Some Came Desperate: A Love Saga (29 page)

       Nick looked away from her.  He’d feel the same way, too, if he was in her position.  Then he looked at her again, at her shapely legs, her well-remembered cleavage, and then into her face.  “Ethan mentioned you were heading back to Atlanta soon.”

       Simone hesitated, to regain her composure.  “Yes.  As soon as those charges against Shay are dropped.”

       “Same old’ Shay.”

       “Yeah.  You can always count on Shay being Shay, which is more than I can say for some people.”

       “Look, Simone, I know you’re bitter—”

       “That phone call that night.  That was about the accident, wasn’t it?”

       Nick stopped cold.  Stunned now himself.  “Yes,” he finally.  “Delia had found out that I was seeing you—”

       “How?”

       “Someone had phoned her and she found out and she was coming there to confront us both.  That’s when she had the accident.”

       “And you decided to marry her, not because you loved her. . ., but because of what had happened?”

       “She gave me the best years of her life, Simone.  When she was young and beautiful and every man wanted her, she stood by me.  When I saw her that night, so badly injured, fighting for her life, I knew I couldn’t leave her.  I knew I could never leave her.”

       Tears began to appear in Simone’s eyes.  “Why didn’t you tell me that?” she asked him.  “Why did you make me think that you had never loved me; that you just wanted to get me in bed and once you did that, once you got what you wanted, you was through with me?  For all those years I thought . . . I thought. . . Did you once consider how I was feeling, Nick?  Did you once?”

       That was all he considered early on, and it devastated him.  But he had to be there for Delia, and he couldn’t allow anything else to matter.  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked again.

       “Would it have hurt less?” he asked her.

       “No,” she said firmly.  “But it would have hurt differently.  I would have at least understood.  I would have at least blamed you more than I blamed myself.”

       This threw Nick.  “Blamed yourself?  Simone!  How could you blame yourself?”

         “How could I not blame myself?  That was shocking to me, Nick, the way you just ended it all.  I tried to. . . harm myself,” she said point blank and stared coldly at Nick.  This floored Nick.  He stared back at her.

       “You tried ... you attempted suicide?  Is that what you’re telling me, Simone?  You’re telling me that you attempted to kill yourself when I broke it off with you?”

       The fear in his voice unhinged Simone, but the truth was the truth.  “Yes,” she said  lowly, barely able to formulate the word.  “Yes.”

       Nick fell back on the sofa.  He closed his eyes in anguish and ran his hands over his face.  “Good Lord,” he said in such despair that Simone immediately regretted admitting it.  But again, she thought, the truth was the truth.

       Nick opened his eyes and shook his head.  “How could you do that, Simone?  Over me?  I’m not worthy to be in the same room with you, and you were blaming yourself?”

       “Yes,” she said, this time more assuredly.  “I blamed myself.”

       “You blamed yourself for what?” Ethan’s voice suddenly sounded and Nick and Simone turned quickly toward the study.  Simone rose and began vigorously wiping the tears from her eyes, determined to hide them from Ethan.

       “What were you blaming yourself for, Simone?” he asked again, but Simone kept her back to him, in no condition to respond.

       “We were just talking,” Nick said, rising, his anxiety masked the way he was trained to mask it.  “A problem on a case, I’d bet.”

       “What?”

       “That phone call.”

       “Oh,” Ethan said, looking at Simone.  “Yeah.  I’ve got to run, actually.  Simone, are you all right?”

       Simone turned, trying to smile.  Nick’s heart dropped at the sadness in her eyes.  “I’m fine,” she said.

       “You don’t look so fine,” Ethan said.  “What happened here?”  He began looking from Simone to Nick.

       “Nothing’s happened,” Simone responded with a tinge of irritation.  “You said you need to leave?”

       “Yeah.  I’ve got to meet the DA.  A plea on a case.”

       “But you can take me home first, right?” Simone asked, moving toward the sofa to retrieve her purse.

       “I’ll take her home,” Nick said and both Simone and Ethan looked at him.

       “You?” Ethan said, genuinely confused now. 

       “That won’t be necessary, Mr. Perry,” Simone said but Nick wasn’t about to back down.

       “Go and take care of your client, Ethan.  I’ll see that Miss Rivers gets home.”

       Ethan looked at Simone.  He was nobody’s fool.  What was going on here?    But Simone just stood there, unable to speak, unable to make the only decision that could possibly make any sense.  Because she knew, right here, right now she knew, that if seven years of hurt and pain didn’t do it; if seven years of bitter memories didn’t cut it; then it was as obvious to her as it was illogical to Ethan: that she was through.  That there was no getting over this big man who stood like an imprisoned wall before her, anxious to imprison her again.

TWENTY-TWO

It was a teen party for the wealthy, Shay thought, as she stepped out of her Corvette and made her way up to the festivities.  They were outdoors, in the massive backyard, laughing and playing tennis, ping-pong, and basketball.  Having the time of their lives.  Grown-ups were there, too, laughing and talking and drinking.  But no Hamilton Lucas.  Shay looked for him, but he wasn’t outside.  Which, she decided, was just as well.  She’d butter up the daughter first.  Then she’d get his attention.

