by Cherry Kay
He pulled his wallet from his pocket and removed a twenty-dollar bill that he slipped under the drink he barely touched. Shrugging his shoulders in a silent apology, he shook his head and walked out of the restaurant, leaving Tiffany standing there alone.
To cover her embarrassment, Tiffany flagged the bartender and asked him for some tonic water. She was sure that the man had been watching her all night, and it didn’t make any sense that he would then lie to her and leave like that. The guy had only taken a few sips from his drink, and yet he’d been so put off by her approach that he had gotten up to leave. What kind of man did that?
Confused and feeling the sting of rejection, Tiffany returned to her table with her tonic water, drinking half of it before making excuses and paying her portion of the bill. All she wanted to do now was to get home before her life could possibly get any worse.
At first, Tiffany had tried to put the confusing and awkward bar experience behind her, but as the days passed, she couldn’t shake the feeling that there had been something too strange in how the man had behaved after she approached him. It had been easy to write off her blunder as a drunken misunderstanding, but the more she thought about it, the more she became convinced that she had not actually mistaken his attention at all.
There was no doubt in her mind that the guy had been checking her out for over an hour. She tried to think back on what she’d seen and how many drinks he ordered, but she hadn’t been paying that close attention to him. Still, he paid with a twenty-dollar bill, and in a place like that it would not have bought him more than one drink, even without a tip.
She tried to tell herself that he could have been paying as he went, and that maybe he didn’t care enough about money to worry about leaving a drink almost untouched, but what kind of many was so put off by a woman coming on to him that he up and bolted from the bar?
The worst of it was that Tiffany was pretty sure he wasn’t the only one behaving strangely around her. It seemed she was getting odd attention wherever she went. The first time she noticed it after the bar, was during an afternoon visit to the café near her work. A woman had followed Tiffany into the café and sat down at a table facing in a direction that had allowed her to watch Tiffany’s table.
It could have been a random coincidence, as it was not unusual for two people to enter the popular café at the same time, but the woman had spent the whole time reading a newspaper and she hardly bothered to flip the pages. Tiffany wouldn’t have noticed at all, had she not felt the woman’s eyes drifting towards her every time Tiffany looked at her phone or seemed otherwise distracted. It was like the bar all over again, only this time Tiffany simply got up and left without going over to the woman to say anything.
The more she started looking for it, the more she began to see. It didn’t happen all the time, but at least once a day, Tiffany caught someone looking at her just a little too intensely for a random stranger passing on the street. She never recognized any of them as being the same people from earlier incidences, but after several days had passed, she became convinced that someone was watching her, and she could only think of one person with the resources to do so.
It hadn’t been easy to ignore Thomas’s calls all this time, and if he’d really done what the woman on the other end of the phone call had suggested, then it wouldn’t be out of character for him to have Tiffany followed. She didn’t know what he expected to gain from it, but since she’d deleted her profile from Matchr, maybe he hoped to learn more about her so he could try to woo her back.
Deciding she would not make it easier for him, Tiffany decided to turn the tables one day after work. It had been almost a week since she found out about Thomas owning Matchr, and she caught the reflection of someone familiar walking about a half block behind her. Keeping a consistent distance, no matter how slow or fast Tiffany walked, was the woman from the café.
Tiffany was by no means a covert operative trained in this sort of thing, but she’d seen enough movies and TV shows to gain enough of an idea of how to shake a tail. She began the process by slowing her pace to time a crosswalk until the red hand was flashing, and then speeding up quickly to barely make it before the light changed, cutting her pursuer off with a stream of heavy traffic.
Continuing down the block, Tiffany ducked into a boutique women’s clothing store, knowing that the woman would see and follow. This particular store was one she had been in before, and so she knew that it was connected to the men’s shop next door by way of an opening that spanned the back of both stores.
Tiffany used her lead on her pursuer to hurry through the store and back into the men’s section, where she walked just close enough to the front window to be able to see the woman walk past. Pretending to look at a men’s sweater, she kept an eye on the woman and watched her enter the same door Tiffany had come through just moments before. At this point, Tiffany left the men’s shop and turned back the way she’d come, ducking into a housewares shop where she could easily watch the street to see what her stalker did when she realized she’d lost Tiffany.
It only took a minute for the woman to return to the street. She seemed agitated, and she looked up and down the sidewalk in the hopes of catching a glimpse of her prey. Unfortunately for her, Tiffany saw every move, and slipped out of the shop when the woman seemed to give up and walked back in the direction of Tiffany’s office.
