Lost In Mr. Parks (Park #3)

  Lost in Mr. Parks

  The Park Series, Book Three

  By Lilly James

  Lost in Mr. Parks

  Copyright © 2015 by Lilly James.

  All rights reserved.

  First Print Edition: March 2016

  Limitless Publishing, LLC

  Kailua, HI 96734

  www.limitlesspublishing.com

  Formatting: Limitless Publishing

  ISBN-13: 978-1-68058-520-9

  ISBN-10: 1-68058-520-7

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  For my mum and sister, two of the strongest women I know. You both inspire me to be better than the person I was yesterday. I love you both to the moon and back.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter One

  Wade

  I shove my cell phone back into my pocket and walk through the revolving doors at my hotel. I’d done something I hate doing. I called Nia. Asked for her help. A man like me asking for help made me look fucking weak. Vulnerable. I’m neither of those things. The one and only reason I called her was because I despise myself for hurting my princess. My reason to fucking live in this world. Before her my life was one big repetition. Business and pleasure. Business because I have the drive to succeed in life by myself. To say I have built up my empire without the help of my fucking father. And pleasure. Ha. The women I fucked in the past were all whores with damaged backgrounds. Whores I didn’t give a fuck about. I’d treated them as if they were worthless.

  Who the fuck do I think I am?

  “Mr. Parks?”

  I turn my eyes to a blonde as she stands from her chair behind the reception desk. She straightens out her skirt, then offers me her hand.

  “Katie. I just started here.”

  I accept her hand and shake it politely, but she must have noticed my frown. She pulls her hand away, and her cheeks glow red. The usual signs of a woman who is flustered in my company. Or should I say by the thought of herself riding my dick.

  “You’re telling me because…?” My question makes me look like a conceited prick. Maybe I want it to.

  “Oh.” Her eyelashes flutter. My comment clearly hurt. “I was told to introduce myself when I got a chance to meet you.”

  My cell phone buzzes from my inside pocket, taking my focus elsewhere. I reach in and press the Off button when I see it is my Mother calling, again, then glance back to the woman.

  “Well, now you that have, get back to work.”

  I make my way up to my suite, and when the elevator doors open on my floor, I find Nia already waiting outside the door to my penthouse. I never noticed it until Evelyn had pointed it out, but fuck does this woman loves purple.

  “Nia. Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

  Her eyes narrow behind her quirky glasses as I shake her hand. “I’m not seeing Evey. Correct?”

  My jaw clicks in response to Evelyn’s name. “Correct.” It’s damn hard for me to admit she’s here for my sake.

  She nods after reading my expression, then moves aside. “Lead the way.”

  I push my key card into the card reader, open the door, and stand aside, allowing Nia to walk ahead. I hold my hand out, gesturing for her to take a seat at the dining table.

  “Can I get you anything?” I ask to be polite.

  “No.” She declines on a short smile, then nods to the chair opposite her. “Just sit down.”

  I shove my suit jacket off my shoulders, hang it over the chair, and slip onto the seat. Nia goes straight ahead and fires out her first question. A question she already knows the answer to because she’s picked up on my changed attitude. Apart from that, I look like fucking shit. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I can’t concentrate.

  “You and Evey are not together?”

  I glance away, avoiding eye contact. What was I, a fucking kid? “We’re on a break.”

  Her brow rose. Was she that surprised? “A break? So soon?”

  I clear my throat and adjust my tie, something to try and make her think I’m apathetic about the whole thing. Although inside I am anything but. I’m unfulfilled. Consumed and burned out. The best part of me isn’t with me anymore and all because I’m not efficient enough to be with her. She deserves so much better than what I can I give her. Of course she does.

  “I think it’s for the best. For now.” Like fuck. Not hurting the woman I love is what’s for the best. But hurting her was inevitable.

  “And why is that?” Nia should already know the answer to that.

  “Because every time I pull her in, I fuck it up. When Evelyn gets too close, I get fucking afraid. I’m afraid of hurting her.” I ball my fists. “I did hurt her.” I glance back at Nia just in time to catch her frown that is both curious and concerned.

  “How?”

  I couldn’t tell her how. The information was too personal. Only myself and Evelyn know what goes on in our sex life. “Doesn’t matter how.”

  Nia shifts in her seat, then clasps her hands on the table. Seems she is starting to become serious. “Did you do to Evey what you used to do to other women?” Nia knows about that part of my life because I occasionally talked to her when I was going through that hard time. I’d wasted the younger years of my life, and I want to forget about them indefinitely.

  “Not as bad.” I look away again. “I would never put Evelyn through any of that.”

  “You love her?” she questions on a smile.

