Love, Greater Than Infinity (Book 1: New Adult Romance)

by Avondale, Cora

  “Gracie?” Luke insisted, unhooking her arms from his shoulder. “What handsome secret admirer?”

  Gracie gazed at Luke, unable to believe he was still maintaining the charade. She opened her purse, and pulled out Teddy’s note that she had guarded there the whole day.

  Luke scanned her note with confusion. “I didn’t write this. And I don’t like that some weird guy is chasing after my wife.” He crumbled the note with one hand, and free-threw it into the waste basket. “I’ll kick his ass if he pulls a stunt like that again.”

  “I thought it was you…” Gracie’s voice trailed off, attempting to revise her fantasy that her sensitive husband had been thinking about her all day.

  “Was this creep on the boat with you?”

  “Well… there was this one man on the boat, an insurance sales man from Detroit—”

  Gracie stopped cold, glancing down at their bed. Its bedspread was hastily tugged into place—manually smoothed down in some sections, bumpy and rumpled in others, and its sheets oozed out like curls of messy toothpaste.

  “I can’t believe this… she didn’t make up the bed properly either...” Gracie said with a strange air of uncertainty, wondering how she hadn’t noticed it when she had seen the maid in their room earlier that morning.

  Luke quickly whispered kisses down her neck. “Is this how the little butterflies felt when they landed on you?”

  “No, really, Luke,” Gracie replied, shrugging off his attention. “I saw the cleaning lady this morning. I had her replace your robe with a clean one. It had a cherry red smudge on the collar, and—”

  Luke interrupted her. “Why do we need the bed made up when we’re just going to mess it up again.” He towed Gracie down into the love seat, kissing her tenderly. “Tell me again about the butterfly that didn’t want to leave you…”

  “But don’t you think we should call down to the front desk? You know, as a reminder that we want our room made up? I don’t want to get her in trouble, but I could’ve sworn…”

  “You know what the cleaning staff is like in places like this? Hundreds of rooms to clean and hundreds of tips to collect. Besides, you tip in one day what they expect for an entire week. Why should they do more than they have to? They’ve already got our money.”

  Gracie sat up on the sofa and considered if her husband was right.

  “Oh come, on, Gracie. I’m kidding. I love how generous you are with my money.”

  Gracie crossed her arms and pouted in her own special way. “Now, there’s my little Sassy girl. I missed her so much today.”

  Luke slipped his palm under her hair and kissed her hard.

  It was more than Teddy could bear.

  Gracie loved Luke, and nothing—not Teddy’s hopes, or dreams, or fantasies—could ever change that.

  Chapter Ten

  A keeper may not initiate chaos within the Universe

  Teddy left them alone in their honeymoon suite, and retreated into the jazz lounge. The sun was already retreating from the horizon, and Teddy knew he would find Lou there, throwing back his third rum and coke, and blazing through his umpteenth cigarette. Teddy sat down next to him and gazed around at the wait staff, who whisked around the swanky lounge and placed the final touches on each table as the ritzy dinner crowd trickled in.

  “Luke didn’t go parasailing, did he…” Teddy grumbled to Lou.

  “Nope.”

  Teddy didn’t need the confirmation. The signs were obvious: the stained robe, the rumpled bed, Luke’s guilty conscience pacifying itself in the form of excessive affection.

  “Look, Teddy…” Lou eased in, “I know you think Luke’s a complete and utter screw up, but he does actually care about her. And you have to remember something else—he does actually make her happy.”

  Lou nodded over to Luke and Gracie, who had just entered the lobby of the jazz lounge, hand-in-hand. Gracie looked stunning in her black-beaded evening dress that she had bought at the Salvation Army for fifteen dollars. It was a tango gown with a dramatic V-neckline and an open back that twisted down into a tight fringe skirt. The skirt slit up the side of her thigh, revealing Gracie’s black panty hose and conspicuous garter. Her hair and make-up were done up like an Argentine dancer and every waiter and bus boy glanced back at the sensual woman who sashayed passed them. Teddy couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  “She takes your breath away, doesn’t she?” Lou said, slamming back his rum.

