She started talking to Pearce again and then she looked at me and said, “Your boyfriend should be here any minute honey. Just keep taking those deep breaths.”
I wanted to scream that it wasn’t working because I felt like everything was turning gray and my face was going numb. Realistically, I knew I couldn’t die from this, but at that time, I felt like I was hanging on the precipice of death.
I heard wheels screeching and suddenly my door flew open and there he stood in the flesh, all six feet two inches of him.
“Breathe baby. Deep breaths. Slow. Follow me. Inhale to the count of four, three, two, one. Exhale, four, three, two, one. Let’s do it again.”
He rubbed my arms and then put his hands on my face. Eventually things started to even out for me. He could see it in my eyes because he pulled the bag out of my hands and unbuckled me from my seat. The next thing I knew I was sitting in his lap, crying and shaking.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. I’ve got you now.”
I heard his voice talking to the woman who saved me, thanking her profusely. Then his attention was focused on me again. He kept running his hand through my hair, pushing it off of my face. The tears finally ebbed, leaving me feeling like a limp noodle sitting in his lap.
“Christ, Alexia, you gave me a fucking heart attack. Shit! What the hell happened?”
Where the fuck to begin with this one?
I started rubbing my arm where that asshat had grabbed me and noticed then that bruises were forming. He noticed it too.
“What’s this? What happened? Tell me now Alexia because this not knowing stuff is so not going over very well for me.”
So I told him...the whole fucking sordid tale. I cried some more and then felt like the dirty whore I was.
“This is why I didn’t want to get involved with you. I knew somehow that my past would catch up with me. I’m dirty Pearce. I’m no better than a fucking whore.”
“Stop it Alexia. Stop it right now. I won’t have you belittle yourself like that. You did things that were unacceptable to you. You made mistakes. Would you do those things now?”
“No!”
“Then stop comparing yourself to a whore. You’re not a whore and I won’t stand for you calling yourself that. Are we clear?”
“Yes,” I murmured as I hung my head.
“Look at me Alexia.”
I did as he asked.
“This changes nothing between us. I’m here and I love the fuck out of you. I want to beat the shit out of the bastard that broke you down just now. I told you...I’m not going anywhere and I meant it. Now kiss me before I go crazy here with you on my lap.”
I kissed him, lightly.
“Is that all you got for me? You almost gave me a fucking MI!”
“What’s an MI?”
He let out a snort. “A myocardial infarction. The medical term for a heart attack. I almost crashed the 911 getting here.”
“The 911. You called 911?”
“No...my car...my 911.”
“Oh!” I laughed. Then I kissed him with everything I had, running my hands all over him and just about losing myself totally to him...that is until I heard some smart ass yell, “Get a room!”
“Fuck Lex.”
“You called me Lex. You don’t ever call me Lex.”
“I know. Because your name is so fucking beautiful...just like you.”
We just sat there staring at each other like two idiots.
“I think I need to get to work. I’m super late as it is.”
“You okay to drive?”
“Yeah. I’m good now.”
“I don’t want you to leave.”
“I don’t want to leave, but I don’t want to get fired either.”
“I’ll take care of you Alexia. You don’t have to work.”
“Yes, I do, Pearce. It’s gives me self worth.”
“Can I tell you something?”
“Yeah.”
“So you’ll stop hating yourself so much.”
“What?”
“I’ve slept with a lot of women Alexia.”
“I pretty much had that figured out.”
“You’re okay with that?” He looked totally shocked.
“I mean, look at you Pearce. If there were an entry for ‘male perfection’ in the Webster’s Dictionary, they’d have a picture of you. I’m sure when you were in high school and college you had girls crawling all over you for your attention. And now that you’re a doctor...hell, I’m no fool. I didn’t take you for a monk.”
“Well, I wasn’t a monk and that’s the truth. But can I ask you something?”
“Sure?”
“Why is it such a terrible thing for you because you slept with a lot of men, and you were either drunk or drugged out when you did it and it’s not for me when most of the time I was sober?”
“Good question.”
“I think you operate under a double standard, my backwards and archaic girlfriend. I’m not saying it’s okay to have indiscriminate sex, but what I am saying is get over this already and move on. You fucked up and you learned. I did the same thing. Let’s forgive ourselves and love each other. Okay?”
“I’ll make you a promise. I’ll do my best to try my hardest. I’m sure I won’t be able to shed this very easily so please be patient with me. I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you though.”
“That makes two of us. Now kiss me good-bye and get your ass to work.”
“Yes sir!”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Work flew by because by the time I got there I was so far behind I didn’t have time to breathe. It’s a good thing I’d hyperventilated earlier. Now I was finding it hard to find time to get a breath in at all.
It was six thirty before I was making my way back downtown. My phone rang en route and it was Pearce checking on me.
“Is pizza good for you for dinner?”
“Perfect.”
“My house or yours.”
“Mine. I need to get out of these clothes.”
“Okay, I’ll see you there in twenty. Is that cool?”
