Belle Pearl
Page 6
“Give me another chance,” she creaked out, tears spilling from her eyes.
I drew her closer and whispered in her ear, “No.” Then I gave her another speech about all the gifts she’d be getting from me: the Mercedes, an apartment in Cap d’Antibes, the Porsche, a new apartment that I’d be renting for her, and HookedUp Enterprises itself. The list went on. Academic, because I knew we’d be sharing all these things in the future anyway. I had no doubt in my mind that she would be my wife. I wasn’t going to give up on her—of course not—but she needed to pine for me. Needed to feel what life was going to be without me for a while.
My last words were, “Bye Pearl, baby. Look after yourself.” I walked away, not looking behind.
Fuck I was being a bastard.
But it was the only way to win her back for good.
7
Money and power were my obsessions for many years, working around the clock to make HookedUp what it quickly became.
Now I had an obsession of a different nature: Pearl.
Every minute of every day, I wanted to be with her. Hold her. Make love to her, although she still probably wasn’t ready for that, after all those nightmares about the college rapists. All the more reason for me to give her time to heal herself, to step away from her; for her to spend a while with her brother and father. She told me she was going to Hawaii to visit her dad.
Pearl and I were talking, but barely. My calls were clipped and businesslike. I sent her a Birkin handbag, replete with cellphone and replacements for her other ‘stolen’ stuff. She needed a new purse, anyway. The old one I stashed away in a suitcase.
Meanwhile, I waited, like a lonely crocodile in his patch of territory; no mate, no friends (except for faithful Rex), biding my time until Pearl wouldn’t be able to bear being away from me anymore. Only then would I make my move.
I had two things to sort out: sell my share of HookedUp to Sophie, once and for all, and deal with the dreaded Laura.
If I wanted to make things work with Pearl, even if she were being irrational about Sophie, I had to extricate myself from HookedUp. Because, seriously, how much money and power does a person need? I’d proved myself—I’d never have to work again if I didn’t want to. It was a small sacrifice to pay for a smooth road ahead with the woman I loved.
But Laura…Jesus, that was an unquantifiable problem waiting—like a grenade—to detonate.
I dialed her house number. I was hoping to get James on the line, to tell him what was going on—to get his crazy wife under control and keep her away from me for good. But James hadn’t been answering his cell so I wasn’t surprised when Laura picked up. As I stood in the kitchen in my apartment, I opened the fridge door, wondering what I should snack on, but the moment I heard Laura’s voice, I lost my appetite.
“Hello darling” she cooed.
“How did you know it was me?” I asked with suspicion—I’d hidden my number.
“Gut feeling.”
I slammed the fridge door shut so hard I heard a bottle smash. “I am not your darling, Laura. I don’t ever, ever want to see you again. Your shenanigans with me at The Connaught were bad enough, but what you did to Pearl was beyond imagination. She was terrified. Terrified.”
She chuckled. “That was the idea.”
“I’m marrying Pearl so you might as well accept it and get out of my fucking life.”
“You won’t marry Pearl, Alex my love, when I tell you what I know.”
Blood pounded in my ears. “What do you know?”
“I think it’s something we need to discuss face to face. I’ll come to New York—we can have a little chat.”
“No!” And then I said calmly, “I have business to attend to in London. I’m going to Provence to see about house stuff—I’ll pick up those books of yours and bring them over to your place. And I’ll pick up my Aston Martin from your garage, too. That way, you and I will break all ties and we won’t ever have to see each other again.”
“So final. So dramatic! Well, Alex darling, if you like a little drama, I can guarantee you that I won’t disappoint.”
“No more games, Laura—really, this isn’t funny.”
“I thought our time together at The Connaught was hilarious, and if I remember rightly, you did too.”
“The drugs had me laughing, but I can tell you it wasn’t bloody funny standing with my dick poking out like a fucking torpedo in front of my sister and Indira Kapoor.”
Laura cackled into the line, her breath hitching in hysterics.
“So when I next come to London, I’ll bring those books, get my car and sayonara, okay?”
“No, Alex, it’s not okay. I’m still in love with you. Surely you must have guessed that by now?”
“What you have for me, Laura, isn’t love; it’s some sort of sick obsession. If you loved me you’d want me to be happy. Please, I beg of you—leave me, and leave Pearl in peace to get on with our lives.”
“But I can’t do that—I want your baby.”
I knew it! That was what she was after when she laced my Bloody Mary with Viagra, and God knows what else was in that cocktail. I hung up on her, my stomach coiling with fury. She was beyond insane. When she had her accident and the doctors said she hadn’t suffered brain damage, I now knew they’d got the prognosis wrong. This woman was not right in the head. Okay, she had always been highly-strung, demanding and spoiled, but this? This behavior was psychotic.
My cell rang again. I ignored it. Laura, wanting to wind me up some more. But then I glanced at the screen and saw that it was Elodie. I opened the fridge again to get out a drink.
“Elodie,” I said with relief, cracking open a beer, “what’s up?”
