by Rissa Brahm
He carefully fingered through the box closest to him. His first find was a small, withered photo, and although it was probably not the right time, as they had no time, he pulled it out anyway.
“You are quite la princesita here,” he said to Jana, who continued her intense search through her second box. “Jana, hey.”
She looked up. He handed her the photo of a little girl, most obviously Jana, on the lap of a mustached man in a sombrero, most definitely her grandfather. She was dressed in a white puffed blouse and a thickly layered skirt, each layer a different vibrant color. It completely reminded him of his home. She had to have been four, maybe five years old. Pigtails and the same long lashes framing her golden eyes, as shapely and sharp as a kitten’s.
“God, I remember that. He’d brought me some salsa music and the costume. We danced all day. My mother must’ve sneaked a picture,” she said, musing over it for a second. Then she slid it into her purse and smiled her thanks as she went back to the boxes.
“Ahh, birth certificates. Might be on the right track here,” she announced.
To keep with the ultra-serious tone she’d set, he hid his smile as he fingered through more photos of her and early school projects. Jana’s roots, her backstory in crumpled paper form. God, she was a little strike of lightning as a girl. He looked up at Jana for an instant to match this version to the young one. Yeah, she still is. Pure lightning. Then he moved onto another box to keep with her furious pace. “Bank and financial here,” he said. “Are you cool with me going through—”
“Yes, of course. I can guarantee there’s nothing to know. They’re flat broke.”
He went through each paper, like she’d asked him to, but was getting distracted by her shifting and twisting body kneeling in front of him as she sifted through her own box, her delicate curves drawing his eyes away from the redundant documents. His ability to stay unaffected by her, with her magnetic beauty, was lessening with every passing day. Then there was their connection at the park, laying there beside each other in the grass and hell, all the days since the library, really. But to be honest, since the day she’d slid into his limo the first night, she’d captivated him.
And now his body was responding more often. Physical, electric charges bolted through him, and he had to hold himself in check with all his might. His advances were the last thing she needed right now.
Wait. The bank statements he’d been going through. A change in the dollar amounts. His eyes had picked up a difference just then and not a small one. There were average balances of two and three thousand dollars all the way back to the prior year, but he held in his hand a statement from thirteen months before with an eighty-five thousand dollar transaction. But it was leaving the account. He’d run through enough statements in his own business to know something was up, but before he said a word to Jana, he rifled back further, fourteen and fifteen months in the past. Sixteen months, then he got to a year and a half, when an eighty-seven thousand dollar deposit showed up entering the account. The line item was identified in the bank’s detail as a HELOC: a Home Equity Line of Credit. He quickly went back to the eighty-five thousand dollar withdrawal and looked at the bank code: some numbers then ‘wire transfer to Burbank, CA.’ He remembered Jana telling him in the park that her brother was somewhere in California.
“I found the will. Here it is,” she said, waving the one-page form in her hand. “So glad he’s leaving everything to Dane,” she laughed reading through it. “I’d rather have a damn heart attack myself than inherit this pit.” She laughed. “So did you find anything besides my baby pictures?”
He couldn’t decide. Show her this now? Of course, show her. What would ever prevent him from letting her see the unbelievable craziness that her parents’ bank statements seemed to indicate?
But he knew in the deepest part of him why he was holding back his finding. Antonio couldn’t bear to see her reaction. It would be another rip, or more like a gash, in her heart. God, he hated the thought of her in more pain, more never-ending despair caused by the ones who were supposed to love her most.
“No. Not the directive at least. But…here.” He moved closer to her, and although it was stuffy in the house, and he’d maybe moved too close for her comfort, he felt he needed to be right there, ready to catch her when she crumbles from the shock.
She took the papers from him in her left hand while she hadn’t yet pulled her attention away from the box she was on. “This is it! The health care directive.” She pulled out the document and jumped up. “We got ’em. Would you mind putting these boxes back up, and then we can head out?”
