Belle Pearl

by Arianne Richmonde

  I had planned for Bora Bora, but who cared? As long as we sealed the deal, we could go anywhere. I grabbed the keys from the ignition and scooped Pearl into my arms and then flung her over my shoulder, so I had my hands free. She was kicking like a child, screaming like a little girl.

  “Put me down Alexandre! This isn’t funny!”

  “Then why are you laughing?”

  “Because this is preposterous! You’re being outrageous!”

  I strode over to the trunk of her car and took out her suitcase; a vintage Luis Vuitton, the weight of which was hard to manage with Pearl jiggling and kicking and flailing her arms about and thumping my back. My Taekwondo training certainly helped me manage this little vixen.

  “Enough, Pearl. Stop behaving like a child. Or I’ll have to spank you.”

  “Ha, very funny. You are insane, Alexandre Chevalier! Let me down! I won’t marry you. I won’t, I won’t!”

  “Yes, you will. Stop playing games.”

  “Don’t you dare try and control me, you arrogant French shit!”

  “Don’t tell me what to do, Pearl. I know what I want and it’s your crazy ass. You know it, and I know it. You know that we’re meant to be together but you’re just too stubborn to accept it right now. Stop wasting time because in the end, I’ll get my way.”

  “Ha!” she squealed, still laughing. “You can’t marry me because you don’t have proof of my divorce!”

  Pearl had underestimated me. I’d gotten my hands on her divorce papers weeks ago. “All taken care of, baby. All will be quite legal I can assure you.”

  I practically threw her into the back of my Mercedes and quickly locked the door. Child safety locks. She couldn’t get out. She was pummeling the windows and I too, knew that I was behaving like a madman. But I didn’t care. I wanted Pearl Robinson—soon to be Chevalier—and I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I drove off. I could see her through my rearview mirror pouting like a ten year-old in the back seat. The Sophie topic came up. Of course. Pearl was convinced, now, that Sophie was out to kill her.

  She announced, “Laura called.”

  Shock horror! The word, ‘Laura’ made my body flush with heat and nausea. Had she revealed all to Pearl? Oh, Jesus. My stomach churned. What is that psycho up to now?

  “She told me that Sophie is sure to have me killed in Vegas. That she owns chunks of it…hotels, everything; that she’s powerful and owns politicians and police and—”

  “Nonsense,” I interrupted. I tried to sound nonchalant. It was true, Sophie did have important contacts in Vegas…did own hotels there. But the last thing she’d do was hurt Pearl. Hell, she wanted Pearl to be her friend! Oh Laura, oh Laura, why can’t you fucking stay out of my life?

  Pearl pounded her fist on the car seat. “Why are you ignoring me? Sophie will have me murdered—I’ll end up in a dumpster somewhere in Vegas, all because you won’t take this seriously!”

  In that second, I so wanted to come clean. Tell Pearl about Laura drugging me. Assure her that Laura was making this rubbish up. But I knew that it would make things worse with Pearl. She was on the edge. Admitting that I’d had Laura on top of me, naked, would hardly be the right move—no, Pearl wouldn’t have accepted that for a second. So I said nothing, just kept driving to Van Nuys airport where the jet would be waiting.

  “Sophie’s insane,” Pearl went on. “She stabbed your father in the groin!”

  Something in me snapped. If it hadn’t been for Sophie, I’d be in a loony bin by now. I bashed my closed fist on the steering wheel. “Don’t you fucking bring my monster father into this!” I shouted.

  Pearl was silenced for a while. I could hear her uneven breathing. She really did believe that Sophie was going to have her topped off, but my hands were tied.

  I changed gear. “She’s jealous Pearl, that’s all.” What else could I say? Laura tried to fuck me? “Sophie will get used to you.”

  “She won’t fucking get ‘used’ to me because I’m bailing, Alexandre. I value my life too highly. I love you. I’m in love with you, but I refuse to marry you with that crazy woman in the picture!”

  The truth was on the tip of my tongue again. I wanted to blurt it all out. Assure her Laura was nuts. But if I did that, Pearl would want to know why. No, with the state she was in—her nightmares, her instability—now wasn’t the time. So I just said, “I made some calls tonight. I’m selling HookedUp to Sophie, once and for all.” It was only half a lie. I had discussed it with Sophie but nothing had been set in stone. “Satisfied?”