  Luke escorted Gracie to their romantic horseshoe booth—the best seat in the house, right in front of the piano stage and dance floor. Gracie leaned across the table to whisper something to Luke. The votive candle illuminated her face with seducing purity. Luke and Gracie cradled each other, their hands overlapping on the table, and Grace’s five-carat diamond ring flashing with every flicker of the candle’s flame.

  Teddy gazed at the couple, unable to hide his pain, so Lou knew better than to provoke him. Instead, Lou was content with Teddy’s silent company as he burnt up his endless cigarettes. Within two hours, the lounge was packed with restaurant guests and bar patrons. The blonde female bartender fielded each request like a playful golden retriever, pouring out drinks, bringing them back to each customer, soaking up tips and attention, chatting it up a bit, and returning with more bottles to mix up concoctions of merriment. Teddy and Lou faced the enormous bar mirror. They both could see Luke and Gracie’s table out of the far corner of the mirror—beyond the absence of their own reflection—but neither one of them acknowledged it.

  “I’m off to shoot pool and take money from a bunch of keepers who are here with their Japanese business mortals,” Lou finally said, swiveling off his bar stool. “They don’t even know what it means to ‘scratch.’ It should be a fun night. Wanna come?”

  The invitation was an uncharacteristic exhibition of pity, and they both knew it.

  Teddy waved him on. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

  Lou hesitated and glanced back at Luke and Gracie, who were finishing their dinner and relaxing to the music of the jazz trio, who had boarded the stage during their desserts.

  “Come on, kid. We’ll have a rowdy good time teaching the Japanese keepers all the wrong rules to pool. Besides, there’s nothing here for you. They’ll be upstairs by the end of this song, and hanging around them will do you no good tonight.”

  Lou was trying to save Teddy from himself, but Teddy was too filled up with sickness to follow Lou’s lead and heed his warning. Instead, Teddy covered his face and shook his head.

  “Just go and leave me alone.”

  Lou knew better than to press it, and left him alone at the bar. Teddy watched Lou disappear through the crowd, and felt certain that he was the loneliest soul in the universe.

  Before the jazz pianist finished his lively rift—an improvised Miles Davis melody—Luke stood up from their table and guided Gracie out of her seat. The couple drifted past the bar and into the lobby. Like a homesick puppy, Teddy followed them up the elevator and into their suite. They were retiring for the night and there was no reason for Teddy, lovesick and gutted, to be hanging around them, except for the fact that he wanted to be close to her because being away from her felt worse.

  Gracie and Luke entered their suite. Luke tore off his tie and pulled out his cuff links. When he grabbed Gracie by the hand and whisked her onto the bed, Teddy quickly considered interrupting them by mysteriously flicking on the TV, rattling the balcony door, or turning on the shower.

  Then, for the first time in a long time, Fate intervened. The hotel’s room phone rang.

  “Who would be calling us this late?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care,” Luke ignored it, and set about kissing Gracie’s neck.

  Gracie sat up on the bed and glanced at her watch. “Luke, it’s ten o’clock.”

  He tried to kiss her mouth, but the phone bleeped with urgency. At that moment, Teddy never loved a mechanical device more than he loved that phone.

  “Luke…” Gracie petitioned, roll
ing away from him and answering the phone. “Hello? Yes, hi there, Mom,” she mouthed to Luke. “I thought it might be you…”

  Gracie glanced at Luke with a reprimanding, See, I told you so.

  “You guys will talk for an hour. Tell her you’ll call her tomorrow,” Luke announced, loud enough for Gracie’s mother to hear it through the receiver. Gracie quickly covered the handset.

  “Luke, it’s late in Chicago,” Gracie whispered back. “She’s calling because she’s lonely and needs to talk to me…”

  Gracie’s attention turned back to the phone. “Yeah, Mom, I’m here, sorry. Luke wanted to know who was calling. No, no, no! Of course it’s not a bad time. It’s not a bad time at all. How are you? It’s pretty late there… Is everything okay?”

  Gracie’s mom was okay; she just needed to hear her daughter’s voice. Luke Ellington, on the other hand, was not okay. He lay on the bed, spread out like a pouting five-year-old whose favorite toy had just been taken away.

  Gracie kicked off her high heels and slid herself against the pillows. She was still wearing her sultry black tango dress, and Luke tried to play with her feet, tickling them at first, then slowly delivering kisses up her panty-hosed calves.

