He turned the corner and found him sitting again in the same chair at the long central table. It appeared he wasn’t the only addict to this corner of the building. He saw that he was busy writing using his Braille slate and stylus. He stalled about him, wondering if he should disturb him.
“I can feel you standing over me even if I can’t see you,” the man said, sitting up straight in his chair. “Is there something you need?”
“I’m sorry,” Eric muttered quickly. “I didn’t mean to bother you. I was just admiring your use of the slate and stylus.”
“That’s interesting. Usually, the first comment is not on how well I use my slate and stylus but what in the heck it is.”
Eric smiled as he pulled up a chair beside him. “I’ve seen my girlfriend use it.”
“Your girlfriend is blind?” The man perked up his head with curiosity.
“She is.” Eric glanced at the metal slate. “My name is Eric, by the way.”
“Julian Reece.” The man gave out his hand and Eric took it gladly. Julian laughed. “Well that eliminates my theory that so were you, or you would have missed my hand completely. What are you doing in this part of the library?”
Eric smiled. “Looking for some peace.”
“When you find it let me know. I sure could use some as well.” He picked up his stylus and began to prick at the paper again.
“My girlfriend tried teaching me how to use that,” Eric said. “But I didn’t pick it up fast enough.”
“Why would you want to learn Braille? There are Braille-to-text software converter programs available.”
“I suppose I just want to share something with her. Besides, when you speak to a man in his own language and break down the boundaries that divide you and him, by systematic calculations aren’t you also closing on the gap to his heart?”
“Is that all to it?” Julian lifted his head suspiciously, a cheeky grin lighting up his face.
Eric chuckled. “Well, she does have this jar filled with little notes. She calls it her jar of dreams. I would love to be able to fulfill a few of them except they’re all written in Braille.”
“Not as noble as your first point.” He smirked. “Don’t you think she will mind it if you went through her little private notes?”
“If she had meant to keep them private, she would most probably store it in a better place than displaying it openly on a sideboard in her bedroom.”
Julian nodded. “Or most possibly she is banking on the fact that you didn’t know how to read Braille.”
“Then she wouldn’t have tried teaching me.”
“But you didn’t learn.”
Eric let out a tired breath. In the distance, a librarian wheeled a trolley loaded with books ready to be shelved away. A couple of blind patrons sat quietly in their little booths, running their fingers over the Braille letterings as they read through their books in silence. Perhaps he would have a better chance asking them for help.
“I was hoping you could teach me how to write a word or two,” Eric said at last.
Julian smiled. “Now a word or two, I can do.”
Or three maybe, Eric smiled. After all, the foundations of learning a new language was always set in a mortar of learning three meaningful words, three bad words, a dose of mispronunciation and bad grammar, and a truck load of embarrassment.
He pulled up his sleeves, gearing himself up for all of them.
The laughter of the audience on the television reverberated through the living room. Anne curled up next to Eric detailing the little antics of the host which only instigated another cackle of laughter from her audience.
“She is doing this weird dance.” He chuckled. “I wonder why I never bothered to watch this show before.”
“Eric,” she started and then stopped, pursing her lips into a thin straight line.
He glanced down at her, noticing the frown folding in her brow. “What is it, honey?”
“I met with my Dad today.”
He rubbed her arm, anticipating for some bad news to follow. “I told you to call me if he upsets you.”
“And he didn’t. Well, not like how I thought he would,” she corrected herself quickly.
He arched an eyebrow. “But?”
She sat up, tucking her hair behind her ears. “He wants me to help build a monument dedicated to my mother.”
“That is good news, Anne.” He grew a little puzzled by the worry lining her face.
“You don’t know my father, Eric. I’m sure it isn’t as altruistic as it sounds.”
“Did he say something about us?”
“In consideration of the presuppositions with which I had visited him, not much at all,” she grumbled.
He put an arm around her and pulled her close to him. “Then that is a good thing. Anne, your father is just being protective of you. If I were him, I’d probably deal with me the same way as he is doing now.”
“I just don’t like it when he talks down about you the way he does,” she muttered, leaning into him.
He smiled. “I know. But he’s your father. Let’s give him some time to get accustomed to us being together. It will be worth it. I promise you.”
CHAPTER 20
She walked through the doors of her father’s conference room. She was supposed to meet the project engineer for her mother’s monument. She had never been tasked with such a major project before and she worried if he would think she would just be burdensome. She fiddled with the head of her cane, her nerves beginning to agitate her.
“Anne?” he said.
She spun around, her eyes widening with surprise. “Nicholas.”
He smiled. He had stood at the door, leaning against the door frame as he watched her. She looked absolutely stunning in her formal business trouser suit. If she had wanted to launch an impact of her seriousness, she had certainly achieved that with ease. He was trembling at his knees, feeling utterly skittish about the idea that he would be working with her.
“Nicholas,” she started again with a little more confidence. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“And why not? I work with your father,” he said, stepping closer to her, his hands resting in his pockets. “But isn’t it a nice surprise to see you here?”
“I… I am working on a project for my father,” she stammered.
“Yeah? It’s not about that monument for your mother, is it?”
“Yes,” she said suspiciously. “You’ve heard about it.”
“I should. I head the project.”
She grew quiet, her fingers tightly clasping onto her cane. “I have to go,” she said at last. She gave a jerky snap at her cane, extending it to its full length.
“I’m planning to have white chrysanthemums planted around the central gazebo,” he said quickly. His heart raced, his eyebrows arched, hoping she would fall for it. If she left despite this, he’d kick himself for losing the best chance he’d had of winning her.