Now came the difficult part. Tiffany left the housewares shop after a giving the woman a thirty-second lead. She kept her pace slow and casual, and she attempted to keep several people between her and the woman in order to avoid being spotted. The woman seemed rather preoccupied with something, and then Tiffany saw her place a phone to her ear. Too far away to hear what had been said, Tiffany knew only that it couldn’t have been much of a conversation because the woman ended the call only seconds later, shoving the phone back into her pocket.
A slick black car pulled up to the curb near the woman, and Tiffany stopped and waited to avoid being seen. She watched the woman pull open the passenger side door and slide into the seat before the car pulled away and was lost in traffic.
It only occurred to Tiffany that she should have written down the license plate number after it was too late, but she would not have known what to do with it if she had. Instead, she turned and continued on her way home, hoping that no one else would follow her from there.
Chapter5
Knowing she couldn’t put it off any longer, Tiffany fired off a message to Thomas on her way home. She told him simply that he needed to forget about her, and that she would go to the police to tell them everything, if he didn’t stop having people follow her. She knew she should probably have called him instead of texting, but she was so angry with him that she didn’t trust herself to not yell obscenities at him. That would not actually accomplish anything, other than giving him a chance to heap more lies onto the ones he had already told her.
She could not believe she had been so unlucky to have drawn the attention of someone so crazy, and it almost made her laugh to think about how she had thought just the opposite before learning the truth about him.
Exhausted and wanting to get home and into a hot shower, Tiffany climbed the stairs to her apartment, searching for her keys in her purse. Finding them tucked under a light silk scarf and a pack of gum, she looked up and nearly fell backwards in surprise with the shock of seeing Thomas sitting on the stairs across from her unit. He was dressed plainly, in dark jeans and a basic gray t-shirt, and he raised his hands to calm Tiffany before she could yell at him to get out.
“Please, Tiffany, just give me a few minutes,” he said. “After everything we’ve been through, won’t you please hear what I have to say?”
Tiffany looked at her door and then at the man who put her through such an emotional wringer. She wanted to tell him to fuck off and never bother her again, but there was something about the way he looked at her that made her want to hear his side of things. She couldn’t believe that she had been so blind in not seeing t
hat he’d manipulated her, and she wanted desperately to know if there was chance that she’d been mistaken in everything she thought had happened.
“If we’re going to do this,” she said, unlocking her door, “then let’s not do it in the hallway.”
Thomas followed her into her apartment, closing the door behind himself and kicking off his shoes. He then went into the living room and sat down on an armchair near the sofa, leaving plenty of room for Tiffany to sit without having to be too close to him.
“I don’t exactly know why you suddenly stopped returning my calls,” he began, “but I was able to accept that maybe something had happened to put you off being with someone like me. I know you wanted time to get some perspective on everything, and I was ready to respect that maybe the idea of being with a billionaire was just too much to deal with, but this whole thing about me having you followed scares me, Tiffany.”
“I know you own Matchr, Thomas,” she practically spat at him. “I did a little research into Phase Nine Entertainment and its acquisition by GlobalTech. I also know that I’m not the first person you’ve done this to.”
“Done what to?” he asked, with seemingly genuine hurt and confusion registering on his face. “I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Someone called me and tipped me off to how you use the site to target women,” she said. “It’s so obvious what happened. You knew I was in contact with Luke, and you caused Matchr to block our profiles from each other so you could jump in and get my attention. How pathetic is that?”
“Look, I don’t know who Luke is, and I’m insulted that you’d think I would need or want to do something so sinister,” he replied. “It’s true that I own Matchr, but there are a dozen layers of corporate oversight and security between me and the kind of access you’re talking about. I have been to the Matchr offices just one time, when I first thought of acquiring Phase Nine Entertainment, and I am hardly enough of a tech geek to have done anything in that period. It’s not like I’d know how to hack into a system like that, anyway.”
Tiffany stood up and ran a hand through her hair. It was infuriating listening to his lies, and she didn’t know how much longer she could last before throwing him out of her apartment.
“Don’t pretend like you’re not rich enough to just hire someone to do whatever you needed,” she said. “Just like you hired those people to follow me?”
“That’s the main reason I came here today,” he said. “I’m concerned that you think someone is following you. I know it might be hard for you to believe me right now, but I swear that I didn’t hire anyone to follow you. I lied about my last name and what I did for a living, but I have already explained that. Everything else you’re accusing me of right now is completely false.”
“Why would a woman call me on my unlisted number to warn me away from you?” she asked.
Thomas shook his head. “I don’t have an answer for that.”
“All of this is just too fucking weird.” Tiffany returned to the couch and sank into it. She felt tears welling up in corners of her eyes, and the last thing she wanted to do was cry in front of Thomas. What she wanted was for him to leave.
“Tiffany,” he said, his voice soft and low. He leaned forward and stared into her eyes, letting her read his emotions. “I swear to you that I didn’t manipulate our meeting. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I don’t want to lose you over this bizarre misunderstanding.”
