They walked the remaining distance holding hands but not saying or doing anything more to fuel each other. The only interaction was the occasional look and smile at one another, the smiles revealing the knowing of what was to come.
Any normal outsider who saw them right in that moment, would have seen a young couple in love … a couple who were in the prime of happiness together.
But in a car nearby there was no happiness at what had just been witnessed. There was only deep seething. And an increasingly strong desire to cause pain.
3 ~ THE FINDING
Two Months Earlier
Lincoln knew that everything was a mess in his life now. Somewhere he had taken a wrong turn. He should never have called the police and told them she had been abducted. He should never have put his name out there at all, in association with her. Knowing that he had done that caused great frustration and anger in him, and both of those feelings were growing intensely inside of him.
What affected him even more greatly though - the one thing that could cut through everything messy in his personal life - was his company. Even though much of every day he felt like his mind was misty, somehow he was maintaining professionalism as far as his clients and his business decisions were going. But he worried that he was losing focus and he was going to make a mistake that would affect people - lots of people. He did not want that to happen.
So he had to find a way to move forward. He had to find a way to return to who he used to be. He couldn't understand what had happened to him. Always he was focused and in control of everything. How did everything get so messed up? How did everything get so messy?
He had been using resources to keep trying to find her, but now had to concede that it was getting nowhere. She didn't want to be found. She didn't want to see him again. He had known that right from the moment he had realised she had left, but hadn't wanted to acknowledge it. He still did not want to acknowledge it.
This wasn't how things were meant to be. They were supposed to be together. He loved her, and she loved him.
He took a deep breath and declared to himself that he would search for another week or two, and then he would stop. Just another week or two.
~~~~~
"There you are," he said to himself as finally he found the information he needed. For the past two weeks, since his self-declaration of almost defeat, he had been monitoring transactions of all kinds, and today, just before he was going to stop looking, finally her name appeared next to a new bank account opening.
Instantly he felt himself become heavily aroused. He was in his office and it was during general office hours so he couldn't - wouldn't - act on it, instead making sure to stay right where he was, behind his desk, until he could get his arousal under control.
He made a note of the town the bank account had been opened in. It was well outside of Melbourne, but not inaccessible. He could easily take a flight to an airport nearby and then hire a car to get to her.
But he had to think carefully. He had made so many mistakes since she had left, due to him not taking enough time to assess and consider all possible outcomes of his actions.
No, he would do nothing today. It was enough that he had learned where she was. He would take one month from this day - he set an alarm in his watch so he would not keep counting days - and then he would decide how to act.
For now he knew she was out there, and he knew where she was. Or at least, where she had been in the past week.
All he had to do was get in front of her. As soon as she could see him, all would be well again. As soon as she could see him, she would remember how much they loved each other. How important it was that the two of them were together. How they were meant to be together.
"Mr Kokiri," a voice said as his office door opened. "Mr Grace is here for his 10 o'clock appointment with you."
Lincoln nodded and smiled to his personal assistant, a gracious woman only four years older than him, who had stood by his side, organising almost everything in his life ever since he had taken over the business.
"Thank you, Hannah. Please show him in," he said, immediately making sure that his arousal had gone, before he stood up and held out his hand to the client before him.
There would be no more thinking about Lexi today. But he would see her soon. Very, very soon.
~~~~~
Later that evening he made his way home to his apartment. He had been living there alone now for over a month, but he found he did not mind the solitude. It gave him more time to concentrate on finding her, formulating different things to try to locate her.
This evening when he walked into the apartment he instantly felt something was different. Things were out of place. Not messy, but simply not there.
He walked over to the side table, where he always placed his keys and wallet when he arrived home, and saw a note there.
'I came in and took everything that was mine. I want us to talk. Call me with a time and suggestion of a public place where other people will be in at the time, so we can talk. D.'
Diana. She had finally found the courage to step foot inside their apartment. He hadn't seen or heard from her since that day over a month ago when the news broadcast had shown on television, reporting Lexi as missing. He had needed to control his anger that day. He could remember so clearly the level of rage that had instantly flashed through his blood when Diana had called Lexi a whore. Even thinking about that now he felt some residual anger at the comment.
But he couldn't be angry at Diana. She had never done anything wrong in their marriage, as far as he knew. She had smiled when she had needed to smile, and she had supported him when he had needed support. She had played the part of the perfect wife.
He knew that he had loved her. He didn't know when that feeling had changed so much that he could so easily be unfaithful to her. But it must have changed. He would not have been driven to see someone else if he still loved her as much as he thought he did, he told himself. Surely.
And now she wanted to see him. He would give her that. She wanted it to be in a public place. He understood that. She had possessed the intuition to know that the last time they saw each other, he was restraining himself from acting out of anger. She knew the level of rage she had invoked. Of course she would not want to be alone with him.