“I’m outside your door. I forgot my key.”
“The door’s not locked, I’m in the kitchen.” I gulped down the whole bottle of beer almost in one go and the fizz prickled my nose—Laura had made me thirsty.
Elodie giggled into the line. “Oh. Duh! Okay.”
She came into the kitchen and I took a double take. She wasn’t dressed in her usual Goth attire and she looked quite beautiful without all that black make-up on her eyes. She was wearing skinny jeans tucked into elegant, black boots and a pink, scoop-necked sweater which accentuated her delicate neck. But the headphones she was wearing still gave her a street-cool look. She was slim, as always, but didn’t look like a scrawny sparrow anymore. I gave her a big bear-hug. I’d missed her. She hadn’t been coming into the HookedUp offices much lately, because she said she was getting her art portfolio together.
“I was thinking about making an omelet or something. Are you hungry?” I asked.
She sat down. “What?”
“Take your headphones off and maybe you can hear me. What are you listening to, anyway?”
She took them off and disconnected her iPod. “She’s a new singer from New Zealand, still in high school. This song, Royals, hasn’t even been released yet, but a friend of mine got her hands on it—knows the producer or something.”
“Hungry?”
“Sure.”
I narrowed my eyes at her suspiciously. “Really, you’re eating now?”
“A girl’s got to eat.”
“Great. That’s great.” I got some ingredients out of the fridge, cracked open some eggs and whipped them in a bowl. Elodie watched me with curiosity. I doubted she did any cooking herself. Lucky about the massive choice of take-out in New York or she probably would have starved from laziness.
“You’re pretty flashy, breaking eggs with one hand.”
“I worked as a sous chef in a restaurant in Paris once upon a time.”
“I didn’t know that,” she said.
“There’s a lot of stuff you don’t know about me.”
“I know that you and Maman left home very young and had to look after yourselves, but she never tells me details. What did she do as a job?”
“She worked as a waitress,” I lied. “Hey, Elodie, I forgot to ask you; how’s the portfolio comi
ng along? Still taking photos? Still making those angry angel collages?”
“Going okay, I guess, but I need to get away for a while,” she said, not wanting to look me in the eye.
I lit the gas. “What’s wrong? You’re not paranoid about being followed again, are you?”
“I need a break but I don’t want to go back to Paris. I want to do some traveling or something. Backpack around Asia. I can go with my roommate, Claire.”
“You know what? There’s a lot to see right here in the United States. There’s no need to go schlepping around dodgy foreign countries when there’s too much unrest in the world right now. Go to the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone Park, why don’t you?”
To my surprise, she replied, “Okay, good idea.”
I tore some fresh basil leaves, sprinkling bits into the pan, and suddenly had a thought. “I have a car…well, it’s Pearl’s car. It’s in San Francisco and needs to be brought to New York. Is your driver’s license in order? And your friend’s?”
Elodie got up and took a couple of beers out of the fridge and offered me one. “Yup. Cool plan. Can we take as long as we like to drive cross-country?”
“Sure. No rush. Just be careful. Don’t go over the speed limit—be prudent. Speak to my assistant, Jim—he can get you your plane tickets there, hotels, whatever you need. Maybe you can even stay with Pearl’s brother. Anyway, the car’s at his place in his garage. I’ll call Anthony and Pearl and get it all arranged. I’m sure Pearl won’t mind—actually you’d be doing her a favor.”
“Why is Pearl’s car in San Francisco? I thought you guys had gone to LA?”
“We did, but she stayed on. Went to visit Anthony. Now she’s in Hawaii visiting her dad.”
Elodie ran her gaze over me, dissecting me, drilling her eyes into my thoughts. “You look guilty, Uncle Alexandre. What’s going on with you and Pearl?”
“Nothing.” I tried to suppress the heat-rush I felt, by turning on the sink faucet and putting the underside of my wrists under cold running water. A trick I learned in the Foreign Legion. As if on cue, my cell started buzzing. The words LAURA popped up on the screen. Elodie picked up my cell without pressing anything, but saw who the caller was.
She arched her brows. “Well aren’t you going to answer it?”
I shook my head. Fucking psycho Laura, leave me alone!
“She called me the other day, you know. She wanted to know Pearl’s number. What’s up?”
“Keep away from Laura, Elodie. Don’t answer her calls and do not, whatever you do, give her any information about anything or anybody at all.”
“But Laura’s nice! She was always really friendly to me.”
“Was is the operative word. That accident changed her.”
“So what’s that got to do with Pearl? Why does Laura want to get in touch with her? Why didn’t you go with Pearl to Hawaii?”
I switched off the gas burner. “Would you get us a couple of plates and utensils?”
Elodie got up. “Why didn’t you go to Hawaii with her?” she asked again.
“She needed space. Needed to sort a few things out.”
“I doubt it. Pearl’s crazy about you—anyone can see that. It’s you, I bet, playing games. Playing ‘I need space’ games. So typical.”
“We both need a little break.”
