Hooked Up: Book 2 (50 page)

Having paid for the jet I thought I might as well use it, so I flew straight to San Francisco and checked into a hotel. I totaled up the amount of hours it would have taken her to drive here, and I called Anthony, knowing that by now, she would have arrived. He denied that she was with him. More proof that she wanted out. I told him I had a team of detectives on the case. I wanted her to feel the gravity of what she’d done. I didn’t need a detective; I myself was enough of a Sherlock Holmes to make up for the whole of Scotland Yard. But he believed me, I guess.

After I hung up I listened to the messages on Pearl’s phone. Most of them from me—but then one from Laura. I pressed my ear to the receiver and heard her sickly sweet-butter-wouldn’t-melt tone:

“Pearl, you don’t know me. I’m sorry to bother you like this. I finally tracked down your number. My name’s Laura, Alexandre’s ex . . . maybe you know who I am?”

I shook my head in disbelief. This woman was one hell of a piece of work.

“I’m calling to warn you. Sophie’s really crazy. She could be out to hurt you. I’m sorry but . . .” at this point Laura did a nice little acting job; she sniffled down the line and put on a weak, pathetic, poor-me voice. “I had a terrible accident several years ago and could have died.”
Wish you bloody had.

The message rambled on in a Good Samaritan voice, ending with, “As one woman to another I thought I owed you this . . .”

I heard a guttural roar tear from my throat as I threw the cell phone against the wall and it smashed to the floor.

I was in this Laura shit up to my neck. She was such a good liar that I feared Pearl wouldn’t believe me if I told her the real story. So I did what all guilty fools do; I dug myself in even deeper. I created more lies to cover myself. To this day, I will never forgive myself for this: I decided to
lie
to Pearl. I was desperate, clutching at straws. It was the only chance I had of winning her back.

S
EVERAL HOURS LATER, while Anthony was working from home, I slipped out the back door and used the neighbor’s entrance in their garden to make my exit. I still didn’t know what to do about Alexandre. I needed more time to think before I called him. I was in love with him, no doubt about it, and I wanted to marry him, but every time I was tempted to give in I imagined my naked body sprawled in a ditch, or in a shallow grave. Dead. Maybe even chopped up and distributed all over the United States. Or perhaps Sophie would meddle with the brakes of my car or slip cyanide in my drink. She had people working on her payroll all over the country—she could do anything, I warned myself.

I spent a couple of hours at Anthony’s gym, swimming, letting out all my steam and stretching my aching limbs from that long car journey last night. The water felt great, and I felt so much better afterwards.

As I was approaching Anthony’s neighbor’s back yard, carefully looking out for Alexandre, I heard steady footsteps behind me. My heart raced, I felt a spike of adrenaline rush through my veins and turned around. It was HIM. He was standing there, in jeans and a white T-shirt, looking beyond stunning. His jaw set firm and a five o’clock shadow and hooded eyes of a man who hadn’t slept all night. He was not smiling. His face was stern, unflinching, but he didn’t look angry, just immovable. Uh oh, this was scarier than anything.

I walked over to him, stretched out my arms to hug him, donning a limp smile. But he stepped back as if he didn’t want me to touch him. His body language shocked me.

“Alexandre, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know what to do last night.”

“Oh, I think you did, Pearl. You had it all nicely planned out. You knew exactly what you were doing.”

I edged closer, but he stepped aside, narrowing his eyes at me. All I could think of was how handsome he was and that I didn’t want to lose him. “I’m sorry, I—”

“Did you stop for even one second to think how I’d feel? Can you imagine what an idiot I looked; standing there with a lady’s handbag, while my fiancée climbed through the window of a fucking
toilet
? To escape from me? How debasing that was?”

“I had no choice, I—”

“I wanted to
marry
you, Pearl. I wanted for us to be together forever . . . didn’t that mean anything to you?”

Oh my God! He’s speaking in the past tense!

“Alexandre, I still want to marry you, I still want to make this work, I still—”

“Pearl, don’t you get it? It’s too late for that now. I can’t be with a woman who’s going to bolt on me every time my sister does something that she isn’t a thousand percent okay with. What kind of a man do you think I am? That I’d abandon my own family for some crazy notion of yours that my sister’s got it in for you, that she’s going to kill you? It’s just insane.”

