The Chase and the Catch

Chapter 1-3

John did everything in his power to hide his reaction to the house. He’d anticipated big. He thought he’d been prepared for the wealth. But seeing it close up was more overwhelming than expected. Stairs on both sides of the circled flagstone driveway led up to the front entrance of a massive grey brick villa-styled home that John estimated somewhere around thirty-thousand square feet, if the building wasn’t deeper than it looked. Six pillars graced the tiled front porch, holding up a balcony that jutted out from the second level. The balcony was protected by a traditional poured concrete railing, a feature that also ran the entire length of the roofline over the third level. Tall arched windows reflected fading sunlight, long decorative grasses swayed with evening breezes, and the setting was so quiet, it felt oppressive.

He waved away the driver when the man went to pull his luggage out of the trunk, just as he’d waved the man away at the airport. “I’m no celebrity,” John had said. “I’m just here to do a job like everybody else.” Besides, he could move two suitcases. The damn things came with wheels, after all.

The driver didn’t follow John up the stairs to the double doors of the entrance but spoke softly into the Bluetooth propped over one ear. When the latch of the door jangled, John’s heart skittered into an anxious fret. He forced a swallow down a dry throat as the wood popped away from the frame. Gone was the anger over the snarky text. The apprehension over the possibility that Parker Chase was a pompous ass had flitted off into the atmosphere to frolic with John’s missing confidence. In an instant he was no longer the published author about to start a job for a prolific peer, he was an anxious fan boy about to come face-to-face with an idol. He looked up from the slowly appearing marble flooring and into the watery, judging eyes of a man who was somewhere between sixty and nine-hundred years old. The man wore a knee-length white apron, tied over a crisp, blue, fully buttoned dress shirt and black pants. Highly polished shoes, as black as the man’s no-way-is-that-colour-still-his-natural-hue hair, finished the outfit. “Mr. Liege, I presume?” The man’s voice was apathetic, but professional. John nodded while he mused possibilities—Butler? Servant? Father? Resident vampire?—and let go of one suitcase to stick out his right hand. “I sure am. Pleasure to meet you…”

“Indeed.” The man looked down at the suitcase John had dropped. “Will you need assistance with that?”

John let his hand fall to his side. Butler then. At least, John decided, that’s what he was going to think of the man as. “I won’t.”

Fabric shuffled as the butler turned away, speaking over his shoulder, “Follow me, please. I’ll show you to the guest room. Mr. Chase has held dinner until your arrival, so it would be most appreciated if you could tend to yourself and meet me back down here in the foyer at your earliest convenience.” He stopped, waited for John to take the hint and reacquire the suitcase, and then continued. “We were not advised of any dietary restrictions, so we took none into account. I trust that will be acceptable.”

The words were statements, not questions, but John nodded anyway, his eyes travelling over the foyer in mute fascination. Two spindled staircases flanked each side of the entrance, leading to first the second, then a third level, with tangles of twisted scrolls and forged leaves. At the end of each staircase, dangling ivy plants hung in the corners, long enough that their farthest-reaching ends brushed the floor. Planters had been placed on various steps, each one offset on the opposing staircase by an exact replica of itself, and the greenery mixed with the marble gave the space an almost Romanesque feel. Above it all, set into the ceiling, was a stained-glass skylight of varying shades of blues and greens. John had no doubt that when the sun was high, the entire room would seem as if it were under water.

They didn’t take the stairs, walking instead between both sets, towards the back of the house. “This is a beautiful home,” John said. “Have you worked here for long?”

“That would depend on your definition of the word long.” The butler directed John to the right, and past a series of floor to ceiling windows that looked out over the backyard. “If you walk the opposite length of this hallway, past the sitting room, and to the far left, you will locate the library. It has been requested that any work you wish to do outside of the guest room should be done there. Otherwise…” The butler stopped, levered a handle on a door and then nodded inside, “this is where you will spend the majority of your time.”

