Pearl (The Pearl Series)

by Arianne Richmonde

  My cell had already buzzed a couple of times and I let it go to voicemail, but when the caller—Sophie, Claudine, Indira, Laura?—insisted, I thought that perhaps there was some kind of emergency, so I picked it up and listened to two frantic messages.

  Both from Sophie.

  The first:

  “I was right. I knew there was something fishy about Pearl Robinson. Guess what, buddy? Your sweet little baby-doll-eyed-girlfriend is forty years old! Oh yes, fucking forty! You might be happily thinking that you are her boyfriend but she has other ideas: you are her TOY BOY! She’s playing with you, Alexandre. She’s out to get what she’s after and then she’ll dump you like a hot potato, you watch.”

  Second message:

  “Sorry, forgot to explain myself. Pearl Robinson was stalking us, like the cougar she is, when we met her in that coffee shop. Coincidence, my ass! Do you remember how she pretended she just so happened to be there? She works for Haslit Films, the ones who were hounding us to take part in their fucking documentary! She’s their producer! Do you remember that? The film company who were hassling us, wanting to do a piece about us? She was bloody well following us! Why the fuck aren’t you picking up your phone, Alexandre?”

  I called Sophie back, my eyes on Pearl. I couldn’t believe what I’d heard but I knew my sister; she would have done her homework. Sophie never made mistakes. Wow, Pearl had me fooled. First of all, she looked not a day older than thirty, with that tight, smooth body that even a twenty-five year old would have been proud of. I’d been dumb. I was so wrapped up in the romance of our relationship, I hadn’t bothered to find out who she really was, what she did for a living. Damn it, I probably could have known everything within ten minutes, just by Googling her.

  Pearl was gazing back at me, her face ashen. She knew something was wrong. My eyes had turned as cold as two sharpened flints—I could feel it myself. I never had been good at hiding my anger.

  I looked at her. Pearl Robinson, you’ve fucking betrayed me. I trusted you.

  Sophie picked up on the first ring and continued her rant without even saying hello. “Fucking Americans! They always have an ulterior motive. Always out to get something from you. Pearl Robinson is a fucking snake in the grass! I suppose you’re shagging her as we speak!”

  “No, I’m not, actually,” I said coolly, my heart feeling as if it had been ripped out of my chest. Talk about a good performance. Pearl had me conned. Really fooled. There I was imagining that she had desperately fallen for me. I was the one who had fallen. Fallen hard.

  Fallen on my goddamn face.

  Sophie went on, “I hadn’t put two and two together because it was her boss, Natalie something-or-other who’d sent me all those emails, begging us for an interview, to take part in their fucking spy-film. What have you told her, Alexandre?”

  “Nothing,” I lied.

  “Because if you’ve spilt the beans about our business, it will be all over the papers, soon enough, or edited into some bloody documentary for the whole world to see!”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, my heart pounding. Fuck! Pearl knew so much about my past. About Sophie stabbing my father in the groin. Me, trying to kill him off with rat poison…a fascinating story it would make: the CEOs of HookedUp both belonging in a loony bin.

  “Does she know about the gems? Does she know about our highly illegal Mumbai deal?” Sophie screamed at me.

  “Of course not.”

  “Get the fuck away from that scheming, lying bitch and never, ever see her again.”

  “Sure,” I answered sadly, my eyes still fixed on Pearl’s beautiful face. My insides were churning like a cement mixer. “Bye, Sophie, I’ll call you later.”

  I pressed ‘end’ and let out a disappointed sigh. I shook my head, “Oh Pearl, oh Pearl.” I was wondering how I’d be able to bear it—how I’d be able to stand not having her in my arms, not be able to fuck her, make love to her, see her face when she came, hear her moan with desire.

  Her big blue yes widened with guilty innocence. Damn, she was a good actress. “What?” she asked.

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me who you were?” I was waiting for her to admit what she did, to offer me a reasonable explanation, but she just dug her grave deeper.

  “What do you mean?” she said, her finger touching her nose. Such a giveaway.

  That was her fucking response—that’s the best she could come up with.