  “Uh, huh…,” Gracie said intently, brushing Luke away. “And what did Dr. McCullon say about the headaches? Did you tell him they were getting worse?”

  Luke Ellington was a demoralized quarterback whose last-minute throw just got intercepted by the other team for a game-winning touchdown. Teddy, on the other hand, was ecstatic with jubilation. He performed a little “in-your-face” jig in the center of the room—an unmitigated display of juvenile, unsportsmanlike taunting—and savored every second of it. Luke dragged himself off the bed and laced up his shoes. He stood in front of Gracie, as if he was waiting for her to realize she needed to make a choice—her husband or her mother. Gracie barely acknowledged him. She was too busy telling her mother about the honeymoon, the hotel, and her adventures today on the butterfly island. It wasn’t the response Luke Ellington wanted. Fueled by temperamental frustration, he grabbed the ice bucket and signaled to Gracie that he would be back—later.

  Teddy suddenly curtailed his victory jig. Not the ice bucket—again. All his celebratory gloating ceased as he turned and chased after Luke who blazed out of the room and into the elevator, descending down to the fifteenth floor with the dreaded ice bucket in tow. Luke Ellington was seeking out Mistress Misty, which suddenly seemed much, much worse than Luke and Gracie spending a private night together as husband and wife.

  Teddy grew brazen and defiant. Lying to Gracie about parasailing so he could romp around with his hellcat was bad enough. But storming off to his harpy for a second dose of the clap—that day—was indefensible. And for what? Just because Gracie chose to talk to her mother over servicing her prima donna husband? If this was Gracie’s Destiny, then Teddy was hell bent on changing it. Standing by as her keeper, watching Luke Ellington deceive Gracie again and again was no longer an option. If Gracie was going to wake up one day, five years into the future, and realize her husband was a scum-sucking phony who never loved her than there was no reason Gracie shouldn’t realize it right now—this very night.

  Teddy watched Luke knock on Misty’s door with a familiar surreptitious tap, tap, tap that announced the presence of the lowest life form on the planet. Teddy made his decision, right then and there. He peered at the emergency exit door, then peered at the red square fire alarm box mounted on the wall with its taunting emergency switch that read: “PULL HERE.”

  “Don’t do it—” Lou’s voice hurled at Teddy.

  Teddy covered the switch with his hand and stared down Lou. “Don’t come any closer…”

  Lou put his hands in the air like a seasoned cop trying to pacify an agitated guy ready to jump.

  “Stay back, Lou. I mean it. One step closer, and I’m throwing this switch and changing Gracie’s Destiny forever.”

  “Kid, I’m not gonna stop you—this time. This time you’ll have to face the consequences of screwing up on your own. But think, Teddy. Think about the consequences…”

  “You knew, didn’t you? You knew that Gracie’s mom was going to call, and that Luke and Misty were hooking up tonight. You knew all along. That’s why you invited me to shoot pool, not because you felt sorry for me, but to keep me distracted.”

  “I invited you as a favor because I knew you’d resort to something stupid like this.”

  Lou’s voice was calm and sincere. “But setting off a hotel fire alarm crosses the line, Teddy. It’s not like misplacing a drunken guy’s car keys or stuffing money into the pockets of your assignment’s jeans. You’ll reel hundreds of lives in chaotic motion. You’ll have a ripple effect on everyone’s life in this hotel, not just Gracie’s.”

  “Good. That’s exactly what I want.”

  “To be removed from your post as Gracie’s keeper?”

  “If that’s what it takes to make her happy…then yes”

  Lou recognized the determination in Teddy’s voice.

  “This is felony interference, Teddy. You do this, and there’s no going back.”

  Their eyes locked. “I know, and I don’t care—”

  Teddy threw the red emergency switch. Immediately, the belting screech of the fire alarm ricocheted off the plaster walls, reeling the entire hotel into a shuttering seizure, as if a tomb raider had disturbed a one thousand-year-old booby trap, and a precious site of tranquility now rattled with a blaring warning of imminent doom:

  Get out! GET OUT! The alarm peeled with murderous vibrato.

