Climbing High (21 page)

He looked down at his beautiful lover. Shuddering with pain, he wielded his mental scalpel with precision and speed, slicing them apart. “Goodbye, my love,” he whispered and walked out to face Sharon.

She argued with him, of course. But he remained adamant and nothing she said could sway him from his course. He was a master of the game. He would play it out to get the results he demanded. Ruthless, single-minded, he’d protect his own. To safeguard Siree, he had to make the world think he’d deserted her, create a story more fascinating than her slow recovery. He had to pull the media’s damning interest away from her and put it squarely back on himself.

Chapter Ten

He caught the imagination of the paparazzi, all right.
Billionaire Abandons Knifed Lover. Ingles in Island Love Nest
. “‘No scars for me,’ says Ingles, ‘I’m moving on.’” That his PR team planted most of it, that none of it was the truth, didn’t matter. The press ate it up and regurgitated it over seven continents. JDI took a hit on its shares. Stocks plunged in related sectors, making more than a few big players nervous. Anticipating the cost to his company—nobody liked to invest in a heel—he moved proactively to minimize the damage.

Then he isolated himself on an island in the Florida Keys with an ever-changing string of glamorous models hungry for media exposure. They paraded in miniscule bikinis to the delight of the paparazzi flying over in helicopters and spying from private boats. He grieved and lived for Sharon’s twice daily reports on Siree’s condition, grateful she’d insisted on sending them.

Guilt ate away at him. At night he paced the beach. Sleep became tortured hours of reliving the feel of Siree in his arms, her joyous laugh, heat and passion. His wrinkled shorts hung loosely on his hips. His hair brushed his collar. Only the sticky heat forced him to bother to shave occasionally.

Day thirty-five, hour ten after the attack, Josh and Sam arrived by helicopter. Gribbs went out to greet them while he sat on the veranda nursing a beer.

The two men had their arms around two decorative women and were laughing up a storm. He viewed the hilarity with a sour heart. How could anybody laugh when Siree lay in a hospital bed, the wound over her ribs infected and refusing to close?

Sam leapt onto the veranda and slapped him on the shoulder. Though cheerfulness flowed off him like the breeze over the sea, he studied Jake thoroughly. “Looks like we got here just in time.” He flung the words back to Josh. “This guy needs a party.”

Jake shuddered and slammed his beer down on the wicker table beside him, making it bounce. “This guy needs to be left alone.”

“And we came all this way.” Josh left off, talking with Gribbs and strolled over. Hands on hips, he took a long look at Jake. “Son, you don’t look so good.”

“He looks like he needs a party.” Sam flung his arm around Josh. “Isn’t that what you’re reading?”

“Yep.”

“Screw you two and the helicopter you flew in on.” Jake flicked his middle finger at them.

“Ouch, sounds painful.” Sam reached into the cooler by Jake’s chair and hauled out two beers.

Josh accepted one, twisted off the lid. “No screwing this time, the ladies are for show. We promised them a spa day on a tropical island, while we did manly things with our friend.” He settled into the planter’s chair beside Jake.

His friends jockeyed him into a game of poker, kept tequila shooters and a fresh beer at his place and drank him into a few hours of blessed oblivion.

He woke the next morning with a hangover from hell. Sam grinned at him from the end of the bed. He rocked back on his heels, then up on his toes. “How you feeling?”

“Like I screwed the helicopter you flew in on.” Jake scrubbed at his face and worked his legs off the bed. “Feels like it won.”

“A swim will help. Josh is waiting on the beach for us. Grab your shades, suck back this hangover cure and let’s hit the surf.”

“Fuck you.” Jake flopped back, his arm across his eyes.

“Then I’d be feeling sorry for myself, too.”

“Nobody asked you to come.” He slid his arm up just enough to glare at Sam.

“You’re wrong there, son. Siree did.”

“Siree.” He dove at Sam. “What the hell are you telling Siree about me?”

“Not a thing.” Sam removed the fisted hand from his T-shirt and put a glass of evil-looking liquid in it. “We figured she had enough to fight through without hearing the man she loves is destroying himself and the company she worked so hard to save for him.”

“Bastard.” Jake chug-a-lugged the crap in the glass, gagged, belched, and felt a whole lot better.

