Crazy for Loving You: A Bluewater Billionaires Romantic Comedy(91)

Where the fuck is my baby?

Alessandro meets my eye, sweeps a look around the pool, frowns, and disappears into Daisy’s private wing of the house, lifting a walkie-talkie to his mouth.

My veins ice over.

I don’t stop to towel off, but instead head toward where Alessandro just disappeared, eyes roaming, looking, watching.

“You see the baby?” I ask Jude as I pass him.

He makes a sweep of the patio, then leaps to his feet. “Somebody put him to bed?”

Beck and Derek join us as the bartender touches his earpiece and looks straight at me.

My heart leaps into mission mode, except this isn’t get the job done.

This is what the fuck?

I turn and scan the party on the deck again, this time catching Daisy’s eye in the pool.

Her smile freezes, and suddenly, she turns in a circle.

Then another circle.

There’s no baby down here.

There’s no baby down here.

She goes white as a ghost.

She knows too.

Alessandro steps out of her door. “Sleeping?” I ask him.

He shakes his head tightly and says something else into his walkie-talkie.

Maybe Alessandro overlooked him. Maybe someone in my family put him in the crib in the Strawberry Daiquiri suite. Maybe one of the hockey players Daisy invited wanted baby snuggles inside. Maybe one of my older nieces or nephews wanted a few minutes alone with him.

He’s safe.

Margot Roderick is in jail, being held without bond.

Anthony Roderick is supposedly out of the country.

Supposedly.

It’s not enough.

It’s not enough, and after stopping the party and searching everywhere, it’s clear.

Remy’s gone.

I swore I’d protect him, and he’s gone.





Thirty-Eight





Daisy



I can’t dial my phone. I can’t send a text. I can’t stop shaking.

“It was just friends and family at the party,” I tell the police officer for the sixth time. “I swear I knew everyone here.”

Alessandro and West are talking to another officer. They’re calm. Collected.

Except for that flutter in West’s neck.

He’s freaking the fuck out.

As he should.

And it’s my fault. All my fault. How old am I? How long have I lived with people who would use their money to buy anything and everything, from call girls to favors from tax officials to fucking hit men?

Of course Remy’s not here.

I threw a party, because that’s all I do. I throw parties. I make people like me. And it distracted all of us to the point that we gave the Rodericks the perfect opportunity to sneak in.

“They paid a kidnapper,” I whisper. “They paid a kidnapper, and he probably has Remy halfway around the world by now.”

None of the men in the room—not the officers, not West, not Alessandro, and not Jude, who’s in the corner waiting for orders on how to help—contradict me.

“We shut down the roads,” Alessandro tells me. “He couldn’t have been gone more than fifteen minutes before we noticed.”

“Cam activated Bluewater’s SOS system,” Jude tells me. “We’re accounting for every boat in the marina and every plane at the landing strip.”

“Shutting down the causeway too,” one of the officers tells me. “They can’t get back to the mainland without a vehicle search.”

My little baby.

He’s so helpless. And little. And alone.

“I shouldn’t have taken him to the party.”

I barely whisper it, but suddenly West is there, wrapping me in his arms. “Daisy—”

“No.” I shake free. “I know better. I know better. There’s never safe when there’s money involved. Money can buy anything, and I put him in the middle of dozens of people and let my guard down.”

“We both knew better. This isn’t on you.”

“Where are we looking? Where can I help? Get me a flashlight. I’m going out. Have you searched the beaches? The pool houses? What are we doing standing here talking?”

“We need to be with you if the kidnapper calls—” the officer starts.

“This kidnapper doesn’t want money. He wants Remy.” I fly into motion, because I can’t stand still.

Remy’s out there somewhere.

He’s out there, and I have to find him.

Not for Julienne.

Not for my grandmother.

For me.

He’s mine. Mine to love. Mine to raise. Mine to save.

I don’t care how he came to be here in my life. Or how much sleep I lose, or how many dirty diapers I have to change, because that gummy smile—that sweet, innocent adoration, that happy coo, his chubby little face when he’s falling asleep on a bottle, the way I swear he’s trying to tell me stories every morning—he’s become my everything.

I can’t imagine a day without him.

West falls into step next to me as I head for my shoe closet. “I’ll go with you.”

And there’s the other half of my everything.

The one I’ve let down so very, very badly.

It was bound to happen sooner or later, wasn’t it?