“Sure, of course. But, Jana…” He stood up next to her, squared his body with hers, and put his hands on her shoulders to try to focus her attention.
“Why so serious?”
“Look at the statements I gave you, in your left hand.”
Her eyes moved down to the papers while Antonio counted slowly in his head. When he got to seven, she was slowly sinking to her knees. At the nine count, he rejoined her on the moldy, ratty carpet that was cluttered with boxes.
CHAPTER 32
“Can I run them in for you? Just tell me who to ask for.”
She thought about the prospect of seeing her mother, who had to have known. She was Chang Park’s goddamn puppet, after all, jumping and dancing with the pull of a string. Jana couldn’t even look at the woman, let alone talk to her at that point. “Yes. Please…if you don’t mind. Just ask for Sally Buchard.”
Antonio was in and out in a few minutes, holding an envelope when he returned. “All set. Here are the originals. I had them make copies.”
Thank God he’d thought of that. Where was her brain? Well, she knew. Her brain, her psyche, was reeling in an inferno of anger, and all she could think to do was drown it out with a numbing shot of alcohol. Not like her, but that’s what she craved.
Time check: a solid hour before she had to be at the club. If she could just mellow out with a quick drink now, nothing a few mints wouldn’t cover, she’d be fine and on time for the girls and training.
“Antonio, can we stop for a bite at that little pub before the highway?” She realized she hadn’t really even eaten except for a yogurt before he’d picked her up at eleven-something that morning.
*
She matched him bite for bite on the burger and fries and ignored his lifted brows when she ordered a second beer.
He helped lighten her mood with some distracting stories about Jocelyn Carlson and her ‘rotating johns’ as he called them, and, with the liquid relaxants in her, she came back with a few of her own tales, mostly about high-powered attorneys and arrogant politicians getting caught in the private back rooms. The local papers had somehow gotten close-up shots to prove their indiscretions. “What people will do for money, with money, hell, on money!” She snorted then blushed a bit. Then she closed her eyes to anchor her whirling mind. She felt better, lighter. But dizzier. Her fingers massaged her temples before she slowly opened her eyelids again.
She threw back the end of her second beer as Antonio tapped his watchless wrist.
But as the alcohol had processed quickly through her small frame, she almost didn’t care anymore about being on time. What the hell was the point? People don’t change. They don’t learn. Her parents didn’t. Lending her bum of a brother more money or probably giving it! Just to throw it away. Her money, by the way. It was all her hard-earned, soul-despairing money.
They must’ve refinanced the house and restaurant, the very building she danced naked to pay down to zero. To zero for Christ’s sake! Then she shook her tits and dry humped her way to a nursing degree. Now where was she?
In a fucking delusion was where. And now she thought she could make a difference to a bunch of lost girls. Because if she got to the club on time for training and taught them all about hard work, future planning, focus, and ambition, they’d get up and out and end up exactly the fuck where she was now: nowhere.
Antonio stood up, threw
some green bills down and held out his hand for her. He was such a gentleman, so nice to her, but why? Everyone had a reason, an incentive. What was his agenda?
And then again, what the hell did she care what his motivation was for being so nice to her? He was thick and yummy, too delicious to ignore. Her core had quivered for him since the day he’d stood over her at the library, his plated bronzed chest showing through that crisp white robe.
She smiled when he offered her his hand as she scooted out of the booth. Then she took his hand, pulled herself up to stand, and held on to steady herself. Her legs felt like jelly. Without a next thought, she slid her free arm around his waist, getting definitive confirmation of the ever-defined torso she’d imaged too many times to exist under his shirt. What was she doing? Giving him a hug, maybe? A friendly, much-needed hug? But she couldn’t answer her own question fast enough as she lifted to her toes, lifted her chin, her face, to meet his questioning hazel eyes.
And she kissed him. Her needy lips pressed against his soft sweet lips. Just lightly adjoined, but for a long moment. A lingering, alleviating, glorious moment.
