by Jessie Cooke
“I love you too.”
20
Axel
Mélisse is a big financial commitment for dinner. But that’s not the reason I was meeting with Consuela here. The Santa Monica restaurant was my favorite near L.A. simply because of the food. I sat in the hushed room with its purple and cream palette and dramatic center lighting and tried to let it lull me into a sense of calm while I waited. The staff there is so professional that they even seem to sense when you need to be left alone and until Consuela walked in, looking like Jessica Rabbit in her sparkly black mermaid dress, that was exactly what they did.
I stood up when I saw her crossing the room. Every eye in the place was on her. Consuela had the kind of body that made lesbians out of church ladies. “Connie my love. What am I doing ordering truffles and caviar when I could make a meal completely out of you? You’re scrumptious.”
She smiled and her white teeth shone out from underneath her mocha skin and dark red lips. “Axel, you’re such a charmer.” She held her hand out for me to kiss as the waiter pulled out her chair. I saw him checking out her ass as she sat down. I had him pegged as gay. Either I was wrong or Connie had converted another one. “I want lobster,” she said as soon as her fine ass hit the seat. I laughed.
“You always know exactly what you want…it makes me wild with passion.”
“Oh please stop. You’re such a tease. I’ve been trying to get you in my bed for years.”
“You’re too much woman for me Connie. I’m afraid that once I have you, I’ll never be the same.”
She laughed. “You’re being facetious…but just know that you’re right about that.” She leaned in close and ran her long pink tongue over those full red lips and said, “You would never be the same.”
I shuddered. Maybe she really was too much woman. Poor Mark might not make it out alive. We ordered the lobster with Alfredo pasta and as we enjoyed the succulent meal we made small talk about the old neighborhood. Consuela grew up three houses down from me. Growing up that close to a girl who had a full “C” cup at the age of ten was pure torture on my adolescent soul. The other thing she had were six very large older brothers. Their father…a Columbian who ran a shady import/export business had told them that if his daughter was touched in any way by any boy in the neighborhood before she was twenty-one, he would slit their throats and ship their bodies to his homeland in a wooden crate. They believed him…and none of the boys who knew him in the neighborhood doubted he would do it either. So Connie remained the beautiful…untouchable thing that adolescent wet dreams were made of. Consuela Maria Louise Zapata Alvarez told me much later that she was still a virgin when she turned twenty-one. The day after her birthday, she cashed out her college fund, packed up her things and moved to L.A. Connie now works as a three-thousand dollar a night call girl…she’s definitely no longer a virgin.
“So,” she said after cleaning her plate of any signs of food or cream sauce. “What is it that you need from me, Axel?”
I smiled. “You’re not going for me simply wanting to see my old friend?”
“Not even a little bit. You have a job for me. What is it?”
“I need you to “entertain” an employee of mine…but I don’t want him to know what you do for a living.”
“Are you ashamed of me, Axel?”
“Baby if you were mine, I’d shout it from the rooftops.”
“Shut up,” she said in that sexy Columbian accent she still clung on to. I laughed.
“Of course I’m not ashamed of you. This is a covert operation. I need you to woo this man. I don’t foresee him jumping to sex with you right away…but he’s human so I know he’ll come around to it.”
She threw her dark head back and laughed. “I don’t care who this man is, I can have his pants off in less than an hour, trust me.”
“True, what was I thinking?” I said. “But I don’t want you to do that. I want you to pretend that you’re his assistant. I want you to wear sexy little suits to the office and spend a few weeks driving him mad with that killer body of yours. I want him to believe that he’s seducing you because afterwards, he has to feel guilty enough about it and infatuated with you enough to confess to his girlfriend.”
“So he’ll fall in love with me and then what would you like me to do?”
“I want you to pretend you’re falling in love with him too…until he breaks up with his girlfriend. Then I want you to disappear from his life.”
“You’re an evil man, Axel. You want his woman.”
“I want her worse than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life, Consuela.”
She raked her almost coal black eyes over my body. I felt the heat from them as she said, “Then why not just take it. Surely she can’t resist you.”
“I don’t want her to feel guilty about being with me, Consuela. She’s innocent and if she cheated on her boyfriend, it would eat away at her. I want her to come to me with a clear conscience. I want her mind and her body to be completely mine when it happens.”
Consuela clapped her delicate hands together and squealed. “My sweet Axel is in love!”
I took a sip of my wine and said, “You know that word offends me.”
She laughed again. It was a throaty, sexy laugh. “You can deny it, but I see it in your face and hear it in your voice. Besides the fact that you will be paying me $84,000.00 to take her boyfriend away…plus expenses.”
It was my turn to laugh. She could have been a math professor. She’d just calculated three weeks of her normal “per night” fee in her head. “I’ll give you fifty up front.”
“Good. I’ll need to go shopping for my new office attire. What day do I begin?”
I spent two more days in Los Angeles getting things ready for Tom and Mark. The following week I planned on sending them to get things started. I’d kept most of the staff aside from the executives. I axed them all and without qualms. From what I’d seen in the books, they’d run the business into the ground with their fat salaries and lavish lifestyles.
