Mr. Big Love: The Mr. Big Series: Book Two

by Lund, S. E.

  Luke hugged me tightly.

  "I fly first class to Manhattan. Unfortunately, there are two stops along the way, but it was the best I could get on such short notice. There aren't any non-stop flights from Durban to Manhattan."

  I was sad that I was going to leave him, but John and Greg would be good company in my absence.

  "How will you stand being on land after almost six months at sea?" Luke asked as we went into the galley and fixed breakfast.

  "It'll be hard, but I'll adapt. The hardest part will be missing you," I said and leaned against him for a moment. "It's too bad her mom can't go."

  "She's too sick?"

  I shrugged. "She's in a wheelchair on oxygen, but mostly, she can't afford it."

  "I could put Candace's mom up in the same hotel as you," Luke replied. "I could pay her way to Manhattan from Portland."

  "Really?" I poured us both a mug of coffee. "You'd do that?"

  "I'll get her a wheelchair accessible suite and she can have her own bedroom," Luke offered. "She'd have room service covered too for food. All you'd have to do would be arrange for a taxi equipped for wheelchairs to the hospital and back."

  I shook my head. "You are too good," I replied, wondering whether Mrs. Carter would accept. "I know that she's on a very tight budget."

  "It would make me happy to be able to do it," Luke said. "You could stay at the same hotel. You could even have adjoining rooms if you want. I just wanted to make your stay as comfortable as possible."

  "I know," I said and reached out across the table to take his hand, squeezing it. "I appreciate your generosity. I'll call the hotel and see if I can make arrangements for a suit with adjoining rooms. She should be there, just in case."

  "She should."

  "What about you? Are you okay that I'm leaving?"

  "Of course," he said. "I'm just sad you'll miss seeing Brazil and the east coast with me."

  "I'll go there next year with you," I said and dug into my breakfast of bacon and eggs. "We'll take a trip around South America to Tierra del Fuego and then to Machu Picchu."

  "It's a plan," he said and leaned over the table to kiss me.

  "It's a plan," I said and held out my hand. "Pinky swear?"

  He grinned. "Pinky swear."

  We hooked our pinky fingers together and smiled at each other.

  We'd only been off the boat once when we flew back to civilization for Christmas with my parents. The rest of the time, we'd been on the cat, traveling around the world.

  I wasn't sure I'd love sailing, but I did. When the wind was right and the seas were fair, we'd lie on the dual decks of the cat and catch the sun. The sky seemed endless out in the middle of the ocean.

  For some reason, I wasn't afraid out there despite being so far from land.

  It was paradise.

  Even the bad weather didn't faze me. We'd been lucky to have mostly good seas while we made our way across the Pacific, but Luke expected some weather when we made the South Atlantic crossing and we had it.

  I'd miss that part of the trip with him, but he'd have John and Greg as company.

  My bestie needed me.

  I called Mrs. Carter and offered her the chance to go to Manhattan so she could be with Candace. She protested at first, but then accepted.

  "Can you get someone to help you get to the airport?"

  "Yes," she said. "I have a home care nurse. She could make arrangements with the disabled taxi service."

  "The airport personnel will be prepared for you," I said. "All you need to do is pack your bags and get to the airport. We'll take care of the rest."

  "Tell Luke I can't repay him," she said, and I knew she felt guilty.

  "It makes him happy to be able to help," I said and smiled.

  "Thank you so much..."

  I said good bye and turned to Luke, who was smiling softly.

  "It's nothing to me, but it's everything to her," he said and pulled me into his arms.

  “I love you,” I said tearfully, and we kissed.

  “I love you,” he replied, his voice warm.

  He was such a gem.

  My eyes were blurred as we left the cat and caught a taxi to the King Shaka International Airport north of Durban along the coast of South Africa.

  "I hate leaving you," I said, my arms around his neck.

  We kissed and then I went through security. When I turned back, he was just one person in a sea of people, a bit taller than most, a sad expression on his handsome and very tanned face, a considerable amount of scruff on his jaw.