Until he pulled away, stepping a full step backward.
And she could only blush hot red when she stumbled forward from his retreat, his chest saving her from falling flat on the bar’s floor.
“Jana, are you alright?”
“Yes, damn it. I’m fine. Just fucking fine.” And she grabbed her purse and huffed out of the pub.
CHAPTER 33
Fuck him…and fuck me!
Jana got into the back seat where she intended to stay. For good. She was mortified and angry at the rejection and at her life up to the rejection.
Fucking alcohol slowed her processes and her goddamn prudence! Her sound judgment!
She needed to be alone. To reflect and to decide what the hell she was doing and going to do about everything. Her lost pride and her out-of-left-field feelings or neediness, or whatever the hell that was back there. And, yes, what to do about her family and her absolutely fucked future. Yeah, the entire merry go round of fucked.
She looked back over her shoulder. He was coming to the car now. God, she wanted the divider up so goddamn bad. But of course, she couldn’t have it without getting sick everywhere. So as he reached for his door handle she found her sunglasses, shoved them on, stuffed the earbuds in her ears—yes, his fucking earbuds, ugh!—and readied herself for complete separation. Church and state, client and goddamn chauffeur, her floundering soul and the never-ending ocean of shit her soul was drowning in.
*
She got to the club without a single word to Antonio and decided then that she’d not need him for the next few days. She wouldn’t be going to visit her father, not until Thursday, after she got the money from Johnnie at the theater and from her bank. And she could take a cab to the club from the studio each night or goddamn walk.
She headed to the entrance of The Wet Spot and turned before going through the doors. Antonio rolled down his window on cue.
“No need to bring me back to the studio tonight. Actually, I won’t need you until Thursday morning, 9:00 AM.” She continued into the club.
*
Like a dagger to the chest, her words. And after the brutal silence for the entire drive down, add those sunglasses she hid behind with only her scowl visible to him in his rearview, she stunned his heart beat-less.
With her flip-of-the-switch attitude, an eerie, fearful feeling had drifted through him from the back seat, from her sudden ice-statue aura. It echoed in his chest. Stranger still, it was as if he’d seen it before, her frosty shield. It wasn’t from any time he’d been shuttling her from place to next-dreaded-place. It wasn’t inside his limo at all. It was as if he’d almost hurt her before, though they’d never met, or he’d remember. Jana Park, he was certain, he’d sure as hell remember. He was also sure that he’d never intentionally hurt this woman, this warrior princess who had graced his life. Not ever in a trillion years would he hurt her.
Yet––Fuck!––she was reeling in pain, and now wouldn’t let him in to relieve it.
CHAPTER 34
It had been three sleepless nights since he’d seen her. In person that is. Her image kept flashing in his head, keeping him from sleep and from his usual focus. Because it wasn’t the warm, sensual, vibrant woman he’d come to know and really fucking care for over the last several days—Jesus, only a little over a week! No, now, with those sunglasses she’d hidden behind and that icy scowl, she’d become an untouchable ice sculpture in his head and heart. Still, damn it, all he wanted to do was wrap her in his arms, in his warmth.
The entire situation screwed him up. Anxiety coursed through his veins while, at the same time, he’d zone out behind the wheel––traffic lights turned from red to green until blaring horns brought him back. Instead of conquering his usual pile of paperwork on his office desk, he’d pace and think and debate. Whether to call her or text her or drive over to the studio…or should he just wait it out? He was fidgety, even short-tempered, so noticed Celeste and the girls. And in contrast to last week when Celeste had described him as the “most alive” she’d ever seen him, it was definitely telling. Jana Park’s absence shook him to the core.
Shook him, and now angered him, damn it.
How could she have written him off so easily? After the connection they’d made? She’d just given up on him. Forget about the undeniable spark between them, she’d abandoned their friendship.
