Uncovering You 10: The Finale Read online

  “You said I would give him that?” I ask.

  “I did,” Jeremy confirms. “Because I know you. I know your strength. It is as clear as you are beautiful…”

  “Please,” I say, looking away, unexpectedly embarrassed. “Don’t. You don’t think me beautiful. Not when I look…” I run a hand over my shaven scalp, “…like this.”

  “You are more beautiful to me today than any day I’ve seen you in the past.” Jeremy tells me, firm in his conviction. “Do you know why? Today represents your safe return to my life. Today is the start of a beautiful beginning for the two of us. Together, Lilly, me and you.”

  I look at Dr. Telfair. “It’s trust you want. Is it?” I ask. I laugh a little. “Funny. That is exactly the same thing Jeremy was after.”

  “I can give you time to consider,” Dr. Telfair says.

  “No.” I shake my head. “If you say that you can help me, I believe you. Jeremy does, and he’s an impeccable judge of character. You want to know what was done to me?” I exhale. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you all of it. On one condition.”

  Jeremy starts in concern. I ignore him. Dr. Telfair narrows his eyes. “And that is?”

  “That Jeremy gets to stay at my side the entire time.”

  Speaking of the cruelties I was put through does not come as easy as I think.

  But in the end, I tell it all. From the moment of my kidnapping in downtown San Jose to everything that happened up to the rescue.

  We touch down on an enormous, ancient estate that looks like a vineyard. Immediately, I fall in love.

  “Now it’s your turn, Jeremy,” I say, after Dr. Telfair leaves us. “What the hell happened? How did you manage the coup? What happened to Esteban, Hugh, and Rose? What did you mean when you said you left Stonehart Industries behind? It wasn’t because of me, was it?”

  “Everything I do is because of you, my love,” he tells me, holding me close and kissing my forehead. We walk into an empty bedroom. “Thank you for sharing all that with my brother,” he confides. “In truth, I did not think you could be ready to do it so soon. Neither of us did. He took a month-long sabbatical to come here with me, but beyond that…?” Jeremy trails off. “We just didn’t know how much time you’d need.”

  “You brought him here before the meeting Esteban arranged or after?”

  I ask. Reality is starting to sink in. I’m actually here. I’ve been rescued. I have Jeremy beside me. As it’s starting to sink in, and I’m coming down from the high of finally being safe, I find myself becoming, increasingly anxious. “Jeremy.” I look around the room. “How is this possible? How did you stage all of this? How did you rescue me?”

  He sits on the bed. He pats the spot beside him. But when he tries to put his arm around me, I inadvertently shy away.

  A flicker of surprise, coupled with a tiny frown, mars his face.

  “I’m sorry,” I say quickly. ‘I just—I just don’t want to be touched. Not yet.”

  He nods and gives me space. “I understand. You’ve shown incredible strength, Lilly. I am so angry—and I’m so sorry—that you had to go through what you did. It’s only because of me.”

  “Don’t be angry,” I say. “You couldn’t have—”

  “I could,” he interrupts. “Whatever it is you were going to say, I could have. I let you be taken from right under my nose. You don’t understand how I worried, Lilly. How desperate I became with each passing day. I poured all my resources—literally, everything I had—into finding you. And I could not do it sooner. That is my regret. That I let you suffer, so, so much…” He moves to touch my cheek, then remembering my request, stops himself.

  “I’m sorry,” he finishes in a whisper.

  I bite my lip and take his hand. “You saved me,” I say. “I still can’t believe that this is real. I’m afraid I’ll go to sleep…” I gasp. “The counteragent! Do you have more? Do I need more? You know what they did. They poisoned me. Now I’m ruined, broken…” Despair starts to well up. “…unstable, damaged, insane, just like Paul, just like my father. Only now I know what’s happening. Now I know…”

  “Lilly.” Jeremy cuts in over my hysteria. “Lilly, you are safe. You’re with me. The moment I got you out we administered an injection. It’s a slow-acting ester of the same remission drug found in the counteragent. Except that it has a longer half-life of weeks, not hours. You’ll need the injections for the rest of your life. But we can control it. My brother formulated this ester. It counteracts the effects of the drugs my father gave you in full. Don’t you worry.”