  My lips pressed tightly together, my body tensed. I’d given her a chance to wriggle out of her deceit, but she’d blown it. I hissed between gritted teeth, “Is this what all this means to you? Having breakfast with me, spending time, making love? All this so you can go back to your fucking editing suite and plot out the next scene? The scene where Alexandre Chevalier and Sophie Dumas’s pasts are revealed? Was that what it meant to you when we were in bed together? A ploy to get intimate with me and make me spill the beans about my private life?”

  “NO! I mean…I…let me explain, Alexandre—”

  “Explain what? That you lied to me? Oh no, not lied, that would have been too obvious. You omitted information. Omitted to tell me what your game plan was. Why didn’t you just come out with it?” I lower my voice, “Because if you wanted to fuck me as part-and-parcel of your deceitful little package deal, I would have done that for free. The only difference is I would have fucked you harder, cared a little less,” and I leaned down and whispered in her ear, “I would have fucked your ass off, pounded into you ruthlessly like you fucking deserved, so you couldn’t walk for several days afterwards.”

  The people in the hotel restaurant were staring at us now. Fascinated by our domestic scene. Pearl’s eyes were brimming over with tears—mascara running down her cheek. But she still couldn’t come up with a decent excuse. She did what every woman does when they are caught out—she pulled out the sympathy card. But I wasn’t falling for it.

  “Don’t fucking cry on me now,” I said coldly.

  “Please Alexandre,” she whimpered, dabbing her tears with a linen napkin. The sympathy card wasn’t working, so she laid out her next card on the table: The Queen of Hearts. “I love you,” she sobbed.

  Her words pinched my heart but I took a big breath and muttered, “Good try, baby.”

  She babbled on incoherently about the coffee shop—how she’d missed our talk, something about not giving a toss about HookedUp but wanting to focus on important things, like exposing arms dealers.

  More important stuff. My point exactly. Sophie and I were just pawns to her.

  I stood up, heat flushing through me, not wanting to listen to her bullshit, lame excuses anymore. She’d proven to me that she was your typical, ambitious, ball-busting career woman. Tough. Ruthless. Trampling over others at any cost to get what she wanted. I slapped a couple of hundred dollar bills on the table to more than cover the check. “Keep the change,” I snapped. “Oh yeah, you left your gifts at my place—the pearl necklace, the kingfisher feather. I’ll have them delivered to you—a little keepsake, a souvenir,” I said bitterly, “so you can remember our time together.” I turned on my heel and strode out of the room, not looking behind.

  Pride before a fall.

  10

  That fall came a good week or so later.

  Meanwhile, I had Laura on my case, not to mention Indira.

  “Darling,” Laura purred into the phone, “please let me know about France. I want to book my holiday but I also want you to be there. Like I told you, James won’t be coming this year. I miss you. A lot. Call me.”

  Next voicemail: Indira. “Alexandre, please forgive me. I was behaving like a banshee. I don’t know what got over me. Of course you’re seeing other women, it’s natural. We live thousands of miles apart from each other. I can completely understand. You were such a gentleman the other day, not wanting to take advantage of me. Please don’t hate me because I flipped out. Water under the bridge? Anyway, I’m coming to New York to promote my next film and I’d love it if we
could have dinner or something. Call me.”

  Next message: just tears and sniffling down the line. It must have been Elodie because I didn’t recognize the number. She’d changed it so many times in the last six months, I couldn’t keep count. Was there was someone she was trying to avoid? I called the number back. No answer. I was tempted to set up a GPS tracking system on her phone. Something I didn’t feel good about—I hated spyware of any kind, but Elodie was eighteen years old, new in New York with limited English, and so stunning that people stared at her when she walked by, despite her sneer, her black Goth make-up and her fuck-me-fuck-you-or-I’ll-stab-you-in-the-eye-heels.

  Women. They really were a handful.

  I called Elodie back.

  “Where are you, sweetheart?” I asked. I was sitting at my desk in my apartment, looking at a framed photo of Rex. I made a mental note of going to Paris to get him ASAP.

  Elodie spluttered as if a drink had gone down the wrong way. “How did you know it was me?”

