17. Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

PATEK PHILLIPE

Jamie

S ix years ago, it was just Jamie, Lindy, Dru and Jamie’s longing to have his son more a part of their lives and deeper in their family.

Now, late morning after Nora had been attacked, Jamie’s phone was overheating with all of the texts he’d been receiving from his massive, extended family.

Dru, he’d learned, had shared with Chloe.

And then it swept through the Oakley/Swan/Holloway/Pierce/Sharp crew like wildfire.

He wasn’t complaining. It was good for him, for Nora, for Judge and Dru.

However, imminently, Jamie needed to leave to meet a colleague for lunch, this colleague also one of Roland’s who Kateri had uncovered was considering investing in Oakbilly Gulch, when his phone didn’t buzz with a text.

It lit up with a call.

From Elsa.

He loved Elsa, but he didn’t want to answer because he didn’t have the time.

She was family, so he took the call.

“Hey there, darlin’,” he greeted.

“Hi, Jamie,” she replied.

He got down to it. “I’m sure you’ve heard, and Nora’s okay. Shaken up, but fine.”

“I know. I spoke with her earlier this morning. But, well, I just talked with a friend, and what they told me I couldn’t delay in telling you.”

Marvelous.

This didn’t sound like good news.

Jamie sat back in his office chair. “What’s that?”

“My friend works for a nighttime news magazine, and she told me they’re in talks with Chester Lynch to do some kind of exposé on you. Something about how you used your money and influence to keep Dru from him.”

Jamie let out a controlled breath.

At least they knew why Chet was in town, even if they didn’t know why he was accosting and threatening Nora.

Jamie should have thought of this. It was an AJ Oakley play right down to its DNA.

And Elsa being involved in that industry was another indication it was good to have a big family.

“It’s a reputable news magazine,” Elsa continued. “If they took it on, they’d get in touch with you for your side of the story.”

“I have seventeen audio files of Chet Lynch using threats to sue for custody of his daughter and offers to end his harassment of his ex-wife, who he called, texted, repeatedly showed at her place of work and often times turned up where she got her coffee or when she was out with her friends. He did this in order to verbally abuse her. It goes without saying, I also have witnesses who will attest to all of this and will do so gladly. In these audio files, you’ll hear that he did all of that in order to extort over three quarters of a million dollars from me, which he received, before I cut him off.”

“Whoa,” Elsa replied.

“Two of those audio files record his attempts to extort five million dollars to allow me the privilege of adopting Dru, who, at that time, he hadn’t laid eyes on in six years.”

“Damn,” Elsa murmured.

“Further, I’m still in possession of all Lindy’s account statements and day planners, and they will show that Chet never paid child support and never showed for his visitations with Dru. Even if he said he would, and we had Dru ready to go with him, regardless we didn’t want her to. The media doesn’t need to know that Dru also didn’t want to go with him. But a little girl waiting for her father to give some sign he gives a shit about her, bag packed and ready to go, and he never shows will not play well for Chet.”

Elsa sounded gleeful when she agreed, “No, it won’t.”

“I’ll drop a few of those files in a shared folder and send the address to you. I have no issue with you passing them on to your friend. If they require more to kill that fucking story, I’ll see they get that too. But the stipulation is that there will be no story . They do not have my permission to use what I gave them. They will not have my cooperation if they go ahead and air whatever Chet is claiming. If they do, I’ll give the rest to someone else, and I’ll sit in front of a fucking camera myself and share that I asked for this to remain private, but your friend’s magazine dragged my daughter and my deceased wife into a spotlight they did not ask to have shined on them. And Elsa, I won’t mince words.”

“Not a lot of productions want to be used as some asshole’s personal tool to continue abusing his daughter, Jamie,” Elsa replied. “At least none of that caliber. If you can send those files, my guess, when they hear them, they’ll retreat from Lynch. But I’ll tell them you’re not super thrilled this guy is pulling this shit after he did all the rest.”

“That would be appreciated, Elsa.”

“There are other, less ethical news outlets that won’t blink at sharing what he has to say, though,” she warned.