“I see.” John eyed the man as he walked past and into the room. “You’re not going to be locking the door from the outside or anything, right? Or sneaking in to leave stacks of paper on a side table whilst I sleep?” He set his suitcases on the bed, silently gleeful over the way they sank into the lush surface, then turned back to the butler and grinned. “Should I be keeping a close eye on my knees?” The man didn’t crack a smile. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t understand Canadian humour.”

John lifted an eyebrow. “And I can’t understand if you mean that as a joke or not.”

“Very good, sir.” The butler nodded. “If there’s nothing else then, I’ll see to dinner and watch for your return.”

“There is.” John sat down on the side of the bed, shifting his weight to bounce the mattress a few times. He widened his smile when the man sighed. “I’ll need your name, please. As you already have mine. And I’d like you to call me John, not sir. In typical Canuck fashion, I’ve even phrased that to make it seem as though it’s a request instead of the demand that I mean it as.”

The silence that settled over the room was even heavier than the stillness John had felt in the front yard. Odd, somehow. John had imagined wild parties and lots of music. Cocaine and champagne. Parker Chase was the actor who’d brought hard-core sexuality into mainstream Hollywood. So where were all the long-legged models and the strung-out musicians? Sure, he’d read that Parker was somewhat reclusive, but he’d assumed that had more to do with what Parker was trying to hide from public eyes—farm animal fetishes or some damn thing. On the contrary, the house seemed painfully quiet. Lonely, even.

“Come on,” John prompted. “Don’t make me call you Jeeves.” The butler surprised John by using his elbow to nudge the door shut. The moment it latched, the butler locked their gazes and lifted his chin. “I don’t agree with this.” He held up his hand, stopping John’s comment when John attempted to reply. “It’s not you. Or your writing, or what you do, or any of the self-deprecating ideas that tend to come to a discriminating mind when it is disagreed with. My reasons are my reasons because of what I know and how I know them, and they are no concern of yours. What is your concern, is that you should not be here. Not now, not ever. Not you. Do yourself a favour, Mr. Liege, and go home. Forget about this project. Forget about Parker Chase altogether.”

John leaned forward, frowning. “I don’t understand…”

“I don’t expect you to.” The man clasped his hands in front of him and took a deep breath. “I also have no doubt you’ll completely disregard what I’ve just told you. That you’ll think I’m crazy. Because you have something to prove, or something to work through, or whatever it is that made you the perfect pawn in the first place. But I beg you to ask yourself something. There are a million authors out there. Have you stopped and asked yourself why it was you that Mr. Chase chose? What a romance writer could possibly have to offer a man who scoffs at the concepts of fidelity and monogamy? Mark my words, Mr. Liege—you are here for his amusement, not for either of your careers.”

The butler grasped the handle of the door, turned his back, and as he was drawing the door open, something in John’s guts finally woke back up. “Hey.” John stood. “Wait.” The only thing John got for his effort was a sideways glance over a shoulder. John gritted his teeth. He stepped forward quickly. “Please. Wait.” “I have dinner to finish, Mr. Liege. Please make yourself comfortable and then come back to the—”

John caught the butler’s wrist and tugged the man back around to face him. “Damn it, Jeeves, wait!” He expected retribution for the hold; he didn’t expect the quirk of a smile on the man’s face. “Are you really going to call me that, then?”

“Only if I don’t tell me your name.” John let go and patted the butler’s sleeve flat. “And thank you. For your words. I don’t know what’s behind them, but I have no doubt that you have your reasons for needing to speak them. I appreciate your candour and your respect. I also love the fact that you have balls the size of cantaloupes to not only dare say it here, right in the man’s own house, but to someone that’s going to spend a great deal of time talking to him in private. That takes a lot of guts.”

“I am not afraid of Parker Chase, Mr. Liege.”

John twisted his lips and frowned. “Oh?”

“No. I have nothing to lose, you see. I don’t even make his radar.” The man nodded and began to walk again. “And the name is Anson. William Anson.”

The grin found John’s face before speech found his tongue, so William was halfway down the hall before John replied. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, William.”

William waved over his shoulder. “You too, John.”