  “Only about ten people have my number and I figured that if a number comes up I don’t recognize, it has to be you. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. By the way, do you still have that bodyguard who works for you sometimes?”

  “Of course,” I said, my jaw ticking at her out-of-the-blue, very worrying question.

  “Can I borrow him for a while?”

  “Elodie, what’s up? Is someone following you?”

  There was a long pause. I could hear street noises, her clicking heels. Then she answered, “No. No, of course not. I’d just feel safer, you know. I don’t know this city so well.”

  “I’ll put him back on the payroll full-time, then,” I told her. “What about the new apartment? Will you be scared without a man in the house?” I had just bought her a two-bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village. She was going to get a roommate to share it with her: an old friend from Paris. “Maybe you should carry on staying at my place?” I suggested.

  “No, it’s fine. I love my new flat. Can’t wait to move in. Listen I’ve got to go. Speak later.” She ended the call and I sat there wondering what was going on. I got up and started pacing the room. I’d try and find out without compromising her privacy too much, but if my niece felt she needed a bodyguard, I sure as hell wanted to find out why.

  The week dragged on. I tried to concentrate on work but everywhere I looked I saw signs of Pearl. I hadn’t returned her gifts, mostly because I couldn’t bear to let go of her memory. I didn’t wash the shirts I’d worn because I could still smell her on the fabric. She was everywhere—even on my bloody iPad—in one of my goddamn lists.

  Being a nerd, I write lists, something I have always done to make sure I’m on top of any situation. As I said, multi-tasking has never been my strong point by nature, so all thoughts, all ideas get written down. So being as busy as I was, with so many fingers in pies (and other places), I had to be on the ball.

  I read the bullet points I had written about Pearl:

  Problems to be solved concerning Pearl: needs to reach orgasm during penetrative sex. (My big challenge).

  Needs confidence boosted—age complex due to American youth worship culture.

  Need to get her pregnant ASAP due to clock factor—need to start family.

  The list just went to show how hard I’d fallen for her and how much I had invested myself in her.

  I expected her to call and apologize, the way Indira had. Pearl was in the wrong, and yet still, each day went by with no news. It was beginning to really irk me. How dare she fuck me over and then not even say she was sorry?

  Then I started worrying about her, the way you do about members of your family. Was she alright? Had she died in some freak car accident? Then Sophie called and put my mind at rest. At least, for all of five minutes, until I started obsessing about Pearl again—pacing the room, wringing my fingers through my hair.

  Sophie was in Paris. But even from long distance, I could feel her whiskers twitching, her claws sharpened.

  “The gems are in Amsterdam,” she started off by saying. “All good. They’re with the best cutters, the best jewelers. We’re going to make a mint. We’ll need to buy some more real estate with the cash…distribute. I’d like to buy a brownstone on the Upper East Side, you know, for when I visit New York.”

  “Good idea, we should launder a bit.”

  “Launder. I hate that word—it’s so crass. By the way, speaking of laundry, of your dirty laundry, we don’t need to worry about Pearl Robinson anymore; she doesn’t seem to be a threat. Looks like she’s got bigger fish to fry.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, ignoring her dirty laundry jibe.

  “She’s turned her attention to that Russian billionaire, that arms dealer.”

  “What Russian arms dealer?”

  “You know, the handsome one, that young thirty-year-old Adonis-Casanova guy who’s always strutting about on red carpets with supermodels. What’s-his-face, you know, Mikhail Prokovich.”

  A stab of jealousy pierced my gut. Pearl was turning her attention elsewhere? “That blond guy? He’s an arms dealer? I thought he was in real estate. He’s an arms dealer?” I repeated, incredulous.

  “A clandestine one. I doubt Pearl knows whom she’s dealing with. He’s very black market. He mixes with war criminals, soldiers of fortune, crooked diplomats and small-time thugs who keep militaries and mercenaries loaded with arms. But he’s powerful. Very powerful. Pearl was seen having dinner with him just last night. All smiles, apparently.”

  I hated him already. I felt my fists clench into tight knots. What was Pearl doing? She hated arms dealers, was talking about exposing them in her next documentary. And now she was hanging out with one?