“She is!” I yelled. “Laura called me. She told me not to go to Vegas, that Sophie caused her accident—”

“The night the accident happened, when Laura tripped down the stairs, Laura was tipsy and yes, it was Sophie who had taken us both out to dinner and ordered that extra bottle of wine . . . so was Sophie responsible? No she wasn’t, but at the time Laura felt angry—she has two left feet and was always tripping up and usually never drank alcohol, but Sophie didn’t ply her with wine on
purpose
so she’d have an accident, you must have misinterpreted what Laura said.”

“I didn’t! Laura said on the phone last night that—”

“I was in such a state last night, calling the police—who didn’t fucking want to know, by the way—so I had to hire private detectives to try and find you. I was out of my mind with worry. I thought something could have happened. Anyway, I’m sorry, but with all the commotion I left your handbag by a take-out place in LA, near the police station, and when I went back for it, it was gone. Stolen. Don’t worry, I’ve already reported it all missing—”

“Alexandre—”

“And I know your phone was inside because straight after the toilet escape fiasco I tried to call you, and you can imagine the surprise when it rang in your fucking handbag. I had a look to see what else was there. Your wallet, everything left behind. I figured: a woman who leaves her fiancé, without her credit cards and cell phone, is a woman who’s on the run. As if I were some wife-beating bastard who wanted to hurt you . . . someone you had to run and hide from.”

“No! It wasn’t like that. But I was scared. Scared to go near Vegas. I’m still scared of Sophie. Laura was serious. Your sister wants me out of your life, she—”

“Sophie would never hurt you, chérie, believe me.”

“I wanted you to stop her to—”

“Imagine yourself in my shoes, Pearl. You and your only brother. You’d abandon Anthony, just like that? He’s behaved like an asshole with you ever since I met him, yet you have still stood by him because he is your
flesh and blood.
You can’t just trash your own family! My sister and I have been through Hell and back together, and we’re very close. But that doesn’t seem to register with you. Yet I still listened to you. I have made so many concessions. I have even started to dissolve my own fucking company for you. Even agreed to sell HookedUp to Sophie so I will be out of it one hundred percent. But you know what, Pearl? I’m done. What you did to me last night pushed me to my limit. You demonstrated to me, loud and clear, that you
do not want me
and you know what else? I think you’re using Sophie as an excuse. An excuse to run from me.”

My heart was pounding. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He was dumping me! Dumping me in favor of his crazy sister.

“I love you Alexandre. Please. Please let’s work this out.”

“Work what out? As long as Sophie is breathing you’re going to nag on and on at me about her. What do you want me to do? Have her killed? So you can be free of her?”

“No, of course not. I just wanted her out of your business.”

“And then what? The next step will be you demanding that I don’t see her at all. What has she actually
done
to you? Called you a cougar. Ooh, how terrible! It’s her manner, Pearl, she has a sharp tongue. If you only knew some of the stuff she’s said to me over the years, you’d laugh out loud—”

“She called me a stalker and said you didn’t give a shit about me, that I was frigid and . . . and . . . ”

“But that was over four months ago. She apologized several times and has been trying to make up for it ever since. She’s been trying, Pearl. Somebody who buys their future sister-in-law a one-of-a-kind Zang Toi wedding gown is not going to try and hurt you.”

“She’s been messing with my mind, sneaking in on my movie deal—”

“She came in on a bad movie deal that was sinking, to save our asses! Why did she bail out Samuel Myers? Not just because she saw a good business opportunity, but because
you and I fucked up
. We hadn’t done our homework. Samuel Myers was going broke! Yes, that’s right, the whole movie would have gone under because Samuel Myers wasn’t good for the money, so Sophie came in to make things right. He told you himself that he was having financial difficulties, but you wouldn’t have it, wouldn’t believe him. You were so obsessed with Sophie doing a number on you that you wouldn’t listen to reason.”

“At what point did Sophie get involved?” I was still trying to work out the Alessandra connection.

