by Katie Dowe
She was going straight to the source. She had followed him one night and found out where the wife lived and had stayed out there in the car shivering in the cold and with pain radiating through her broken heart after she had seen her wrapped in his arms before they closed the door. The bitch had stolen her man from her and she was going to pay for it!
*****
“I need to talk to you.” Leah heard the voice behind her and spun around quickly. He was well behind her, but he was too near according to the restraining order.
“We have nothing to say to each other,” she told him coldly. “And if you are not gone by the next minute, I am calling the cops.”
“Please.” He held up his hands. “I just want to say I am sorry about hitting you like that and I really don’t know what came over me. I have not been the same since you left me, Lee, and I cannot function right now.”
He looked a wreck and he had lost some weight, but even though she felt sorry for that, she was not going to fall for that again. She knew the drill: the self recriminations and the gifts and then before you knew it, the same thing happened again and she was not going to let him put his hands on her again. “You need help, Lance,” she told him calmly. “You are going to have to get counseling. I cannot help you and I don’t want to be with you anymore. What you did killed something inside me.”
“Please don’t say that.” She could see the tears and it did not sway her one bit. “I love you Lee, and if I cannot have you then I don’t want to live.”
“You see Lance, that’s where you are wrong,” she told him gently. “I cannot be responsible for your happiness and you should not let someone have that kind of power over you. I am sorry.” She turned to leave and heard the sob that escaped him. She did not turn back to look at him but hurried inside the hospital, her peace of mind shattered!
*****
“When are you going to agree to marry me again?” Richard asked his ex-wife impatiently. July was making way for August and the heat had intensified with the coming of the month. The heat shimmered in the air and the air conditioners were on high alert. School was out and evidence of that was there as they wandered in front yards with water guns and inflatable pools to keep cool.
They were sitting on the front porch enjoying the evening sun and having tall glasses of lemonade and watermelons.
“When you sort out that mess with miss thing,” Janet told him mildly. She was not in a hurry to make it permanent again and was willing to bide her time. She had almost been destroyed when he left and she was not going to let that happen again.
“Why are you punishing me?” he asked her plaintively. He spent most of his time there and was thinking of giving up his apartment if she would only say the word.
“You think I am punishing you?” she asked him incredulously, sipping her iced liquid.
“I think you are because of the way I left.” He put his half-empty glass on the small table between them and turned to face her. “I was a fool and there is no fool like an old fool and I would like to make it up to you if you would let me.”
“You need to sort things out with that young lady first Richard, and then we go on from there,” she said firmly.
“I called her and left messages on her phone and she has not responded. Maybe she has forgotten all about me,” he said with a weak smile.
“Women don’t forget rejection, Richard. They plan a way at getting back to the person who rejects them,” she warned him.
“I am sure she is not planning anything,” he said soundly.
“I hope you are right.”
*****
She made him laugh and he realized that was what had been missing from his life: laughter. He had never been able to laugh around Eileen maybe because he had never loved her, but with Janice it came naturally. She would tell him stories from work or something about her parents and she would make it come out funny. She was also very impulsive. They would be having dinner at her place and she would suggest going to the park or to the inflatable pool she had around the back of the house. One night, they sat in the pool until about ten o’clock and he made love to her right there in the backyard for the neighbors to see and he did not care, he had never done something like that before.
She was clipping the sides and back of his hair for him. It was a balmy night and they were outside on the porch. And he had suggested it. “I promise I won’t make you look like a freak,” she teased him.
He had sat there and let her put scissors in his soft dark hair. He was used to a barber coming over to the manor and giving him a haircut twice a month and he was shocked that he was allowing her to do it for him.
“Okay, what do you prefer?” She had draped a towel around him and was standing behind him wielding a pair of scissors. “A crew cut or a Mohawk?”
“Janice.” He twisted his head to look at her and saw the impish look on her exquisite face. She had come home from work and taken a shower and put on a tiny blouse that left her midriff bare and loose shorts that rode high on her thighs.
“Relax.” She bent over and kissed him softly on the mouth. “I would never let my man go out looking like a total wreck.”
“I should hope not,” he retorted, his heart jumping at her reference to him as her man.
She talked while she clipped and was contented to carry on most of the conversation. She was quite used to his silences and realized he was talking more and more.
“There I am done.” She took away the towel and brushed the hairs from the back of his neck and then gave him a mirror to look at her handiwork. “What do you think?” she asked him a little anxiously.
“I think you could do this for a living,” he told her with a small smile.
“So you like it?” she asked, still not convinced.
“I like it.”
“Oh great!” She put away the scissors and jumped on his lap. “I should give you a haircut whenever you need one.”
“And deprive my barber of his livelihood?” he asked her mockingly, his arms coming around her and holding her close.
“Oh of course you have a barber,” she said with a grin. “Okay, maybe once in a while.”