  I inhale a deep breath. “I don’t love anyone as much as I love her. I love her with every bone in my body.” My answer fires out quick and certain. “My life has become all about Evelyn, and, that’s the way I want it to stay. I want to control her, but not in the way I used to control other women. I want her to be mine. But I need to know I deserve her love. Right now, I don’t.”

  I look away again, and Nia realises the reason I’d imposed this break on Evelyn.

  “You were clutching at Evey and so set on helping her with her problems that you’ve hidden your own. Now they have, I presume, come out, you don’t know how to deal with that?”

  All I could do was nod. I hate talking about my problems, my past. I am personal and private. However, Nia is waiting for me to add more. “I wanted to get Evelyn the best help, not just to mask my own problems, but because I’m so fucking in love with her that my goal in life has become making her happy.”

 
“And you’ve done a great job,” she generously offers. “But you’ve forgot about yourself in the process.”

  “Really? I’ve done a good job?” I glance around the hotel room, a room filled with expensive, meaningless shit. “She’s not here. She can’t be with me because I need to work out my shit alone. How is any of this good?”

  “You’re right, Wade, you need to sort your issues out separately. Trying to sort them out together could be dangerous for both of you. It’s an extremely selfless thing to do.”

  I scoff. “It doesn’t seem that way to me. I had her dragged out of my apartment by security. She wouldn’t leave, and I knew if I took her in my arms I wouldn’t be able to let her go.” I bow my head. “I lost control.” After a shameful pause, I look back up. “With everything I do in my life, my thoughts are mine. Control is mine. Just the way I like it. But when I’m around Evelyn, I can’t think straight, and I’m trying to figure out if that’s a good or bad thing.”

  Nia got it. She understands the way I work, but she can explain it a shitload better than I can. “Your damage is hidden under the shield of your persona, Wade. On the outside, you’re this big, wealthy business mogul who has it all because that’s what you feel you need to be. That’s what you have to be. You work so hard to show people how you feel on the outside that you forget how you really feel on the inside. You’re empty. Hurting. Angry.”

  She was right. I always have to be on my game, show the world what I’m capable of. Although that wasn’t my priority right now. “My temper is what I fear the most. What if I hurt Evelyn?”

  Nia shakes her head strongly. “I know you choose broken women to exert your power over, but I believe you would never hurt one. You choose these women so you can focus on their damage—and hide yours. That’s understandable. Odd, but understandable.”

  “That still doesn’t excuse my behaviour.”

  “What you did with women was consensual,” Nia pushes.

  Although she has a point, as usual, my shoulder gives off an aloof shrug. “Still doesn’t make it right. I wanted to control them, manipulate them, and that’s what he did to me and my family. How does that make me better than him?”

  “You are trying to understand your father’s actions, and the more you don’t understand them, the more you push to understand.” Nia sighs. “Wade, you will never understand your father because you are not him. You behaved the way you did because you’re hurting inside. Not because that is who you are, because it’s not.”

  I could never decide if Nia says the things she says because she means them or to make me believe them. I never do, though. “Discipline and punishment are tightly bound up in me. What the fuck gives me the right to discipline Evelyn when she’s done wrong?”

  Nia sits up straight, crosses her arms, and shoots into business mode, cutting the nice-as-pie bullshit. “This is where I will help you. Tell me what you want me to do.”

  I also go into business mode, serious and willing to accept and take in every ounce of advice. Fuck, I’d never listened to anyone before; however, I need me and Evelyn to work. “I want you to help me so I can get her back. I know I can get her back if I call her, but I want her back knowing I’m what she needs. Right now I can’t be what she needs, and I want to be her everything.”

  Nia flashes a look of adoration. “You already are her everything. What you need to do is see that, and I can help you.”

  Chapter Two

  Evey

  I got distracted by another knock on my bedroom door. It was Steph. Again. I continued staring mindlessly at the TV when she called through the crack of the door.

  “Evey. The room has been filled with bunches of four-foot roses.”

  “Three hundred of them,” Mathew shouted from behind her.

  I shrugged. “Burn them.”

  “Burn them?” Steph gasped. “If you don’t want them, I’ll keep them. Seeing as Mathew never buys me flowers,” she moaned.

  “Flowers die.” Mathew yawned.

  The flowers were another romantic gesture from Parks that I refused to accept. It had been four weeks since he told me to leave him, told me I wasn’t safe around him and got a security guard to manhandle me out of his apartment. The image of his control slipping away from him still haunted me. He was standing stark naked and furious in front of the guy like it was nothing. But it was. It was everything. Parks was private, self-contained, and well-disciplined. There was no way in hell he would have exposed himself like that if he was thinking straight.