“How can I believe you after everything that’s happened already?”
“Do you want to believe me?”
Tiffany returned his gaze and swallowed a lump in her throat. Her heart screamed out for her to answer yes, but she just wasn’t sure she could trust him. She wished she had never learned of his billionaire status or his family wealth. So many girls joked about finding a rich husband, but the truth of it was that money and power complicated everything beyond belief.
Thomas slid off the chair and fell to his knees. He reached out and took hold of Tiffany’s hands, still staring at her with troubled eyes.
“You have to believe that I’m innocent here,” he said. “I don’t know who is trying to poison you against me or why they’re trying to do it, but I promise that I wouldn’t use Matchr for my own personal gain, and that I don’t have anyone following you.”
“I do want to believe you,” she said, a tear breaking free and rolling down her cheek.
Thomas leaned forward and kissed her, his lips brushing hers lightly before pausing to see if she would pull away. When she didn’t, he kissed her again, this time more forcefully and with great passion that she couldn’t help but return. Tiffany felt her resolve crack and melt away, for even though she wasn’t completely sure she could trust him, she was irresistibly drawn to him. This had been the worst part of cutting him out of her life, and now that he was in her apartment kissing her, she had no power to resist him.
Thomas pulled back and kissed her hand. “Tell me you’ll give me another chance?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “It’s all too much.”
“You feel it, though, don’t you?” he asked. “You feel what I feel for you? I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since the first time I met you. Not being able to see you this week has been driving me crazy, and I’ll do anything to win you back, Tiffany.”
“I don’t want you to try to win me back,” she said. “I only want to be able to believe you when you say you’re innocent of the things that woman said of you. I want to know that it’s safe for me to be with you, and that you won’t just drop me when you’re bored of me.”
“Don’t ever believe for a second that I could become bored of you. I want to help find who’s responsible for trying to come between us, and I want to protect you from anyone who might be following you in order to cause you harm.”
“I suppose we could try again,” she said, her voice quavering with nerves. “But I have conditions.”
A smile broke out on his face and then he nodded and tried to regain his composure.
“Name them, and I’ll do my best to meet every one.”
“No more secrets,” she said. “I want to visit your real house and see your office. You don’t have to introduce me as your girlfriend or anything, but I want to see the truth of who you are.”
“I was going to do that anyway,” he replied. “Is that all?”
“No. There are two other things.” Tiffany squeezed his hand. “I want you to use your resources to find out who’s been following me. I need to know who it is so that I don’t live the rest of my life wondering if it was you all this time.”
“That’s fair,” he said. “I don’t love that I’ve put you in this situation where it’s hard for you to have complete faith in me, but I recognize the challenges of the situation. I promise I’ll get answers for you.” He kissed her again and then paused. “You said there were two more things. What was the second?”
Tiffany smiled for the first time that evening. She bit her lip and flashed him a seductive look. If she was going to forgive him, she figured she should forgive him all the way.
“I want you to take me into the bedroom so you can show me how sorry you really are.”
“Now that,” he said, pulling her to her feet and lifting her into his arms, “is a request I’m more than happy to fulfill.”
Chapter6
Thomas pulled back his sleeve and checked the time on his one of a kind Hublot watch. He stared at it long after seeing that it was past eleven o’clock at night, watching the second hand tick around precisely measured seconds.
The watch had been custom-crafted for him as a ‘thank you for a business favor’ he’d done the company the year before, and although the details of the favor had never been made public, this timepiece was a reminder of the kind of power he had in the world.
A high end Hublot could sell for a hundred thousand dollars or more, and this one was worth far more than anything on the retail market. It was
a symbol of how far he’d come from the days when he’d been nothing more than a boy following in his father’s footsteps. It was his most prized possession, and he often stared at it like this when something was troubling him.
“She’s not worth it.” said his assistant.
The young woman removed her glasses and rubbed her tired eyes with the back of her hand. Perhaps ‘young girl’ was more appropriate. Barely out of college, Thomas’s assistant had the admiration of every male who came across her. She was slim, blonde, had long legs that she wasn’t shy about showing off under skirts that danced at the edge of inappropriateness for the office, and she had perfect young breasts that she loved to show off by undoing one more button than was proper.
“I’ll thank you to stay out of my private business, Vanessa.” He said.
Thomas flicked his shirt back over his wrist and returned to the documents in front of him. He had several more pages of complicated contracts to sign before he could go home, and although they’d all been thoroughly vetted by his team of lawyers, he wouldn’t sign off on them before he’d read them through himself. It was this painful eye for detail and attention to every aspect of his business that had allowed him to grow his father’s business as much as he had.
