Page 7 of The Hottest Daddy
“Nonsense. You just moved in; you need feeding. Take it.” Carmen grinned at her. She and Sunday had clicked straight away. “You need a taste of home.”
Sunday smiled at her. Carmen was a second-generation Indian American and when Sunday had told her that her own grandmother hailed from Kerala, it had sealed Carmen’s approval of Sunday herself. “I’ve never been to India,” Sunday told her, “it was one of those things that …” She stopped. She was about to say it was one of those things she and Cory had planned to do, possibly for their honeymoon. “I just never got around to it.”
“There’s still time,” Carmen said, shrugging. “You’re what, twenty-five?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Gah, plenty of time. So, we’ll see you again on Monday?”
Sunday smiled. “You will. Bright and early.”
She hugged Carmen, feeling as if they had known each other for ever. Luke, too, was easy to talk to, and he walked her back to her car. “I’m sorry about River. He’s an ornery pain in the ass, but he’ll come around.”
Sunday shrugged good-naturedly. “Hey, as long as I do my work and I get paid, it’s no bother to me.”
Luke shook her hand, and she was strangely touched by his old-fashioned manners. “Good luck with the job,” he said to her, “I can already tell you’re going to fit in with us. Some of us, anyway,” he added with a grin. “You can find your way back into town okay?”
“I can, thanks. And thanks again for inviting me in. You’re right, it will make it easier to start work.”
“Good. See you around.”
By the time she drove back into town, just after lunchtime, the light was already fading, snow clouds making the sky a riot of purple, pink, and black. As Sunday carried her bags of groceries and the plastic boxes of curry into her apartment, she reflected that in just a few hours, she had made—if not yetfriends—certainly people with the potential tobefriends. Daisy. Carmen. Luke.
She read for most of the rest of the day, falling asleep on the couch—a couch, she noted, that was vastly more comfortable than her bed—and waking to see thick, fluffy snow falling. She sat at the window for hours just watching it fall, listening to the silence, the peace. The streetlamps struggled to illuminate the main road through the snow. Sunday shook her head, chuckling softly to herself. It was like a dreamland, a Christmas fairy tale, not real life.
And yet, thiswasher real life now and for the first time since that terrible night where she’d lost everything, lost Cory, lost the life she had planned for, had worked for, the former Marley Locke felt hope.
When his man reported back that Marley hadn’t been home at all for the entire weekend, Brian Scanlan was irked but not surprised. “She thinks she can hide from me,” he shrugged, as his employees listened to him. There was an air of nervousness in the room, as if the other men were waiting for Brian’s temper to explode. But tonight, he felt magnanimous.
Let Marley think she’d escape him, that she wasn’t still alive merely because he’d allowed her to be. That night, a year ago, when his hitman had taken out the boyfriend—as he’d been ordered to—and shot Marley—which he had been explicitly toldnotto—Brian had known that next time, he would do the deed himself. He couldn’t risk her getting away again and she’d made his planning easier by not skipping town after she’d been released from hospital.
But then again—where the hell would she run to? He knew better than anyone that she had no one. Her family was scattered; her boyfriend’s family would blame her for his murder. She had friends, yes. But he’d been right—Marley had stayed put, albeit with increased security.
As if that would stop him. No one even suspected the great Brian Scanlan, doyen of the Upper East Side, to have such close ties with the Mob, let along be a stone-cold killer. The man he’d hired to kill Cory Wheeler was himself now dead—a punishment for hurting Brian’s love. The night he’d found that Marley was in the hospital with a gunshot wound to the belly …no. Only he would decide whether she lived or died. She belonged to him, and no other.
He’d been magnanimous long enough, giving her time to grieve for her lost love, but now it was time. He’d made the arrangements over the past year—a new apartment for them to live in together on the Upper East Side, a whole new wardrobe for Marley, each piece tailored just for her in the colors that he, Brian, had approved. He’d make her dye her hair back to its natural color—she looked like a whore with that blonde mess. Make her scrub the makeup from her beautiful face—the mother of his children would not need it.
Yes, he had everything planned for her, and now it was time to put that plan into action.
It was only the next morning, when Marley failed to appear on his television screen, that Brian Scanlan discovered that he had been wrong. Marley had escaped him.
Marley was gone.
And his rage knew no limits.
Chapter Four
Monday morning, Sunday tried to put the fact that she was gone from New York would today become public and tried to concentrate on the drive up to the Giotto house. The night before, she’d spent a fun evening with Daisy Nash, and now she was full of optimism that her job would be just what she was looking for.
Carmen greeted her like an old friend and showed her to the little office where Sunday found a state-of-the-art laptop set up for her, as well as a comfortable chair and solid oak desk. A couch completed the room, of which one wall was solid glass looking out over the valley below.
Sunday shook her head, chuckling in disbelief. “How am I supposed to concentrate in the face of that?” She indicated the view and Carmen smiled.
“You’ll do fine. Listen, anything you need, come find me and please help yourself to anything in the kitchen, food, drink. You have a mini-fridge with water and sodas, but anything else, please, really, help yourself.” Carmen glanced at her watch. “I’ll do lunch for one o’clock, okay?”
“I wouldn’t want to impose.”
Carmen rolled her eyes, smiling. “See you later. Oh, bathroom at the end of the corridor on the right.”