  I stare at him. “That’s…unbelievable,” I mutter. I touch my head. “You mean, I really don’t need to worry about the visions? The illusions? The fantasies?”

  “No,” Jeremy says. “You get the injections, and never again. I’m having a lifetime supply created at this very moment. You will never have to worry about your sanity again.”

  “Thank you,” I breathe. I feel light-headed—almost in shock. “I need to lie down.”

  “Right here, my precious Lilly-Flower,” Jeremy tells me. “Rest.” He pulls me into him, and I let him. I close my eyes and nuzzle against his chest. “Rest now. Those demons will never touch you again.”

  I come to with a gasp. It’s the middle of the night.

  There’s a tightness in my chest, and around my neck. For one frantic moment, I think I’m bound, made prisoner again. I rip the sheets off. Drenched in a cold sweat, I grasp for the collar around my neck.

  My hands find nothing. I dig my nails into empty skin, trying to rip it off, knowing, just knowing that it’s still there.

  “Lilly.” Somebody says my name. A deep, male voice that I think I should find familiar. “Lilly, stop!”

  Hands close over my own. I struggle against them. I keep trying to claw at my neck, to get the collar off, to get, to get—

  “LILLY!”

  Jeremy’s yell makes me jump. I look at him, right there beside me, his strong hands holding my own, the muscles of his bare upper body seeming less real than the certainty that the collar was still on…

  I realize what I was doing. I stop fighting. I sag back against the headboard, exhausted.

  Jeremy loosens his grip. He starts to stroke my fingers in a loving, caressing way. “Tell me what happened,” he implores.

  I shake my head, ashamed and embarrassed. I can’t give voice to my thoughts.

  “You were clawing at yourself. Tearing at your neck.” He touches a spot where my nails have drawn blood. I wince. “Why?”

  “I thought…I thought the collar was still on,” I mutter.

  Jeremy brings my hands to his lips. He kisses my fingers one by one. The softness of the gesture makes me feel doubly embarrassed, doubly ashamed.

  “It’s gone,” Jeremy says firmly. “It’s gone, Lilly. They’ve all been destroyed. There isn’t a single one left in the world that can harm you. I made sure of that.”

  “How?” I whisper.

  “How?” Jeremy chuckles. “Easily. I knew where all of them were.”

  “And…Paul’s?” I wonder.

  “Paul’s is gone too, just as I promised you so long ago.”

  “But…” I’m still reeling, still trying to make sense of everything that’s happened to me lately. “But Esteban. He had one. He put it on me. And on you! How—Esteban, and Hugh, and Rose. What happened to them? You still haven’t told me a thing about the rescue!”

  “Hugh and Rose are now…” Jeremy pauses for the barest flicker of a moment, “…deceased.”

  “What?” I jerk back upright. “No! How?”

  “They took the coward’s way out.” Jeremy shakes his head. “Do you remember the story I told you about my mother, my father, and the gun?”

  “Of course,” I say softly. “I couldn’t forget.”

  “So you know the type of man my father was. The meeting that was arranged, between me and you, was supposed to be his greatest coupe. It was the culmination of everything he’d been scheming. He fo
und an ally in Esteban. You know that. But his real accomplice was Rose.” Jeremy’s grip tightens on my hands. “Fuck me,” he says. “I should have seen it coming. But I got careless, and that nearly cost me you.” He touches my cheek in a tender way. “I have you back, now. Thank God.”

  “Hugh?” I remind him softly.

  “He and Rose both took a cyanide pill when the militia came.”

  “Militia?” I repeat. “What?”

  “It had to be an army, Lilly. It was the only way that allowed me to get you out of there. Mercenaries. What do you remember last? Do you recall the shaking, the shock waves in the air, the explosions?”

  “I—yes, I think I do,” I say. Memories of the final moments before my rescue are blurry. It’s almost as if I viewed them from behind a veil of cloudy liquid.

  “A small scale war was waged that day, Lilly.” Jeremy tells me. “My men against Esteban’s. It was the only way I could get you out. I risked everything. But it was the only way I could be assured that maybe—just maybe—I could get you out of there alive.”

