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She spins in my arms so she’s facing me, wrapping her arms around my neck, grinning up at me playfully. "I think the kind of help you want to give me will be more distracting than productive. I'm looking for an assistant to take the pressure off Summer so she can work with me more on the design side. We need someone to run errands. Do you really think you could be my errand boy?" She tilts her head like she is really considering me, even though I know she's not.
"I could be anything you want me to be, baby." I lift her, placing her on her desk, and she wraps her legs around me, pulling me into her.
"I'm sure you could." She draws me toward her, kissing me with confidence she didn't have a couple of weeks ago. Her self-assurance is building the more time we spend together.
She might be right, I am a distraction around the office. I push her back down onto her desk, loosening her shirt, ready to take it off her, when out of the corner of my eyes I see the parcel Summer must have been talking about back at the warehouse, and my blood runs cold. I grab it, looking at Millie with a fierce determination. "Don't open this," I tell her.
She looks at me like I'm crazy, sitting up to take the parcel from me. "What? Why? It's probably some fabric samples of something."
"It's not." I already know from experience this is not something she wants to open.
"How do you know?" She laughs, thinking I'm being dramatic, but I'm not. I have seen this type of parcel before. No address label, just dropped off at the door so there’s no way to trace it. "Heath, what is it? The look on your face is starting to scare me."
"I used to get parcels like this all the time. They stopped the night of the break-in, and I thought maybe the person was over it and had moved on to bother someone else with their creepiness."
She looks over the box, then her attention comes back to me. "What were they sending you?" she asks with more concern in her voice.
“All sorts of things. Sometimes panties that had been worn, with messages like 'this is what I was wearing when I watched you perform tonight.' I think the person thought it would be sexy, but it was so disturbing.”
“What is wrong with people?”
"Do you have cameras here?" I ask, hoping we might be able to catch this creep before the problem escalates.
"Only in the boutique and out front. But Summer said this was left at the back."
"You need to get better security around here," I mutter, running a hand through my hair.
"Okay," she says slowly, really taking me in, and I know I'm starting to look like the crazy one here. Sweating, pacing, my body tense, all over a mystery box. But this is bad. I already know it, and it's exactly what I didn't want to happen, her being involved in some game or put in harm's way because of me. "Maybe we should just open it first and see what it is? We might be overacting. I'm sure it's just samples. I get boxes of stuff sent to me all the time."
I glare at her. "I don't want you to." My voice is direct and filled with a warning.
She blinks back at me, shocked for a second at the way I just spoke to her. "Heath, stop being silly." She takes the box from me, grabbing a boxcutter from her desk and slicing it through the masking tape. “It's just going to be fabric swatches," she says like she knows better. She peers inside, inspecting the contents, and I see the second she realizes I'm right. The color drains from her face, but she doesn't say anything, just stares at the box in front of her.
"What is it?" I ask, needing to know how bad it is and exactly what we’re up against. She shoves the box in my direction. There is what looks like a sex toy and a note. I pick it up, reading what it says.
You stole something from me that doesn't belong to you, so I stole something from you. Guess you think you won't need this anymore, now that you have a new toy to play with. Enjoy the real thing while you can, because your days with him are numbered, and if I need to come back and warn you again, next time, I will make sure I steal something just as valuable to you as Heath is to me.
I look back at her. She looks sick, her hands trembling. She's not thinking this is a joke anymore, and the high of seeing all the people lined up at her store and her newfound mega success is being drowned by the darkened cloud of the ugly side of fame. "That’s my vibrator. Someone has been in my fucking house, Heath," she seethes. "How am I supposed to go back there with my kids?"
My stomach drops, knowing what a shitty situation this is to be in. I know firsthand what that feels like, and she has the safety of her kids to worry about as well. I already knew this was the same as the parcels I had been receiving just from the look of it. But she wouldn't believe me and had to open it to see for herself anyway.
"I will be there to look after you. As shitty as this is, Millie, this has been happening to me for a while, and the person has never approached me or anything. They’re just playing silly games. I don’t think they would turn up at the house while we were there.” Even as I say the words, my blood boils as I think of what I'm going to do to this person when we find them.
How dare they mess with my family. It was bad enough when they would steal something from my car or dressing room, something that couldn't have been anyone else, just so I knew they were for real. Then they would leave a cryptic note, always something to do with them owning me and how we will be together soon. Totally bullshit from a crazed fan, and Della took it really seriously and reported it to the police every time, but nothing ever came of any of it. After my house was broken into, I was waiting for something to come from it, but it didn't. No evidence is ever found, so they can't do anything about it.
I thought maybe whoever it was had given up on me, but this is so much worse. Now they’re after her because she is with me. I'm not going to let someone fuck with her, with either of us.
CHAPTER TWENTY
AMELIA
"SorryI'mlate,Summer,"I call as I rush past her desk on my way through our design studio to my office. I plonk myself down at my desk, not feeling ready for the day at all. I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself so I can get some work stuff taken care of while I'm here this morning.
Heath assures me my house is safe and that it was okay to bring the kids back home yesterday. But just to be extra sure, we came back first and had my parents drop them over once I was able to check the house out completely. To my surprise, it was untouched except for my bedside drawer where the toy had been taken from. I hadn't looked at it too closely yesterday, sitting in that box, and I had hoped it was just a lucky coincidence. But it was definitely mine, and the creep had been in my room. The thought makes me sick to my stomach. Why would anyone bother playing games like that?
My dad was also raging once he found out and had an ex-Army SEAL friend of his come stand watch at the house overnight to make sure we were safe until we could get the new security system installed today. It was probably overkill, but one look at me and how freaked out I was and he was all over it and had his friend there within the hour. The kids had no idea what was really going on, and today we have the new system going in while they’re at school. I don't want this to be an interruption to their lives. But I need to know we are safe in our home, something I have never really worried about before.
Summer waltzes into my office, like a breath of fresh air in her tailored slacks and colorful floral blouse, her curly hair bouncing as she moves. "Julian sent through your design briefs and wants a video chat with you this afternoon if that's possible." She takes one look at me, and her eyes widen. "What the hell happened to you since I saw you yesterday? You were all loved up and happy then, and now you look strange." She wrinkles her nose, like the look of me this morning is unpleasant to witness.