And hell, he had to protect himself. Especially after Michelle. So he’d follow Jana’s lead and throw in the towel too. He’d keep focused on getting home like he’d planned in the first place.
As if it’s that easy, damn it.
Because there was more to it. And it was beyond the devastating effect of the shut-out, the silent treatment, the lack of Jana in his days and hours and minutes. Worst of all, his seeming rejection had made her feel more alone than she’d already felt. And he couldn’t handle being a source of pain to her. Another source of pain.
Damn it! He hadn’t meant to hurt or embarrass Jana––anything but.
God, a kiss from those lips would have been like finding an oasis after the longest, most arduous trek across the Sonoran. A kiss from her, he’d only dreamt about. But a kiss from her, a touch, a whisper, could not be stained or tainted by the emotional turmoil inflicted on her by her oblivious and vile family. And a kiss they’d share would not be gotten by pity either. If he ever had the chance of being with such a woman as Jana Park, it had to be complete and pure synergy, the two of them in a united moment, both aware, both choosing each other on total and conscious and absolute purpose.
And although he knew she thought he’d rejected her and was undoubtedly furious from her tornado of a day, he didn’t see her getting over what happened between them at the bar. But she could get past it, then by association alone he guessed she’d think of this torturous time in her life every time she looked at him.
Who was he kidding anyway? They were heading toward different worlds. She wanted the City life, her esteemed ER. She’d only mentioned it a few hundred times in the week-plus that they’d known each other. Once she figured out what she’d do about her parents’ finances, Jana would resume her big city life in Manhattan. And he’d rather die before being dropped into that maze again.
Really, their connection was nothing more than logistical desperation. Jana was being wrung out for money while he was finalizing a divorce and trying to get back home with his financial goal reached. Or hell, at this point, in one financial piece at all because he didn’t know if Jana would ask Johnnie to replace him as a driver. Maybe she could no longer stand the sight nor sound of him.
Anyway, how could he even imagine it working between them? They had worse chances than a rebound couple. They’d be a couple by emotional and psychological default. It could never be.
And for Christ’s sake, she might very well have been and may still be with Johnnie, he didn’t know. And even though it killed him,
knowing Jana was too good for a saint, let alone that prick, it was, again, none of his damn business. And never had been.
So, in the end, it was better for him to get good and used to not being near her, not talking to her, not thinking about her.
But, not thinking about her? Was it even possible?
Thinking about her made him happy. Being near her made him happy. Made him better. A better man. She made his days worthwhile, vibrant even. And as sad as it was, she’d undoubtedly been the impetus for letting Michelle go, throwing his ring into the Hudson and signing the papers. Jana had been his motivation for obtaining freedom.
And now, without her, what did he have?
Home, Antonio. You have home.
Home? And his fucking “number”? Without Jana and what she suddenly represented, none of the other things mattered a damn. Not a good goddamn and it was deadening to his heart.
CHAPTER 35
Johnnie called him late Wednesday afternoon to make sure he’d be at the apartment at five to get them into Manhattan by seven-thirty. Antonio bowed out on his adult Tae Kwon Do students with apologies and rushed home to shower. He hadn’t known of Johnnie’s plans. The bastard probably assumed that since Antonio was on twenty-four-seven detail, he’d be at their disposal anyway. Which meant Johnnie didn’t know Jana had dismissed him until Thursday morning. Why, though? Why was she waiting to ask for a replacement? God, he should take it upon himself to send someone else. It would be less torture on him. But for some reason, he couldn’t. He had to take her Thursday. Something compelled him, and he couldn’t answer for himself what. Or could he?
Antonio pulled up in front of the studio a few minutes before five, and Johnnie’s seventy-five thousand dollar coupe was already there, double-parked as it were. A second later he watched Jana come out in a black satin dress, the continuation of her long midnight hair, with her slender neck holding up the fine black threads of the halter top of the gown. Johnnie Demonte was right behind her, ushering her to the car with his hand at the very base of her back.
