Page 73 of Purchase Power
No, not the truth about his mother. Andcertainlynot about Stacey! If he were to ever speak of those events, it would be after many months of closeness and trust built up between them. It could only come after Lucy’s tenure as his personal escort ended, and a trial run as a genuine girlfriend began.I wonder if she would say yes… if it’s money she’s worried about, she could call me sugar daddy. I don’t care.This was a woman who twisted Noah’s heart every time he looked at her. Never before in his life had he bedded the same woman every single day – sometimes multiple times a day – for over two weeks. He could hardly remember what life was like before he had her. Now, he could hardly remember what it was like making all that love and never once kissing her gorgeous lips.
Noah may have been zero to sixty in the bedroom, but in matters of love and romance, he vastly preferred the slow and careful approach. He knew what it was like to throw everything away for whimsical love. He had seen his mother do it. He had witnessed those devastating repercussions. Nobody knew better than Noah. And nobody knew better than Stacey, who had been the epicenter of everything terrible.
So why did Noah have to look at one of those women now?
“How long has that woman been in this house?” Tonya lit one of her long cigarettes and spat her smoke into the breeze. She had joined her son for a late brunch on the main balcony off the dining hall. Below them, Stacey went for a walk with Candace, who had been employed to help the girl run off the excess energy she acquired at the sight of Tonya. Every few seconds she ran past the shrubbery, shot a hand into the air, and vigorously waved to her family. Candace stayed in the center of the yard and kept an eye on Stacey. Tonya hardly acknowledged either one of them, outside of a fake smile here and a twiddle of her fingers there. “It’s not like you to bring your whores home, Noah.”
“Mother.” Even if it weren’t Lucy she referred to, Noah had a hard line against such verbiage in his company. “Don’t mind her. She is a temporary guest. Stacey doesn’t even know she spent the night. If you think I’m not discreet, then…”
“How temporary?”
The only reason Noah indulged her prying was because he knew what this was really about.Stacey.She wouldn’t understand Noah’s sexual urges. Nothing triggered her into a breakdown more than the presentation of adult sexuality beyond happy-ending kisses and some chaste handholding. She adored her Disney movies but had to receive the airplane versions of movies that contained sex scenes. Her access to the internet was extremely limited, not that she used it for anything more than colorful app games and her child-locked Netflix. DVDs and Blu-Ray discs were previewed by either Candace or someone else the Gabriels trusted.
“Temporary. She’s about to leave while Stacey is out here.”
Tonya considered her son’s comment before leaning back with her cigarette. “At some point, you’ll need to seriously think about marriage.”
“Mother.” Noah could only sip orange juice and poke at his scramble and bagel for so long. At some point, he would have to actually ingest something. “Please. I’m thirty. There’s plenty of time to get Stacey acquainted with the idea of me marrying someone, not that there is anyone I can think of right now.” Considering Lucy for marriage was so ridiculous right now that he might as well forget it.Like I said, I take these things slowly. I couldn’t ask her to marry me until I know more about her true motives. Or until she knows about my family. I could only marry a woman who knows all of my secrets.Not because he was embarrassed by them. Because they brought with them great responsibilities.
“Noah!” Stacey, in her ponytail and baggy pink sweatshirt, hung off the branch of a tree and swung her lithe body to and fro. Candace was only a few feet away, ready to help if Stacey slipped. “Check it out!”
Tonya pulled her cigarette out of her mouth and called, “Excellent job, honey! Look how strong you are!” She sat back as soon as Stacey was distracted with a ladybug in the flowerbed. “You need to find a lovely nurturer. Someone who will give me grandchildren I can spoil rotten. And, you know…” She took a long drag of her cigarette. “Someone to help with Stacey.”
You want grandchildren to spoil?The mere words almost made Noah’s face boil.How about spoiling me when I was a child, huh? Where were you when I needed you?Lest anyone think Noah was too cowardly to say that to his mother’s face… he had, before. Multiple times. His late teens and early twenties were ripe with accusations and confrontations with his mother, who either avoided blame or broke down into a terrible mess of tears. The lowest point of Noah’s adulthood was when his own mother grabbed him by the leg and begged for forgiveness. She hadn’t even been drunk, for once.
“Stacey is my ward, yes.” Noah always made sure to identify her as such, especially toward his mother. It was unlikely Stacey would ever be able to take care of herself as a functioning adult. Every doctor said she had the mind of a child trapped in a grown woman’s body. Noah was long used to it. He had accepted he would probably be looking after her for the rest of their lives. That didn’t mean he wanted to bring children into the world. It wasn’t Stacey he was worried about around them.
It was the rest of the world.
“You will not see Lucy while you are here. Nor has Stacey seen her.” He put a hand on the table to get his mother’s attention. “I always make sure of it.”
Tonya sighed onto her cigarette. “Don’t try to make it sound like she’s a casual girlfriend, Noah. I can smell a prostitute from a mile away. Your father loved them. Why do you think he ran off with your nanny? She used to be a porn star, for fuck’s sake.”
She always said that about the woman who used to change Stacey’s diaper, but Noah never knew how true it was. Tonya’s vindictive streak appeared in her words, not her actions. She had always been too powerless to do a damn thing physically.
“Lucy is special to me,” Noah said, “but it’s not like that.”
“Sure, son.” Tonya looked beyond the balcony, into the woods, toward the sky… welcoming the sun onto her skin and a chill into her bones. “Keep her away from the house. That’s what the city is for. Your father made it clear that hotel rooms were the way to go.”
Noah thought of the week before, when he first brought Lucy out of his house and paraded with her into private spaces. There was plenty of opportunity for someone to spot them together, and he didn’t give a single shit. The tabloids didn’t care about him, thank God. He kept a low profile, and the drama of his childhood had been scoured off the internet and more than one journalist paid off to never bring it up again. Every so often, an SEO expert started Googling to see if anything remained. All Noah knew about was an unfortunate photo of him and his stepfather, and the wedding announcement between Tonya and Ronald Gray. It wasn’t worth going after those. The wedding was public knowledge, and everyone knew that Ronald had been Noah’s stepfather. As long as Stacey’s existence was left out of it, he could rest easy.
Lucy… how could I ever tell her?First, Noah would have to make it through the month and ascertain his true affections for her. If she would stay on as his girlfriend, either by moving into an apartment he procured in the city until he was comfortable with her publicly moving into Gabriel Manor, or maintaining a long distance approach in New York City… then maybe that could be the next step. But broaching Stacey’s existence was like opening Pandora’s box. Once all the horrors of Noah’s childhood were out, it was impossible to put them back in.
No matter how much hope fluttered out in the aftermath.
***
“Excuse me?” Lucy didn’t step out of the way for Candace to enter the guest suite. Candace took it upon herself to gently shove Lucy out of the way. “Can I help you? And what was that you said about me moving out?”
“It’s only temporary, Ms. Craig.” Candace opened the curtains and moved some of the furniture as if this were what she did every late Sunday morning. Lucy was barely fresh from the shower and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt when Candace knocked on the door and announced that Lucy should pack up her shit and prepare to go to the city. “Until Ms. Merriweather has left. I hear she should be gone by Tuesday.”
“Tuesday? You’re talking about Noah’s mother, yes?”
Candace whipped around. “He informed you that Ms. Merriweather is his mother?”
“No…” Lucy considered her words carefully. “I heard him call it that. Why? Is it some great big secret I’m not supposed to know about? Come on. Who else would walk in on us in bed? Besides you!”
“My apologies, Ms. Craig.” The flush in Candace’s cheeks was genuine. “I did not know you were with Mr. Gabriel. He… he usually doesn’t have sleepovers like that.”