  The truth was I wanted those wedding bands on our fingers, first. Seal the deal. My mission was to marry Pearl and sort the rest out afterwards. Typically male, I realized later. I should have laid all my cards on the table.

  But I didn’t.

  And it got me into more of a mess than I imagined possible.

  “Don’t try and pussy-whip me, Pearl,” I said, ridiculously grabbing onto any excuse, like a child holding onto a balloon, hoping it will whisk him up and away into some fantasy land.

  There was silence and then Pearl said in a quiet voice, “I got pussy-whipped tonight.”

  Then the second set of secrets was revealed. Pearl told me that she found a photo of Sophie and Alessandra in an embrace. So that was who Sophie was seeing. Jesus, the plot thickened. I looked guilty as Rex with a stolen bar of chocolate. The fact that I had no idea that Alessandra was Sophie’s new romantic partner didn’t let me off the hook. I hadn’t told Pearl that Sophie was gay—that was her private life. Sophie was bailing out Samuel Myers and acting as a silent partner on Stone Trooper. Sophie and Alessandra were in each other’s panties. Alessandra had also wheedled her way into Pearl’s panties, or so it sounded from Pearl’s pussy-whipped quip. What a fucking tangle. All the more reason to abduct Pearl and take her away with me and get that bloody ring on her finger.

  “Interesting,” I mused. “Sophie met Alessandra after that play we went to see her in in London.” I laughed. This whole scenario could have been some silly sitcom.

  “Did you hear what I said, Alexandre?” Pearl was leaning forward, still in the back seat, her angry breath on my neck. “I got pussy-whipped by Alessandra.”

  “Well I’m not surprised,” I answered, coolly. “She was all over you.”

  “She seduced me and I let her! I have a sore ass. I’m a fucking head-case. Why the hell do you want to marry me, anyway? I’m a quasi lesbian. I can’t do a work deal without being screwed. Yeah, I’m screwed in every way you look at it. I’m a mess, Alexandre.”

  I couldn’t help but let a smile curve onto my lips. “I know.”

  “No you don’t! You thought I was perfect!”

  “Perfect for me, chérie. Perfect for me. I guess you must have figured out by now that I’m hardly normal myself. And what happened to you in the past has only made me love you more. We need each other, baby. We’re both two dysfunctional peas in the same pod. And we won’t be able to dis-function properly without one another, you’ll see. If you try and run away from me, from us, you’ll come back because we’re destined to be together.”

  Famous last words.

  Little did I know that ‘run away’ was exactly what Pearl had planned.

  With the car parked, and Pearl desperate for the ladies room, we went inside the small airport of Van Nuys. She dashed to the toilets.

  I waited for her. And waited.

  I stood there like a fucking lemon, holding Pearl’s handbag. At first I wasn’t paying attention because I was so busy talking on my cell, organizing our wedding. What a fucking joke. I called the car rental people to ask them to come and pick up the car key from me. Hang on a minute…where’s the bloody key? I fumbled in my jacket pocket…no key. Did Pearl have it? No, why would she? That was the first alarm bell. When I saw that the coast was clear and no other women were in the ladies room, I snuck in.

  “Pearl? Hurry up, baby. Are you done?” She had told me that she needed to change her tampon. Nothing. The place was empty
. I peered into all the cubicles. What the fuck? Then I saw…I looked up and there was a tiny window, wide open. I dashed out of the room, through some double doors, and onto the tarmac to the spot where I’d parked the Mercedes.

  Gone.

  She’d done a bloody runner! I looked in her bag and she had even left her phone behind. And her credit cards. She was that desperate to escape from me. A woman on the run. As if I were a wife-beater or something—she wanted nothing more than to get the hell away from me. Tears prickled my eyes. This woman does not want me. I felt as if a hole had been scooped out of my gut. Now I knew the British expression of ‘feeling gutted.’

  The jet was waiting.

  But without Pearl, I had nowhere to go.