  “What else do you know?” I pressed my sister, blood bubbling in my veins, jealousy rippling through every muscle in my body. This guy was sickeningly good-looking. Even as a man I could tell you that. Dashing, one of those square-jawed types that look like they’ve walked straight out of a cartoon strip. Blondish hair, searing blue eyes. Sophie was right; he was a red carpet kind of guy—liked to be seen. Cocky. With beautiful women hanging on his arm, and probably hanging onto his every word, as well. Jets. A fleet of flashy cars, some of them enviably cool. Houses all over the world. Every woman’s fantasy.

  “Sophie, what else do you know?” I demanded again in a low growl.

  “That Pearl’s been out to dinner with him, that’s all. Him and some important guy from the United Nations. She’s not just some sweetie-pie, naive American chick with big blue eyes and luscious lips, you know, Alexandre. She’s a smart little operator, a user. She knows people in high places. Knows what she’s doing. Obviously loves mixing business with pleasure. Anyway, at least she’s off our case now, onto the next fool who’ll fall for her innocent little act. Oh wait, before I go, how’s Elodie getting on?”

  “I think you’d better ask her that yourself,” I said, not wanting to betray Elodie’s confidence in any way. But my mind was now focused on Pearl, not Elodie. Sophie’s words rang cruel in my ear… “Pearl likes mixing business with pleasure.”

  The more I thought about it, the adrenaline surged through me. Fuck her! Flirting and smiling with that fuck, Mikhail Prokovich? She was mine! I could hear my breathing getting more unsteady by the second. I was feeling hot and very bloody bothered. I loosened my tie; I’d been in a meeting earlier that day and was wearing a suit.

  The idea of her being anywhere near another man was making blood rush to my head. Especially one as powerful Mikhail Prokovich. I got up from my desk and counted to ten to calm myself. But then I did the reverse, I started counting down from ten, and by the time I hit zero, I was out the door and into the elevator. I had to fuck her.

  Before the Russian got his clammy hands on her.

  I just hoped it wasn’t already too late.

  By the time I reached Pearl’s apartment, my heart rate had doubled. Tripled. She hadn’t apologized. She’d been using me. Using me to further her career.
And now she was onto the next guy (her next project) without even a blink of one of her big, baby-blue eyes! Her whole “I haven’t had an orgasm forever” was bullshit, obviously. Her little ploy to draw sympathy, to get gullible men like me all worked up and horny. To bring out our macho side—be the one to make her come, be the one to fuck her properly. Clever girl. Clever, clever girl. She’d hooked me in. Now she was moving onto the next guy.

  She deserved a fucking Oscar.

  Perhaps she won’t even be home. Maybe she’s on that son-of-a-bitch arms dealer’s yacht by now, her lips clamped around a straw sipping cocktails, or worse…her lips clamped around his….ugh! The thought made my brain burn. But my dick was propelling me to her. Just thinking about her was getting me hard. I couldn’t bear the idea of that cocky-faced shit touching her ass—that sexy, curvy ass, or kissing her beautiful lips. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions, maybe I was being paranoid, but I didn’t want to let the distance between us encourage some gatecrashing jerk to push his way into her life.

  The doorman let me in, and as he was reaching for the landline to call her to announce me, I dashed through the lobby to the service elevator, thought twice and legged it up the back stairs, instead. I couldn’t risk Pearl instructing him not to let me up, or halting the elevator between floors. I’d bang on her kitchen door until she answered—goddamn it, I had to have her. Had to fuck her. Remind her how good we felt together. Remind her that she didn’t want any other man bulldozing his way into her panties. The fact that I, myself, was acting like the biggest bulldozer of all, escaped my one-track mind.

  By the time I reached her floor, I was sweating. My tailored suit didn’t help my frantic climb. I banged on her back door outside her kitchen. I stood by the trash bins, my heart pumping as adrenaline surged through me like a lion hunting its prey.

  Pearl answered the door. James Brown’s Sex Machine was blaring. Good. She probably hasn’t even heard the phone which is still ringing—the doorman trying to announce me. She stood there, and I swear to God, my dick flexed hard within seconds. I was like an untamed animal. All decorum lost, all manners out the window.