He knew that. “Then I hope their libel insurance is up to scratch.”

“Sorry you have to deal with this guy,” she said.

“I had Lindy in my life for seventeen years, and Dru will be in it for the rest of it. He’s a piece of shit, but with what I got, dealing with him is worth it.”

“Yes,” she agreed quietly.

His phone told him he had another call, and when he checked, he saw it was Nico.

He didn’t want to take that one either, but if Nico had heard about what happened to Nora, Jamie had to.

“I have another call coming in,” he told Elsa. “You have my thanks for the heads up, but sorry, I have to let you go.”

“Of course, Jamie. Speak soon.”

“We will. And thanks again.”

They rang off, and he took Nico’s call.

“Hello, Nico.”

“Sorry to disturb you at work, Jamie.”

“That’s all right. Everything good?”

“If you’re fishing about whether or not I know what happened to Ma, I do. Cadence called Val, Val called Allegra and me.”

“I see.”

“I just spoke to her, and she says it’s all good, but Mom always says that shit. So I’m calling you, and I know I’m putting you on the spot, but that was some fucked-up shit, so I really need to know if she’s okay.”

“Nora’s strong, Nico. You know that,” Jamie replied. “She was shaken up last night. But Alyona and I were with her, he didn’t hurt her physically, and she was herself this morning. I can promise you I’ll keep an eye though.”

“Right,” Nico mumbled.

“I’m sure she won’t mind if you came down this weekend to see for yourself,” Jamie invited.

“I’m already planning on it. Is it cool if I show on Saturday and stay the night with you two?”

“It’s your home, so definitely.”

More mumbling with his, “Cool.” And then he cleared his throat and said, “Uh…Felice won’t be with me.”

“That’s too bad,” Jamie lied. “Maybe next time.”

And more mumbling with, “Maybe.”

He felt Nico’s pain. Coming to the realization you needed to end a marriage was not fun and games.

But Jamie looked at his Patek Phillipe watch, and saw he had to leave in no less than five minutes, or, if New York traffic delayed him, as it tended to do, he’d be late for his lunch.

Even so, Jamie inquired, “Is there something else you needed to speak to me about?”

“I…yes, um…no. No, not really. Just worried about Ma.”

“We don’t know each other very well,” Jamie said carefully. “But I hope you know I love your mother, what we have is serious, it has a long future, but not only because of that, also because I like all of you, I want to build strong relationships with you and your sisters. So I also hope you know if you need anything from me, I’m here.”

“Boy, you get to the point, don’t you?” Nico remarked.

“Life is too short to fuck around when shit is important,” Jamie returned.

“Yeah, it is,” Nico muttered.

“So, is there anything you need from me?” Jamie offered.

“I…maybe this weekend, you and me, you know, just the guys, can have a chat?” Nico requested.

“I’d like that.”

“Okay, we’ll do it.”

Did Jamie detect relief in his tone?

Christ, Roland was such an asshole.

“I’m sorry, but I have to let you go now,” Jamie said. “I need to be off to a meeting.”

“Oh, right. Yeah. Anyway, thanks for assuring me Ma’s okay.”

“She’s good. See you on Saturday. Look forward to it.”

“Yeah. You’re busy, so I’ll call Ma and tell her I’m coming.”

“Right. Take care, Nico.”

“You too,” Jamie replied.

They ended the call, and Jamie had just enough time to text Kateri about the latest developments with Chet and make a note for himself to deal with the audio files for Elsa when he returned, then he was up and on his way to the door to his office.

It opened and Dru peeked her head around.

He came to a halt.

He should have known this would happen. She was very bad at hiding how distressed she was last night. He didn’t buy her consistent reiterations she was fine, she’d stop by that evening to check up on them, and he should let her go so he could see to Nora.

But woefully he was a father who had a now-adult daughter he couldn’t coddle and protect, and if she expressed her wishes, he had to abide by them rather than sending a car for her and all of her clothes and moving her in with him and Nora.