“Come on. Let’s get you feeling partly human again and sort this out.” Sam stepped up and wrapped his arms around him. He grabbed for Sam and hung on for a full second, looking over his shoulder into the dresser mirror. He saw himself clearly for the first time in weeks, his face haggard and putty green, his wild hair and whiskers, a man who needed a friend to help him stand up.

He squeezed Sam hard and pushed back. “Why’d she send you?”

“Sharon doesn’t just report to you.” Sam picked up a towel and threw it at him, then slid open the wide doors onto the veranda. A cool breeze fanned through the room, lifting Jake’s hair. He turned to the sound of waves slapping the beach, grabbed his sunglasses from the dresser and followed Sam out.

It felt like he’d walked into a wall of light. The heat slammed into him. The sand burned his feet. He raised his hand just enough to acknowledge Josh’s shout from the surf and loped down to the water beside Sam. Jake dove into the first big wave and swam hard for twenty minutes, letting his blood and sweat drive the alcohol out of his body. His legs felt like noodles when he flopped into a shaded lounge chair and lifted the beaded glass of orange juice his houseboy placed beside him.

The guys gave him another ten minutes alone before they settled into adjacent chairs. In that time he reminded himself they cared about him. More importantly, they were here because they cared about Siree. He needed to address their concerns.

“So why did she send you?” he asked again, when he felt he could handle the answer.

“I just said that to get your attention,” Sam confessed. “We don’t talk to Siree about you, or haven’t talked to you about her because we figure it just makes it worse. But Ty told her he didn’t think you were handling things well.”

“Why the hell would he tell her that?”

“You know Siree. If she wants to know something she can wangle it out of a guy in minutes. I understand from Sharon that Ty is a marshmallow where Siree is concerned.”

“The point isn’t why Siree asked or why Ty told.” Josh leaned forward, his hand swinging his Corona between his legs. “The point is we don’t want her to hear anything about you that would cause her to worry.”

“And it’s up to you to make sure she doesn’t, by making bad news moot,” Sam added. “Siree’s the brightest woman we know. Do you think she isn’t sorting out fact from fiction in this Jake the Philanderer crap you’re selling so hard? Do you think she hasn’t looked at the stock market, seen JDI shares in the toilet and can’t calculate the damage?”

“You might be able to walk away clean”—Josh took up the verbal cudgel they beat him with—“but she didn’t make that choice. She’s still in love with you and it’s her nature to care about those she loves. She’s wasting the energy she needs to heal on stressing over you.”

“Siree needs plastic surgery on her wounds and she’s holding out till all three can be done in one go. The two scars already healed need to be done now for ultimate results.”

“Then tell Sharon to persuade her to go ahead.”

“You need to persuade her,” Sam said.

“No, it nearly killed me to walk away. I’m not going to do it all over again.”

He heard the pain in his own voice as they sat back.

“You can help her without talking to her.” Josh spoke with caution, weighing each word. “It’s time to pull it together, old man. Show her you’re back to normal, save JDI. Then she can at least stop worrying about you and focus on healing. You can’t hide here until the stalker is caught. No matter how hard you, Gribbs and the police are trying, it might never happen.”

“Shit.” Jake hunched over to rest his elbows on his knees. “God damn that stalker and what she’s done to our lives.”

“She certainly messed up Siree’s,” Sam interjected, never one to mince words. “But you’ve made all the choices since the stabbing. She didn’t ask you to abandon her when she needed you most.”

Jake launched himself at his friend, hitting him hard and knocking him to the sand were they wrestled for supremacy, until the blind fury in his brain dissipated enough for him to distinguish Sam’s placidity. Astride his friend’s back, he lifted Sam’s face from the sand with a disgusted sound. Standing, he reached down a hand to help him stand.

Sam spit out sand and wiped his eyes. He glared at Josh. “Thanks for the help, pal. You come up with the idea to get Jake to take action and sit back and let me get the crap pounded out of me. Some action.”

“I held your beer.” Josh handed it to him.

They watched Jake brush himself down then run across the beach and dive into the first wave that hit. He surfaced minutes later, walked over, picked up his beer and dropped onto the lounge chair.