       But as soon as Shay hit the scene, every teen male, not to mention their fathers, were paying all of their attention to her, by gawking at her.  She looked gorgeous and she knew it.  And she played it to her advantage.

       “Where’s the birthday girl?” she asked with a grand smile, removing her shades, and Hamilton Lucas’ daughter, a plain Jane in bottle glasses, gladly went up to Shay.  It wasn’t everyday such a glamorous woman called her out of a crowd. 

       “I’m a friend of your father’s,” Shay said when the thin teen approached her.  “Thought I’d stop by and wish you a happy sweet sixteen.”

       “Thank-you,” the girl said, and her male party mates immediately hurried up beside her, to meet this glamour girl too.  The boys weren’t bad, Shay thought, but Ham’s daughter, goodness.  And when she smiled, Shay noticed that she also wore braces, poor thing.

       “Aren’t you going to introduce us, Mina?” one of the young guys said and Mina Lucas didn’t quite know what to do since she’d never laid eyes on Shay either.

       “I’m Shay-Shay,” Shay said to the young boys delight.  “I’m a friend of Mr. Lucas.”

       They all ate that up, as if a stiff banker like Hamilton Lucas could be anything but a stiff banker.  But it was no sweat for Shay.  She even allowed the young people to escort her into the thick of the party, introducing her to everybody.

       It was nearly an hour later when Hamilton Lucas drove up. He assumed the fancy Corvette belonged to one of Mina’s friends, and pulled in behind it.  His passenger, a beautiful dark-skinned woman in a business suit, looked toward the backyard and smiled. 

       “And you were worried that nobody would show up,” she said as Ham walked around to the passenger side and helped her out of her car.

       “I know,” Ham said, smiling.  “I had to bribe nearly all of their parents to get them here.”

       The woman laughed and she and Ham walked arm in arm toward the backyard.  It was Ham, however, who saw Shay first.  She was, by now, sitting by the pool with a drink in her hand and a group of gawking teenage boys surrounding her.  And that mouth of hers, that foul mouth of hers, Ham decided, was going a mile a minute.  He patted his escort on the arm.

       “Excuse me for a moment,” he said to her politely and then walked with all deliberate speed toward Shay. When Shay saw him, she grinned.

       “I thought you’d never get here,” she said.

       But Ham wasn’t going along.  He wasn’t even pretending to be understandable.  He grabbed up Shay by her thin arm and began escorting her out of his backyard so fast that she was barely able to keep pace.  The boys that had surrounded her stood up stunned, and even Mina and Ham’s date were horrified.

       But Ham didn’t care.  Shay had gone too far.

       “What’s the matter with you?” Shay was saying as he hurried her toward her Corvette.  “Ham, what’s wrong with you?”

       Ham slung her around beside her car.  “Are you out of your mind?” he said to her with such venom that she could hardly believe he was the same man who had made love to her in that cheap motel nearly every day for the past week.

       “What have I done?  I just came to a party.”

       “You didn’t know anything about this party.  Who told you about this party?”

       “I read it in the papers, what’s the big damn deal?”

       “This is my daughter’s sixteenth birthday,” he said, “and I’ll not have the likes of you ruining it for her!”

       “Ruining it?  How in hell was I ruining it?”

       “By showing up!  By bringing your ghetto-fabulous nonsense to our respectable neighborhood.”

        “Oh, and I’m not respectable, is that what you’re saying?”

       “Just get in your car and get out of here,” Ham said, attempting to open Shay’s car door.  But Shay knocked his hand away.

       “You don’t tell me what to do,” she said angrily.

       “Hamilton,” a female’s voice said behind them.  Both Ham and Shay looked back to see that it was the woman Ham had arrived with.  “Is everything okay?” the woman asked him.

       “Who the hell are you?” Shay asked.

       “She’s my fiancée and watch your mouth,” Ham warned Shay.

       Shay looked at the woman, the very sophisticated, “respectable” looking woman, and her heart dropped.  She looked at Ham. 

       “You dog,” she said bitterly.  But he only opened her car door.

       “That’s right, I’m a dog.  And I bite so get out of my sight.”  He said this and walked away, taking the woman by the arm as he walked with her back toward the party. 

       Shay just stood there, stunned.  She couldn’t believe it.  He had been playing her all along.  For the sex.  And here she was thinking that giving it up to him would give her the inside track to his heart.  When Condoleezza Rice over there probably wasn’t giving up anything.  But she gets the ring.  The man.  The house.  The whole nine.  Shay exhaled, tears beginning to stain her eyes, and got into her car.  She could have fought it.  She could have told Hamilton Lucas about his natural self.  But what would that have done? 

       She looked at him, as he embraced his beloved ugly daughter.  And Shay smiled.  He won this round, she thought, but she’d win the match.  With the help of that ridiculous daughter of his, the daughter he said he had to protect from what he called “the likes of” Shay, she’d win it in a walk.