“Hey, darlin’, this is a surprise,” Jamie greeted.

She smiled at him and slipped in.

“Is this a good time?” she asked, walking his way. “You look like you’re off somewhere.”

It wasn’t, and he was.

But for Dru, he always had time.

She made it to him, they kissed cheeks, and she stepped away.

“I have a lunch,” he told her. “But I can text and say I’ll be a bit late.”

“This won’t take long, promise,” she said.

“You okay?” he asked, watching her closely.

“I just…well it hit me, last night, with my bio-dad rearing his stupid head again, that I’m twenty-three now.”

He smiled at her. “You are.”

“So, I don’t need his permission for you to adopt me.”

Jamie’s stomach dropped and his throat closed, but oddly, neither were unpleasant sensations.

“He can kiss off,” she went on. “I’ll officially be an Oakley, and he’ll just be the pathetic loser he always was.”

“Darlin’,” Jamie whispered, his voice choked.

Her eyes were bright with tears of happiness because she knew his answer to her suggestion.

And setting him up, she clobbered him with the rest of it.

“Now I can tell you, I saw him. My bio-dad. Last week, he was lurking across the street from the brownstone. He was there, then gone, and he’s aged a whole lot. I wasn’t sure it was him. Until what he did to Nora, that is.”

Christ.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jamie asked.

She tossed up her hands. “Because I wasn’t sure it was him, Dad. You and Nora were finally together. We have JT. All is good. It’s happy. It’s as it should be. We don’t need that jerk messing it up.”

He didn’t like this. It smacked of stalking. Not only of Nora, but of Dru.

However, if she hadn’t put that together, he wasn’t going to do it for her.

And she had security on her, so they’d inform him if this was the case.

Jamie let out a sigh. “You can always tell me anything, especially if it’s important.”

“I know, but that doesn’t mean I want to tell you, especially if it’s going to be upsetting. I didn’t know he’d go psycho and assault Nora.”

There was a sliver of pain and embarrassment in her eyes, as if Chet’s bullshit had something to do with her, when it didn’t, so Jamie took her in his arms. As usual, they both held on tight.

“You’ve told me now,” he said to the top of her head. “And I’ll get my attorneys on drawing up adoption papers.”

She tipped her head back to look at him. “Maybe we can have a big dinner to celebrate or something? I mean, JT can’t fly, so we’ll have to wait for when that’s groovy for him to do, but that won’t be bad. Only a month or two. It’ll give everyone the chance to fit it in their schedules.”

“That’s an excellent idea. Would you mind if Nora planned it?”

She melted into him. “I’d love that.”

And he loved she did.

“So would she,” he murmured.

“Her shower for Elsa was the bomb.”

“I have a sense she’ll pull out all of the stops for this.”

“I might have to bust into my trust fund to find a dress,” she teased.

“It’s yours, you can bust into it whenever you want.”

He watched his daughter’s eyes sparkle before she queried, “Can I walk you down?”

Best offer he’d had all day.

“Yes,” he agreed, turned her to his side and slid an arm around her shoulders, guiding her to the door. “Can we drop you somewhere?”

“I can take the subway, Dad.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

“Okay, yeah, I have an audition and interview down in Soho,” she told him as they moved through the outer office, and he lifted his chin to Monica so she’d call down to Vincent to have him pull around.

Monica picked up her phone.

“Is this interview for something you’re excited about?” he asked.

“It’s not gonna happen, so I’m trying not to be.”

Jamie hit the elevator then gave his girl a Spill expression.

She spilled. “It’s to be in the band for Ashe’s new tour.”

That artist was not of his era, but even Jamie had heard of the hyper-popular female singer, Ashe.

The elevator doors opened just as Jamie’s face split into a grin. “That’s fabulous, darlin’.”

They moved into the elevator as Dru warned, “Don’t get excited. Everyone wants to be on this tour. It’s going to be huge, and they’ll have dates all over the world.”

This didn’t thrill him. Some of those tours lasted a year, or even longer.

