Chapter Eight
Adjusting his review mirror, Zach watched Kendall's car quickly dart through the opening he'd so precipitately cleared, thanks to his directing Frank, his deputy security chief, to patrol the grounds and alert him of Kendall's approach. While the hapless and outraged reporters tried to regroup, he executed a swift three-point turn, following the BMW down the driveway before the gate came down inches from the rear of his Range Rover. Sliding it smoothly into the parking space beside Kendall's, Zach was out of the driver's seat before Kendall even turned her engine off. As he approached her side of the car, he saw why it was still running: Kendall sat there staring straight ahead, evidently in a daze.
Even surrounded by the armor of her car, she looked so shell-shocked he momentarily wondered, with a genuine concern he ordinarily denied Kendall, Is she all right? But the moment didn't allow for leisurely dissecting—had anything more alarming than her encountering the press occurred, something he needed to know immediately?
Zach tried yanking her door open, but it was locked. Then he also saw, to his initial great pleasure, that Miranda was in the back seat, excitedly gesturing toward him. Zach's heart performed its familiar cartwheel, but he forced himself to ignore it and return his gaze to Kendall, upon whom it now focused. What the devil is she doing carting Miranda around as part of her sideshow? Zach banged on the driver's side window.
Whatever mental glitch had short-circuited Kendall's normal reflexes finally seemed to self-correct. "I hear you—don't break the window!" she called, throwing open her door so vigorously that Zach perceived it was meant as an extension of her knee. So when he was nonplussed when she said almost confusedly, "My hand slipped. I—I didn't mean to clobber you."
Narrowed hazel eyes bore disbelievingly into wide blue ones. "No? Since when?" Zach asked skeptically.
"Well…since you rescued me from that pack of reporters." Kendall still seemed confused. "I never expected you to do anything like that."
Rescue you? Zach wanted to mock her. The hell I rescued you. I was merely performing media damage control. Although if you prefer to think otherwise, far be it from me to enlighten you. Not because doing so would erase that foreign grateful expression from her face, he assured himself, but because it would tip his hand and besides, her misconception could be more useful to him if he played along—especially with Miranda as part of the reward for good behavior.
Noncommittally, Zach stated, "Kendall, I'm sure we're agreed that the press are vultures. Regardless of your and my opinions of each other, I don't particularly care to have them take advantage of you." Then he sweetened the statement with the faintest expression of a sympathetic smile.
Again, Kendall seemed flustered. "I wouldn't have wanted to end up on the front page of any newspaper looking like this, and not with Miranda—oh, Miranda!" Anxiously, Kendall released the door to the back seat and freed the impatient Miranda from her restraints, gathering her into her arms.
"She seems fine," Zach commented, thinking, no thanks to you, and stifling the urge to take one of the baby's flailing hands in his and encourage her tiny fingers to curl around one of his long ones. "Is there some reason you didn't leave her at Myrtle's?"
Kendall's face slowly shuttered. "Is there some reason I should have?" she asked haughtily.
"Miranda wouldn't have run the risk of being exposed to the media if you hadn't removed her from Myrtle's," he pointed out in a futile attempt at a reasonable tone. And with that, he realized he had tipped his hand.
"Boy, for a minute there you had me going there, Zach," Kendall replied. "I mean, I admit was kind of thrown off by those reporters and I was really stunned you of all people tried to help me, but now you're showing your true colors. True, Miranda wouldn't be exposed to the media at Myrtle's, but she'd have been exposed to you, and that's why I quote unquote removed her. Now if you'll excuse us, I have to get the rest of our things out of the car."
"Wait."
"What?"
Zach paused. The power struggle came so naturally to them that it had actually slipped his mind they were still in the parking area, with Kendall holding on to Miranda out in the open. The private gate at one end of their complex and the guarded entrance at the other, plus the perimeter fence around the whole, afforded some physical protection, but anyone with a telephoto lens—Zach could see photographs of them being splashed across the front page of The Intruder, and he didn't want her to blame that on him, too. "No, never mind. Go ahead. I'll follow behind and make sure no one accosts you and Miranda, for the second time today," he reminded her with technical if not moral accuracy.
"Kendall? Kendall!" Greenlee was waving both arms and jumping up and down on the other side of the parking gate opposite them. "What are you, deaf, or is Zach really so much more fascinating than you ever let on? Come on, let me in—I've been looking all over for you! Please say the magic words and do the open sesame before these reporters devour me!"
"Get going. I'll let Greenlee in," Zach said, reaching into Kendall's car and grabbing the key card she'd left on the dashboard before she could protest. Sorely as he would have liked to take off, leaving Kendall standing there awkwardly juggling the baby on her unaccustomed hip and Greenlee screeching, he couldn't do it because it was Miranda whom Kendall was clasping like a talisman. And he didn't really have anything against Greenlee Lavery.
