Sun-Kissed Secret Baby by Leigh Jenkins
Chapter 8
“Princess….”
“Yes, Mr. Sam?”
Samuel nodded in the direction of the pool with his chin. “The lady with the two children are my guests for the evening. Please make sure they have everything they desire. Offer them entertainment after they’ve eaten, if they like.”
Sam’s uniformed attendant threw Allie a curious glance, but obediently responded. “Yes, Mr. Sam.”
He could feel the flesh of Allie’s upper arm give under his fingers and was well aware that he was gripping her too tightly, but for the life of him, he couldn’t bring himself to care. As he led her away from the pool deck, she anxiously looked back at the little girl… his daughter….
And that word, resonating inside his head, was like gasoline on a fire. And something inside him was ready to explode.
He briefly considered taking Allie to his office, but the confines of those four walls seemed like a prison to him. Instead, he led her out to the parking lot, past the guest spaces and the short line of taxis to an area that was cordoned off and labelled Private.
There were three cars there: a rugged all-terrain vehicle that came in handy whenever he wanted to get into the countryside for the weekend, a low-slung Pontiac in an admittedly clichéd shade of red, and his personal favorite, a Dodge Demon, a silver, unembellished bastard of a street vehicle that looked and drove like it had stormed the barriers of Hell and was now unleashed upon the world.
He yanked open the door, and only then did he release his grip on Allie. “Get in.”
She looked at the car dubiously, and he could understand why anyone who didn’t love cars would have been hesitant: the car was brash and rugged and stank of testosterone. But one look at the thundercloud his face had become, and she climbed inside, hastily, quite wisely belting herself in.
Sam kept the keys to all his cars inside them, reasoning that with the level of security he maintained around his property, any attempt to steal them would be ill-advised. So it was a matter of mere seconds before they were knifing out of the parking spot and speeding towards the barriers, which lifted to greet his approach.
Beside him, Allie said nothing.
Without needing time to ponder, he headed straight for the north coast road, a narrow, climbing, rocky, twisting strip that hugged the curves of the coast as intimately as a silk negligée hugged the curves of an ingenue. The strip was unpredictable, notorious for its treachery, but in Sam’s state of mind, it was glorious.
The radio was already tuned to his favorite alternative station, and he reached out to turn it up: it was blaring crashing chords from the likes of Slayer and Nine Inch Nails. Perfect. He was in a Nine Inch Nails kind of mood.
He pressed down on the pedal and felt the great beast beneath him roar. Allie drew a sharp breath, and as the speedometer needle kicked to the right, she held it.
He skated around curves, waiting until the last second to negotiate, feeling the controls respond to his fingertip touches, feeling the tires grip the road surface like grasping gloved hands. They headed east, with the rays of the lowering sun piercing through the rear windshield. On their left, filaments of gold danced upon the quietening waters.
As the car screeched around the curves, he sensed Allie’s fear mount, and something perverse inside him was glad. She had no way of knowing it, but there’d been many a foolish time in his early twenties when he’d been enough of an ass to go midnight drag racing along this coast, him and his equally stupid friends. It was only the fact that God had bigger plans for them that none of them had ever wound up flaming out over the cliffs and into the sea. Sam knew this road by heart, every curve, every straightway. He knew where to downshift, and where to go hard.
For him, it was as satisfying as punching out his rage on a bag at the gym; and every time the tires screamed, he felt a little bit better.
“Please, Sam.” Next to him, she was begging. He glanced over. Her hands were braced against the dash as if she thought that would protect her if they slammed into a cliff face doing a hundred. She was pale, sweating, eyes bugged, fixed on the road. Absolutely terrified.
Goddammit.
He eased off the pedal, let the Demon slow down on its own. Up ahead, there was a wide stone entrance, leading to a rocky outcropping. He swerved hard off the road, and Allie’s body shifted with the momentum. His arm shot out unbidden across her chest.
She gave him a surprised look.
He pulled to a stop.
A large sign ahead announced their location: El Fuerte de los Reyes; the fort of the kings. The large, imposing stone edifice on their right was a miracle of 18th century engineering, which was probably why it was still standing. Rock slab was mounted upon slab, cemented together by an amalgam of sand and stone that rivaled modern concrete. The fort had been constructed by Spanish colonizers in their efforts to defend the island of Sabina, a jewel in the crown of any monarch who chose to seize it, from other European challengers.
Normally, it was swarming with tour guides and curious tourists, who wandered the endless stone chambers, the dungeons and soldiers’ quarters, enjoyed the museum artifacts, mainly weapons, and then toddled on to the gift shop. But it was well after hours and the site was closed.
Sam didn’t give a crap about closing hours. He sat there facing the sea, with his hands in a death-grip on the steering wheel, watching the gentle swell of the incoming evening tide. Listening to Allie pant next to him, struggling to retrieve her breath.
It was all too much. He threw open his door and shot out, storming towards the cliff’s edge, wanting desperately to put as much space between himself and her.
Huge metal cannons were lined up facing the sea, placed long ago to let anyone who dared approach know that the current conquerors of this little island meant business. The cannons had gone from being instruments of war to backgrounds for status updates and duckface selfies.