But it’d be a huge coup for his daughter. It’d be tough work. But Dru loved to travel, so she’d not only see more of the world, she’d do it being able to network extensively in her chosen field.

“It’s good you don’t go in cocky so you’ll make an effort,” he said after hitting the button for the lobby. “That means you’ll go for it. But I can know you’ll get it even before you show up.”

She rolled her eyes.

Jamie kept grinning.

They hit the lobby, got in the car, and Vincent dropped Jamie first, so he didn’t have the opportunity to call Nora and share all the news before he had to meet his lunch partner.

And luckily, New York traffic cooperated, so he was only a few minutes late.

Jamie was walking across the lobby of Nora’s building when his phone vibrated with a text.

He hit the button for the elevator, then pulled out his cell.

Elsa.

The Lynch thing is dead. I’ll keep my ear to the ground if he’s shopping it around. My friend’s pissed they were duped, so she said she would too. I’ll be in touch if I hear anything.

He considered asking her to ask her friend if AJ, Roland or Paloma was involved in any of that mess, but decided to let Kateri do her work and ferret it out.

Thus, he returned, Means a lot. Owe you one.

He was in the elevator, and it was going up, when she returned, No markers in family .

So Jamie was smiling when he got off the elevator.

Alyona had the door open, and he aimed his smile at her.

She returned it and said, “Good evening, Mister Jamie.”

He walked into the apartment and turned to watch her close the door.

When he caught her eyes, he said, “Nora told me you’re coming with us to the brownstone.”

She nodded.

“Then we’re going to know each other for a long time, Alyona, and as such, I’d like to invite you to just call me Jamie.”

That earned him another smile before she replied, “Okay…Jamie.”

He winked at her and asked, “Where’s Nora?”

“Study, and warning, she’s in a bad mood.”

This was concerning, but he didn’t ask Alyona about it.

He went to find his woman so he could ask her, then do something about it.

He found Nora seated behind the desk, and he thought he discovered why she was in a bad mood, because, strewn over it were large diagrams which were obviously seating charts.

She turned her head to look up at him when he arrived, her foul mood undisguised even as she greeted, “Welcome home, darling.”

Jamie moved to her and put a hand to her charts to brace himself as he bent low to kiss her.

He didn’t move far away when he broke the kiss.

“Haven’t found the key to the perfect placements?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“No. I have. I’m like a savant with seating charts. That’s why they always ask me to do them,” she said airily. “If you’re asking after my scowl, it’s because I love our people very much, but having Mika fawn all over me for two hours, Tom demand to prod the back of my head where it didn’t even hit the wall of the building, my daughter racing here on her lunch hour to take my blood pressure, my other daughter texting every five minutes, not to mention fielding texts from Dru, Cadence, Chloe, Genny, Elsa, and even Blake all day, I’ve definitely decided to kidnap you to a yacht, but we won’t be gone a week. We’ll be gone a year.”

Jamie carefully nudged her charts aside before he rested against the edge of her desk, and said, “We’ll definitely do the yacht thing. I didn’t get to fuck you there.”

She tsked and gave him a side eye, but neither hid the rose in her cheeks and the fire in her gaze at hearing his words.

“But we have to wait to go for a few months so you can plan and then we can throw a celebration dinner when the adoption papers are filed making Dru officially mine.”

She stared at him, lips parted in wonder.

Then she surged out of her chair and threw herself in his arms.

She even gave a little hop of excitement.

Yes, his elegant, sophisticated and droll Nora did something as cute as that in her happiness for him and his daughter.

Therefore, Jamie was chuckling when she leaned back, but not out of his arms, and he saw her face beaming.

“How did this come about?” she asked.

“She stopped by the office and informed her unusually slow father that she was no longer a minor, so we didn’t need Chet’s approval.”

Nora fiddled with his tie. “You are not slow. You’re already her father, so obviously, adoption became superfluous, therefore, you stopped thinking about it.” She lifted her gaze to his. “Though, it’s absolutely, positively lovely it’s going to happen anyway.”

“Dru wants you to plan the party.”

More beaming. “Consider it done.”

