“That your new boyfriend?” Sam
asked, nodding his head towards Luke, but never taking his eyes off of me.
“No, just a friend
,” I said, looking down at my beer. I tried focusing all my attention on removing the label from the bottle.
“Could have fooled me. The way he looks at you is the way a man looks at a woman who belongs to him
,” Sam said. I looked up to see him staring at me intently.
“Well, I may be considered his property, but I most definitely do not belong to him
,” I said defiantly.
“Ah,
gotta love the biker world,” Sam said, taking a long pull from the bottle of water he was holding.
“And just what do you know about the biker world?” I asked. I knew that Sam had walked out on a full athletic scholarship to a four year university to move to Hawaii and become a surfer, but I had no i
dea he had any knowledge of this life.
“I watch a lot of T.V.
,” he said grinning at me like we were fifteen again. I smiled at him. He had always been so easy to talk to.
My frustration
seemed to have lifted somewhat, until a deep voice spoke into my ear, “Let’s go.” Before I could jerk my head around, to see who it was, Luke had me by my arm pulling me from my spot at the bar. I had not even recognized his voice. I could feel the tension radiating through his body. I half expected Sam to come to my rescue, but was somewhat relieved, yet disappointed when I turned to see him still sitting at the bar as if nothing happened. Luke pulled me through the door never letting go of my arm. I had to practically run to keep up with him. Excitement coursed through my veins at the feel of his touch. I didn’t care if the touch was forceful or not, it felt so good to be this close to him, too good.
“Get inside
,” Luke barked to the two guys out front. Without a single question, they immediately went inside. I found myself shoved up against the front of the building. Luke’s hands were on either side of the wall by my head casing me in. “What the fuck are you doing?” he asked in a surprisingly calm voice. I couldn’t speak. His eyes glared deep into mine as if in search of an answer. “Answer me,” he snapped, no longer in a calm manner.
“I don’t know
,” I replied, not sure what was a right answer. I’m not sure why, but just like at my house the sound of his demanding voice had me wanting to take him right there.
“You don’t know? You trying to make an ass out of me
, Dallas? You are here with me and only me. I will not tolerate you hanging all over another man in my presence. Do you understand?”
“I wasn’t hanging on
...” Luke slapped the wall beside my head, cutting me off in mid conversation and causing me to jump.
“Yes or no?”
he growled. I could tell that this was
not
the Luke I had seen in the bedroom. That Luke was domineering, but in a sexual way. This one looked like he could rip me to pieces with his bare hands.
I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat and replied with a simple, barely audible
, “Yes.” Without another word, Luke walked back inside, leaving me alone. Not sure what to do, I turned and started walking down the road.
Chapter 7
I could not face the humiliation of going back inside. Even though no one said anything, I knew everyone in the building had watched the scene unfold. I knew I could not walk down the interstate, so I grabbed my cell from my back pocket and dialed the only person I knew in Hattiesburg that would come get me. Lindsey’s phone rang only once when she picked up with her normal cheery greeting.
“Hey
, Dallas! What can I do for you?”
Somehow, I found my voice and was surprised to find it working without a hint of despair. “
I need you to come pick me up from Blackwell Grocery off of Evelyn Gandy Parkway.”
“Um, ok. Just so happens I am in Petal. I should be there in about ten minutes. Everything ok?” I ended the call and placed my phone back in my pocket. I would have to concoct some st
ory to tell Lindsey as to why I was sitting on the curb at a run-down grocery store, on a Sunday afternoon. If she knew what really happened she may take that as a sign of weakness and that was the last thing I wanted.
As promised, Lindsey’s shiny white car pulled into the parking lot less than ten minutes later. “I don’t want to talk about
it. I just want to go home,” I said, never looking her in the eye. I had slouched down in my seat, staring out the window, silently hoping that she would just let it be. I knew that she would. She was not the type to pry or ask too many questions. I suddenly remembered that Luke had the code to get in the gate at my house. “Do you mind if I come to your house for a little while?” I blurted to Lindsey without thinking.
“Of course
not,” she responded. I felt like a complete fool, an idiot. It was degrading, lowering myself to ask for assistance from someone who made less in a month than I did in a day. Here I was, CEO of one of the largest real estate companies in the south, calling on a girl with an associate’s degree from a junior college to assist me with my personal life. She was sure to take this as a sign of distress and lack of confidence, which would lead to her leaking my story to a group of middle class workers at a Thursday night Bunco party. She would eventually lose respect for me in the office, causing me to let her go and hire a new assistant. By that time, she will have gone to the media hoping to get some sort of attention by letting everyone in on the secret life of the most eligible millionaire bachelorette- Dallas Knox. My private life would be aired like dirty laundry for the entire world to see.
I would eventually lose clients causing my business to fold and once I dipped into my savings and CD’s, my interest would go down, and by the time I was forty I would be broke and without a job living in a trailer with thirty-five cats. The thought was so
revolting- I started to tell Lindsey to take me home. I would rather face the wrath of Luke and his goon squad than be known for the woman who once had it all, but lost it after her assistant sold her out. I wanted to say those things, but I couldn’t. I needed Lindsey. I needed a friend and of all the people I had come in contact with over the years, it was her that I was closest to. I wanted someone I could confide in and share all my secrets with. It was a little overwhelming at times being me and trying to keep an all business persona when deep down- all I wanted was to be just like everyone else.