  That was just it. He wasn’t thinking straight. He had blurted out that his father, Clinton, had abused him, his twin sister, and his mother. Physically and mentally. Parks had warned me to stay away from Clinton, but just like the glutton for punishment I am, I invited Clinton round for dinner and utterly disregarded Parks’s wishes. In all fairness, I had no idea of Parks’s past with his father at the time; I just wanted to make things right between them. What I’d done, though, was make things worse.

  Parks then punished me with a cane because I pushed him into it. I could see he hated himself for it, but I found out that discipline was exactly how he released his anger. His inner demons. He told me that he used to punish women. Subdue them. It’s what his father did to him, so he wanted to try and understand it, but I didn’t understand it. Why would he do to women what his father did to him and his family?

  He told me to stay away whilst he got his shit together, but how could I stay away from something I was completely and utterly addicted to? I’ve called him, but he never answered. What he did do was send me gift after gift. Each with a poem expressing his love. Words was what I wanted from him. And all the poems he sent me did that for me and so much more. But that’s all I was getting. I wasn’t getting him. And I needed him. The first week he sent me the keys to his Kensington apartment with a cream piece of parchment attached, which said:

  Princess, home is not home without you. Please accept the keys and live at our apartment without me. Love W x.

  I crumpled up the paper and threw the key into the bottom of my bag. No way was I going to live there without him. On the third day he realised I wasn’t going to take him up on the offer, so he had someone send over most of my clothes from the walk-in wardrobe in his apartment. The designer clothes filled the living room, so I told the delivery guys to send them all back to Parks.

  The fifth day he sent my jewellery box with the necklace and ruby inside. He even had the ruby engraved with ‘Love W x.’ I couldn’t stop looking at the jewellery that meant so much to me. And the song he had personalised for me—my grandmother’s lullaby—was heartbreaking. I kept the jewellery box open at night until I fell asleep.

  The sixth day he had a watch sent over. A beautiful white-gold Chanel watch engraved with ‘Evelyn’ inside the face. By then I was sick of the presents. I called him over and over, pressed Redial over and over, but he never answered. Four weeks in and he was still sending me gifts, flowers, chocolates. He wanted me to know he was still thinking of me, but I would rather he tell me he was thinking of me.

  I picked up my phone, found his name, and called him again. Just as it had for the last four weeks, it went straight to voice mail, so I left him a message.

  “I do not need any more romantic gestures, Parks. I don’t need flowers. I don’t need chocolates. I don’t need bracelets or keys or fucking watches. I just need you!” I raged down the phone for twenty minutes. Telling him I loved him, I needed him. Then it turned to I hate you. He was the biggest arsehole alive, and I never wanted to see him again.

  “Evey, every single one of those roses has more poems attached.” Steph went on after I hung up, standing in the threshold of my bedroom doorway, trying for a second time to get me to go and take a look. She was rubbing her stomach, something she had been doing after finding out she was five months pregnant. She was so dramatic. We found out dates and worked out the baby was Mathew’s. They got back together and were more loved up than ever. I couldn’t keep up with Steph’s
love life. Only God knows where Julian had disappeared to.

  I groaned and pushed myself off my bed. Walking into the living room, I got hit by the sight of hundreds and hundreds of white roses. The gorgeous smell and sight had my head in a spin and made my heart stop, until Mathew began reading one of the poems out loud.

  “I live knowing you have presence on this earth. But just know that I miss your lips, your face, your sweetness…” Mathew paused. “What’s a sweetness?”

  “Right!” I bounded over to him and ripped the tag from his hands. “Get them all out of here.” I started pulling the flowers from the vases, throwing them all over the place. My temper was snappy and irritable on the best of days, and since Parks left me, again, I couldn’t shift the mood. I was livid, upset, and depressed.

  Steph took me by the shoulders to calm me down. “It’s okay. I’ll get rid of them. I’m sure I can make use for them somewhere.”

  My body sagged, and I rested my head on her hand. “Thank you.”

  “You got admit, though—” she smiled, “—it’s kind of cute.”

  I pushed off her hand and shoved my feet into my shoes that I spotted in the room. “It’s not cute. He’s a moron. I’m going out.”

  “Evey—” Steph pulled me back by my sleeve, and when I turned I was met by concern.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going to the pub,” I mumbled under my breath and threw my sleeve from her grip.

  Since I’d moved back to Steph’s, she’d been monitoring my behaviour. Wondering if I was going to have a drink or if I was going to fall off the wagon again. She asked what Parks had done to me, and to stop her slagging him off, I told her it was my choice to leave. Told her that he was too much for me and I needed time alone.