by Tania Beaton
“Something to drink, madam?” he had a trace of a European accent, maybe Dutch.
“A glass of white wine.”
He turned the menu card and pointed. There was a whole column of white wines by the glass. I chose a white Spanish Rioja. The sails of a few little boats wove along the horizon. Seagulls squawked above. I wished I had a pair of shades, even cheap ones.
The deck shuddered under the pounding weight of a tall, blond-haired man in a gray suit. Surrounded by a milling entourage, he strode to the table next to mine. Maybe half a dozen boys and girls in their twenties buzzed around him. They all wore similar pale khaki pants and short-sleeved shirts.
The way they hung back, made space for him, cocked their heads to everything he said, I figured they were minions, attached to do his bidding. All of them carried tablet computers, little folders and flappy shoulder bags. They all wore very nice shades, although not as nice as his. I shifted my chair so my back faced the group.
The waiter brought my wine in a high-stemmed glass on a sliver tray. He set it out nicely and took my order for a club sandwich. The voice at the next table was one that could not be ignored. He was talking quite loudly into a phone. I thought it was funny how people in the best places often had the worst manners.
“I want a Gulfstream G 150 ready for my pilot to collect.” A lump of ice dropped through me. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Not the words, those didn’t matter, but the voice was so familiar. “I want it at LAX, certified and fueled up the day after tomorrow. Call me back in ninety minutes with your best price. No second chance, understand?” It couldn’t be true. I was afraid to turn my head.
“When you call back, state only your finished, all-inclusive price. Just one number.” I turned. It was him. “It will be a straight cash purchase for the best bid.” And he hung up. Then he looked up, over his shades. Those golden-brown eyes shone into mine, and way down inside me a depth charge thudded.
The entourage fell silent and their eyes all swiveled to me. I hadn’t seen him in, like, forever. I almost didn’t recognize him with the short beard.
It was the sound of his voice I had responded to. And, I mean, I responded. God, the purring rasp of that voice had reached down inside me and stirred me up like a Long Island Iced Tea.
He raised a hand. The entourage all turned to look. His fingers flicked like they were dusting the air. Silently the group gathered their tablets, notepads, and bags, and they melted away.
When he stood, my heart pounded. His muscles were tense, but not as tense as the expensive fabric on the front of his elegant pants. That was tented tense. A weight pressed against them. It prodded familiar feelings in me. The deck shook under his feet as he strode the short distance to my table.
He stood with his feet apart. He was so near, so tall, that I had to crane my neck to look up to him. He stared at me, although I couldn’t see his eyes through the Oakleys or whatever they were.
The waiter came up behind him with my sandwich on the silver tray, but he couldn’t get around and he was flustered. Balthazar didn’t even turn his head, he just took the tray.
“This your sandwich, Sis?”
When he said, ‘Sis’ my stomach fell down a hole. My thighs slackened apart. My throat tightened and my breath caught. All the feelings, all the wrong sensations that I had experienced around him, time after time when we were younger, all the things I thought I’d never have to go through again.
They all flooded back at once. I felt thoroughly drenched. He was still waiting for me to answer, with that half smile on his face that I remembered from the first time I saw him.
“Well?” that familiar sarcastic edge, that slightly superior tone was in his voice. His scent was unmistakable; he had on some elegant and probably expensive, exotic cologne, but behind it was a darker note. A note that lit a sense memory. It revived thoughts and feelings that I knew I shouldn’t have had at the time. But I loved them and I wanted them then. And I wanted them still.
His head cocked a little to one side. He’d asked me a question. I’d forgotten. I realized that he was still holding the tray.
“Yes,” I told him, “It’s my sandwich.”
He set the tray down. My eyes didn’t leave his as he bent with the tray. The waiter clearly wanted his tray back but he couldn’t find the nerve to ask Balthazar to return it. He bobbed his head uncertainly. Balthazar showed no sign of noticing. The waiter shuffled away, trayless and dejected.
“Aren’t you going to eat it?”
“While you stand there and watch me?”
“I’ve watched you eat before. I never noticed it troubling you.”
“I seem to have lost my appetite.”
“Oh. I put you off your food?”
No! I wanted to shout at him but I held back. I said, “I’m very surprised to see you, that’s all.”
“Likewise.” My stomach curled at the sound of his voice.
I said, “Are you going to just stand there?”
“Until you invite me to sit, of course.” His manners were much more polished. He had reinvented himself. That same spirit burned from his eyes but he had a kind of an assured confidence, a new certainty.
