Later, after Zach gently lifted his little daughter into his arms and carried her up the stairs to bed, Jessie was begged to play the piano, and the Christmas carols started anew. The entire day and evening was a jolly time filled with laughter and love, the family bonding as tangible and welcome as soft swirls of ice cream being dipped in chocolate. Overall, the season in its entirety was glorious as Josh and Jessie celebrated their first Christmas as a couple, and it was easy to see why they fell into a pattern of even deeper trust and love after the New Year when the Drifters shooting continued.
Together, with Dee’s reluctant advice, they decided it would be best to set a wedding date after Drifters wrapped for the season, when they would know whether they’d be shooting a third season. Likely the big day would be sometime in May or June of the following year - a year and a half away. It was a bit of a wait but after the fiasco with Charlie, both Jessie and Josh felt it best to let people get used to them as a couple. Besides, Dee would need to recoup her energy before diving into another big wedding celebration, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. With Deirdre Keating at the helm, it was always “go big or go home”.
Then, one day in mid-spring, shortly after Agassiz cleared away the mud and the motocross track reopened, Deuce McCall decided the lovers had shared enough time together. He was sick of seeing them in the newspapers and rag bags, snuggled closely, engaged, and McCall was disgusted that Jessie’s fans seemed to be easing up on Josh. It was time to make an entrance back into Jessie’s life. It was time to shake up the perfect little world that left her eyes shining with happiness and her songs filled with love.
It was time for payback.
It was time to get her back.
***
Chapter Nine
Agassiz was clear and dry on the day of the exhibition event marking the new season of motocross racing and competition. Jessie and Josh decided to give Jessie’s SUV a run, so they picked up Kayla and Paul. The upbeat couple reclined in the back seat and entertained the driver and his gal with stories and jokes. Jessie spent most of the drive turned around facing Kayla and chatting animatedly as Josh drove. She and Kayla had become quite close, and Kayla was now one of her permanent regular dancers. Their last big gig was a dynamic musical number for the Grammys and the two women had lots to share about how they felt the evening transpired, both for their own performances as well as in relation to many eccentric celebrities on the prowl that evening.
After pulling into the dirt parking lot near Cemetery Road they found a roomy spot near the fence for the SUV and then, linked arm in arm, Kayla and Jessie sidled off in search of their friends, who were expected to arrive in Stephen’s brand spanking new Audi TT and Carter’s new-to-him but ancient Beamer. Once the gang was all assembled, they hustled over to the wooden bleachers with buttery popcorn and garlic pretzels from the concession stand in hand, and enjoyed a cool, crisp spring day under slate grey skies and the caress of a gentle breeze.
The road on the drive up had showcased exactly the opposite palette of the fall trips. The ephemeral cherry blossoms were, this time around, in fleeting gorgeous candy cotton pink bloom, testaments to extreme beauty and quick death. The other native deciduous trees, maples and cottonwoods, mostly, sprouted delicious hope and enduring promise in their miniature green buds and enchanting earthy branches that extended optimistic assurances of renewal. To Jessie, the landscape was nature’s art, God’s covenant that beauty and hope are eternal and will come around again and again, even after the dark, bitter cold of a dreary, ashen winter.
After a day of earnest races and daring freestyle exhibitions, the small group of good friends was on an adrenalin-fuelled high. After they picked their way down from the bleachers, with Jessie’s hand fitted snugly into Josh’s to help navigate the depth between steps, mother hen Maggie rounded up the friends for a group photograph. Crowds moved around and behind them as they sorted out their poses, and lots of curious whispers were heard along with cheers for Drifters and for Jessie who as usual toed the dirt, embarrassed by the attention. They had to wait for her to sign a few autographs before Carter gently hastened her away and into the front center of their picture. Josh snuggled up behind her, his arms around her neck.
Later, the whole group met back in downtown Vancouver for dinner at the Cactus Club on Burrard. Exuberant chatter about the day’s stunts and Josh and Stephen’s goals for the new motocross season punctuated and illuminated their animated conversation. Maggie pulled out her iPhone, which she’d given to a thrilled baseball capped passerby to snap for the group photo, and passed around the day’s pictures. Wrapped up in a heated discussion over how their favorite stunt, the “kiss of death”, was executed, nobody noticed the color drain from Jessie’s face when she scrolled to the group photo, although Josh did raise his eyebrows when she hastily climbed over him to make a quick retreat to the upstairs ladies’ room.