“Very cool.”
Ten minutes later I walked into a very dark house and for the first time it really gave me the creeps. I felt along the wall but the lights wouldn’t come on. I flipped both the inside and outside switches and they were both dead. A sense of dread came over me and I was reminded of my clash with Beavis. Then the incident of my abduction came crashing down on me and I started to wonder if they were connected. I ran out of the carriage house and punched the remote button on my car door, thankful for the illumination of the headlights. I climbed inside the car and sat there trembling.
A few minutes passed when I heard the purring of Pearce’s Porsche as it pulled into my driveway.
I bolted out of my car and straight into his arms.
“What happened?”
I was shaking, but I wasn’t in a panic attack.
“My lights in the house. They wouldn’t come on. Inside or out. It freaked me out because they’ve never done that before. I’m scared Pearce. I started thinking about that incident on the bridge and then I started wondering if that guy had anything to do with my abduction.”
“Okay, babe. Let’s get a flashlight from Lisbeth. Come on.”
“Should we call the police?”
“For what? Lights that are out?”
I giggled. “Yeah, that’s just the kind of emergency calls they want to get, right?”
We headed over the Lisbeth’s and grabbed a couple of flashlights. When we got back to my place, Pearce made a sweep through the house and all the lights were out. The circuits were broken on everything meaning the master switch had been thrown. That could only have been done on the outside so he flipped it back on and everything lit up.
We went back to Lisbeth’s to ask if anyone had been by the carriage house today and she said no. Now I was really worried. I decided I couldn’t stay there so I packed a bag and we headed over to Pearce’s. Lisbeth wa
s going to have an alarm installed in the carriage house the next day and a lock placed on the breaker box. She was also going to install an electric security gate in the driveway. We called the police to inform them what happened, just so they could have a record of it.
“What I don’t understand is why do they want to hurt me? I didn’t do anything to them!”
“Listen sweetheart, some people are just crazy.”
“But if the two incidents are connected, why didn’t they come for me sooner?”
“I don’t think they are connected. I just think Beavis is pissed off at you and he wants to scare you.”
“Well he’s doing a pretty damn good job of it.”
“Can you get off work tomorrow for a little bit?”
“I can try. Why?”
“I want to buy you a gun.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, absolutely. And I’m going to enroll you in a private Concealed Weapons class. I want you to carry all the time.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Here I was expecting all sorts of pushback from you and you were a pushover.”
“I’m scared Pearce. If carrying a concealed weapon will save my life or yours, then I’m all for it.”
“I want you to understand something Alexia. If you do this, you have to be prepared to shoot someone. And I mean shoot to kill. Can you honestly say you can do that?”
“Pearce, when I was bound, gagged and duct taped, I thought I was going to die. I kept trying to come up with ways to beat those fuckers that had me. The only thing that saved me was their stupidity and drunkenness. If I would have had a gun, I wouldn’t have hesitated to use it on any of them in that room. They were getting ready to rape me.”
“Shit Alexia. You never told me all of this.”
“I didn’t really know you back then. But yeah, I would use a weapon and I would kill with it.”
“Okay, I just needed to know.”
He stuck the pizza in the oven because it was now like ice and he heated it back up. I carried my stuff up to his bedroom and hung up my work clothes in his closet. I went to the bathroom and scrubbed my face and brushed my teeth. Then I put on a comfy pair of yoga pants and a long sleeved shirt and went back downstairs.
He was waiting with a glass of wine in the living room for me. He patted the seat next to him, and curled up by his side as he handed me my wine.
“What a day!” I said.
“I know, right?”
“Are you working tomorrow?”
“Yeah, but regular hours. No call. I want you to stay here until everything is secure at Lisbeth’s. Well, if the truth be known, I want you to move in with me.”
It was the way he said it that made my heart thump and butterflies flutter in my stomach.
“You’re serious, aren’t you.”
“One hundred percent. I need to clue you in on something about me. I’ve always been a great judge of character Alexia. Not just good, great. And so has Lisbeth. That’s one thing my grandmother always said about her. Anyway, I’m not wrong about you. You are loyal, honorable and would do anything for someone you love. You’re kind, considerate, hard working, you have great integrity and you’re honest. The bottom line is I love you. I’m thirty five years old, financially secure and have been around the block a hundred times. I thought I was in love a time or two but it never turned out to be the real thing. What I have with you is definitely the real thing Alexia. I’m not changing my mind. Like I said before, we can waddle in the water and wade around, but I’m not going anywhere.”
I launched myself into his arms and almost mauled him.
“Pinch me.”
“What?”
“Pinch me,” I told him again. “I want to make sure this isn’t some bizarre dream.”
“Oh it’s not a dream.”
“Good. You know what my answer’s going to be. I can’t do this yet. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the near future. The other thing is you have to meet Terri. I can’t do anything without her permission anyway.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. She’s my rock and eventually when I move in here, I have to have her blessing.”
“Women. You all are nuts. You know that, right?”