  6

  That whole night was torturous. I feared that in Pearl’s state she’d drive off a cliff or something, so I called the car rental company and, as I suspected, they had a GPS system fitted underneath the car—Pearl could be tracked. I offered them a bribe, or as I liked to phrase it, “a big tip” so that I could keep her under my radar without causing too much fuss. But it was proving to be tricky because I hadn’t included Pearl in the insurance policy (how the fuck was I to know that she’d make off with the car?) so I bought the car, instead. It was heading toward San Francisco. Good. She was on her way to her brother’s, obviously. My head was like a computer unscrambling data. I couldn’t find a solution to my predicament. The only words I heard ricocheting in my brain were, Pearl doesn’t want you Alexandre. Accept it.

  I made up my mind, then and there; I wasn’t going to chase after her anymore. I’d take my own tried and tested advice: let her come to me—the bulldozer technique hadn’t worked. I remembered a couple of adages—ironically given to me by my father (when he was in one of his kind moods): What’s yours won’t go against you, and What’s yours will come back to you. Was Pearl mine? I certainly felt she was. I’d have to wait and see. Wait and see if she would return to me—be mine. And not only come back to me, but stick with me for good. I had to bide my time.

  Having paid for the jet, I thought I might as well use it, so I flew straight to San Francisco and checked into a hotel. I totaled up the amount of hours it would have taken her to drive here, and I called Anthony, knowing that by now, she would have arrived. He denied that she was with him. More proof that she wanted out. I told him I had a team of detectives on the case. I wanted her to feel the gravity of what she’d done. I didn’t need a detective; I myself was enough of a Sherlock Holmes to make up for the whole of Scotland Yard. But he believed me, I guess.

  After I hung up, I listened to the messages on Pearl’s phone. Most of them from me—but then one from Laura. I pressed my ear to the receiver and heard her sickly sweet-butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth tone:

  “Pearl, you don’t know me. I’m sorry to bother you like this. I finally tracked down your number. My name’s Laura, Alexandre’s ex…maybe you know who I am?”

  I shook my head in disbelief. This woman was one hell of a piece of work.

  “I’m calling to warn you. Sophie’s really crazy. She could be out to hurt you. I’m sorry but…” at this point Laura did a nice little acting job; she sniffled down the line and put on a weak, pathetic, poor-me voice. “I had a terrible accident several years ago and could have died.” Wish you bloody had.

  The message rambled on in a Good Samaritan voice, ending with, “As one woman to another I thought I owed you this…”

  I heard a guttural roar tear from my throat as I threw the cellphone against the wall and it smashed to the floor.

  I was in this Laura shit up to my neck. She was such a good liar that I feared Pearl wouldn’t believe me if I told her the real story. So I did what all guilty fools do; I dug myself in even deeper. I created more lies to cover myself. To this day, I will never forgive myself for this: I lied to Pearl.

  The following afternoon, I waited for Pearl in Anthony’s back yard. She came into the garden, her hair wet; she’d obviously been for a swim. She looked so beautiful in a bedraggled sort of way, her blonde hair loose over her shoulders, her eye make-up smudged. She looked as tired as I felt. I took her by surprise, as if she hadn’t expected me. What did she think? That I wouldn’t find her? I wanted to hug her there and then, take her in my arms, but my voice of reason kicked in and told me that I needed to stick to my plan. Make her come to me. Don’t suffocate her. Give her time to sort out her fucked-up state of mind.

  She stuttered, “Alexandre, I…I’m…I’m sorry, I didn’t know what I was doing last night.”

  My lips tipped into a crooked, ironic smile and I took a step back. My pride kicked in. “Oh yes, you did, Pearl. You seemed to know exactly what you were doing.”

  “I…I…no, I had no choice—”

  “I was standing there with a fucking lady’s handbag while you climbed out of a bloody toilet window!” In that second, I almost wanted to laugh, call a truce; the whole drama was risible, but I stayed proud, immovable; I needed to drum it home to her how much she had hurt and belittled me. I gazed into her innocent blue eyes. Those eyes that had ripped my heart out. “Did that mean nothing to you? The fact that I wanted to marry you?” I could read the panic on her face.

  She lifted up her arms and let them fall in an exasperated thump either side of her hips. “I still want to marry you, I still—”

  “Don’t you get it, Pearl? It’s too late for that now,” I lied.

