CHAPTER 7
Present Day
“Rose? Rose? Are you home?” That evening, after finishing my cleaning job at Mrs. Goodwin’s. I stepped through the front door to my apartment to find it was eerily quiet. It was after 10:00 p.m. on a school night and my sister was nowhere in sight. Was she with Wayne? I pulled my phone out of my purse and dialed her number as I headed toward my bedroom. No answer. I called her again, but it went to voicemail. I tried calling Wayne three times, but he didn’t pick up either. I had a bad feeling about this.
Just as I was taking off my sneakers, my phone rang. But it wasn’t Wayne or Rose like I expected. Instead, it was Jen.
“Hello?” I pressed my phone between my ear and shoulder while taking off my socks.
I headed into the kitchen and opened the fridge, scavenging for anything edible.
“Hey, so I had an idea,” Jen said, enthusiasm lacing her voice.
“What?” I asked.
“Agree to his terms about having sex with him.”
“What?” My immediate thought was that she’d lost her mind. I shut the fridge and opened the pantry only to find it pathetically scant, an empty box of crackers, a few spices, herbs, and rice.
“Hold on. There’s a plan,” Jen said. “A good plan.”
“Ok…?” I said, highly skeptical.
“When he takes you to wherever he wants to take you to have his way with you, you ask to see your grandmother’s necklace first. Then, you tell him you need some time to… you know, freshen up a bit. You offer him a drink… but not just any drink. A drink that contains ipecac.”
“Ipecac?” I asked as I meandered into the living room.
“It’ll make him throw up in 10-15 minutes. Sex averted.”
“Won’t he taste it?” I plunked down onto the couch and picked at the stale potato chips Rose had left out a few nights ago. I was so starving that I couldn’t help but inhale a few.
“I found Ipecac in powder form on the Internet… it’s tasteless,” Jen said.
“Oh, God. I just… that’s a horrible thing to do.” I laughed because the idea was insane… and at the same time, highly tempting. I mean, it would be a way for me to get back at him for all the shit he’d put me through.
“Or there’s something here that gives him severe diarrhea,” Jen continued. “Only thing is it takes longer to work.”
“I can’t believe this is what it has come down to,” I said with a guilty laugh. “Seriously, this is just low.”
“You haven’t even scratched the bottom of how low he’s going,” she said.
“True. But I don’t want to stoop to his level.”
“If you want to win his game, you have to play the same game as he’s playing… play by the same rules.”
I considered for a moment giving up on my grandmother’s necklace. Was it worth all this? God, if Spencer was just a smidgen reasonable… but he wasn’t. And Jen was right. I couldn’t play by normal people’s rules if I wanted to win his game. I would have to stoop. Way down to his level and play dirty.
My phone beeped with an incoming call. I looked at the screen and Rose’s name popped up.
“Hey, Jen. Can I call you back? My sister’s calling.”
“Sure. Let me know though.”
“I will.”
“Oh, and I managed to get a hundred-dollar tip from the scoundrel,” she said. “All for your necklace cause.”
“Wow… impressive.”
“I know,” she said. “You should have seen it. I had him eating out of the palm of my hand. Bye.”
I hung up and clicked over to the other line.
“Rose. God, where are you? It’s almost 10:30 and it’s a school night,” I said.
“Would you stop yelling at me? You’re not Mom, you know,” she snapped.
I didn’t realize I had raised my voice, but even though I probably shouldn’t have, I felt justified.
“I am your mom while you’re living with me,” I said. “You’ve been acting completely irresponsible lately and we still haven’t talked about you drinking, and—"
“Stop with the lecture. I was just calling to say I’m staying at Wayne’s tonight,” she said.
“At Wayne’s?”
“Yes. You know, my boyfriend…”
What did this mean? Dozens of questions arose in my mind. Was my sixteen-year-old sister sexually active? Was she drinking? Was Wayne someone I needed to ban her from seeing? I was so not qualified for this ‘mom’ position I currently found myself in. Not only was I never home, I had no clue how to raise a teenager. I felt I was doing her a huge disservice by continuing to let her stay with me and I didn’t want to be responsible for her messing up her life.
“Does Mom know about this?” I asked.
“Please don’t tell her.”
“Rose… I don’t know about this. I need to talk to you.”
“About what?” she asked.
I really didn’t want to do this over the phone.
“When can I talk to you in person?” I asked.
“Uh… tomorr… no. Tomorrow I’m going to a concert. Saturday?”
“What time?” I asked.
“In the morning is good.”
Since I’d been fired from Hotel Seattle and had nothing better to do, that would work.