       She cranked up her Corvette and burned rubber leaving.

****

They took the elevator up to Simone’s hotel room as if they were not unlike the other strangers that occupied that ride.  Everybody stared up or straight ahead or at some spot on the walls, but never at their ride mates.  And so it was for Simone and Nick.  All the way from Nick’s home, all the way in the elevator, all the way up to Simone’s hotel room.  Simone’s heart couldn’t be trusted right now, and she knew it, and that was why she remained silent. 

       For Nick it was more practical: he didn’t know what to say.  He’d hurt her so completely, the pain that was in her voice at his house confirmed it, and he didn’t know what word existed to right that horrendous wrong. 

       At her hotel’s room door, Simone decided to be dignified about it all, and extended her hand.  “Thank-you for the ride home,” she said. 

       Nick looked at that hand, at how small and soft it looked, and took it into his.  And held it there.  Her heart lurched when he held it, amazed that his touch could still sear her so, and when his deep blue eyes looked into her green ones, she had to fight back the tears with all she had. 

       “Simone,” he said so heartfelt that a tear did drop.  And he moved closer to her, why did he have to move so close, and wiped her tear away.  Then he kissed her softly on her lips.  She could not believe she was allowing it, but she couldn’t do anything else.  She felt frozen in a time when she loved him so completely; when nobody no-where could touch the kind of deep feelings he brought out of her.  And when he pulled her closer and kissed her harder, with the same passion she remembered in him, she melted in his embrace. 

       “Oh, Simone,” she heard him moan as he kissed her, as he let loose the kind of wild passion that she always loved about him.  Like the night she allowed him to cross the line and make love to her.  It was a night she’d never forget; a night where she just knew her life of pleasure would begin.  Then she remembered the horror of the next day, when her pleasure so quickly, so easily, turned into pain.  And the pain was still there.  It was that pain, that seared her almost as surely as his kiss did, that caused her to pull away from him. 

       “Simone—,” he said with a plea in his voice, but she couldn’t live through that kind of pain again.  Not now.  Not with this married man!  How could she even let it go this far?  “Good night, Nick,” she said breathlessly, painfully, and went inside the room. 

       “We need to talk, Simone,” he said with a plea in his voice.  “Please.  I need to talk to you.”

       She felt as if she was at a crossroads again.  As if she had no choice in the matter when she had every choice.  But like a broken record, she decided to play that song again.  And let him in.

       He walked in slowly, almost methodically she thought, as if he were a panther sizing up his prey.  And that was how Simone felt.  Like prey.  Like a hunted animal surrounded by the jungle king. Since she was surrounded anyway, she decided to just give up.

       She headed for the suite’s sofa, kicking off her heels as she walked, and Nick walked in behind her.  She sat down, with her legs underneath her, and stared at him. 

       Now he felt surrounded.  Cornered even.  He wanted to sit away from her, because he wasn’t sure if he could handle his emotions, but that would have been too cowardice.  He created this mess, and he was the one who had to clean it up.  He sat down beside Simone.

       He leaned forward.  He used to smoke every time he was anxious, Simone remembered, but he didn’t pull out a cigarette this time.  Maybe he quit.  Maybe he finally decided that smoking wasn’t good for him and gave it up.  If only, she thought, she had that kind of will power right now.

       “When did it happen?” he asked her.

       She hesitated.  She knew what he was talking about, but she didn’t know if she wanted to go there.  “When did what happen?”

       He looked back at her.  “When did you attempt suicide?  That morning after I left you?”

       She looked away from him.  Why was he making her relive that hellish time?  Why was she making herself relive it?  She exhaled.  “No.  Some days later.  Maybe even a week, I don’t know.  But it wasn’t that morning.  I was still too stunned that morning.”

       Nick stared at her, his heart pounding.  He would have died himself if he had known, back then, what she had attempted to do.  “How?”

       “Pills.”

       “Why would you do that, Simone?”

       She looked at him.  That angered her.  “Why do you think?  I gave you my body, Nick.  You and only you.  To this day you and only you.  That wasn’t some game I was playing.  I was dead serious.  I expected to become your wife.  I actually thought that I was the only woman in your life, and had been the only one since our feelings for each other, since my feelings for you, had escalated.  It devastated me when I realized how wrong I was.”

       Nick looked forward again.  “You weren’t wrong,” he said.  “There was another woman, Delia had always been there, but you weren’t wrong about my feelings for you.”  He looked back at her again.  “They had escalated too.  And I was planning to break it off with Delia and be with you.  Marry you.  But Delia had gotten that phone call.”

       “From who?  Mark Grier?  He knew that you were seeing me that night?”

       Nick hesitated.  Delia had told him some time after her accident, but he didn’t know if Simone could take it.

       “Do you know?” Simone asked him.

       Nick exhaled.  “It was Serita, Simone.”

       Simone frowned.  “Serita?  Shay?  Why would you think Shay would do such a thing?”