  She scraped her fingers through her wet hair and then covered her mouth with her hand. It was sinking in: the idea that she could lose me forever. Her pain was palpable. Good. It shows that she still loves me. But she was teetering on the edge—the edge of indecision. She could have gone either way. Rejection was quivering on her lips—she still wasn’t ready to commit to me a hundred percent, and was using Sophie as an excuse. I needed all of her, every last percent. She was still obsessing about my sister, and if I admitted that I knew what Laura had done and that I’d listened to her voicemail, then I would have had to reveal the whole story of what had happened in London. This wasn’t the time.

  Sometimes in life you make dumb choices. And in that moment, everything I said, everything I did, was unforgivable.

  So when Pearl brought up the subject of Laura’s phone call, I pretended that she must have misinterpreted what Laura said. Because if Pearl knew what Laura’s motives were—that Laura still wanted me—it might make her run from me for good. I couldn’t risk that. Panicking, I told her that I’d lost her handbag with her phone and credit cards inside. That I’d reported it stolen. The fact that either of us could have listened to Laura’s messages without the phone itself, didn’t seem to register with Pearl. Perhaps she was in too much shock.

  If I could do things over again, I would not have said what I said. But I did.

  Coldhearted.

  Bastard.

  These were the words to describe me in that instant. Did I subconsciously want Pearl to suffer? Live the agony that I had undergone the night before? Know the stab of abandonment? Feel the desolation of knowing you have lost your other half? Perhaps I did. Because the more I spoke, the more immersed I became in my fabrication of the truth. Perhaps I thought that Pearl’s pain was proof of her love for me. Knowing that she gave a shit about me gave me hope for our future.

  The words that came out of my mouth showed that I wasn’t going to let her off easily. No, she’d need to earn me back.

  “You know what, Pearl? I’m done,” I said, my eyes sharpened flints. “What you did to me last night pushed me to my fucking limit. You demonstrated, loud and clear, that you don’t want me and that you’re using Sophie as an excuse to run from me.”

  Pearl’s mouth was an O. Her blue eyes round with disbelief. She stood there, shaking, her lips trembling. “I love you, Alexandre. Please, please let’s work this out.”

  “Work what out?” And here, I really did mean what I said. I was fed up with this Sophie nonsense—Pearl thinking that Sophie was capable of murder, not believi
ng that she wanted to make amends. She hated Sophie’s guts long before the Laura message, and Sophie really had been trying. I went on, “Work what out, Pearl? As long as Sophie’s breathing you won’t let up. I can’t have a relationship with someone who hates my sister, especially when she and I are in business together.”

  My monologue continued, as I explained to Pearl why Sophie was not her enemy, and culminating with a balm for her wound, I said, “Come here, chérie, and give me one last kiss before saying goodbye.” It was if an actor were speaking, not me, and I, the onlooker, from the wings—the audience watching the performance. I was observing a coldblooded, callous bastard who was calculating every move—treating Pearl like an acquisition, not a human being. I knew what I was doing. I was a billionaire businessman and I always got what I wanted. And I wanted Pearl…

  To be unequivocally mine.

  This was my way of going about it.

  “You’re breaking up with me?” she whimpered.

  “No, Pearl. It was your choice. You broke us up last night. You broke my heart in two.”

  “That’s not what I want…at all!”

  I continued my performance. “Say what you like, baby, but actions speak louder than words. Nobody should have to go what I went through. You discarded me like a piece of trash, leaving a waiting jet and a waiting fiancé while you climbed out of a fucking toilet window, like a six year-old playing hide-and-seek. Not to mention the reverend in Vegas, and the surprise I had planned for us after our wedding.”

  Her eyes lit up. “What surprise?” Ha! I’d piqued her interest. Good.

  “It’s the past now, baby. Water under the bridge.” I leaned down and kissed her. A passionate, sexual kiss with my hand gripping her ass—to let her know what she’d be missing. I drew her against my thumping heart, and opened her lips teasingly with my tongue, probing, lingering—my cock coming alive with every stroke of my tongue on hers. (I’d piqued her interest—she’d ‘peaked’ mine.) She yielded to me and then, after I knew I had her attention, I pulled back. If she’d been smart, she would have known my speech was bullshit and that no man can kiss a woman like that when he’s not head over heels in love. Not to mention the rock in my jeans.