  Lou looked at Teddy. Teddy looked at Lou. “I hope you don’t regret this, kid,” he said with a severe glare in his eye. Then, Lou disappeared, leaving Teddy alone to fend for himself against the consequences of the Universe.

  Doors flew open like cascading dominos along the hallway as hotel patrons streamed out, confused, uncertain, and just plain annoyed. The last thing anybody wanted to deal with on their Hawaiian vacations was a false fire alarm.

  A husky mafia man, wearing a white tank top, stained boxers, and fuzzy bunny slippers shuffled out of his business suite.

  “Can somebody shut that goddamn thing off?” He shouted with a heavy Brooklyn accent “I’m trying to watch The Lion King here.”

  The fire alarm blared with a repetitive, pulsating pitch that forced everyone to shield their ears. The man from Brooklyn glared at an anemic twelve-year-old boy being ushered to the emergency stairs by his equally fragile mother.

  “You,” the Mafia Man pointed at an anemic boy. “You got something to do with this, kid?”

  The fragile mother stared at man, unable to comprehend that her little Francis could be fingered as the culprit.

  “Those four-eyes ain’t fooling no one,” he bellowed the accusation across the hallway.

  An urbane British man wearing an oriental silk robe, matching evening pajamas, and leather loafers exited his room. “Shall we take the stairs or the elevator?”

  “You’re not supposed to take the elevator during a fire,” the fragile mother called back.

  Twin teenage sisters in identical swimsuits emerged from their room, “Oh, how cool. There’s a fire. A R-EEEEE-AAAAA-L fire!” the boisterous, taller sister shouted. “Hey, Mom and Dad,” her sister yelled back into their room. “The whole hotel is burning down!”

  Frantic with confusion and fear, hotel patrons continued to stream out of their rooms. There was only one door on the fifteenth floor that remained undisturbed, and that was Misty’s room. Teddy passed through the door, and found Luke and Misty far along in their suck-face session. Neither Luke or Misty acknowledged the fact that maybe they should postpone their love-fest—in the event that the hotel was actually burning down. Luke and Misty had their priorities.

  There were two sprinkler heads on the ceiling above each side of Misty’s king-sized bed. Teddy studied their mercury sensors; their silver and maroon red thermometers stared back at him. Teddy had heard about keepers in t
he higher dimensions being able to conduct thermal energy, like heat, at rapid speeds, but he had never actually tried himself. Having the ability to channel dissipated heat from every floating eternal crevice in the universe was one thing, but knowing how to actually do it was another. Teddy closed his eyes, capped the sprinkler head in his hand, and summoned as much available heat in the hotel as he could muster.

  A low humming vibration filled the bedroom, and Teddy knew he was onto something when Misty suddenly pulled away from Luke. “Why is it so cold—”

  Misty barely finished her sentence when SCHAZAM! Four hundred gallons of freezing water whizzed out of the sprinkler heads.

  Misty shrieked at the top of her lungs as the sprinklers spewed endless concentric circles of freezing arctic water over them.

  “Aghhhhhhh, ughhhhhhh, aghhhhhhh!” Misty and Luke’s vocabulary was reduced to monosyllabic utterances as their king-sized mattress was converted into a waterbed.

  Half-naked and drenched, Luke and Misty tried in desperation to escape from the pelting rain. They cowered and scampered into corners, shouting and bumping into each other like circus clowns unable to scurry away from the inevitability of being the center of attention of a crowd-pleasing joke. Finally, they jumped onto the bed, seeking shelter from the accumulating water that flooded their floor and threatened to transform their room into an aquatic carnival ride.

  “Luke, my luggage, my luggage,” Misty cried out, pointing to her precious alligator baggage that floated along the edge of the mattress before suddenly gurgling down to the bottom of the moat. She whimpered in horror, witnessing the drowning of her five-piece luggage set.

  “Shut up. Just shut up.” Luke yelled at her. “Put some goddamn clothes on and let’s get out of here!”

  “All my clothes are in my luggage,” Misty bawled, unable to contain herself.

  Luke grabbed her by the hand and whisked her out of the room. They stood half-naked, Misty in her black sheer negligée and Luke in his soaked boxers. Barefoot and sopping wet, they both doubled over and heaved in the hallway, waiting for the elevators to whisk them down to safety.