“I don’t know exactly, but the timing was perfect for us all. Why did Sophie not tell us both, earlier? To save us from embarrassment, that’s why. She thought she could subtly stay in the background and not get involved, except financially. She knew how much this project meant to you. And why did Samuel Myers, himself, not mention it earlier? Because of his pride. He’s a big shot producer, or at least was till some deal went sour—he was hardly going to admit to you his state of affairs.”

My brain was racing a thousand miles an hour. “But that doesn’t make sense. It was my idea to have a woman for the role, my idea to take a chance on a gay actress.”

“Exactly, Sophie knew all that, knew how you wanted a woman, a more mature actress to play the lead—you’d mentioned that to her yourself at some point . . . why do you think Samuel Myers was so open to the idea? Because he didn’t have a choice. But as far as a gay actress was concerned, it was Samuel Myers who put the idea of Alessandra Demarr into your head, wasn’t it? When Sophie found out about the mess he was in, she took the opportunity to use Alessandra as leverage to make it all work out for everybody. And yes, now I realize that my sister did have an ulterior motive: to give Alessandra a chance to break into the movies. Sophie was giving her a leg up with her career. Sophie was doing all of us a fucking favor by coming on board! Me, you, Sam Myers, Alessandra—all of us would benefit.”

“Why did Alessandra pretend she didn’t know Sophie?” I asked with suspicion.

“Because Sophie hasn’t come out of the closet. She doesn’t want her marriage breaking up. She doesn’t want her stepdaughter knowing she’s gay—Elodie has no idea. Alessandra was being discreet.”

“Did
you
know about Alessandra, that she and Sophie were lovers?”

“No, of course not, or I would have said something when I saw how flirtatious she was being with you. Sophie never discusses her sex life with me anyway, why would I have known about Alessandra?”

I stammered, “Sh-she . . . Sophie . . . she had it all worked out . . . to demean me. To get her girlfriend to seduce me so I looked like a fool.”

“You’re really scraping the barrel now, aren’t you, Pearl? She got Alessandra on board the movie because a.) she was cheap, and b.) she wanted her girlfriend to get a leading role in a film. Alessandra was basically going to do the part for free as long as she could rework the script. That was the deal. The fact that you then got into Alessandra’s panties had nothing to do with Sophie.”

“I didn’t get into her panties, she got into mine!”

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other, what difference does it make—you two made out, which, by the way, Sophie has no idea about.”

“Bullshit! Sophie set me up! They were in on it together.”

“Oh please. You think my sister is into BDSM after what she went through with our father? Or she’d want her own girlfriend fooling about with another woman? With whips and shit?”

“To punish me to—”

“Oh come on, Pearl, you’ve been gagging for a spanking ever since I’ve known you. You were up for it, Alessandra didn’t force you.”

I was lost for words but knew that I must be right somehow. I was all tongue-tied but blurted out, “Sophie was mean to me when she and Elodie came for dinner, she was hinting that things were going to go wrong to ‘unravel’ themselves and . . . ”

“You know Sophie’s English is bad and the translation comes out all wrong sometimes.”

I was standing there stupefied. Everything Alexandre was saying made sense, yet . . .

“Come here, chérie. Let me give you one last kiss before we say goodbye.”

What?? Goodbye?
I could feel my breath short, my stomach churning with terror. He was leaving me. This was real. Anthony was right, I should have snapped Alexandre up when I had the chance.
Oh
my God!

He walked toward me and held me tightly in his arms, and then ran his fingers through my swimming pool-wet hair and said, “I’ll miss you baby, but there’s no way you and I are going to work out. I don’t want to play this cat and mouse game any longer. I want a stable relationship, I’m not into roller-coaster rides, sorry.”

“You’re breaking up with me?”

“
You
broke us up last night, Pearl. Not me. You. You broke my heart. You made it clear that our two orange halves will have to go their own separate ways.”

“No! That’s not what I want at all!”

“You can say what you like, baby, but actions speak louder than words. You made your choice when you escaped out of that toilet window last night, leaving a waiting jet and a waiting fiancé like two pieces of discarded trash. Not to mention the reverend in Vegas, and a special surprise I had planned after our wedding.”

“What surprise?”

“It doesn’t matter now, it’s water under the bridge, it’s the past.”

The past?
No, this can’t be happening
!