CHAPTER TWELVE

Ridge

I watch Lydia chasing Reva around the house, sliding in their sock feet and giggling. Reva turns and catches Lydia, lifts her up with a dramatic grunt about how big she’s getting, and swings her around. My daughter’s delighted squeals fill the house. The fretful whines, the crinkle between her eyebrows, has all but disappeared. She’s still temperamental, still grouchy in the mornings, but she’s happier. She’s blossoming.

Yesterday she put on a singing show. She made me sit on the couch beside Reva while she dragged out her microphone. Then Lydia went into the playroom and was gone approximately forever while I sat and stared at my phone to avoid talking to the nanny. When I stole a glance at her, she gave me an inviting smile that made me go hard all of a sudden. I shifted uncomfortably and logged in to the security app to check alerts on the perimeter.

At last, Lydia came out in a sequin fairy costume that she’s pretty much outgrown, a purple feather boa and what looked like a pair of Reva’s boots that were much too big for her. She took the microphone and started singing the new Taylor Swift song. The one she loves, doesn’t understand, and doesn’t really know the words to very well. I give her my full attention, applaud when she’s finished and taking extravagant bows. I don’t even laugh out loud at her hilariously wrong lyrics delivered with noisy enthusiasm. I just take pleasure in Lydia’s confidence and joy. I love that she’s expressive, that she’s come out of her shell. She had a rough time with shyness when she had to change schools.

It’s wonderful to see her happy. Even if it means sitting beside Reva from time to time. Having dinner with her most nights. Catching myself exchanging a conspiratorial look with her when Lydia talks about a loose tooth and the tooth fairy. Or giving her an eyeroll when Lydia explains something everyone else obviously knows. Of feeling like we’re partners in crime once in a while, a kinship I can’t afford.

When I told her, I didn’t interview for a wife and mother, it was true. I was reminding myself as much as her. Because I had a wife, Lydia had a mother. It was no good. We’re on our own and I’m damn lucky to have my daughter safe and sound. I intend to keep her that way. I’m indulging her by having Reva here until the threat is past. So far, I’ve been lucky or else Rativan’s lulling me into a false sense of safety. Because I’ve only had a couple of calls threatening all I hold dear, one set of slashed tires on my car while I was at work. That’s nothing. Amateur stuff. Not the level of threat I expect from a crime family. So maybe they have bigger fish to fry than a security contractor. Maybe they’re going after the Feds, or maybe they’re more interested in breaking Rativan out of maximum security than they are in retribution.

For now, I’ve finished an estimate for a new client. I’ve called to shout at my vice president for authorizing an ad in a gun collector’s magazine because we want elite clientele who need serious security, not firearm fetishists. I hear Reva shut her bedroom door. I relax a little. I feel like a hostage in my own room and office when she’s here and awake. I imagine going to the kitchen for a drink and meeting her in her nightgown, something soft and sheer I could crush in my hands. I take the laundry Mrs. Whitman washed and start sorting it into drawers. As I line up socks in the drawer, I see it. A scrap of raspberry pink lace clinging to a dark sock. I peel it way as it clings with static electricity. A pair of hot pink lace panties that belong to the nanny. I hold them and stare at them like they’re a rare artifact. I crush them in my palm, try to think of a simple way to return them. I could stuff them back in the laundry for Mrs. Whitman to deal with. I could march down the hall and knock on Reva’s door and say, “I think these are yours.” Because confronting her with her panties in my hand wouldn’t be the least bit awkward or sexually charged. Putting them in the laundry room is clearly the answer.

I stand up to do just that, but I find I don’t want to give them back. I want to keep them. The slight roughness to the cheap lace is sexy against my skin. I know what I’m going to do. I lock my door. I unzip my pants and sprawl on my bed. With Reva’s lace panties in my hand, wantonly, I start to stroke my cock. It’s already standing at attention, and the rasp of lace turns me on even more. Aroused, my cock is big, and wrapping it in her lace panties feels naughty, wrong. Filthy. With every stroke I grit my teeth. I shut my eyes and imagine her.