He walked into the living area and sat down on the sofa. He was still in his work suit, although he had loosened his tie, as he always did when he left work at the end of each day.
He wanted to have a shower, under water that was as hot as possible. He wanted to feel pain. He could have the hot shower but he couldn't have the pain. For that, he would wait until he saw her again. She was the one who was meant to deliver him the level of painful satisfaction that he needed.
For now he had to think about Diana. He owed her so much. He would not mess her around.
He picked up his mobile and called her number.
"Hello," he heard her voice say, sounding quiet and tentative, as if uncertain about what kind of response she was going to get after having gone into the apartment without him knowing. Not that she had to let him know, of course, since she was half owner of it.
"Diana. Tell me where to meet you, and what time suits you," he said to her, now finding himself eager to see her. Not due to love. Not due to sexual attraction. But simply to be able to talk to her. To be able to talk to someone.
"Two hours. Revolution Café."
He agreed and heard her hang up on him. Always straight to the point with no embellishment. That was Diana. For so many years he had loved her for that directness, although in recent years he had begun to recognise a certain level of fakeness in her conversation, like she had started to say more often, what she thought he wanted to hear rather than what she wanted to say.
He took a few minutes to sit back on the sofa and just close his eyes. Two big things in one day. Finding contact with his wife again. And finding Lexi.
At last - he had found his Lexi.
~~~~~
&n
bsp; Diana took her time showering and preparing to meet him at the arranged time and place. Even with so much time having passed, she felt hugely apprehensive. In the weeks following the day that she had seen the news report about the girl's disappearance, she had not dared return to their apartment, or even make contact with Lincoln. She had been prepared to turn her back on her entire life, just to get away from him, and away from any possibility of feeling the depth of his anger toward her, after that one remark.
"So that is what she looks like. I've always been curious what the face of your whore would be like", she remembered clearly having said to him when the girl's face had appeared on the television that afternoon. She also remembered clearly the extreme level of anger that, even from where she had stood, she could so easily sense rushing through his entire body.
In that instant he could have been in front of her, yelling at her, or worse. But he hadn't moved. He had maintained control at least long enough for her to go. To leave the apartment. To get somewhere safe, away from him.
And he had not come after her. She had thought - hoped - on that day that he would not, if he was as messed up about that girl as he seemed to be. And that had proven to be the case.
But now a month had passed without her seeing him, and she felt like her feelings toward him had changed. She thought she would be happy starting over. And in many ways she was. But she had also started to miss him.
They had always had a strange marriage, with him having had to take over the family business when he was only 20 - not too long after the two of them had wed. The order of how things had panned out for them had meant that right from the very start they had experienced a distance between them. He had needed to focus on learning the business, first of all, and that had taken almost every waking hour of every day. But that was only the start. After that he started to fit into the role and begin building on the business, planning takeovers to grow the company further, taking on more and more businesses under the umbrella company. That had taken time and commitment, and all through that Diana had supported him. It was what she wanted to do. It was a life that she wanted to live.
With this life came wealth and a sense of independence, although looking back now she could see that she was never really independent. He had never told her she had to give up ideas of having a career. She knew deep down that he would have supported her in anything that she wanted to do. But she had wanted to be his wife - that wasn't just a status she had wanted and enjoyed. It was also the activity that she wanted to do each and every day. She would have liked to have become a mother, too, she reflected now, but that had never happened. Again, he had never said that he didn't want to have children, and he had never tried to control her body in any way. And she had tried to conceive - she had stopped using contraception in the hope that a child would come into the world. But it never did. She had asked him once if he would consider getting tested so they could identify why she wasn't getting pregnant, but he had dismissed that. And she had stopped asking.
It wasn't quite the life she anticipated for herself, but the wealth and status had enabled her to mix with the kind of people she wanted to be around. And she did love the charity aspect of it once the company had begun to grow so much. Standing beside Lincoln at events where he gave away literally millions of dollars, was something she took pride in. Pride for having a husband who was so generous. And so successful.
Never once in all the years they had been together, had her head been turned by anyone else. She wondered now if she could ever have been tempted, if the right person had come along. She had particularly been thinking about it since the day she felt it was confirmed that he had been seeing her - that girl. Still she could not understand what it would have been about that girl that had attracted him so much. She looked so young on the television screen when Diana had seen her photo. Why did he want to be with someone so young? As far as Diana was aware, he had never been unfaithful to her in their years together … until that girl had crossed his path. She hoped that one day he would explain it to her so she could understand. She knew their sex life was not great, of course, but he seemed to accept it for what it was. Until that day a month ago, generally they had still had sex together a few times each week, which she believed was doing pretty good for a couple that had been together for twenty years. She had never said no when he had wanted sex. She didn't think she had ever given him a reason to go elsewhere. She still didn't understand that - she didn't understand the why.