“Yeah, right. That’s male code for “back off.”
“Not at all. I want to be with Pearl…she just needs some time on her own and—”
“Ha! You’re just making excuses so that you can behave how you like without any thought for Pearl.”
“You’ve got it all wrong, Elodie.”
She sneered at me. “I don’t know what you’re doing, juggling two women at once. Typical man behavior. As if male babies were born with a mean gene in them. You’re all the same—all of you. The only difference is, some hide it better than others but the bastard gene is buried into every man’s DNA.”
She had a point. “That, mademoiselle, is a very uncalled for and rude accusation!”
She put the plates on the table. “I know more about men than you think.” She blew air out of her lips—pouting while she spoke.
“Elodie, I thought you were meant to be going to art college this fall anyway, not traveling about and wasting your time.” I served up our omelets and sat down.
“Next year.”
“Don’t procrastinate.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“And cool it with the cocky attitude, okay?”
She gave me a salute. “Okay, sir!”
Elodie was right. I had the bastard gene in my DNA. What was I playing at? All this, Let Pearl come to me, was bullshit. I loved Pearl. Damn it, I couldn’t be happy without her. I was going to go and find her, whether she was ready or not. I was so in love with Pearl Robinson, I couldn’t concentrate on anything else.
We belonged together and I didn’t want to spend one more day without her. I’d already wasted enough time.
I’d been tracing Pearl’s movements with the tracking device I’d installed on her new cellphone. Guilty. Guilty of obsession, possessiveness, jealousy, and controlling, manipulating behavior of every kind. I convinced myself that all I was doing was keeping a distant eye on her, in case of any emergency; that I could be wherever she was like a knight in shining armor, ready to save her should the occasion rise. Except, my armor was a little rusty, the metal too bulky. Maybe when I was seven years old I’d been a good chevalier, a good knight, but now I’d lost the flair. She had been in London for several days. Why? Instead of catching a plane from Hawaii to New York, she’d gone there. Hampstead to be precise. I remember her having told me that Daisy’s mother lived there.
By this point, I knew I needed to go and join her.
I stopped off at my house in Provence first. The pool was being fixed so I had a meeting with the builders, stayed the night, picked up those bloody books of Laura’s, and left. Technically, a few of the books were mine; gifts from her. I could have taken them to Goodwill, or the French equivalent, but somehow getting them free and clear of my house and giving them back to Laura was symbolic—a fresh start for Pearl and me. Returning gifts to the gift bearer sends a clear, no-nonsense message—get out of my life; not even your gifts hold any meaning anymore.
I took a nice, small and discreet room, not at The Connaught, but another hotel, just in case Laura decided to track me down. Annoyingly, when I asked one of the members of staff to wrap some gifts for my mother—some cashmere scarfs I’d bought—they also giftwrapped the bloody box of books. I didn’t have time to unwrap it. But the last thing I wanted was for Laura to believe I was showering her with gifts or there was some good, pre-Christmas feeling on my part. No, I wanted to ice her out. I’d go there, give her the books and get my Aston Martin, which James had been kindly looking after for me—it was parked in their garage which I still had the keys to. I’d asked him to run the engine every now and then to keep it tuned. I’d bought the car in England and had hoped to drive it to France with Pearl, but we hadn’t had a chance. Right now, the idea of my precious classic car being anywhere near Laura was making me nervous—I could just imagine her dousing it with acid or something, stripping off the beautiful gunmetal-gray paintwork.
I couldn’t wait to snip all ties with her.
8
The hotel didn’t have a gym so I used one close by. I wanted to expend some of the pent-up, surplus energy I had, which was playing tricks with my brain; making me angry and quietly aggressive. I knew part of the reason was because I hadn’t had sex for nearly two weeks. It shouldn’t have affected me; I’d been without sex for long stretches before, when I was in the French Foreign Legion, but that was before I met Pearl. She was imprinted on my brain. I tossed and turned at night, smelling her, hearing her sweet voice, feeling that silky soft skin, dreaming of fucking her. Hearing her whimper when she came, the tears that would fall when her orgasm was so intense she couldn’t believe it was true.
I thought back to my code; treating women with respect at all times, no matter how unhinged they were. Bad idea. I should have told the lot of them to fuck off a long time ago. Laura, Claudine, even Indira. After the way my father treated my mother, I swore I’d always be gentle with women in every circumstance—the idea of being like him in any way disgusted me. But my kindness wasn’t paying off; it had got me in a tangled web with a whole lot of Black Widow spiders out to gobble me up.
“Can you please step on it—don’t mean to be rude but I’m in a hurry,” I said to the driver who was chatting away in his Cockney accent about immigration.
“No problem, gov. It’s those bastard eastern European scum and the like. Vey come ‘ere expectin’ work, stealin’ jobs from decent British citizens. Arf of ‘em ‘av illegal, dodgy businesses, drugs, prostitution and ve like—vey really are ve scum of ve earf.” They really are the scum of the earth, I finally realized he was saying.