Once there, Jessie had to force herself not to slam the cubicle’s white shuttered door, and then she collapsed onto the lid of the toilet and put her head between her knees to steady her heart rate and keep herself from passing out on the cold, tiled floor.
No, no, no, no, no, no, noooooo, she heard herself moaning quietly as a slow terror permeated and overtook the quickly diminishing light in her newly blossomed soul. She rocked back and forth, and squeezed her arms around her belly in an attempt to quell a rapidly rising panic. Then she stood and yanked open the toilet lid behind her, and threw up until she had nothing left but uncomfortable dry heaves. Wiping her mouth on tissue paper which she discarded into the basin, she gently replaced the toilet lid and sat down again, shaking, then placed her hands over her ears as she tried to block out a horrid sound that haunted her dreams, a memory of a very bad day in Charleston years before.
It was half an hour before she could bring herself to respond to Maggie knocking on the door, calling her.
“Jessie! Jessie, if you don’t soon open that door I’m going out to get Josh and we’re going to break it down. Are you sick, or what?”
On trembling legs, Jessie finally hoisted herself upright. Slowly, as if she’d aged fifty years, she opened the door. To Maggie, it was obvious her friend had come down with some bug, maybe food poisoning from the barbecued sausages which they’d drowned in onion and sauerkraut, purchased from a lunch truck at Agassiz, and so she led her straight to the restaurant entrance after texting Josh to tell him to meet them there straightaway with the SUV.
After ensuring that Carter would drive Kayla and Paul home, Josh had the vehicle at the entrance in a flash. Mystified and concerned, he buckled Jessie into the front passenger seat, her face a distorted white mask against the droplets of rain now trickling down the car window as the overbearing slate sky gave way to a sinking barometric pressure. As he veered away from the curb, Josh reached over to wipe a wispy strand of hair off Jessie’s face. She was staring at the sidewalks, and at the vehicles on Burrard, searching, her eyes darting back and forth as if she were looking for someone.
“Jessie, what the hell?” Josh demanded urgently. “I thought you’d passed out or something.”
She was unresponsive and, in fact, only heard his voice somewhere off in the distance, as if it were disembodied, a hiker’s cry from a distant mountain far, far away.
“Jessie!” he called, to no avail. “Jess!” Just as Josh was starting to panic, and as other drivers beeped frantically, urging him to focus on his driving, she turned and looked blankly at him and the questioning, haunted look he saw in her eyes immediately alarmed him. A cold chill crept up Josh’s spine and his stomach tightened in fright. He hadn’t seen terror like that in Jessie’s velvety eyes since he’d asked about Charleston and, even then, it had only been momentary, a glimpse into a horror he had yet to understand.
Now, for some intuitive reason unbeknownst to him, it seemed here to stay. Unrelenting. An evil snake that had suddenly crept into their lives unnoticed as they celebrated the joy of being together, the wonder of discovering ea
ch other, the passion and ache of love.
Afraid of what he did not yet comprehend, a sinking, portentous feeling mudding his brain, Josh drove Jessie to his place and led her inside. He poured her a warm bath and a glass of Baileys, yet she still did not speak. He sponged her back and, just as he was debating the placement of a call to Dee, a last resort as far as he was concerned, Jessie’s eyes cleared a little and she took his hand and placed it on her breast. She looked up at him, tragically, and he could sense that she was trying to tell him something. Josh grasped his T-shirt with both hands and yanked it up over his head, and then he slipped off his jeans and boxers. Climbing into the tub, he drew her back against his chest and wrapped safe loving arms around her shoulders. It was the best he knew to do at the time, to embrace her in their sheltered cocoon so that she would feel protected, secure, and invulnerable.
As the water cooled Josh reached around Jessie and, with the backs of his fingers, tenderly wiped some bubbly stray suds off her warm pink cheek, and then they heaved themselves - exhausted from the day’s efforts and its sudden strange turn - out of the soothing tub and he dried her off. As if she were a child, Josh steered Jessie to the bedroom, and then he kissed her and loved her and held her, terrified at how she trembled and shook.