I fantasize that Reva knocks on my door, finds me this way. I pause, unlock the door and open it just a crack to ask if something is wrong. Yes, she says, I need you now. She pushes her way through the door, backing me up toward the bed. I sit down, my cock still out. She kneels down in front of the bed, takes just the tip in her hot, questing mouth. I think I’m going to scream because I want her so much. I anchor my hands in her hair, pull her face against my cock so she takes me deeper in her mouth. A few long sucks and she draws back with a knowing smile. She pushes me back onto the bed and crawls up over me. I reach for the deep neckline of that green dress she wore the day she moved back in. I pull it lower, revealing the swell of her breast. I reach in, draw her entire breast out of the dress and capture it with my mouth. I love her nipples, so sensitive, so rosy, so quick to peak and harden in my lips. After a few minutes, she pushes me away and peels off her dress to reveal she’s wearing nothing under it. I reach down instantly and cup her bare mound in my hand, fingers teasing at the outer folds of her pussy. She grinds against me wantonly. I feel her wetness seeping on to my fingers, and it’s so erotic.

I roll her on to her back and lift one of her legs to wrap it over my shoulder. I straddle her other thigh and sink in to her. By holding her leg up, I can go so deep with every thrust. She feels amazing—slick, tight, eager. My cock is pounding in to her before I can slow myself down. She rocks against me, moaning with every deep thrust. I rub my thumb across her mouth. She opens her lips and sucks it. I take it away, use my wet thumb to stroke her clit in hard, tight circles until she’s coming so hard she screams like an animal. I make myself slow the rhythm somewhat, enjoy the cling of her wetness as I withdraw and the hot feeling of being consumed when I thrust back in. I manage to keep going for a while as her flutters of pleasure subside. She reaches up and catches my hand, laces her fingers through mine and pulls me down for a kiss. I kiss her softly at first, but she wants more, opening her lips for my tongue. When I’m kissing her like that, deep and dizzy, I start to come. It’s hard and fast, explosive, and I kiss her the whole time. I let her swallow my groans, my hands coming to frame her face as I keep kissing her. We roll onto our sides and make out like teenagers, her hands in my hair, my fingers stroking her beautiful face, still flushed from the exertion. I pull her against me.

Then I open my eyes, annoyed with myself for fantasizing about her like I’m some horny teenager. Then I stroke myself, pretending the lace panties are Reva’s hand, that she’s the one touching me like this, building the anticipation and giving me release at my peak. My body jerks with climax, my head falling back. How can I want her so much? Why didn’t having her on my couch get this out of my system? I want to fuck her night and day.

The other day, she bent over to pick up Lydia’s rain boots after she left for school. Instead of telling her to let Lydia do her chores and pick up after herself, I wanted to bend her over the chair, flip her skirt up and take her right there. I could have her moaning in pleasure, looking back over her shoulder at me in seconds. Then, when she was reading to Lydia that night and I bent to kiss my daughter’s forehead, I wanted to kiss Reva as I stood up. I wanted to catch her lips and kiss her softly, tenderly, to let her feel my attraction and affection for her. Because that’s half the problem. It’s all too intimate, sharing a home with her, sharing a child with her. I think I didn’t get over my passion for her after our one-night stand because the whole situation feels too real, too much like a relationship, like the sort of life I would have had if I’d married someone different from Catherine. So it’s painful, the wistfulness of seeing how Lydia looks at her with such trust and love, how Reva looks at me like I’m everything she wants. Because I could’ve had that if I’d been a man who made better choices.

I clean myself up, stuff the panties under my pillow. I’ll have to figure out what to do about those another time. As I finish lining socks up methodically in the drawer, my phone rings. I have a private number on my personal line. I have a specific ringtone for the people in my life who have it—Caroline, a couple employees at the firm, Reva, Mrs. Whitman, the principal at Lydia’s school and her personal guard Charlie. This is someone unauthorized to have that number. I feel every nerve on alert as I answer the call ID’d only as unknown number.

“Carter here,” I bark, sounding more defensive than I mean to.