“You know, Saturday is July 24th,” she said, her voice suddenly dejected.
The mention of that date took my breath away. It was the day our dad died, the one-year anniversary.
“We should visit his grave,” I said.
“We should,” she said, hesitantly. “Well good night then.”
“Rose. Make sure you use protection ok?” God, I hated that I needed to bring that up, but I felt it was necessary. The last thing she needed was an STI or to get pregnant.
“Ew… Ellie! I’m not having sex with him.” She grunted.
“Just want to make sure, you know…”
“Just, oh my God. Stop talking. Bye.” She hung up.
I breathed a sigh of relief to know she wasn’t getting it on with Wayne. He was a nice enough guy, but she was just sixteen.
In addition, I couldn’t deny that there was another reason why I wouldn’t have liked it if she was sexually active. A petty reason. I would have hated it if my younger sister lost her virginity before I did. It was a selfish reason I realized, kind of stupid, too, but even so, I was kind of embarrassed for still being a virgin. To be honest, the night I almost gave up my virginity to Spencer just left me gun shy about the whole thing.
Damn man. I didn’t want to think about him right now.
I tossed my phone onto the couch, went into my room, and dressed in a pair of sweats and a loose off-the shoulder T-shirt. Feeling starving now, I headed back into the kitchen and found one last package of Raman noodles on the top shelf in one of the cupboards. I managed to make a meal out of it and decided on a peanut butter jelly sandwich for dessert.
After inhaling my meal, I poured a glass of wine, headed back into the living room, and turned the TV on to the local news channel. To my shock, Spencer King’s gorgeous face appeared on the screen. He wore a navy business suit and a silver tie, and his hair was perfectly messy as if he’d tried to tame it after a wild and passionate sexual encounter. Probably with his Victoria’s Secret girlfriend.
Ugh. I didn’t want to think about that.
A slew of reporters surrounded him, the females flipping their hair, eagerly vying for his attention. Why was he on the news? I wondered. Then a horrifying thought popped into my mind. Was he going to air out our personal war publicly? Defend his name because I had reported him to the police? My heart started to beat double time as I expected the worst. God, what was I thinking when I called the cops on him? This would never end well.
“Yes, we’re in negotiations now,” Spencer said into one of the microphones. “Once I’ve purchased three of the largest hotels in Seattle, I’m planning to renovate them and reopen them next year.”
Relief flooded through me. He was being interviewed because of his business ventures, not because he was in trouble with the cops, thank heavens.
“Will you be relocating to Seattle?” one of the reporters asked as she smiled and batted her eyelashes.
“Temporarily,” he said.
Wait, he was moving here? Ugh! My life was officially over. I plopped down onto the couch and sipped my wine. Well, chugged actually. I needed to feel relief quickly.
“I heard from a reliable source that you’re being investigated by the police,” another reporter said. A male.
Oh, shit. I gulped the rest of my wine as I braced for what Spencer might say.
His upper lip curled back ever so slightly, so imperceptibly that had I not been staring at his mouth, I wouldn’t have noticed. And why on earth was I staring at his mouth anyway? His ugly, full, perfectly arched, ultra-kissable mouth. God, he was a good kisser. I hated it.
“That is concerning another matter entirely,” he said. “That will be all.”
The reporters clamored but he ignored the firestorm of questions as he slipped into his shiny black limousine. Of course, he drove a limousine. And had a chauffeur. And was a confident, ultra-sexy, cocky gazillionaire. And was the talk of the town and the most eligible bachelor in Seattle… or perhaps in the world. And of course, I was sitting here in my shitty apartment drinking the cheapest wine I could find, eating Raman noodles, and trying to scrape in enough money to get me through college. Of course, everything was peachy fine with him and disastrous for me.
Ugh!
I turned the TV off and glanced around my apartment. Whatever happened to me? I used to have everything going for me. I had a family that loved me, my parents were considerably well off, and I was looking forward to finding my one true Gentleman and live happily ever after. Now I lived in a one-bedroom dump apartment with my sister and was working three… make that two jobs so I could afford college and living expenses, all the while trying to forget about my Dark Knight who somehow had slithered his way back into my life.
Life just wasn’t fair.
I turned the TV off, finished off another glass of cheap wine, and headed to my bedroom. Why the hell was he showing back up in my life now? I didn’t need this. He was the last man on the planet I wanted anything to do with.