"But our things are in the car—"
"We'll get them. We'll argue all you want later. Just get Miranda out of here."
Finally she obeyed, and Zach went to rescue Greenlee. Since less time was required to reach over the closed gate, place his hands around Greenlee's waist, lift her petite form up and over the fence and then set her back down on his side than waiting for the gate to open mechanically, that was exactly what Zach did.
"Thanks!" was her unperturbed reply. "Maybe you can carry me out the same way too. It beats walking."
"My pleasure. But why are you here? Have you heard anything?" Zach couldn't keep the anxiety from his voice.
"No…no, Zach, I haven't heard anything, but—but Ryan's at the station and he'll call me on my cell as soon as anything comes in, if it does, so I just went to Fusion just now to try to keep my mind occupied since we have this big new campaign starting and I thought it might help, but Kendall wasn't there and nobody had heard from her and so I got worried about her," Greenlee finished without inhaling.
"More worried for her than yourself?" Zach asked interestedly, retrieving Miranda's diaper bag and whatever else was loose in Kendall's BMW, before locking it.
"Well…yeah." Greenlee looked thoughtful. "I mean I know she's very upset about Erica and Bianca and…and everybody, and I—I am too, but…but you should have heard her trashing y…." Her voice trailed off.
"Trashing me, Greenlee?" he probed.
"It wasn't pretty."
"I've already heard it. First she said it to my face and she said it to Derek in front of my face."
"That sounds like Kendall. God, I hate it when she gets like this."
"Why do you care what she says about me?"
"I'm not sure. I guess I don't think you're that bad. Maybe because David Hayward was my brother-in-law and my first mother-in-law was a drug lord. I guess that has a way of putting things into perspective. And I don't like…I don't like Ethan. Sorry, I know he's your son and all that, but I'm just being honest. I know Ethan doesn't like you, so that's another argument in your favor. I guess that's another reason I don't think you're that bad."
"I'm flattered."
Greenlee seemed to take Zach literally. "Oh, don't be. I always say what I think. That's one of the things Ryan loves about me."
By now they'd arrived in the courtyard between Zach's condo and Kendall's. Kendall opened her door warmly to Greenlee and scowled at Zach standing beside her, even though Miranda's diaper bag, her own overnight bag, and two sacks of baby supplies she'd taken from Myrtle's hung from his arms and hands.
"Oh, let him in, Kendall. His hands are full, he can't do anything to you, and if he tries, I'll protect you," Greenlee said in her breezy way, motioning Zach to follow her in, which he did, returning Kendall's scowl in full measure.
"Where you like these to go, Kendall?" he asked with studied politeness.
"I don't want you coming in, Zach. Leave them right there by the door and then take a hike."
"Really, Kendall, the man just did you a favor by carrying in your stuff."
"Stay out of this, Greenlee—it's none of your business," Kendall informed Greenlee curtly..
The bags and sacks were delivered to the floor with a light touch that Kendall owed thanks to both Greenlee and Miranda for. Otherwise they'd have been dropped from the considerable height of his waist regardless of the damage. "I'd like to see my niece before I go…and make sure she's all right," Zach said tightly.
"Miranda's in the bedroom, and she's perfect. I'll take a photo and mail it to you. Thank you for bringing in our things and now I'd appreciate not having to ask you to leave again."
Zach's face assumed its darkest, most thunderous mien, and his deep voice its lowest register, the one that made his employees pray for a quick death and his suppliers bandage their blistered ears and replace their melted phone receivers. But his anger was more self-directed than directed at Kendall, who was only being true to form. He must have taken leave of his wits earlier to ever imagine that she possessed even one iota of vulnerability, or that she was the slightest bit capable of showing or expressing gratitude.
"I'll leave the premises, but don't declare victory yet, Kendall. You don't have even temporary custody of Miranda. I stand in the same relation to her that you do."
"Oh, I'm scared. Miranda hardly knows you, Zach, and if you're talking about her father being equal to her mother, let's not go there."
"Touché," Zach conceded reluctantly. "But Bianca granted me access to Miranda. You have no legal standing to override that decision."
"That's because Bianca is just like Myrtle. A pushover for a husky voice and those big puppy-dog eyes you're so good at making—"
"Really?" Zach seemed to grow a foot taller and proportionately more menacing. "I didn't think you'd noticed."
"Greenlee, why did you have to let him help you?"
"Help me? Kendall, Zach was helping you."
"No problem, ladies. I'm gone. Just remember what I said, Kendall. We're not finished."