and purple reading glasses out, which he hid in
his desk. He looked at them and chuckled before sticking them on the bridge of
his nose. Blinking for a second, the pain retreated for the moment.

"I wanted to thank you," he continued reading,
"for the chance to do this. I don't know why you're paying me so well, but just
know that without it, my family would be in quite a spot. Things are still
tight, but that's okay. Ever since you dropped by and offered me this chance,
everything's looking up."

Then, Preston Webb read something that made his
eyebrows arch.

"My daughter will be coming home from school in
the next few days, and is planning to stay for a week or so to look after Jake
and Lori (those are the kids). She keeps threatening to take a semester off,
but I told her not to do that. We'll see if she listens, though. The kids doing
fine, but I'm not. It's so strange to be alone, you know? I don't know why I'm
telling you this, except that in the last few weeks that I've gotten to know
you, I feel like I've made a friend. I know you lost your dad a few years back,
so I'm sure you understand what it's like to be around someone for so long, and
then just have them gone one day."

Preston lay the letter down again, but not because
his head hurt. With it on the table, he read 'best regards, Ryan Barton' and
leaned forward with his elbows on the desk, head in hands.

"Your daughter," he said under his breath in his
soft baritone. "Alyssa, that's her name. Alyssa Barton. What I wouldn't give to
see that face again."

Years ago, before his father died, before he took
over the business and all that it entailed, Preston had watched Alyssa,
although she never knew it. She had a habit of breaking into the west end of the
property, through a hole in a fence that separated Webb land from her father's.
She never did much of anything, but every now and then she'd wander out of the
woods and poke around in the parts of the property just past the woods.

He lived most of his life through a pair of
binoculars. Or at least that's how he learned a great deal about the world
around him. Except for a few rare occasions, he was never allowed to leave the
mansion and the surrounding gardens. Tutors came to him when he was a child, and
then at Gadsen's insistence, because his father had gotten a little
feeble-minded and entrusted the butler with Preston's upbringing well before
anyone knew about it, college professors were hired to come and give him
private classes. The family's massive wealth was enough to convince Princeton
to send faculty to him, and give him a degree, but it wasn't enough to cure
loneliness.

Through those binoculars, he watched the woods
every single day. He loved the deer and the little foxes and other things that
made their homes in them. He was never allowed pets, not until his father died
and he got Schala and Sky, so those out in the forest were the closest thing he
had.

And then, one day, he saw her.

She popped out of the woods with a sack slung over
her shoulder. Preston always figured it was full of mushrooms, because
gathering mushrooms was one of his father's favorite hobbies as well, and he
always did it out in those woods, because he said it had the "right amount of
rot" and produced the tastiest specimens.

He watched her with the binoculars, a little
confused because she was a few years younger than he – almost ten – but as
isolated as he was, it didn't feel wrong. To him, she was just another person,
and as much as he wanted anything, he wanted to talk to her, or to touch that
golden hair. But there he sat, alone, separated from the rest of the world
except what was allowed into his life through Gadsen's filter.

Down there, picking through whatever it was, she
looked like a little beam of light. He couldn't take her eyes off her. And
then, every day after that, he always spent a few minutes watching that
particular patch of forest, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.

"I pretended you saw me," he said into his empty
office. "I sat there with those binoculars, staring out the front of my house
and pretend that you waved sometimes. And then you just vanished."

Preston reached for his ever-present stationery
pad and grabbed a pen, but then he thought better of it, and shoved it aside.

"What on Earth are you thinking? Writing a letter
to some girl – to a woman, now – who has no idea who you are, and telling her
you watched her pick mushrooms ten years ago? I'm sure that's a wonderful way
to meet new people and all, but come on, Preston."

He sighed and leaned back in his chair, absently
rubbing his scar. He didn't know what it was from, not exactly, because no one
ever told him. His father never addressed it at all, and Gadsen either didn't
know or refused to talk about it. Same went with his mother. Just a candle in
the wind, he thought. As soon as she was gone, that was it, no more talking
about her, except to say how she died in childbirth and that was that. He'd
long since given up asking for answers, though he never stopped wondering.

"Alyssa Barton," he said again, the sound rolling
around in his mouth.

A knock on the door interrupted Preston's
reminiscence.

"Mr. Webb? Sorry to bother you again."

"No problem, Gadsen, I was just thinking about
something. What is it?"

"Well, I do hate to remind you of things like
this, but there's the matter of your trust that must be attended."

"My trust? What about it?"

"Yes, ah, well, as you know, when your father
died, he made me the interim executor of his estate, to oversee it until you
were ready to take the business."

"And? I'm running the business, so great. Transfer
the money."

"That's the problem. He has very specific
stipulations for what he meant by 'ready'."

"I'm listening," he took a deep breath and let it
out in a heavy, impatient sigh. "I get the feeling you're going to say
something I don't want to hear."

"That depends." Gadsen said. The slender butler
wrung his hands and then pinched the base of his nose again as was his habit.

"On?"

"Well, it depends on how much you want to be
married."

"Are you proposing to me?" Preston plucked the
rose he'd cut off the plant earlier and held it behind him, chuckling. "It's a
bit sudden."

"Sir, be serious."