“Why do you love me?” he asked her abruptly, his intense black eyes staring into hers.
She looked at him and realized that he was trying to make sense of what was happening between them. She trailed a finger around his mouth and lingered on the sensuous bottom lip and felt the shudder through his body. “I love you because I cannot help myself,” she told him quietly. “I love you because you are intense and sexy and when you touch me I dissolve into tiny pieces. I love you, David Hattori, because you are the first man for me and you were the one I have been waiting for all my life. Does that break it down for you?”
He nodded, his throat clogged and he felt the moisture in his eyes. “I have never told you I loved you back,” he whispered.
“I know you do, but you cannot bring yourself to say it yet,” she told him gently. “You have been telling me with your body for some time now.”
“Janice,” he whispered brokenly, dragging her head down to meet his mouth, his lips claiming hers in a kiss that left them both shaken and trembling. She clung to him tightly, molding her body to his.
He lifted her and went with her to the bedroom. “I have never experienced anything like this before.” He knelt before her, his mouth drifting down to her bare torso, pulling the skin between his teeth and sucking on it. Janice cried out as the sharp dart of desire shot through her body. He eased off her shorts and his eyes narrowed when he discovered that she was not wearing panties. “You make me weak with want,” he told her huskily, parting the lips of her vagina he bent his head and licked between the folds tenderly. He was taking his time and she realized that his feelings for her had shifted and he was letting her know. She was shivering from the desire racing through her body and her hands clenched at her sides. “Let me show you how much,” he murmured deeply. He used his fingers inside her and touched his mo
uth to her mound, sucking the skin into his mouth while he moved his fingers inside her. Janice was sobbing! She could not help it. He was driving her crazy with intense need. She came against his mouth after only a short time, and he thrust his tongue inside her to lick her clean.
“David,” she sobbed out his name and reached for him.
“I am right here baby,” he said soothingly and climbed on top of her, releasing his erection and putting it inside her.
“I can’t.” She held him tight to her, her body swirling out of control. “I love you so much!” He captured her cries with his lips and started moving inside her.
“I know baby, I know,” he whispered against her mouth.
*****
She waited until they had gone inside before she made her move. She had seen them cozying up out on the porch sipping cold drinks and talking and laughing. Probably talking about me, she thought bitterly. Well she was going to get the last laugh, she thought grimly.
As soon as they went inside, she was galvanized into action. She crept from her car and looked around furtively to see if any nosy neighbors were on the lookout. She knew she was taking a big risk because it was summer and people tend to be outside and it did not get dark until sometimes after nine, so she had waited.
She took out the kerosene pan from the trunk and she made sure she had her lighter with her and crept towards the house. A very nice house, she thought sneeringly, as she spilled the oil all around the perimeter of the building. Something inside her whispered that it was not worth it, she was doing all this for a man and he was not worth it, but she wanted revenge. She had just struck the match at the front of the porch when she heard someone called out to her. “Hey, what are you doing?” She froze looking at the fire that was spreading at a rapid pace and when she heard the front door opened, she fled to her car. The person who had called out to her did not look at her but had run up towards the house, dragging out his phone to make a call. By this time, the entire house was surrounded by fire and the neighbors had started to come out with buckets of water to douse the flames. Charlene drove off with a squeal of tires and raced away, her heart hammering!
*****
The damage was minimal, thanks to the quick actions of the neighbor, Mr. Fearon, who told the police what he saw and described the woman to them. The flames had damaged the front porch and the garden, but other than that, everything was intact and the occupants were not hurt.
“I know who she is, Officer,” Richard Langley said quietly, not looking at his ex-wife, knowing that she was never going to say yes now.
“I see.” The man gave him a knowing look. “Know where we can find her?”
Richard gave him the address, his heart heavy at what he had caused her to do and he shuddered to think what had almost happened.
“Is there somewhere you can stay for the night?” the officer asked them.
“I will stay at a hotel for the night,” Janet told him, not even looking at Richard. She had warned him something like this was going to happen and he had not listened.
“And you, Sir?”
“I have an apartment,” he said quietly.
*****
“Mom, why didn’t you call me!” Janice exclaimed. She had been totally unaware of what had happened the night before and shivered as she remembered how David had kept her busy for most of the night.
“I did not want to scare you honey,” Janet told her with a sigh. “That woman is a total psychopath. I understand the idiot went straight back to her apartment and that’s where the police caught her. She confessed to everything.”
“I know I should not sympathize with her after what she had done, but I really feel sorry for her,” Janice murmured. She had not too long arrived at the store when her mother had called and told her the story.
“I don’t,” her mother told her staunchly. “You don’t go burning someone else’s house just because a man left you. No man is worth all that.”
“Yes Mom, you and I might think that, but some people take rejection very different,” Janice said, still feeling sorry for the girl. “Dad did not handle the situation very well so he is partly to be blamed.”