I made sure there was an employee file for Consuela and the paperwork for that was all in order. It was all fake of course…she knew nothing about being an executive assistant, but her file said otherwise. I’m guessing that even if Mark figures out the first day that she can’t type…he won’t care.
I found myself, as I set this all up, wondering about what Consuela said. Love? I shudder at the use of that word. I sincerely hate it in any context that doesn’t simply involve the way I feel about my mother. Aside from that, love is not only an abstract to me; it’s something that I’ve never desired.
My mother raised me in the Bronx as a single parent. She was and still is a beautiful woman. She also loved hard and passionately. My father…or sperm donor in this case, high tailed it out of New York within minutes of hearing she was pregnant. He was a native of Columbia and suddenly his homeland was calling to him. He never came back. Mother mourned him for years before she finally moved on. When she did, she married an accountant. I was four at the time. I still remember her telling me he was “the one” and she would love him until the day she died. He lasted until I was eight. I have no idea what he did to her…but to this day he’s like Voldemort from the Harry Potter books… “He who must not be named.”
Mom worked as a cocktail waitress at a swanky club in the village. When I was ten she married her boss, assuring me that he was “the one.” She told me she “loved him desperately.” Times were flush for us for a while…until I was about twelve. Then Mom came home from work in tears one night. She didn’t directly tell me what happened, but from eavesdropping on her conversations with her friends, I figured out that she’d caught him with his pants down in the back room with the bartender…who was very male. She would cry at night sometimes in her room and I could hear her sobbing “Why? I loved you!” into the phone.
For the next five years, Mom remained single. I think it was a record for her and I had secretly hoped she’d given up on love. I wasn’t really inte
rested in a new step-father. They’d all been good to me…but I already knew it would end badly for her. When I turned seventeen, she met Mac. Mac was a professional fighter. She was head over heels for him and after only a few dates, she flew off to Aruba to marry him. Two weeks later, she came back alone. Again, I got my information from eavesdropping…it would seem that Mac did a lot of steroids in order to get that massive physique of his. If Mom’s conversations with her friends were to be believed, his male parts had shrunken down to “barely there” and were no longer able to maintain even the smallest erection. She swore to her friend that she still loved him…but she was a woman, after all. I had nightmares about that one for a while.
After that I got involved with Glenda the bad witch and began striking out on my own. Mom and I keep in touch, but I don’t know the details of her love life…or lack thereof. What I do know is that she’s fifty-five years old, beautiful and still alone. Her life was my only exposure to “love” and I wanted no part of it. What I did want was Holly…and not just a part of her. I wanted her body and soul. I’d never felt so extremely attached to a woman in my life…besides my Mom. I’m sure if I sat on some fat Freudian’s couch he would tell me that my attraction to Holly and all her innocent beauty was due to the fact that she reminded me of my mother. That’s one reason I’d never go back to therapy. The other one is that I’m quite comfortable with my own quirks…I wouldn’t know how to live without them.
21
Holly
Axel has been back from L.A. for almost two weeks. During that time it has been all business between the two of us. It’s strange because I’d prepared to tell him myself that I wasn’t going to cheat on Mark…ever…and what happened in his “dungeon” could never happen again. But as it turned out, I didn’t have to. He came back from his trip subdued…for him. And he plunged head long into business. He was working on promoting Samantha Daniels and getting her on the talk show circuit. I’d heard him and Blake having a few heated conversations behind closed doors, and I’d sat in and took notes on all the meetings he’d had with the producers of the shows he wanted her to appear on. I typed up contracts and made phone calls. I ran errands and picked up coffee. What I did not do…is have any kind of sexual exchange with my boss. The attraction didn’t go away…I just decided to choose to ignore it. Mark was leaving at the end of this week and I wanted to concentrate completely on my man before he left. Besides, whatever infatuation Axel had for me seemed to be in the past. I had just been a challenge to him at first I believe…and then he grew bored and moved on. I never saw any signs of his womanizing, but I wasn’t naïve enough to believe he went home alone every night.
Friday afternoon Axel came out of his office and said,
“Holly, I’d like for you and Mark to come to my home for dinner tomorrow evening. Tom will be there as well. I have a few more things I need to go over with them before they fly out on Sunday.”
“Okay,” I said, dreading a trip to the penthouse with Mark. I shuddered at the thought of sitting with my boyfriend only feet away from where I’d allowed my boss to engage me in an erotic spanking. “What time would you like us at the penthouse?” I asked.
“Oh no, not the penthouse. At my house in Chelsea.”
“Your house?” I was confused.
He smiled. “Yes Holly. I have a house. The penthouse is for convenience, but sometimes I want a real home like everyone else.”
“Of course. I just never heard you mention it.” I picked up my pen and said, “What’s the address?”
“Perhaps I’ll just send a car for you. Shall I say around six?”
“Okay, sure.” He turned and headed back into his office. “Axel…”
“Yes?”
“Is this formal?”
“It will just be the four of us. Wear those jeans you have with the bling on the butt if you like.” He grinned mischievously and walked away. It was the first time in weeks that he’d eluded to any of my body parts. It sent a thrill rushing through me. I’m ridiculous.