I plugged my phone into the charger and was about to turn off the light on the nightstand. My gaze drifted to the silver-framed picture of me and Dad, which was taken a few days before he had received his cancer diagnosis. I had decided on a college, and he took me shopping for college clothes as a birthday present. I lifted up the picture and studied his face, his kind eyes. We were standing in front of the waterfront shops, a Washington State Ferry drifting past us in the background. The day was perfect, sunny, and warm. He had complained about how tired he was that day, but he still insisted he take me out. Not only did he buy me clothes, he got me three pairs of shoes, a backpack, jewelry, and a raincoat. Perhaps one day I’d meet a man who was as wonderful as he was to my mom, to our family.
I set the picture down onto the nightstand, turned the light off, and rested my head on my pillow. I dried a tear from my eye and tried not to allow my thoughts to linger on how I missed him so.
Just as I closed my eyes, my phone rang. I picked I up and looked at the screen. Area code 631. Spencer’s calling me again? Didn’t he take the hint when I didn’t return his phone calls before?
I turned the phone on silent, placed it face-down onto the nightstand, and squeezed my eyes shut. Even though I couldn’t hear the ring tone, I just knew he was calling me again and again. I couldn’t explain how I knew this… I just did.
“Go to sleep,” I said to myself out loud as if saying that would somehow help me forget who was calling and would magically make me fall asleep.
I tossed and turned for the better part of the hour, slumber eluding me. That’s when I gave up trying and glanced at my phone screen. He had called twenty-six times. The phone lit up with his number again. This was beyond ridiculous. I needed to put a stop to this.
“What?!” I yelled into the phone after I answered it.
“Hey there,” said a deep voice. “You’re up.”
“It’s not like I can get any sleep around here with you calling me twenty-seven times. And how did you get my number anyway?”
“We need to meet,” he said. “I want to settle things on more friendly terms.”
“Do you ever answer questions?” I asked.
“I apologize for my less-than gentlemanly offer.”
“My point exactly.”
“I’m willing to give you back the necklace if you drop all charges.”
“Fine. Whatever. Send it back to me and consider it done.”
“And one more thing… I need a date Saturday,” he said.
A date? With Spencer? It was as if my mind couldn’t register something so preposterous and it just froze up.
“Do this for me and we’ll call it even,” he said. “We can catch up…”
He continued to talk but I couldn’t pay attention because my brain cramped trying to come up with anything, anything at all that we could catch up about. There really was nothing… well, nothing worthwhile anyway.
“I’m rather busy,” I said.
“Other than on Saturdays, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays now that you no longer work at Hotel Seattle.”
“You’ve been stalking my schedule?” I wanted to murder the man.
“Soon being the new owner, I needed to replace you,” he said. “So I had to know what hours needed to be filled.”
“And since we’re talking about it, why did you fire me, exactly?” I demanded.
“I’ll pick you up 3:00 p.m. on Saturday. Wear a red dress... a formal dress.”
“I’ll do no such thing! And I don’t have a red formal dress.” He cursed it for me years ago, and I’ve not once since worn red.
“If you want to see your necklace again, you’ll go out with me, Ellie,” he said in a threatening tone.
What the hell was wrong with this man? Or perhaps a better question was: what was wrong with me? He was the worst thing that had happened to me, and ninety percent of the time, I was obsessing about him, vacillating between wanting to kill him… and wanting to have wild, passionate, earth-shattering sex with him.
Even so, I couldn’t deny that I really liked that he was giving me attention. But if history was an indicator of the future, spending time with him would only lead to another disaster. And Saturday… my heart squeezed.
“Saturday really isn’t a good day for me,” I said, remembering that it was the one-year anniversary of my dad’s passing.
“Why not?” he asked.
There was no way I was going to tell him that I’d rather sit home and drown myself in a bottle of wine, trying to forget what I still hadn’t come to terms with yet. I wanted to mourn in peace, not with a man who didn’t have a sentimental bone in his body and who probably would take pleasure in my pain.
“Cat got your tongue?” he asked.
“It really isn’t a good day for me,” I repeated.
“Looking forward to seeing you on Saturday, Ellie,” he said.
“We’re not—”
I heard a click on the other end of the line as he hung up. We’re so not going out. I mean, it isn’t as if he can force me. He doesn’t know where I live.
Shit.
He knows where I live. He has all my info. He could have access to my social security number, my emergency contacts… everything!
I let myself fall into the pillow with a loud huff. Why was Spencer doing this to me? I knew he had no good reason and that he probably only had bad ones. Plus, Saturday… I was going to be an emotional basket case. Besides, I didn’t own a red dress and I wasn’t going to buy one just to go out with him. In fact, I wanted to wear the opposite of red just to spite him. Ha. That would be hilarious.
Oh, my God. I was so going to do it.
What was the opposite of red? Green?