  “What happened to Esteban?” I breathe. “Is he alive or…dead?”

  “Not dead,” Jeremy tells me. “He was captured. He is now being detained as an extremist terrorist. His property has been seized. Everything he had has been seized.”

  “Wow,” I say. “This is still so much to take in.”

  “No shit,” Jeremy mutters.

  I look at him… and start to laugh.

  I laugh because his response is so blunt. I laugh because I still cannot come to grips with the fact that I’ve been rescued. I laugh because it feels good to laugh, goddammit. It feels even better to have the freedom, to have the ability to do so.

  Jeremy looks at me in mock indignation. “Did I say something humorous?” he muses. “This is a gravely serious matter.”

  He pauses…and then he breaks out in the most radiant smile I’ve ever seen.

  I throw my arms around his neck, full of unbridled joy. He holds me tight, clasping me to his body. In that soft, intimate moment, my laughter turns to sobs.

  Jeremy holds me tightly. He strokes my neck, my back. He cups his hand against the back of his head. Even though I hate being reminded that all my hair is gone, I let him. I let him, because he’s letting me dissolve and fall victim to my feelings against him. He does not question me. He just holds me until the tears finally dry up.

  “How do you feel?” he asks at the end.

  I sniffle and wipe at my nose. “Wonderful,” I tell him in earnest. And then I laugh again. “I can’t believe it’s really you. That we—“ I look around the vacant room. “—are really here.”

  “Believe it, Lilly,” he tells me. “Now, go back to sleep. There’s a whole array of tests my brother needs to put you through tomorrow. You need to be fresh for that.”

  The next morning, at breakfast, I ask Jeremy what he meant when he said that he left Stonehart Industries behind.

  “Exactly that,” he responds. “The company still bears my name, and it always will. But it is no longer the vital part of my existence it once was. That honor,” He smiles at me from across the table. “belongs to you.”

  “You’re sweet,” I mutter, smiling back at him. “But I have to know what that means in practice. You’ve lived your whole life for Stonehart Industries…”

  “The first part of my life,” he interrupts. “Actually, no. The second. It was a long second, but now that you are returned to me, it is time for the third and final act.” His eyes bore into me. “You. I want you to marry me.”

  I sputter on the coffee I’m drinking and start to cough. “What?” I demand.

  “I want you to be my wife,” Jeremy says. “I want you to be Mrs. Stonehart. Forever and always, you will be mine. The company does not even need to bear my name if it is transferred to you.”

  “You’re unbelievable,” I mutter.

  He gives me a crooked smile. There’s a devious glimmer in his eye. “Usually I’m good at holding back,” he says. “But something about you compelled me to ruin the surprise. I was going to propose in earnest a few days from now, after you’d had a chance to settle in and come to grips with your—our—new home. I had a spectacular ceremony planned, with music, a live orchestra from Italy, performing just for us in this grand auditorium. You and I were to be the only ones in the seats. At the crescendo, I would come on stage, join the actors, bend down to one knee, take out a ring…” He reaches into his trouser pocket to produce a small black box. “…this ring, in fact, as luck would have it. And I would present it to you in the middle of the stage with the spotlight on me. With the stars shining overhead, I would ask you…” Jeremy stands, walks to my side, and slowly falls to one knee, “—I would ask you, Lilly Ryder, my one and only love, my amore, my heart and soul and my everything, my sweet, precious Lilly-Flower…” He reaches out and takes my hand then brings it to his lips and kisses it. “if you would consider, in the off chance, in the remote possibility, of becoming Lilly Stonehart, my one and only, my love for life, my woman, my wife.”

  He opens the top of the box. My breath is taken away by the most beautiful engagement ring I have ever seen. It’s a large emerald cut diamond set in a thin, platinum band. Simple. Elegant.

  “But,” he winks, snaps the box shut, and suddenly rises and turns away. “Now is probably the wrong time for it all. Isn’t it? You need a proper refractory period to consider committing. I’ve sprung this upon you much too soon.”

