Page 26 of Be My Traitor

Frowning, I went round to his side of the car as he lifted Amber out and set her down on the ground. She ran towards the house. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t buy this property,” Lucas told me. “Solomon gave it to me. When he died, Ivy inherited the bulk of his fortune, but there were a few little secrets she didn’t know about. Before he died, Solomon had told me he wanted me to have a little bolthole where I could keep an eye on Ivy without her knowing if our marriage ran in trouble. Very few people know this place even exists. I don’t keep any staff here – the drivers collect me from the flat I have in town which is the address I use for official correspondence. This is where I come when I want some privacy. It’s perfect for my time with Amber. No one knows she’s here, so she’s perfectly safe, but obviously, as her mother, you need to know where she is when I have her. I’d just ask that you respect my privacy and don’t tell anyone about this place, for Amber’s safety if nothing else.”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” I promised. “But you don’t need to worry about Amber. No one would dare do anything to the daughter of the Knight heir.”

“She might be an important member of the Knight family, but she’s also a Donatello,” Lucas pointed out. “There are plenty of people out there who hated Penelope and think I shared her values – or rather, her lack of them. I was brought up to be paranoid about kidnappers and it was drummed into me that I should never trust anyone, even family friends. I had a code word I had to give the driver and it changed every day. Penelope would text it to me just before the driver picked me up so there was no chance that someone could find it out and trick me into going with them by knowing the word. Even with all these safeguards in place, I was very nearly snatched one time.”

“Seriously?” I gasped.

“Yep.” Lucas nodded grimly. “It was when I was 15. Penelope had sent me to a boarding school for a term because she thought it was important for me to mix with my peers. I always thought the real reason she sent me away was because she was fed up with being a mother and wanted a break from dealing with a teenager. Whatever the reason, that term was one of the happiest times of my life. Although I was bullied by some of the other kids, it was nothing compared to the way Penelope had treated me and I wanted to stay there until I was too old for school.

“However, one night I was woken up by a strange sound. I had a private room, so I was all by myself and I woke up to find two men standing over my bed. I cried out and one of them put a cloth over my mouth to stifle my shouts. I wasn’t going to let them take me easily, so I started kicking and lashing out. Years of using my fists to make a point came in handy and I punched one of them right in the groin. He doubled over in pain and I was able to hit the panic button by my bed. An alarm sounded and the two men realised they were going to have to leave without their prize. They ran away and although the guards searched the grounds, there was no sign of them. Penelope pulled me straight out of the school of course. She said she should have known she couldn’t trust anyone else to take care of me properly.”

“That’s awful.” I couldn’t help but feel for Lucas. The more I learned about his childhood, the more it made sense that he’d run out on me after our night together and it explained why he wanted to take things slow. Anyone who’d been through what he had would have commitment issues. It was going to take time for him to see he could trust me and I decided that I was going to give him that time.

Lucas shrugged. “To be honest, with all the crazy things I went through while I was living with Penelope it was pretty much normal for me. But there’s no way I’m going to let my child suffer the way I did. If it means I have to be a little paranoid and hide her away from my enemies when she’s with me, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe.”

“Hurry up, Daddee!” Amber stood by the front door, jogging from one foot to the other as she waited for us to catch up with her. “I want to see my bedroom!”

“All right, munchkin.” Lucas laughed as he swooped down on her, picking her up and swinging her high before setting her back down on the ground. He unlocked the front door and pushed it open. Bowing low, he gestured to Amber to go inside. “After you, milady.”

Amber skipped into the house and I followed close behind, just as curious as my daughter to see what Lucas’s house was like inside.

The front door opened into a short corridor with doors to the left and right of us which appeared to lead to a lounge and a dining room. After a couple of metres, it opened out into a larger reception room, with stairs to the right leading up to the first floor. There were more doors off this part of the room, but they were shut so I couldn’t see what was behind them.

“Your room’s on the first floor,” Lucas told Amber. “It’s right next door to mine.”

“Can I see it?”

“Of course!”

Lucas took Amber’s hand and the two of them went upstairs. I stayed where I was, wanting to look around a little more. Lucas’s tastes were more conventional than I’d have expected. There were landscape paintings hung on the walls and a closer look at one confirmed my suspicions: it was an original Constable. It was the kind of place that looked understated in that way that only someone with a large amount of money could pull off, with expensive antiques and solid oak furniture.

“Mummy! Come and see my room!” Amber’s voice echoed down the stairs.

“Coming!”

I walked slowly up the stairs, not sue I wanted to see how much effort Lucas had gone to to win my daughter’s affections. For all his talk of wanting her to lead a normal life and not be spoiled, it was pretty clear he was willing to spend money on creating a beautiful home and he knew that the best way to a little girl’s heart was to treat her like a princess.

Amber was waiting for me in the hallway outside her room. It was very clear it belonged to her because her name was spelled out on it in brightly coloured, wooden letters. She was grinning from ear to ear, clearly delighted with whatever was inside.

“You have to see this, Mummy!” She ran over and took my hand, pulling me along and into her room.

“Wow.” I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw what Lucas had done. I knew he was going to do something special, but I really wasn’t expectingthis.

The room was large, larger than my own bedroom, and the walls were painted with a mural that made it look like we were in the middle of a fairy tale kingdom. There was a large four poster bed in the middle of the room with layer upon layer of netting draped over the frame to create the perfect little hiding place for a small child. There was a rocking horse to one side of the room and on the other was a huge mound of soft toys, including another large teddy bear like the one currently occupying half of Amber’s bed at home.

“Isn’t it amazing?” Amber ran over to the bed and climbed up on it, jumping about like it was a trampoline.

“Don’t jump on the bed, Amber,” I warned.

“It’s okay,” Lucas said. “Let her have some fun.”

“Can I have a word?” I gestured to Lucas for him to follow me into the hallway.

“What do you think?” he asked, clearly seeking my approval.

“I think you’ve gone way overboard,” I said, his face falling at my words. “It’s too much, Lucas. You were the one saying that you didn’t want her traveling in limos because you wanted Amber to have a normal childhood and then you go and spend goodness knows how much money hiring an artist to paint that mural.”

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