  I blew him a kiss and watched while he pretended to catch it, turning his head to one side like he'd been struck by it. He smiled when he turned back.

  I loved him...

  I had the best seat I'd ever had on a plane and while I felt anxious about Candace, it was amazing being in first class. I made a video of the seat and the plane, which I would upload once I got on land and send to Luke and Candace. Candace had never flown first class either, so I knew that once she recovered, she would really enjoy living vicariously through me. I would show it to her once she was well-enough to see it.

  By the time I arrived in Atlanta, Jan send me an update on Candace's status. She'd successfully come out of surgery to fix her leg and reduce the swelling on her brain. The neurosurgeon who took care of her was cautiously optimistic that she'd be fine, but the first twenty-four hours after surgery were always critical in a person with a brain injury, just in case there was swelling that couldn't be controlled or any residual bleeding on the brain.

  I hoped she was okay while I was in flight, and I didn't arrive in Manhattan to a worse situation than when I left Durban. While I had Wi-Fi on the plane, I worried that Jan and Mara wouldn't keep me up to date on Candace's progress. I passed the flight alternately sleeping and worrying about her and the rest of the time missing Luke terribly. We'd been together for six months on the boat and I had grown so used to his being there right beside me. We were never more than twenty feet away from each other. I liked it that way. It told me that we'd made the right decision to get married and damn caution. Sure, we had both been burned before, but that was then.

  This was now.

  Now, I missed him and only my fear for Candace's life could take me away from his arms.

  I arrived in Manhattan and after I landed, I called Jan once I was in the terminal waiting for my bag. She said Candace had a good night and the neurosurgeon thought she was out of the proverbial woods when it came to her injuries. Now, she had to get better and regain the use of her leg, once the cast came off and she did physical therapy. She wouldn't be running or hiking any time soon, but she was alive.

  The cab pulled up to the hospital and I paid the driver and went inside, dragging my suitcase behind me. I went to the neuro ward where she was being kept and found my way to the nursing station, wanting to stop there and get an update from the nurses.

  They repeated what Jan told me. I wanted to make sure she wasn't being overly optimistic about Candace's recovery, but she wasn't. That made me feel better. I exhaled in relief and dragged my bag to her room, a single room overlooking a small interior green space.

  "Here I am," I said softly, and stood in the doorway to her room. She was asleep and Jan was sitting on a chair beside her bed, a tablet in hand.

  "Alexa," Jan whispered and put down her tablet, standing up to come to me, her arms open. "I'm so glad you're here."

  We hugged long and hard, for it had been a while since I saw her.

  "I'm so sorry to pull you away from South Africa like this," she said. "Her brother couldn't get leave so it was you or no one since I'm in class during the day and then work most evenings. I knew you would want to come and be with her."

  I smiled and I put my suitcase inside the room and went to Candace's bedside. The head of her bed was raised, and she had all kinds of monitors, tubes, and wires snaking onto and into her body, bandages on her head where I assumed she'd had surgery to relieve pressure on her skull. Her broken
leg was in a cast and had been raised using some kind of pulley attached to the ceiling. She looked frail in the bed, the blue hospital gown loose around her neck so the wires could go beneath them for the EKG.

  "Oh, Candy," I whispered, not wanting to wake her up. I couldn't help it -- my eyes welled up with tears, my anxiety about her coming to a peak. I wanted to hug her, I wanted to squeeze her hand, but I didn't want to wake her up, so I just stared at her face for a while, taking everything in. Her eyes were hazel, but they were closed, and a bandage covered her head. There were abrasions on her cheek and forehead, probably where she scraped herself while falling off the platform and then off to the rails below, breaking her leg.

  I turned to Jan and she waved me out of the room.

  "Let's go get something to eat," she said and grabbed my hand. "Now that you're here, I can finally relax."

  I nodded. Hopefully, by the time we were finished with the meal, Candace would wake up and I could talk to her. Until then, Jan and I could catch up on things.

  I took one last look at her and followed Jan down the hall to the elevators and what I assumed was the way to the cafeteria. Hopefully, Candace would recover over the next few days from her very close call with death.

