Billionaire Protector - Alexa Hart Page 0,82

disappear from the constant fighting between my mother and stepfather, my grandmother’s endless orders to stand up straighter, and later my mother’s drinking and crying. It had always been a safe and secret spot for me to hide.

I fish my phone out of my purse and call Carmen and Jorge again, but it goes right to voicemail. I don’t understand how they wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t be trying to find me. They are my only family, more real than any blood shared between my mother and I. I stare down at the phone as my eyes fill with tears.

I want to say that I loved my mother, but that is too simple a statement for the complex, heartbreaking relationship we had. Yes, I loved her. But I loved her the way a child learns to love a fragile, easily broken thing - gently, and with more concern for the other than for the self, a difficult way for a child to live. Made even more difficult by her constant pressure to make me perfect in the ways she failed to be.

My mother, Belinda Yates, grew up poor in Colby, Texas, but that all changed after her dad struck oil on some property he owned for hunting. After that, she was rich as sin. And she was beautiful, strikingly so. She was crowned the youngest Miss Texas in the state’s history, earning her the title at the young age of only seventeen. When she turned eighteen, she’d gone on to California to try a stint at modeling and acting but only ended up pregnant by nineteen and tight-lipped about who the father was.

She came home unwed, to the embarrassment of nearly everyone in her very religious family. Her mother shipped her off to live with a second cousin in Connecticut with a very weak story about being a young widow. Luckily, she still had looks and money and quickly caught the eye of Jonathan Bradley III, whose family offered the semblance of blueblood respectability that my mother desperately longed for. She thought he married her for love, but later she understood that the Bradley’s had more blueblood than actual cash in the bank. Needless to say, their wedded bliss didn’t last long.

They had some things in common though. My stepfather and mother shared a similar enjoyment of spending money. My mother loved shopping, and my stepfather loved gambling. They also traveled extensively, and separately, leaving me behind in what would become a familiar pattern for most of my life.

You’d think that abandonment would be the true seed of my bitterness, but actually them being gone was a huge relief. I avoided the worst of their drinking and fighting, and Jorge and Carmen became like second parents to me. They couldn’t have children themselves, and I spent all my spare time helping Jorge and Carmen with their work. Honestly, it very likely saved me from the misery that my mother grew in her heart as easily as Jorge grew his prize-winning roses.

I text Carmen and tell her that I’m planning to come over to their house later tonight. I want to ask why they didn’t tell me about being fired, why they aren’t returning my calls, I just want to find out if they are alright. I wish I could leave right now, but I know I need to stay a little longer. My mother, the consummate beauty queen, cared a great deal about appearances, and her only daughter leaving her funeral reception early would just flame the gossip she so loathed.

I start to stand up and head back inside when I hear two muffled male voices approaching. They seem to be arguing as they approach me on the opposite side of the thick, tall hedgerow. Almost no one knows about my little hiding spot, so I sit as quietly as I can, too startled to make myself known to them, especially as I realize one of the voices belongs to my stepfather.

“This isn’t the time or place,” I hear my stepfather say. “My wife just died.”

“Don’t give me that mourning crap. I’ve seen you around, Johnny! And you’re pretty lucky she did go and die on you. Now you have the money you owe me. So I say, why put off for tomorrow what you can collect today,” a gruff, angry voice retorts.

I hear the sound of a lighter igniting and then smell cigarette smoke. The gruff man takes an inhale of the cigarette. When he speaks again, his voice isn’t