Sam leaned against one of them, facing the sea, pleading with its spirits to grant him strength. He was sure he had never been so angry in all his life; never so stunned, so shocked, so scared, so appalled. He didn’t even know how he felt, wished someone would invent a new word for it, a word that echoed all the emotions that rolled over and over into each other and threatened to swamp him.
Unbidden to his mind came an old Saturday Night Live skit, with a character featuring Mike Myers, one of his favorites. A middle-aged woman who clutched her pearls when all became too much for her: “I am verklempt,” she used to say.
That was the word: he was verklempt, overcome. A bitter laugh escaped him.
“You’re laughing?” Allie was behind him, eyeing him cautiously. Probably wondering if he was losing his mind.
She wasn’t far wrong.
He spun to face her. “What the hell, Allison?”
She hung her head, looking miserable and ashamed.
That wasn’t enough to get her off the hook. He went on. “How could you have done this to me? Leaving me in ignorance all this time….” A thought struck him. “Charlie Brown was with her all day, no? He must have seen her. He must know.”
She nodded miserably.
He clenched his fists, feeling his fingernails threaten the skin of his palms. “He should have come to me at once. He should have said something. I’m going to murder him!” Two betrayals in one day….
Allie hastened to his friend’s defense. “He knew the moment he saw her, but he told me I had to tell you. He said if I didn’t say something within a day, he would.”
He snorted. “Oh, yeah. That makes it so much better. The only reason you came clean was because Charlie told you to….”
“I would have,” she said hotly.
“Yeah? When?” he asked sarcastically. “Certainly not when I was standing on the beach at Batali, begging you to wait for me….”
“I wouldn’t have known I was pregnant then,” she retorted. Now that she was no longer facing the imminent threat of plunging to a grotesque death among the cliffs, she was heating up, too. He figured he liked that.
He acknowledged the truth of her point with a shake of the head. “But you did know eventually, didn’t you?”
Her lips drew into a tight knot.
“And yet you said nothing….”
“What did you want me to do? I was eighteen and pregnant. I finished the school year pregnant, Sam. Running out of final exams to the bathrooms to throw up! What would you have me do?”
“Call me!” He knew he was roaring, challenging the raucous, cawing returning birds settling in for the night for noise supremacy. “You could have phoned me, Allison, and told me I was going to be a father!”
Her face crumpled, reddened. “What could you have done? How could you have helped?”
He slapped the flank of the cannon, stepped away, then spun around to her again. Almost laughing sardonically. “What, you figured the little island kid wouldn’t be good enough to father your baby? Strong enough? Was I too simple and too poor? Did you think I’d just be a second burden, in addition to the one you already had?”
Around them, the lights of the fort came on automatically, and out of the corner of his eye, he could see security details beginning their first evening patrols. He knew their time was limited, but he so desperately needed answers.
Still she said nothing. In frustration, he bellowed, “What, Allison? Say something!”
“I hate it when you call me that!” she shouted back.
“At least I’m calling you,” he snapped, well aware of how petty that sounded.
There was the sound of a throat being cleared. They both turned to see two security officers standing there, legs spread slightly apart, radiating authority. “I’m sorry, but the fort is closed….”
Sam nodded grimly. “We’re leaving.”
Then one of the officers recognized him and straightened respectfully. “I didn’t realize it was you, Mr. Drummond.”
Sam acknowledged him with a wave of his hand. He was sure his reputation and brand recognition up and down the coast would have bought him some extra time at the site, but the last thing he wanted was to cause any problems for these guys. So he said, “It’s fine, gentlemen. Have a good evening.”
With a nod towards the car, he wordlessly signaled Allie to follow.
The drive back broke no records for land speed. He could feel his ire cool, his mind shifting into a more contemplative mode. Next to him, she was silent, looking out the window to avoid his gaze. He took her in: this new Allie, more mature than the gauche teenager who’d been so insecure about her body.
Her hair was that same chocolate brown, but she’d done little with it. It was pulled off her face with a scrunchie. She was still curvy, still soft and comfy-looking, her pale bare skin already radiating its first kiss of the sun. Dark lashes shielded pensive brown eyes. It was like a time shift, back and forth, as if he was sitting in the car with two people: an awkward young girl and a stronger, more assured woman.
The mother of his child.
Once at the resort, instead of parking in his spot, he drove along the grassed pathway to her cabin, pulling up near a sweet lime hedge, studded with fragrant, tiny white blossoms. They sat there, the idling engine the loudest thing in the car.
Then without warning, without even realizing what he was about to do, he popped his seatbelt and leaned forward, kissing her hard. It was as if he believed the gesture would help him meld these two Allies into one.
With that first contact came a flood of memories, an intense jolt of awareness… the feel and taste and scent of her were oddly, achingly familiar, but overlaid with an exciting newness.
Taken unawares, she responded in surprise, her lips parting for him, and he took full advantage of that fact, allowing the tip of his tongue to caress the bottom row of teeth.
Then she pressed both hands against his chest, shoving him back hard. He discovered he was panting; the sound of his rough breaths ricocheted in the interior of the car.
“Why the hell would you do that?” she demanded, aghast.
He didn’t know, had no answer. He wished he could say he was sorry, but he wasn’t. He could still taste her mouth….
She didn’t wait for an apology. She threw open the car door, got out, and then bent forward so he could clearly see that she was glaring at him. “Don’t do it again!”
Then he heard the whisper of her feet in the short grass.