  I was more than happy to be able to be there with her during her recovery.

  Chapter Two

  Luke

  Durban, South Africa

  I spent the first night Alexa was away alone on the cat, lying in the double bed, tucked away in one of the pontoons. I missed her terribly.

  ALEXA: I'm in my bed on the plane, lying down in the lap of luxury, so I hope you're happy.

  She sent me a pic of her first-class seat on British Airways. She was on a 747 and the seat was fantastic. At night, it laid down flat and the area was walled off by a sliding door that gave her privacy.

  LUKE: I'm ecstatic that you have a nice seat. Enjoy. In contrast, my bed -- our bed -- is terribly lonely.

  ALEXA: Aww... I'm so sorry. I miss you, too.

  LUKE: While you're keeping busy with all the action on the plane, I am all alone, pondering the meaning of life...

  ALEXA: It's good to ponder. You have John and Greg with you, so I expect the three of you will be having a good old time.

  LUKE: We will, but I've grown accustomed to your presence, Ms. Alexandria Dixon, soon to be Marshall.

  ALEXA: Me, too. We'll be together again soon. XOXOXO

  LUKE: OXOXOX

  John was going to arrive the following day so I would have some time alone anchored in the bay and then the two of us would continue our trip along the coast of South Africa. We'd cross the South Atlantic Ocean and would arrive on the southernmost coast of South America for the last leg of our journey up to the Caribbean and home.

  I hoped Alexa would be able to join us some time before we got back to Patchogue but that would depend on how Candace fared over the coming week or two. She really wanted to see the islands but would probably miss out. I had no doubt she'd want to stay with Candace while she got settled back into their apartment. Once she felt sure that Candace could handle things, she'd fly to the closest port near our position and rejoin The Phoenix.

  John would be with us, but she enjoyed his company, so I wasn't worried about the three of us managing on the leg home.

  I hoped she could join us sooner than later, but Candace came first.

  I went to sleep that night, reading over her texts which spoke of her flight and her layovers in Johannesburg and then Atlanta. By the time she arrived in Manhattan the next day, I was at the airport near Durban to meet John. He looked eager to see me when he finally arrived near the baggage area in the airport.

  "Hey, buddy," he said, and we embraced, clapping each other on the back. "Long time, no see. The last time I saw you, you were the most eligible bachelor in all of Manhattan. Hell, probably in all of the East Coast of the USA. Now look at you," he said and pulled back, checking me over with a critical eye. "An old man of the sea. Replete with beard and weathered and tanned skin. All you need is a pipe and you’d be completely Hemingwayesque.”

  I laughed at his description of me. Yes, I did look like an old sailor, my hair below my collar, a considerable growth of whiskers on my jaw, wearing a t-shirt and long-sleeved shirt over top, a pair of Bermuda shorts and some deck shoes. I even had an old floppy hat for good measure.

  "You're just jealous that I'm living the dream," I said. "The sun, the sea and my sweetheart. That's all a sailor needs."

  "Aye, matey," he said. "I can't wait to get out on The Phoenix again. Let's get my bags and get the hell out of Dodge."

  So, we did.

  Once we arrived at the marina where The Phoenix was anchored, all my cares seemed to fade away and so did John's. We took the dingy out to the cat and got John settled in to the bedroom in the other pontoon. Once he was unpacked, we sat down and went over the next leg of our journey. We'd be sailing up the coast of South Africa and then taking the shortest route to the tip of South America.

  The evening before we were scheduled to depart, we picked up a bottle of good South African wine, and some fresh seafood and we had a nice barbecue on the deck of The Phoenix.

  "Ahh, this is the life," John said. "Seriously. I missed the sound of the water on the hull. The cry of the gulls. The sun setting on the horizon..."

  "You're getting all poetic on me," I said, giving John a grin.

  "You have to admit there's nothing like it."

  "No," I said. "There isn't."

  "The only thing that could possibly compete would be liftoff from Cape Canaveral on the way to Mars, am I right?”