“I got your number. I also got your wife,” the voice growls. I hear a woman’s scream in the background before the line cuts off.

Sweating, I dial Monfort, my guard who keeps tabs on Catherine from time to time and makes sure she isn’t homeless or hurt.

“Where’s Catherine?” I manage.

“Give me five minutes and I can tell you,” he says. I hang up and wait for him to access the tracking data from her phone, her debit card, the traffic camera outside her building in Reno. When my phone rings again, it’s him.

“Gone,” he says. “No activity for over thirty hours on her phone, my eyes on the ground broke into her apartment and it’s empty. Traffic cams—”

“Maybe she forgot to charge her phone. She could’ve gone away for the week or something and left it—” I say, desperate.

“My guess is, somebody got her. Whether it’s a dealer or the Rativans…we’ll have to wait and see if they make contact.”

“They did. Rativan’s men have her or say they do,” I say.

“Call back. Get proof of life. We’ll go in,” he says. I know he’s right, but I can’t swallow, can’t breathe. I hang up.

I go to Lydia’s room and look in on her. She’s sleeping soundly, a stuffed animal clutched in the crook of her elbow, thumb in her mouth. I sag against the doorway with relief. Just hearing her breathe reassures me. I won’t let anything happen to her mother. I can’t. I redial the unknown number, but there’s no answer. I cue up the app to try and trace its location. While it’s scanning, I stand in the hall and watch Lydia sleep.

I feel a hand on my back, tentative. I look back sharply. It’s Reva, standing by me in a pink robe. She gives me a half smile.

“I was checking on her too.”

“She’s fine,” I say hoarsely, “go to bed.”

“Hot chocolate?” she offers.

I shake my head. I want to say yes. I want to be in the bright kitchen listening to her talk while she makes a hot, sweet drink and everything feels safe and normal. But I know it would be a lie. I have to use every resource I have at hand to stop my enemies from killing my ex-wife. I can’t tell Reva any of this. She’s already in danger just being here. The less she knows, the safer I can keep her. So even though going to the kitchen with her sounds like paradise right now, I tell her no.

I double the guards on Lydia and put two more on the house. I order the cars swept twice a day for trackers and bombs. I pull my best team off a paying client and put them on tracking down Catherine. For three days I hardly leave the office and barely see my daughter because I’m trying to keep the wolf from the door.

When Catherine turns up disoriented outside Vegas, I breathe a sigh of relief. She’s roughed up but not seriously hurt. She doesn’t remember much. She turns down an offer of a cushy rehab in LA and returns to her drug dealer instead. I had thought for half a second that she might turn it around now, be scared sober. But I let her go, let her live her life, only this time with a guard on her who’s ordered not to interfere unless she’s in immediate danger. Which means if she’s buying drugs or partying, to stay out of her business.

I was afraid, I admit to myself now, that they’d kill her as a message to me. That any hope of a future reconciliation with her mother would be taken from Lydia. It’s not that I think Catherine was ever much good to her daughter, but I would never forgive myself for being the reason they never had a chance.

I double down at the office, telling myself it’s more important to chase down leads on Rativan than it is to spend time at home. On weekends I spend quality time with Lydia—playing endless rounds of Chutes and Ladders, coloring in her coloring books—when Reva’s not part of the picture. The funny thing is, my kid asks for her even when she’s got my undivided attention. Like she’s the missing piece for Lydia. It unnerves me. I don’t need someone else to protect, someone else to lose.

When I come home early one evening to have dinner with Lydia despite the fact Reva’s on duty, I find them in Lydia’s bathroom, my daughter sitting on the counter while Reva cleans blood off her legs. Both knees are torn up and she’s nursing one scraped palm that must sting like hell. Without thinking, I grab Reva’s arm and push her away from Lydia.

“What happened, baby?” I demand. My daughter looks startled.

“I was riding my bike! Reva took off the baby wheels so I could try it. I fell sometimes, maybe one or two, but then I did it! But I crashed…” she trails off, her grin replaced by concern.