I told him, “Then, it’s my pleasure.” Try to match him. I didn’t feel like I succeeded. “Won’t you please join me?” My voice trembled as I waved my hand to the chair, and my hand shook.
He hitched the knees of his gorgeous suit and his lithe, athletic frame settled into the seat. He laid his phone on the table with his hand on top of it.
He sat in front of me with his thighs spread, like he had when he was a teenager. The bulge was prominent, high and strong. He made no attempt to hide it.
Finally he said, “It’s been a long time, Sis.” My stomach flipped again when he said ‘Sis.’
I said, “You didn’t exactly keep in close touch.”
“With the family?” His lip curled.
“With me.” I was aware of sounding pouty. I hated that.
“It was partly because of you that I left.” It was like a slap in the face.
“I always knew you hated me.” Now I really did sound whiny and hard done by. Suddenly the whole of the day, my professor, the prospect of flunking college, the yawning sense of failure, everything threatened to well up behind my eyes. I held my breath, but still my chest shuddered.
“I never hated you.” A breeze blew my hair into my face. He reached over to brush it away. I knew that it couldn’t stand it if he did. I would collapse. More than anything, I didn’t want to go to pieces in front of him.
As his hand approached my face, I seized his wrist to stop him. I misjudged and I used a little too much force so I smacked against the inside of his wrist. But when my skin came in touch with his, it was like all the lights went on in a huge room inside me with a great whump.
He looked at me as I held his wrist.
“Nobody else would dare to do that. You know that, Sis?”
It didn’t matter how hard I peered at his sunglasses, I couldn’t see his eyes behind them. My mouth tightened. “You said you left because of me.”
“I did. Not because I hated you, though.” His lip twitched. His fingers drummed on his phone.
His voice was flat as he rose. “Enjoy your sandwich.”
“Yeah,” I said stiffly. “Keep in touch.”
There was a sharpness when he said, “Like you did?”
“You mean like you did.”
“I left my phone numbers, Facebook, email. You had plenty of ways to be in contact.”
“Likewise, Ba…” I stopped myself. Even now, I wouldn’t break that trust.
The deck rumbled as he left me with the sandwich I could hardly afford, and now, almost certainly couldn’t bring myself to eat. As I glanced at the plate, I saw his phone. My head whipped around, but he was out of sight. I picked up the phone to run after him.
As I got up from the chair, a huge noise shook the air from behind the restaurant. I was just a couple of steps
across the deck when a helicopter roared overhead, close enough to blow all the linen. Somebody’s glass blew over and waiters came running towards the protesting howls.
As the helicopter rose and arced out across the beach, it threw up a small sandstorm in its wake. It headed straight for the ocean. It was a small dark fish halfway to the horizon before it baked to the left and veered out of sight.
Even though I had a strong hunch that Balthazar had left in the helicopter, I carried on to the edge of the deck to look around. He was nowhere to be seen. So, I made my way back to my table trying to decide whether I should leave his phone at the restaurant so he could come back for it, or if should I take it.
He would be bound to have a way to track the phone, so if I took it he could find it easily enough. And me with it, if he cared. But that was what I knew I would do. I’d take his phone.
The wine was fresh and crisp, and I did my best to enjoy it. Any taste that I had for the sandwich was gone, but the waiter was pleasant when I asked him to bag it for me. I knew that I needed to eat, and I hoped that a walk along the shore would revive my appetite.
As I walked back onto the sand, the sun was still high in the sky, but the breeze was more stiff and persistent. With the laces of my sneakers knotted together, I put them over my shoulder.
Strolling near enough to the water’s edge to dip my toes in the ocean, I tried to make some sense out of my feelings about the day, with no success. It was a day of disasters. And in the middle of it, Balthazar showed up. My pulse raced at the thought of him. It looked like he had become pretty wealthy.
Thinking of the finely cut cotton of his suit, I tried to keep my mind off the bulge in his pants. The recollection of his scent took me back to the sensation of him standing over me, so near, and his hard heat.
His phone rang. I knew I would be able to answer the call, though I probably couldn’t do much else. I pressed the screen and held the phone to my ear. A cultured male voice said, “Thirteen point eight million dollars. Cash.”
I said, “Who is this?”
And the voice hesitated. “I was told to give the number only. Will you see that the message gets to Mr. Colt?”
“Thirteen point eight million is the message?” I said, baffled.