“I am sure he is in his lonely apartment rethinking his life now,” she said grimly.
“You two are not a thing anymore?”
“He needs to stew in his juice for a little bit and fix my front porch and replant my precious flowers and then maybe I will consider taking him back.”
“Mom you have become quite the ‘b’ word, haven’t you?” Janice said in amusement.
“Darn right I have,” she told her daughter with a laugh. “Now, on to more pleasant things. As soon as your father has redone the porch, I want to meet your young man and have him over for dinner.”
“I will see what I can do.”
*****
“Oh my Lord, what on earth is going on?” Candace asked, throwing up her hands in the air. They were having lunch at a nearby restaurant and Janice was telling them about what had nearly happened. “Thank heavens that neighbor was around to call out to her and preventing anything worse from happening.”
“I shudder to think what might have happened myself,” Janice said picking up the cold shrimp and popping it inside her mouth.
“So what’s going to happen to her now?” Leah asked.
“She is going to jail of course,” Janice said with a sigh. “I told mom that I feel sorry for her and she thinks I am crazy.”
“You are always feeling sorry for people,” Candace told her dryly. “You cannot allow your emotions to get the better of you and when it comes to men, then that’s the worst thing you could ever do.”
“You sound like a woman who has had it with men,” Leah said looking at her friend.
“I am,” she said with a shrug. “I can’t seem to find a good one.”
“I think I have found one,” Janice said with a slow smile.
“We know, your billionaire lover,” Candace said with a grin.
“Hmm,” she murmured. “He is one of a kind.”
*****
Lance stared at the gun in his hand and wondered if he was brave enough to use it. He had tried forgetting her, but he had not been able to do so. He had gone out with a nurse or two and had even taken one of the female doctors to bed, but it had not worked and he had ended up feeling empty and alone. It had to be Leah or no one else. He had watched her from afar to see if she was going out with anyone else, but so far she was alone, apart from being with her girlfriends, and he had been happy about that because he would have had to take matters into his own hands and dealt with the person she was seeing. He had hit her because he had felt the rage rise up inside him when she had disregarded him and he wished he could take it back. Why wouldn’t she believe him when he told her it would never happen again? Why was she being so stubborn?
He fingered the .22, his hand, his mind drifting back to happier times when they had just gotten married and had worked double shifts at the hospital. They had come home together in the pouring rain and hurried into the tiny apartment and had made love, tearing off their wet clothes and sinking into each other, their cries echoing inside the apartment.
He had wanted to have children with her and grow old with her, but she had decided that she did not want him anymore because he was too possessive. Didn’t she see that it was because he loved her so much that was why he held on so tight? Some women would be happy to be getting all the attention from their man but not dear Leah. She was different!
*****
Richard Langley sipped the liquor disconsolately. He had to look at Charlene and hear her admit to torching his ex wife’s place with the intention of killing them both and he felt totally responsible for her actions. If he had not asked her to marry him and then not bothered to honor that promise, then it would not have happened. Now he was left alone in his apartment, his wife was not talking to him, and a formerly nice girl was in lock-up because of him. His daughter had told him that he had a lot to think
about and he should take the time to do so. Women, he thought, taking a swallow of the liquid and grimacing. He wished sometimes he could do without them!
Chapter 10
He brought her a gift. She had told him what happened at her parents’ place and he had sympathized with her. That night, when he came over, he brought her diamond earrings in a black velvet box and she had no doubt that they were real. When he had passed her the box when they were having dinner, her heart had skipped a beat, thinking that it was a ring but had forced her disappointment away when she opened the box and saw the earrings winking at her.
“Do you like them?” he asked her anxiously.
“Yes,” she said with a dazzling smile, but she had not taken into account how intuitive he was and how he was coming to know her.
“I am not ready for that yet, Janice,” he said quietly, putting aside his wine glass. He still shied away from anything concerning marriage and commitment and although she knew he was into her and that he probably loved her, it was very frustrating for him not to tell her anything. She wanted more, she wanted to be his wife and bear his children and the waiting was wearing on her.
“I know, but that does not make it any better for me,” she told him with a sad smile. “I want more, David.”
He got up and went to the window. “You knew how I felt before you started this Janice, and I will not be railroaded into another marriage,” he said grimly.
“How dare you!” she hissed, pushing back her chair and facing him, her hands on her hips. “You think I would force you into marrying me? Who the hell do you think you are?”
“I am sorry-“ he began, but she did not allow him to continue.
“I love you and I have put up with your crap because I love you, David Hattori, and for you to say I am forcing you into marrying me, that’s the last straw. I would like you to leave.” Her heart quaked inside her, but she was determined to stay strong. He knew how she felt about him and if she continued like this, she was never going to get a commitment from him.