  I didn't say anything. Of course, that had been my dream for the year before I met Alexa, after my disastrous breakup with Jenna. I wanted to use my considerable fortune to get in on the space race, maybe hook up with one of the other space entrepreneurs, with an eye to colonizing Mars. Now, I couldn't imagine leaving Earth because that was where Alexa was.

  I didn't say that to John, because I knew I'd just get ribbed like crazy, but that was the way I felt.

  It surprised me, but I was coming to realize that my fantasies of Mars had been a way of escaping my cares back on good old planet Earth. I no longer felt the need to escape. In fact, I looked forward to getting set up with Alexa at the beach house where we would spend our summers, and of course, picking out a place to live together in New York.

  Or maybe, we could move to Europe and live somewhere that Alexa chose. I was game for anything. With the money I'd made off Chatter, I could do pretty much anything I wanted.

  I was a lucky man, and I knew it.

  That night, I got a text from Alexa, recounting how she'd spoken to Candace about what happened the day she fell off the platform at the subway station.

  ALEXA: She didn't fall after all. Someone pushed her.

  LUKE: What?

  According to Alexa, the police came to interview Candace as soon as she regained consciousness, but all Candace could say was that she was standing at the edge of the platform, surrounded by people, a few inches behind the yellow warning strip, and that someone had deliberately pushed her so that she fell off and onto the rails below.

  She didn't remember anything after that, because of her head injury. According to police, CCTV showed that a tall man wearing a dark hoodie had been standing behind her for a few moments, then came forward and shouldered her hard enough that she tripped and fell off the platform. The man walked out of the station, taking care not to look up at any of the cameras, his hands in his pockets. Police were able to see that he was Caucasian, had long dark hair and a beard, and was over six feet tall of medium build.

  That was it. The mystery man who pushed Candace off the platform appeared to have done it randomly. He disappeared into the crowds on the street, and they lost him. There was even an article in the newspapers about it and a video on the local television news, asking for witnesses to provide tips to the police's tip hotline, but so far, no one had offered anything useful.

&n
bsp; Whoever did it was still at large.

  I couldn't shake the sense that whoever harmed Candace was more than just a random stranger. I didn't want to say it, but my mind went immediately to Blaine. He was still in the city, according to police, having served his time and being on probation. Maybe he harmed Candace to get back at Alexa. Police had no leads, and so my guess was as good as theirs.

  I hoped I was wrong because that would mean she was still in danger.

  John and I left port the next day and made our way along the southern coast of South Africa to Port Elizabeth. We found a nice spot to moor off Cape St. Francis, and all I could think of was how much Alexa would love the location. It was picturesque, with an old lighthouse, and it would be the last really pleasant sailing before we hit the notorious Wild Coast, with frequent weather systems that blew through and a very powerful Agulhas current that extended from Mozambique through to Cape Town.

  With frequent stops while we waited for the weather to improve, John and I made the trip and then planned our next leg of the journey -- from Cape Town to St. Helena and the Ascension Islands. After that, our next stop was Brazil. The trip took a total of twenty days, during which time we were lucky to have almost perfect weather with pretty consistent winds from the north east, which pushed us along and only moderate swells. It was almost unbelievable luck that we avoided the worst squalls, which stayed north of us, thankfully. By the time we saw land, I was ready to spend a few days anchored in some quiet spot.

  Most of all, I missed Alexa's presence in my life and in my bed. Luckily, I had installed a satellite system so I could connect to her even in the middle of the ocean. Messages between us kept me centered and let me know that Candace was getting better with each passing day. By the time I arrived in Brazil, she was almost ready to come and meet me. I decided to wait in Sao Paulo so that she could fly and meet us somewhere with a major international airport.

  Her flight, once she booked it, ended up being from Manhattan to Atlanta and then on to Rio, and then from Rio to Sao Paulo. All in all, it would be a good twenty hours of travel, with layover factored in. She'd be exhausted when she arrived, but then the three of us could take the next month or so to travel up the eastern coast of South America to the Bahamas and Caribbean. It would be the trip of a lifetime.