“What the actual hell, Reva? She is five years old. She’s too little to be riding a two-wheeler without training wheels, which is why I got her a bike that has them. You didn’t consult me before encouraging my kindergartener to attempt an activity that was an obvious injury risk! Look at her! She’s bleeding, because you’re too arrogant to admit that I’m her parent and your employer! You had no right to put my daughter in danger!”

Reva gapes at me, puts antiseptic spray on Lydia’s knees and starts to bandage them. I loom in the doorway, thinking that we could be in ER right now, my little girl with a compound fracture because her reckless nanny put her up to riding a two-wheeler. Her torn knees gut me. She’s in pain, bleeding, because I wasn’t here to stop it from happening.

Lydia hops down from the counter, wriggles past me and runs to her room. She slams the door and I can hear her crying. I’m about to go after her before the nanny grabs my arm.

Reva wheels on me, “You listen to me for a hot minute before you fire me for letting a kid scrape her knees—which happens to everyone in real life who doesn’t live in a gilded cage! You are stifling that child. You won’t let her jump on a trampoline or take a gymnastics class because she could get hurt. You’ve just scared her bad enough she may never take another risk. Are you proud of that? Of teaching her to be afraid of everything?” she spits at me.

“You’re reckless. You made her do something unsafe. I’m just lucky she isn’t—”
“Dead from falling off a bike on the sidewalk with me right there? Really? She was so proud of herself. She was talking about it nonstop, how she couldn’t wait to tell you. She was mad at me because I said her knees would be too stiff from the scrapes to show you tomorrow how she can ride a bike like a big girl now. She was beaming until you came in and took that sense of accomplishment from her and made it something scary and disobedient. Do you want her to hate you when she’s grown up? Because you’d never let her be independent?”

Reva shoves past me and goes into Lydia’s room. I hear her voice as she talks to my daughter. Because she’s in there, I feel like I can’t go in. I hover at the door, furious. She’s questioning my parenting decisions and pushing me out of my daughter’s life. I storm into the kitchen and wrench open a bottle of beer. I take one drink before I dump it down the drain. I’m not going to become my mother who drank when she couldn’t deal with life. I go turn on the news and scowl at the TV.

Reva marches my daughter out to me, and I flick the TV off. She stands with her hands on Lydia’s shoulders.

“I have tried to explain to Lydia, but she needs to hear it from you. I’ve told her that you’re angry with me, not with her, and that you are not mad that she was brave and tried something new. That you’re mad because I didn’t ask if it was okay first. Right?” she prompts me.

I take Lydia’s hands, look into her eyes. They’re so tentative, like she’s unsure of what I’ll do.

“I’m not mad at you, baby. I want to keep you safe. I felt upset that your knees were bleeding and you go hurt, but I am not mad at you.”

“You’re mad at Reva?” she says, her lip trembling a little. She’s still red and blotchy from crying, and it hurts me.

“Yes,” I admit. “I’m mad at Reva because she’s your nanny and works for me and should have called me before having you do something where you could get hurt.”

“But she takes good care of me,” Lydia sticks up for her nanny. I should be glad she stands up for what she believes, defends the people she loves. But it annoys me that she’s somehow on Reva’s side here.

“That’s why I hired her,” I say pointedly, “but I get to make decisions about what’s safe for you.”

“Right, so he’s not angry with you, and he didn’t mean to scare you,” Reva says to Lydia.

Mrs. Whitman chose that moment, probably on purpose, to announce dinner. So we sulked at the table, the three of us, and no one mentioned the uneaten carrots on Lydia’s plate. I could feel the tension, the unspoken words wafting off Reva as she sat and cut her chicken into tiny bites and pushed it around her plate. I didn’t let myself say anything else about the conflict. I lobbed my daughter a couple questions about school that got little response. I ate in silence just like the other two.

I had prized Reva’s ability to stand up to me, challenge me. I thought it would make her a good role model for Lydia. But I didn’t count on how aggravating it could be with a major issue like safety. We’re going to have to discuss this. And the last thing I want to subject myself to is a conversation with Reva about boundaries.