“We can only guess how bad you’re hurting,” Josh stated, pressing his hand on Jake’s shoulder, “but, buddy, five weeks of blitzing your reputation and company is enough. You can’t stay in limbo forever, and keep her hanging there with you. She won’t ever make the choice to walk away from you. If you’re determined to sacrifice being with her to keep her safe, then you have to get back in the game. You have to move on so she gets the message and moves on too.”

A deluge of grief enveloped him. But so did the truth. While he said one thing, he lived in the hope of another. A part of him expected to work his way back to her side.
And that’s the same selfish thinking that had gotten her hurt in the first place
.

“You’re right.” He pushed himself upright and stood. “All of this is about her, and if that’s what it takes to get her whole, I’ll get on it.”

He noted the relief on his friends’ faces. “Thanks for kicking my ass,” he said, knowing they would understand all the things left unspoken in that message.

****

Siree nestled deeper into the bright-colored cushions Sharon had tucked around her. The couch in her mother’s condo had become her go to place to recuperate. She’d come there straight from the hospital at Sharon’s insistence. Siree didn’t argue. Without Jake, she freely admitted she needed her mother.

His eyes stared back at her from the covers of magazines and the front page of newspapers. He looked thinner and harder. The wicked smile remained elusive. Whatever beautiful woman hung on his arm looked like an afterthought. It fed Siree’s hope enough to keep her going. He was never seen twice with the same woman. She suspected it was a deliberate ploy to keep the stalker from fixating on one. She prayed it was because Jake still wanted her.

Her thoughts circled him in a never-ending rollercoaster ride, racing high with love and dipping low with depression. Elation led her into tight turns that dropped her into frightening darkness. Did he suffer the same sense of loss? Feel the looming emptiness claim more of him each day? A small sob left her throat.

Her mother looked up from the book she’d been reading on the opposite couch. “All right, darling?”

She nodded, sinking back into introspection when her mother’s knowing regard returned to her book. She hungered for Jake. At first she only knew he wasn’t there to hold her when the pain knifed through her like a repeat of the attack. His beloved face didn’t hover above her when she needed courage. Her hand remained empty when she reached for his strength. With longer hours of lucidity came her mother’s explanation of his position. Siree understood his strategy and fought alone to help him make it work. Though she didn’t agree with it, and desperately needed him beside her, she understood his protective instincts allowed him no other choice. She had faith that he’d come back to her. Once the stalker was behind bars, it would happen.

She’d wept when she thought of the damage he’d done to his company and good name to get the stalker’s attention off her. Though she pushed the thoughts away as repellant when they came, she still wondered how often the beautiful women he used as a distraction took advantage of the situation to make a play for such a rich prize. They might even see beyond the money, good looks and fame to the thoughtfulness and goodness she loved.

Her spirits had lifted a little when he abruptly changed strategy. He stopped putting himself in the eye of the storm. The island covered with bimbos and booze receded into the past. The man he’d hired again fielded all PR for JDI, and the company stocks began a sluggish climb. From Ty she learned Jake travelled constantly, visiting the powerful men who’d supported him in the past, and convincing them JDI could still deliver. Though she could find the odd article on JDI or Jake in business magazines, the tabloids gush of attention slowed to a trickle. The murder of a fashion designer by his lover and overdose of a film star grabbed headlines. Jake slipped off their radar.

With a deep sigh, she wondered if he meant to disappear from her life, too. Had he left her not as a safeguard but because of a deep-seated belief he must? She shifted to ease the strain on her shoulder and forced herself to focus on her blessings. Josh and Sam had become good friends. Her mother surrounded her with warmth and humor.
And too many cushions
, she thought, batting a few of them back into position. She spoiled her with her favorite foods and treats, fresh flowers, books, and music.
And she doesn’t smother me. She knows when I need to be alone.

Ty had unceremoniously filled his position with an up and coming CEO he believed in, and bought himself a condo just down the street from Sharon’s. They saw him every day. He and Sharon had started running together, and Siree took pleasure in seeing her mother leave the condo to meet Ty and return looking invigorated and happier. Jake’s sacrifice hadn’t been in vain. The press had disappeared from their lives. Only security remained, shadowing her everywhere.