Luke had turned into a complete failure and my melancholy mood his actions had put me in made me extremely vulnerable. It was time to let go of the past and try to become a new person. I looked over at Lindsey as if seeing her for the first time. Her long hair was almost black and her tanned skin was flawless. She didn’t wear a hint of makeup,
and didn’t need to. She seemed innocent, yet full of life. She wore khaki shorts and a plain white shirt. Even sitting down I could tell that it complimented her curvy figure. It was a requirement of mine for her to dress in business attire for work. I even gave her a bonus when she started, just so she could look the way I expected her too.
Seeing her now, dressed down in casual clothes with no makeup on
, I almost felt as if we were friends maybe coming back from a movie or a shopping trip together. My heart smiled at the thought, but my body responded by me rolling my eyes at such a silly daydream. I was twenty-six acting like I was ten again. Next thing I knew, we would be skipping along together with our hair in pig-tails singing Mary- Mary Quite Contrary.
“
Well this is awkward,” Lindsey said, pulling me from the comfort of my own thoughts and back to the situation at hand.
“Yeah, I guess it is. Sorry to
inconvenience you,” I said looking down at my feet embarrassed.
This was a first
.
“Not this
,” she said, motioning with her finger between the two of us. “This.” I looked up to see her pointing out the windshield. It seemed that we had a front row seat to an all-on dog orgy happening in the middle of the driveway before us. I had not even realized the car had stopped, or that we had turned into a driveway that I presumed led to her house. Lindsey jumped out of the car, shooing the dogs out of the way. I laughed at the sight of her, kicking the air around the dogs, hoping to scare them out of their sex induced coma. After about two minutes of swearing and kicking and shooing, the dogs broke up and decided to take their business elsewhere, but not before shooting Lindsey a look that had her giving them the finger in retaliation which made me laugh harder.
“Fucking dogs. You would think they could find somewhere else to fornicate other than my driveway
,” Lindsey mumbled, mostly to herself when she got back in the car.
“Who do they belong to?”
I asked, still laughing.
“Me. I got them from a Wal-Mart parking lot salesman for ten dollars. They are just mutts but they let me know when someone is coming over. There is a bitch in heat somewhere, so that’s all they have been studying for the past few days. Just like a damn man.” I laughed, Lindsey was funny, although I knew she was not trying to be. “Well, welcome to my ponderosa,” Lindsey said, putting the car in park and getting out.
Lindsey’s house was a small wooden framed cottage that was painted a light blue. A white picket fence went around the front of the house and opened into a small garden. We walked up the steps onto the porch that housed two white rocking chairs. The porch went down the side of the house
and across the front. The railing was white and looked freshly painted. I had always imagined Lindsey living in an apartment somewhere, so it was surprising to see how much pride she took in the small cottage. Now that I had seen it, I could not imagine her living anywhere else. She opened the front door, which I noted was not locked and led me inside the living room. “Make yourself at home,” she said, throwing her purse on the turquoise couch and walking out of the room.
The walls were covered in canvas paintings, each with an LI inscribed on the bottom. Lindsey was quite the a
rtist. There were pictures of various insects, animals, trees, flowers and even a couple of portraits of some woman. The old hardwood floors were covered in worn rugs and all the furniture looked distressed, but made the room look airy and bright. There was no T.V. in the room, but an easel with a half- finished canvas painting stood in the corner next to a shelf full of paints and brushes. I looked through the door that Lindsey went through and could see all the way to the kitchen.
With my
curiosity getting the best of me, I walked through the door that led to a bedroom that stretched the width of the house. The large four post bed was white and looked like it had once been a canopy bed, but was now draped in a mossy green net that was blowing in the breeze coming from the open windows in the room. It looked like something out of a dream. Large, white, overstuffed pillows were piled high on the matching white down comforter and I could see a slight dip in the middle of the bed letting me know that the mattresses were old and worn. Just like the living room, the walls here were also covered in paintings, but all of streams, rivers, woods and cottages similar to the one she lived in. An old dresser covered in perfumes and framed pictures sat across from the bed.
“I’m kind of a do-it-yourselfer
,” Lindsey announced from the doorway.
“I think it’s amazing
,” I said truthfully.
“When I started working for you, I lucked up and found this place for rent really cheap. The outside was overgrown and the inside was covered in dust, but the structure was good, and the owner told me I could paint the furniture if I wanted. I have been here over two years and I have never paid full price for my rent. He always finds a way to knock something off, because I have fixed or updated something,” she said smiling.
“Have you thought about buying it?” I asked.
“Maybe. Wanna see the rest?” she asked turning and leading me out of the room and into another. I knew she was avoiding the topic, but I didn’t mind. I was pretty discreet myself.
Something else we had in
common
. “This is my guest bedroom, but I use it as an office. Whoever lived here before must have too because I didn’t have to buy anything but a new desk chair,” she said, spinning the chair around and taking a seat. The desk was painted a bright yellow, but didn’t look gaudy or tacky in the least. It went well with the room that was painted an off white color with only a few large paintings of flowers on the walls. A small sofa sat in front of a large stone fireplace and the walls around it were lined with books.
“I love to read. During the winter I spend almost all of my time in here reading
,” Lindsey said, abandoning her seat to run her fingers along the books on the shelf, just as I had done many of times.
“
I do too,” I said, liking the fact that my employee and potential friend loved reading as much as I did. We walked into the kitchen, which just like the desk, was painted a bright yellow. The cabinets were white as were the appliances and the small breakfast area had a white wooden table for two. There were so many windows that there was not very much room for paintings, but Lindsey had still managed to squeeze in a few here and there.