That night when I got home Mark asked me, “Did Axel talk to you about dinner tomorrow night?”
“Yes, he did. Did you know he had a house in Chelsea?”
Mark laughed. “No. I really don’t know much about Axel at all other than what you’ve told me. He talks more to Tom when we meet than he does me. Sometimes I get the feeling he doesn’t even like me.”
“Don’t be silly. He’s giving you this dream job. Of course he likes you.”
Mark pulled me into his arms and said, “I’d rather skip the dinner if we could. Tomorrow will be my last night in town. I’d rather spend it alone with you.”
I snuggled into his chest. “I’d rather spend it with you too…but he didn’t seem to be giving us much choice. He’s even sending a car.”
I felt Mark’s body shake as he laughed. “Yes, he informed me of that. I have to say that as much as I’m going to miss you…I’ll be very grateful that Axel is three thousand miles away. I’m happy to leave you to babysit him.”
“Gee, thanks.” He kissed the top of my head and said,
“Since I’m not going to be able to do this tomorrow night now…” He slid down to one knee in the floor in front of me.
“Mark? What are you doing?”
“Shh! Let me finish,” he said. He was fishing in his pocket for something. I was trying not to interrupt him…but what was he doing? He pulled out a red velvet box. It was a small one, like for a ring. “Holly, I love you. Before I leave I want to make sure you know how much. I also want to make a promise to you that I’ll be back and I want to make a life with you. I want you to be my wife Holly and the mother of my children.” I was stunned. I know we’ve talked about it but I truly hadn’t expected this. He flipped open the box and said, “Will you marry me?”
I took his face in my hands and with blurry eyes from the tears I said, “Yes, I’ll marry you. I love you too, so much!” He was smiling from ear to ear. He plucked the ring out of the box and took my left hand. He slipped it on my ring finger. It was a Princess cut diamond, not very large but very beautiful. “I love it, Mark! Thank you.”
He stood up and took me into his arms. “Thank you, for saying yes. I’m sorry the ring is small. When I start making more money…” I kissed the rest of his words away. I didn’t care how big the ring was. I wanted him…not Axel Maxwell, billionaire extraordinaire. I wanted Mark. I was going to make this work. I love him. I took him by the hand and said,
“Follow me.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the bedroom where you are going to get so lucky.”
I have never been so relieved in my life to have not worn my jeans. Axel’s “house” turned out to be a fifteen thousand square foot, nine bedrooms and nine bath mansion. As it were in my black cocktail dress, I felt underdressed to even step over the threshold. We were let out of the Bentley by the well-dressed chauffeur who had picked us up and met at the door by a severe looking woman in a very smart-looking black uniform dress. She looked Mark and I over as if she wasn’t sure she approved, but she let us in and led us across the white and gold marble floor, down a white carpeted hallway to a sitting room that looked out onto an Olympic sized swimming pool. Mark and I were both quietly stunned as we took it all in. The room was big enough to sit either of our apartment’s right down inside of it. The fireplace was about eight-foot-tall and spanned across another eight feet of wall. The furniture was plush and comfortable and every detail of the room was almost excruciatingly detailed. Another woman brought us a silver tray with water and coffee and tea on with sliced lemon and real cream. She was dressed in a black uniform as well, but she was much younger than the one who had answered the door. This one seemed shy…or submissive. She sat the tray down without making any eye contact, gave us a weird bow and left the room. I couldn’t help but wonder what these people did for those long stretches of time when Axel was in his Manhattan penthouse. Not that it was my business, but wrapping my head around this
kind of wealth was mind-boggling to me.
Not long after we arrived, Tom got there. He seemed to be stunned as well, but there was nothing quiet about him.
“Holy fuck! This place is…Holy shit! It must be worth like a hundred million bucks.”
Mark was used to him. He laughed. I just hoped Axel didn’t walk in and hear him. It seemed a little bit low class to me to be discussing how much our generous host paid for his house. “It’s impressive,” Mark said. Tom’s eyes were on me however. When I made eye contact with him he winked.
“How are you doing, Holly?”
“I’m fine, thank you, Tom.”
“You certainly are,” he said with a lecherous look. “I’m not sure why you’re with that guy when you could have all of this.” He waved his hand over his torso and grinned. He thinks he’s funny. I wasn’t really amused.
Mark put his arm around me. I liked it. It wasn’t like him to mark his territory, but it felt good. “I’m a lucky man,” he said. “Should we tell him our news?”
Before Mark or I could say another word, Tom clapped his hands together and said, “You’re pregnant!” I saw motion out of the corner of my eye and looked up just in time to see Axel walk in the room. The look on his face could only be likened to one of someone whose dog had just died. Insanely, I was pleased by it. It only lasted for a second before he recovered and replaced it with one of his dazzling smiles.
“Well then, this certainly is a celebration,” Axel said. I looked up at Mark. His face was flushed.
“No…no, Holly’s not pregnant.” I watched the relief wash over Axel’s face out of the corner of my eye. Again, I was oddly pleased by that. I am so twisted. Mark lifted my left hand and said, “We’re engaged.” Axel’s face fell like a home economics student’s cake.