“Jessie,” he begged her, whispering, his forehead pressed against hers as they lay in bed. “Please, please tell me. What’s got you so upset? Please!”
She took his face in her hands, one hand on each bristly one-day-old whiskered cheek, and peered into her beloved man’s deep brown eyes. The age-old pain in Jessie’s soul was eating away at the little joy she desperately held onto, a joy that she could feel diminishing as quickly as the murky water from the tub they’d just drained. It was all she had in her to speak, yet she knew she had to give him something to hold onto, for she knew not what the future would bring, only that it would be filled with uncertainty and an ever darkening presence.
“Josh.” She spoke his name with reverence and demand, and he stopped caressing her and listened, as he knew she was willing him to do. “You listen to me,” she said, her voice low and commanding. “Whatever happens, you remember this, okay?” He saw a mist build up in her eyes and, once again, a feeling of dread overtook him.
She continued, pressing her hands to his cheeks, forcing him to meet her eyes. “You remember that I love you, that I have always loved you, and that I will always love you. Always and forever, okay? Promise me that?”
He stared at her, curious, confused, afraid.
“Josh!” she commanded, louder, insistent, drawing him away from the unspoken spider web of dark thoughts that were reeling like a rogue roller coaster through the caverns of his mind.
He responded then, and pressed a big warm hand over hers on his cheek, and then he twined his fingers through and around hers.
“Jessie.”
She waited, but nothing else was forthcoming.
“Josh. Please.”
He hesitated, sensing that whatever he could say to her on this mysterious black night likely wouldn’t be enough. But all she needed was a yes. A nod, even. An assurance that the unknown future was secure in his assent.
“Jessie. Of course. You and me. Always and forever.”
“Just promise me,” she whispered, and he knew that was all he would get from her that evening, and so Josh pulled Jessie close and comforted her as best he could. After a while he drifted off into a restless sleep while she shivered in his arms and forced herself to stay awake so that she could memorize every depth and breadth and hair of his body - his touch, his breathing, his skin, his musky smell, that brazen hair falling over his ear that had secured her seduction in the first place. And then, when she could fight it no longer, Jessie let sleep take her and, mercifully, she dreamed of a boy named Sandy, and of playing guitar near the fishing pier at Folly Beach in Charleston. The dream was happy and good until the end, then as she moaned and cried out Josh woke her, and she had to face the truth. Deuce McCall was back.
There he was, in Maggie’s group photograph, standing behind Josh amongst a few other stragglers who had managed to get into their picture by walking behind them. Deuce was grinning sardonically at the camera, his hand poised just behind Josh’s head as if he were waving. But Jessie knew otherwise, she knew he was not waving, she knew better. She recognized the demonic, crazed look in McCall’s eyes and the threatening poise of that evil hand that was capable of so much hurt, and she knew that life with Josh, as she knew and loved it, had suddenly shuddered to a crashing halt. For as long as Deuce McCall walked this plane called earth, there could be no love called Josh in Jessie’s life.
There could be no life in Jessie’s life. Just a deepening pain, and confusion, and a numbness that would never go away.
But she was a survivor. She had made it this far. She would make a plan and, somehow, Jessie Wheeler would survive.
She wondered how much time she had.
After a solemn Josh Sawyer breakfast of fried eggs and salty bacon, Jessie apologized quietly for her mood and then she begged off from their planned Sunday afternoon excursion to Rebel on a Mountain Coffee with the others, on the pretense that she had some songwriting to do. Josh hated to let her go, but he understood that sometimes women needed their space, and so he watched her back out of his driveway in her SUV and he stood there for a few moments after she disappeared down the street, wondering what in the hell had come over her the night before.
He picked up Jessie’s plate and scraped half an egg into the compost bin. Carefully, he lined her plate up behind his in the dishwasher and then he spent a few minutes scrubbing the frying pan free of fat and bacon residue. He went through the rituals, cleaning, tidying, Sunday morning stuff, but later couldn’t remember whether or not he had brushed and flossed his teeth. With an empty space in his heart and a feeling of dismay he couldn’t shake, Josh grabbed his tan leather riding jacket and the King Ranch keys and headed out the door to meet their friends at the nearby UBC campus coffee house. Maybe they could help him figure out what was up with Jessie. Maybe it was nothing, and would pass as quickly as it had come on.