“Absolutely not. We stick together and support each other. She’s my only family.”
“Excuse me. What am I? I’m your lover and I want to be your husband. Isn’t that family?”
“I suppose it is.”
I leaned against him and slid my hand beneath his shirt. I loved the way his skin felt.
“Oh, by the way, we’re having New Year’s dinner with my family.”
I stiffened and almost choked on my wine.
“Huh?”
“I’m dying for them to meet you.”
“Shit Pearce.” The air from my lungs made a whistling sound as it exploded through my teeth.
“You’ll love them and they’ll love you.”
“I don’t think so. I’m on a completely different level from you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I just looked at him.
He ran his hand through his hair and rubbed his eyes.
“Alexia, we’re both people. My family doesn’t judge people because of their financial status.”
“I have no financial status. I’m dirt poor. I have five hundred dollars in my checking account until my next paycheck and that’s my financial status. You have a home, and a yacht and an expensive car and God only knows what else. So I go to your family’s for dinner and they’ll ask me what I do for a living and I’ll tell them I have some menial job working for a software company. And then they’ll ask me about my family and I’ll tell them that my family doesn’t give a rat’s ass about me. And then how much will they like your new girlfriend Pearce?”
“Are you quite through?” His voice was steely which jerked me to attention.
“Yes.”
“Then may I speak?” he asked in that same steely voice.
“Yes.”
“You seem so quick to judge my family. No Alexia, it’s true. You seem to think it’s okay for you to make comments like that, but you haven’t even met them. You don’t know the first thing about my family. Yes, they have money. A lot of it. Old family money. I was fortunate to be born into wealth, unlike you. So does that make me a bad person? My mother wasn’t. She met my father while working as a nurse’s aide at the hospital. He was an intern at the time. They fell in love and were married within three months. Her family were paper mill workers. She didn’t even have five hundred dollars to her name when she got married. So don’t tell me they wouldn’t accept you because of your lack of wealth or status. I wasn’t raised like that. And I hope to God if you and I ever have children, you don’t bring them up that way.”
He stood up and walked away and I felt like a piece of crap. I was so torn over everything. I was so in love with him but I had this thing about us needing more time to get to know each other. He was cool about that, but I would love to be with him every night too. I would have to make a choice. I also needed to get a grip on me. I had no confidence in myself. I really was a head case. It’s a wonder he wanted anything at all to do with me. Hell, I wouldn’t blame him if he told me to get the hell out of his life tonight.
Wow, his mom was poor like me. He was right. I did make assumptions about people and I guess I did judge them. What a shit I was.
I got up and walked into the kitchen and he was putting the pizza on plates. I had totally forgotten about the pizza.
“I’m really sorry.”
“Alexia, don’t say it unless you mean it.”
“I do mean it.”
He looked at me, his eyes drilling into mine and finally he nodded. “You have to let go of that inferiority thing you have going on. It’s a real buzz kill and you have nothing to feel that way over. Don’t pull old baggage out either. That shit is burned up and
the ashes have been dumped in the harbor. You have unresolved issues with some shit parents you have...I get that part. But my family shouldn’t suffer because of that. You love Lisbeth and she loves you. If you think she’s great, you’ll love my family even more.”
I don’t know why, but my eyes had teared up and the damn things were making a freakin’ mess on my face. I didn’t want him to see because I wanted to be strong...to be the kind of girl he could be proud of and not some stupid mewling fool. So I turned my head and quickly wiped my cheeks.
He walked around the island and pulled me against him.
“You don’t have to hide your tears, you know.”
“I don’t want to be weak. I want to be someone you can be proud of.”
“I am proud of you. Just the way you are. What I want is for you to be proud of yourself.” He just held me to him, and rubbed my back.
“Come on honey, let’s eat before I have to heat this thing up again and it turns into a part of the box.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Because it was the holidays, it took the rest of the week before all the security could be set up at Lisbeth’s. That meant I stayed with Pearce until after New Year’s Day. Since Thursday night was New Year’s Eve, I stayed with him then too.
Pearce told me to pack an overnight bag, and to bring warm casual clothes. We weren’t going to any big party or fancy restaurants, but we were spending the night alone.
So late on Thursday, I arrived at his house after work with my bag ready to go and we headed out. When we got to the City Marina, I had a good idea of what we were going to do. He looked at me and grinned.
We boarded the TSCSC...well, he actually carried me on board. Jack was already there, along with a chef, who would be serving our dinner that night.
We were underway in no time and headed out into the harbor. Pearce wanted to make sure we were anchored in a good spot so we could watch the fireworks show at midnight. We would be spending the night on the boat, but Jack and the chef would take the dingy back to the marina. Pearce would drive the yacht back in the morning.
It was a beautiful night with a gazillion stars twinkling in the sky. The moon was reflected over the water and we sat in the enclosed upper deck eating our intimate dinner by candlelight. The chef served grilled lobster tails, which melted in your mouth and a creamy tomato bisque as a starter. The meal was exquisite.
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