Page 3 of Enchant Me

Evelyn had squeezed Frank’s hand, then cleared her throat. As a rule, Evelyn’s as strong and outspoken as anyone I’ve ever met. That’s what’s made her such a powerhouse in Hollywood for all these years. Right then, though, she’d looked uncharacteristically nervous. “Oh, hell, Damien,” she finally said. “Don’t you get it? I want to be family—officially—before your wedding.”

She lifted her left hand that had been hidden in the folds of her dress. “Been meaning to find a way to tell you two,” she began, as I started to squeal with glee. “We’re getting married. And if it doesn’t inconvenience you, we’d love to be your dry run.”

Now, Damien shifts Bradley in his arms, the motion pulling me from the memory. “They’re already family,” he says, making clear that his thoughts had tracked my own. “Both of them. But I like the idea of it being official before our ceremony.”

“Me, too,” I agree, understanding what he has left unspoken. That both of us are the product of deficient parenting. Damien, with his snake of a father and a mother who passed away far too young. Me with an abusive, controlling mother and a father who walked when I was too young to understand and old enough to be hurt.

Neither my mother nor Jeremiah Stark have redeemed themselves. But Frank sought me out and worked slowly and deliberately to not only make up for his past mistakes, but to prove that he truly loves me and my family and wants to be part of our lives. Not for financial gain or the spillover from the spotlight that seems to constantly follow my husband. But simply because we are family.

Family. That’s the core of the pride I see coming off of Damien. This corporate warrior and master of the universe. For years he built his empire in a vacuum, without any purpose other than an innate need to conquer his past and build a tangible future. Now, he’s still as competitive and innovative and commanding as before, but the core of it is different. Now, his goal is a legacy for our children. Comfort for our family and friends. And the fact that we have the kind of home that Frank and Evelyn—two of the most important people in our lives—want to share on their most special day is both magical and humbling.

I’ve been looking out over the workers who have finished with the chairs and arch. Now I turn toward Damien to find him looking at me, his expression so full of joy that I feel almost weightless.

“Hard to believe that—” he begins, only to be interrupted by the chime of his phone. “Sorry,” he says, passing Bradley to me. “I’ll turn it off closer to the wedding, but until I hear back about this meeting, I—”

“I get it,” I assure him. Damien seeks out new talent the way my best friend Jamie used to stalk cute guys. I don’t know who he’s courting specifically, but I do know that his potential conquest is a genius in the area of applied physics and mechanical engineering.

I bounce Bradley, turning to show him the ocean and the tennis court and whisper that he’s going to take a short nap before the craziness of the ceremony and reception.

That’s when I hear Damien’s sharp curse.

I turn, wondering what could possibly have upset him.

“Damien?” He looks up, and the haunted look in his eye scares me so much I actually take a step backward. “Damien,” I repeat. “What—”

“I got them, too,” Evelyn says, and I glance over Damien’s shoulder to see her standing in the doorway, our part-time nanny, Bree, standing right behind her. “Bree, can you take Bradley?” Evelyn continues.

“Of course.” Bree shoots me a look of confused concern, then comes to get Bradley from me. “Lara and Anne are already in the playroom.”

I nod, grateful the kids are downstairs. I don’t understand what’s going on, but I am absolutely certain I don’t want the children around when I find out.

As Bree heads out with our son, I look between Evelyn and my husband, expecting Damien to speak first.

He doesn’t, though, and it’s Evelyn who meets my eyes. “It’s the Richter photos,” she says, her flatly professional voice belying the horror of those vile images that stand as witness to the abuse Damien suffered. “Apparently there are more, and someone’s threatening to release them.”

2

My stomach twists with both disgust and confusion, and I reach out to take Damien’s hand, only to find his cold and clammy. “I don’t understand,” I say. “Damien released the Richter photos to the press himself. And they were—”

I cut myself off, then swallow. “I mean, how much worse could a few more be? This is a storm we already weathered, right? Damien won. He had the press and the public’s sympathy and they haven’t mentioned the abuse or the photos in ages.”

Damien burst onto the sports scene as a tennis prodigy when he was nine years old, and he won the Junior Grand Slam at fifteen. After that, his career only got better. From the outside, it looked like he had it made, but what the world didn’t know was that his former tennis coach, Merle Richter, had abused Damien for years, even going so far as to force Damien to do horrible things with Sofia, Richter’s daughter, who was even younger than Damien. To make it worse, he’d photographed those vile moments, keeping the pictures and videos as his own sick souvenirs.

After Richter’s death, the pictures disappeared, only to resurface again years later, most recently as a threat—either I walked away from Damien, or the pictures would be made public. It almost worked, too, until Damien had turned the tables and faced the press, standing strong against the horror of his past so that we could move forward together into our future.

The photos were vile. Horrible evidence of the torture through which Richter had put two innocent children, one his own daughter and the other a star athlete that Richter had been hired to mold. And if that weren’t bad enough, Damien confided to me that his own father had known perfectly well what was going on, and he’d never stepped in. Not and risk stifling the cashflow coming in from Damien’s wins and endorsements.

I try to lick my lips, but my mouth is too dry. I’ve been parched by my fear. No one has answered my question, and I still don’t know what these new images show. All I know is that they are bad enough to have knocked the wind out of my husband, and that tells me plenty.

“Damien,” I whisper, but he simply shakes his head, his hand clutching so tightly to mine that I fear he’ll crush bones. His face is a mask of pain and regret. And of failure, too, as if all the progress we’ve made in the years since he went public with those pictures has been completely erased.

“Who sent them?” I ask stupidly, because of course it’s going to be anonymous. “And what are they?”

Evelyn starts to speak, but Damien holds up his free hand. “You know what? It doesn’t matter.” He releases some of the pressure on my hand, his attention on Evelyn. “This is nothing. Not even a blip on the radar. Not today, anyway. This is your day, and you need to enjoy it. Don’t you have a whole hair and makeup thing to do? Isn’t Nikki helping you get dressed?”

He’s right about all of that. Carina, who does hair and make-up for Jamie’s publicity photos, is due here any minute. And Evelyn’s dress is hanging in the guest bedroom, just waiting for me to help her put it on.

“It’s okay,” Damien adds to me, and even though I can see the tension in his body and hear it in his voice, I don’t argue. “Frank’s probably here by now. I should go check on him.”