~~~~~
She saw him waiting for her when she arrived at the café. She didn't immediately move toward him, finding inside of herself a reluctance to get too close to him yet. But if he wanted to hurt her in any way, he could have approached her in preceding months and done so. He hadn't. He hadn't hurt her in any way - he hadn't searched for her physically, he hadn't cut off her money supply, and he hadn't changed the locks on the apartment door. He just seemed to have forgotten about her. And that thought resulted in her feeling a mixture of sadness, at how little she must have meant to him, but at the same time happiness that she could so easily be free and start a new life if she wished to. But that was the big question - did she wish to?
Lincoln sat quietly, waiting for his wife to arrive. Before he had left the apartment he had spent an hour in meditation, working hard to refocus his mind. As much as his emotion had been focused on Lexi, he didn't want to be thinking about her when he met with his wife. Diana deserved better than that. That horrible comment aside, she was a good wife. His name might be on all the documents out there about the business, but she had done her bit, as his support person … for the past 20 years. Approximately half of his life.
He looked toward the door, wondering why she was late … and if she was going to turn up. When he did so, he saw her standing there, not moving … just standing still and watching him. When she saw him notice her, he finally saw her start to move forward.
Diana took a deep breath and felt her nervousness deepen even further all of a sudden. Now that he was looking right at her - as she made her way through the café to the rear, where they always had a table put aside, as major benefactors to the business - she actually started to feel … like they were on their first date.
He watched her walk toward him and he took the few moments to look at her. It was the first time in their entire life together that they had not seen each other for such a long time, and having the day to day ritualistic lack of notice having drifted away, he immediately saw her as simply the woman she was. Confident, immaculately groomed, physically toned and incredibly poised and beautiful.
She came closer, within reach of their special table, and he stood up to let her set the pace and style of their greeting, not wanting to alarm her at all. Diana approached him and forced herself to kiss him on the cheek, in that moment breathing in the smell of him … the blend of men's moisturiser and after shave that she knew so well.
After she sat down, Lincoln followed and sat opposite her, not yet certain why she had wanted to meet him right in this moment.
"You look beautiful," he said to her, truly feeling that as he looked at her after all this time, and he saw her blush. The blush took his memory back to when he had first met her, at university, and he smiled at the thought.
"What?" she asked him when she saw the smile.
"I was just remembering the night I met you, at that party at David's mother's house," he said, laughing softly. The memory didn't take any further explanation as he could see on her face that she remembered their moment of meeting, also.
"David was chasing me relentlessly, and you came to my rescue. My knight in shining armour," Diana replied, remembering how she had felt toward him that night. How handsome she had thought he was … so handsome that he was also probably completely inaccessible.
"We spent the evening arguing because you did not believe that I was not involved with anyone."
"You were too handsome to not be involved with someone."
They looked at each othe
r then. While he could see her beauty and healthy vitality, what she could see was that he was aging too quickly. It seemed to her that his hair had actually changed over the month or so that they had been apart and there were more grey hairs around his temples now. And his face looked worn. Tired. Strung out.
"How have you been, Lincoln? You look … tired," she said with hesitation that he heard in her voice.
"I…" he started to say, before finding it difficult to know what he could even start to think to say to her. "I am sorry, Diana."
While she welcomed his apology, a part of her wanted him to expand on it, so she could be certain which aspect of their current situation he was apologising for.
"What exactly are you sorry about?"
He looked at her for a long time, wondering what could have tempted him away from her when she was such a beautiful woman who had never done anything wrong to him.
"Every week for three years I visited a young woman…"
"Let us talk frankly to each other, Lincoln. You had sex with a young woman."
He cringed at the terminology as he had considered - and still considered - that what he and Lexi had together was not just sex. But he didn't want to say that to Diana. He did not want to hurt her any more. So he agreed.
"Yes."
Diana looked at him. She could see remorse on his face, and yet at the same time there was something different. Like he did honestly hold remorse for hurting her - for hurting their marriage - but he didn't really hold any remorse for seeing the girl.
Right then a waitress approached them and they automatically ordered the same things they always had when they came here. It was natural and easy. When the waitress left, Lincoln saw Diana look at him once more.
"Why, Lincoln? What was missing in our marriage, that someone so young could give to you?"
"Diana, I don't want to hurt you any more than I have…"
"No! You don't get to choose what bits you reveal to me and which bits you keep hidden away. We are in this marriage together - for better and for worse. Stop being a coward and talk to me. Tell me everything that happened between the two of you, without leaving anything out."
Darkness of Heart (Painful Deliverance Book 2) Page 5