He didn’t see Deuce McCall’s rented Ford Fusion parked down the street but, strangely enough, as Josh pulled out of his driveway, he shivered.
This time, Deuce didn’t follow. He was a methodical man and, anyhow, he had the GPS surveillance bug he’d placed on Josh’s bumper. He knew where Jessie’s man was at any time; if he wanted to check up on him later, he could. But for now, it was enough to know that Jessie had clued in to his reappearance in her charmed life. It was enough to know that she was afraid.
Deuce had bugs placed strategically inside Josh’s home, thanks to the substantial bribe he’d given that scraggly bearded guy from the fiber optic company. Deuce had eyes in the back of his head. Deuce had all the power he needed to start this age-old game he played with Jessie anew. One day, and he already had her on the run.
He sniggered, and then reached a hairy finger down and cranked up the radio. The station was playing one of Jessie’s new ballads, a recent release she supposedly wrote in honor of Josh and gave to him as a Christmas gift. Deuce snorted, and listened to the lyrics. He didn’t like the idea behind the song, but then again he had the power to pretend she had written it for him. He was Deuce McCall. He liked Jessie Wheeler’s music. He closed his eyes and imagined their first new tryst together, which he decided must come soon. If he thought about it hard enough, he could feel her skin on his again. He tingled with desire.
Deuce slammed a fist down hard on the dashboard when his pleasurable thoughts were roughly interrupted at the end of Jessie’s song by the loud blast of some inane commercial for a local hardware store. He relaxed when he remembered that he’d have her soon, reminding himself that he must be patient. Deuce started the sedan and easily manipulated his passage through the quiet Vancouver Sunday traffic back to his hotel, where he sat and schemed and planned the afternoon away.
At her downtown condo, Jessie did
the same. She would not allow the horror of Deuce McCall to once again destroy her life. She would not lose Josh the way she lost Sandy. She was Jessie Wheeler, a celebrity with access to top-notch security and protection. She would prevail.
Josh was quiet at ROAM that day. He left early, relaxing a little only when Jessie responded to his texts.
That night was the first since they’d gotten together that Jessie spent a chilled night alone at her home, and Josh passed lonely dreams at his.
Despite her best efforts and her hopeful rallying, the world was already shifting once again from underneath Jessie’s brown cowboy boots. Unbeknownst to her at the time, except for maybe on some intuitive level, she was already losing. This was a battle she could not hope to win, at least not anytime soon. McCall was a wily bastard, and for all of his strangely conceived psychotic ideas, he was a master planner, a puppeteer, and thanks to his disgusting deplorable actions in a historic home on Tradd Street in Charleston years ago, he manipulated the strings that would make Jessie’s life go round from here on in.
***
For the next two weeks Jessie lived in a fog of fear and betrayal. She found herself, on the more positive days, scheming and trying to find a solution to an evil problem she felt she could only solve on her own. She began to sink into the familiar despondency she’d lived with after that fateful day in Charleston more than a decade ago. It became a noose around her neck, a cloud that marred her view of the world around her, a world which should have continued on in that glorious rainbow Technicolor of new love and sincere and genuine friendships, of success and fame and freedom and music.
In the darkest of night, when she couldn’t sleep for fear of horrific nightmares which had resumed their vicious and unremorseful haunting, Jessie sat on the balcony outside her condo or Josh’s home, depending on where her mood let her lay her weary head. Wrapped up in a blanket to ward off the numbing cold that, in her state of shock and despair she barely felt tingle her skin anyway, she went over and over and over the possible scenarios that would release her from Deuce’s deadly grip. She considered involving Charles and Matt, but there was so much at risk here. She knew this about Deuce. She knew his reach was far and wide, his tentacles deep and grasping. He got beneath your skin and clawed his way into your veins, and the only way to remove him would be by pulling him away with his teeth still intact in your soul, so that as he was removed, a good chunk of you went with him, bloodied and forever destroyed. To involve Charles and his security team in “Operation Deuce Eradication” at this stage would be like inviting the people she loved to wade into some foreign tribal war, where they’d potentially be bayoneted and speared and thrown into a bottomless pit.
Promises Page 10