  “Jeremy, wait!” I exclaim, grabbing his hand and tugging him back. “You’re actually proposing? To me? Right now?”

  He smiles coyly. “It’s not the spectacle you deserve, or the one I had planned,” he tells me. “But,” he smiles again, a beautiful smile full of warmth and love, “I could not wait. You pressed my hand.”

  “Then yes!” I exclaim, breathless and still in disbelief. “Yes, I’ll marry you, Jeremy! Yes, I’ll be your wife.”

  “You know,” he smiles. “I was hoping you’d say something like that.”

  Then he takes the ring out, slides it on my finger, and kisses me long and hard.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I spend the rest of the day giddy as a teenager consumed by her first crush.

  Dr. Telfair takes me away from Jeremy and runs his diagnostic tests. They pass in a blur. All I can think of is that I’m going to be Mrs. Stonehart. Me! Jeremy’s wife!

  The absolute ludicrousness of the situation has not yet sunk in. Just a week ago I was certain I would never emerge from Hugh’s and Esteban’s grip alive. And now I’m here, in this beautiful estate, surrounded by acres of grapevines, about to become Mrs. Lilly Stonehart? It’s unbelievable.

  In the evening, Jeremy and I dine alone.

  “My brother said you need to walk to get your strength up,” he tells me. “I know a peaceful moonlit path we can take tonight, if you feel you’re ready?”

  I set my fork down and think. I am already starting to feel somewhat run down. But I can’t deny myself the pleasure of spending more time in Jeremy’s—in my future husband’s—company.

  “I would love that,” I tell him.

  We finish eating and head out. Jeremy holds my hand as he leads me away from the estate. The night is warm and wonderful. It seems like the perfect time for new beginnings.

  Once we’re out of range of the house’s many lights, I stop and turn him toward me. “Jeremy,” I say. “Let’s make love.”

  A fire flashes in his eyes. It makes my heart positively dance with excitement.

  But then it passes. He looks at me in earnest, all playfulness gone, completely serious now. “My brother told us we have to wait at least…”

  “Fuck waiting!” I break in. “When have you ever waited before, Jeremy? Make love to me. I want you to! I want to feel you deep inside of me. Make love to me under the stars, in the full beauty of the night, so we can christen the day I said ‘yes’!”

  Jeremy smiles fondly. He steps into me. Already, I feel him
getting hard. “Well,” he growls, “when you put it that way…”

  I’m swept off my feet as his mouth crashes into mine. He consumes me with a heated, passionate kiss. My hands run over his shoulders, his arms, and his back. I dig my nails in through his shirt. It makes him groan and step into me. His erection presses against my midriff. I want him inside me. Passion is burning hot in my body.

  Suddenly, without warning, he breaks away. He looks down at me and cups my face. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I got carried away. You—you do that to me.” He chuckles, and runs a hand through his hair. “Shit, Lilly! I know you need me to be gentle. But if we start, I’m not sure I can hold back.” His voice becomes raspy. Raw. Strained and full of need. “We’ve…been apart…” He suppresses a deep growl in his throat. “…for so very long.”

  “Don’t be gentle,” I tell him. I grab his hands. “I want you, Jeremy. I need you. I’m starved for you. I want all of you, unrestricted, full of passion. It’s all I’ve ever known you to be. And it’s…” I look at him through love-struck eyes. “…it’s what I crave, to wipe away all that I’ve endured.”

  Then his mouth seals mine again. The next thing I know, we’re on the ground. I tug at his shirt, my hands fumbling to get it off. He rises up and helps me. His body looks glorious in the moonlight. My greedy hands rush to his belt. I unbuckle him and pull his pants down. There is his erection, full and hard and prominent. Everything I’ve ever known it to be.

  I bite my lip.

  Jeremy positions himself between my legs. “I’m going to be gentle at first,” he tells me. He leans down and kisses my jaw, then my forehead. “I’ll let you be in control. You tell me how fast I can go. It’s you, Lilly, you and your word. You and your comfort are most important to me right now. If you tell me to stop, I will. If you tell me you’re not ready…”

  “Jeremy.” I cut him off mercilessly, just like he’s done so many times to me. “Shut up and fuck me.”