“Now, I have more good news, and some bad news.”

She frowned dramatically.

Jamie chuckled again, and asked, “Which do you want first?”

“Definitely good.”

“I spoke with Charles, and you were correct. Pop fucked him over on some deal about three decades ago, and Charles never forgot it. Thus, when Roland started fishing around, Charles jumped on board for the sole purpose of being in line to hammer a nail in Pop’s coffin.”

Charles VanderMeer was who he’d had lunch with that day.

“Oh my,” she whispered with verbal delight.

“And Charles shared that, even though Roland doesn’t know it, the other four investors he tapped who were willing to buy into this scheme were doing it for the same reasons.”

“And this means?” she prompted.

“It means, I’m struggling with letting them have it, just to spread the joy of fucking Pop over.”

“Jamie,” she said softly.

Damn.

“I know. I can’t. I need that ranch in my possession so I can give it to my birth father.”

“Did you share with Charles that you had uses for the ranch?”

“I did, and he was amenable. That said, he’s asked if he and the others could play with AJ for another few weeks. Give him hope he has a lifeline, then yank it around the time AJ runs out of funds, is facing default, and then I can move in.”

“Obviously, you said yes to this,” she purred.

His lips tipped up. “Obviously.” He tilted his head to the side, “Though, one thing I wasn’t certain about during our lunch was that he said Roland had contacted him just that morning, making some murmurings about how he may no longer wish to be involved in that deal.”

Her expression turned thoughtful as she murmured, “That’s interesting.”

“What did you say to him last night?”

Nora tipped her head to the side. “Nothing I’ve not said before.”

“Could it have gotten through?”

At that question, she lifted a shoulder. “No idea. Possibly. But if I had to guess, how honest his son was with him was probably what started to make him think.”

Jamie could see that.

“Now, dearest, hit me with it. What’s the bad news?” she asked.

Reluctantly, he told her why Chet was in town, and that Dru had seen him outside the brownstone.

“I worked with Elsa to kill the story,” he finished. “But that doesn’t mean he won’t shop it around.”

“So that was who Dru was looking at,” she said.

“You saw him too?”

“No. But she mentioned someone watching us, and she seemed…not quite right about it. I put it down to the media attention our group gets. She never seems comfortable with that.”

“Well, she recognized him.”

He hated to see it, but there was no beam from her eyes now.

“This is unsettling, Jamie.”

She was very right.

“She has a man on her at all times, as do you,” Jamie reminded her. “They’ve been informed of this latest. Elsa is going to keep her ear to the ground in case Chet, Pop or Paloma looks for some other place who will air his lies. I can’t imagine she’d be able to catch the story anywhere he shopped it so we could kill it. But Kateri also knows this is a possibility, she has even more connections, so maybe, between the two of them, we can cut him off at the knees.”

“So, hopefully, we’ve sorted the two major issues. Charles and his cronies can have some fun with AJ. And in a few months, this will all be over.”

“Hopefully.”

“And then, Jamie,”—she pressed deeper into him, her gaze serious—“it’ll be time to deal with your real father.”

Yes.

It would.

As she always did when this came up, she made her point, then sensed his emotion around it, so she changed the subject immediately.

“In the meantime, Nico is spending the weekend with us, I have a fabulous adoption party to plan, and Allegra tells me my blood pressure is perfect .”

“Excellent news, baby,” he murmured.

“Oh, and I’ll need a new dress for the party, so will Dru, and this means shopping .”

She was beaming again, and he knew she loved shopping, but she’d also told him about her conversation with his daughter about designers and style, so he knew that beam was about a lot more than just shopping. Thus, Jamie decided talking was done, making out was in order, so with her between his legs, his ass on her desk, that was what they did.

He let her go to change out of his suit so they could relax and have dinner. Then read for a while, make love and go to sleep.

It wouldn’t be until the next afternoon, when Charles called him, that Jamie would learn that Roland had completely stepped away from the Oakbilly Gulch deal.

So either Nora or Nico got to him.

That was good to know.

One down.

Two to go.