“Thank you.” They hung up. I looked at the screen. There was no number.
I had just dropped the phone back into my pocket when it rang again, so I fished it back out. Still no number. I pressed the ‘Answer’ key.
“You picked up my phone.” When I heard his voice I nearly dropped it again. “I knew that you would.” The bastard did it on purpose. “Did you answer it a few moments ago? Did a call come in?” It was getting hard to hear him as a huge motorboat sliced the waves close to the shore.
I shouted into the phone, “Yes. Thirteen point eight million dollars, cash, is what the man said.”
Through the noise of the boat’s engine I was just about able to hear him, “Thanks, Sis. Did you eat your sandwich yet?”
“Not yet. I wasn’t hungry.” I shouted with one finger in my ear, pressing the phone hard against the other ear. The boat grew louder and closer.
He said something and I couldn’t hear him at all, the damned boat was so close. I shouted to him to repeat it.
“Have lunch with me,” I moved away from the shore but the boat slammed onto the beach in front of me.
He stood tall in the back of the speedboat. Two of his uniformed minion-kids sat behind the windshield to drive.
As the long speedboat lurched back into the waves, the front rose and I was thrown hard against him. I held him to steady myself. My heart thumped as my hand rested on the firm ripples of his stomach.
His body was big and hard against mine, and I felt protected like I had in the days when we lived together. Protected and excited, like when kids in the hall make remarks about me and he beat them up.
The huge swelling in his pants transfixed me. As I held tighter against him, the fabric of his pants was stretched tighter and harder.
His throat tightened and his breath seemed to thicken. When he rested his hand on my waist, the bulge moved up. He took his hand away again. I was sorry that he did.
We bounced hard over the white spume and the green waves. The water splashed under us and a cool spray dampened my face and my clothes as we sped in a wide arc out to the open ocean.
His shirt was damp, too and it clung to his skin. He had a beautiful muscular bod when we were younger. Now he was awesome, and breathtakingly beautiful. And, somehow, he seemed to have become incredibly wealthy.
In no way was I prepared for the size of the gleaming silver yacht that heaved into view ahead. There was no doubt in my mind that it was our destination, because the massive helicopter that had swept thunderously over the restaurant perched like a dainty dragonfly at the back of one of the upper decks.
Aboard the yacht, he took me to a shaded deck at the front, no bigger than a tennis court, and more minions served us lobster and mayonnaise salad with freshly baked bread. A green bottle of champagne swirled in a silver ice bucket, beaded with drops of water that ran down the sides in rivulets.
“This is quite a change from how we grew up.” I said, sipping from a tall champagne flute.
“All the times we came up to the beach when we were kids?” he tore a hunk of bread, “I met a lot of the local kids. All of them were from very wealthy families. I kept in touch.”
He had always had that gift for getting along with people, even when he bullied them like a savage. They always seemed to love him for it. Maybe his gift was for spotting the masochists. Then again, I thought, Maybe he found the masochist in whoever he met and then nurtured it.
“As we grew up together,” he took half a lobster tail from the shell and tore it in half, “I needed work and I needed money. I found ways to help them get what they needed.” He at the lobster tail with some bread and mayonnaise then refilled our glasses.
“I found transport, office space, and staff--anything. Whatever was required.” I wondered whether all of ‘whatever was required’ would have been entirely legal.
He said, “Soon I discovered a big demand for a very high end taxi service, with executive jets as the taxis.” He certainly didn’t think small. But you wouldn’t wind up on a yacht like this one by thinking small.
“Now I have a fleet of twenty two planes, four helicopters, plus limos and SUVs for ground transportation all over the US. Some in China, Europe and Russia, too.” My stepbrother had turned into one hell of a man.
“So, why did you say that you left because of me?”
“Sis…” he protested.
“Really. You said that it wasn’t because you hated me. I’d thought it was because you hated all of us. Well, Mom and me at any rate.” I didn’t say ‘The Asshat.’ I never said that aloud. It was Balthazar’s father, after all. I didn’t want to hurt him. From what he said, I think Balthazar had his own issues with him, but hearing me bad-mouth him wasn’t ever going to make it any better.
His feet shuffled. I saw that the front of his pants was beginning to lift above his lap. A tent pole rose.
“I couldn’t stay there, with your Mom and… him. Nothing against your Mom, she’s a good woman, but I couldn’t forgive him for replacing my mother, and for shacking up in our home. Moving in the first woman he found who would…”