“You should invest some time into researching your projects, Mr Bradley. My mother intensely disliked white chrysanthemums,” she replied curtly.
He let out a silent relieving puff of air. “Yeah well that is what I discovered about her from some of her close friends. However, if you stayed you could help us sift between the rumors and the facts. I would hate to do something wrong only because we weren’t corrected when we had the chance.”
She stopped, nipping gently at her lips in thought.
“I know that this monument is important to you,” he continued slowly. “And I won’t deny that we need you in this project. So I hope you will stay and work with us so we can give our best to it.”
She folded her cane and put it into her bag. “Where do we start?”
Cavallo slipped onto a bar stool, glancing up occasionally at the people about him. The voices and laughter of the patrons in the club filled the air, mingling with the odor of alcohol.
“What can I get you?” the bartender asked him as he shined another glass with a napk
in.
“A beer,” Cavallo replied in short.
The bartender picked out a mug and turned on the beer tap. Cavallo watched the amber liquid gush into the glass and then brim into a thick foam. He looked at his watch and then back at the patrons. He would give him another five minutes. But punctuality was core to his business and a cute little quote like “it’s never too late” didn’t exist in it. There always was a thin line drawn between too early and too late. A lean towards either could most possibly mean a ride to the cemetery in a casket.
A man in a baseball cap with tattoos inked up to his chin sat onto a stool beside him. “Joe Cavallo?”
“Reggie Fields?”
“Yeah.”
Cavallo grunted. “It took you a while to get here.”
Reggie head-nodded lightly to the tune of the music playing over them, choosing to ignore his comment at first. “Do you really want to know where I’ve been?”
Cavallo slid a photo over to him. “Have you seen him?”
The other man arched his brow. “Who is he?”
Cavallo pulled back the photograph. “Well that should answer it.”
“He has a name?” Reggie said, peering at the picture.
“Ricky Prescott.”
“The Runner?”
“You’ve heard of him then,” Cavallo said as he sipped from his glass.
“Well, yeah.” Reggie shrugged nonchalantly. “You’re probably the fourth person who’s asked about him in two weeks.”
Cavallo perked his ears. That could only mean there were others who were closing onto Ricky as well. He clasped the ear of his beer mug tightly. Where had the bastard disappeared? He had always known there was something crucial he didn’t know about Ricky. Family? A lover?
“So what’s up with this dude?” Reggie asked again. “Did he bump off some godfather in New York?”
“What did they ask?” Cavallo asked.
“The same. But you’re the only one who has a proper picture of him. Where’d you get that?”
Cavallo pocketed the picture. “If you learn anything, I’d really appreciate it if you’d let me know about it first. I will make it worth your while.”
Eric glanced over at the man talking to Max Pepi, one of the cementos. His head bobbed as he spoke to the man, occasionally pointing in his direction.
He crouched to the side of a pillar, pretending to work with some rods, his eyes though fixed on every move of the two men. Finally, the other left and Max strolled on towards him.
“Hey, Tanner!” Max called out to him.
“Hey, Pepi. What’s up?” He pretended to be busy as he worked on with his rods.
“There was a guy here who was looking for you.”
“Yeah?” He scratched his brow. “Did he say why?”
“Nah.” He shook his head. “Just asking me to point you out to him.”
Eric straightened up, resting his hands on his hips.
“He did ask if I knew anything about your girlfriend.”
Goose pimples prickled Eric all over. “And what did you say?”
“Well, I thought the question was weird and I would have told him to fuck off. The thing is he sorta seemed to know her already.”
“What did he say exactly?”
“He was like… ‘Isn’t Eric’s girlfriend that blind chick, Anne Mullen?’ I did tell him that if he wanted to know anything more about you, he should ask you himself.” He shook his head again. “You’re not in any trouble, are you?”
“I wouldn’t know unless he told me what it was about,” Eric said with a deliberate light-hearted tone. He needed to drop the suspicion in Pepi’s mind. He didn’t want him discussing his questioning background with the rest of the men. “I’m sure it was because he recognized me from somewhere. Now that I think about it, he seems like a friend of one of my cousins I met once… a long time ago.”
“Oh well then it could be.” Max smiled. “I’m glad it isn’t anything more serious.”
“Pepi!” another called out to him.
“I better see to that,” Max grumbled, adjusting his hard hat.
Eric watched him disappear into the mess and chaos of the construction. His hands itched to call Anne. But she was safe. She was busy with a team of people designing her mother’s monument. At least she wasn’t home alone like she used to be.
His jaw tensed. It was time he started putting the matter of his bounty at rest. Kurt Lynch would not be satisfied with just his mystical disappearance. He would not be happy until he was certain that he was dead.
“What do you think?” Nicholas asked as he watched her amble beside him in the middle of the green lawns of the orphan school.
“I still remember how it was when I used to come here with my mom,” she whispered. “Is it the same?”
“Nothing much has changed,” he whispered back, mesmerized by the way her long loose blonde locks fluttered in the wind.
She sighed. “Where did you intend to build the gazebo?”
“How about where we’re standing right now?” He ached to touch her face, to run his hands over her hair and to pull her against him. He turned away from her, trying his best to focus on the project. “The school is on the left of you and the lake is on the right. And we could surround the gazebo with flowers of your choice.”
“I want wisteria,” she said. “My mother loved those.”
“If that’s what you want,” he said softly.
She stood quietly, thinking to herself.
“Anne,” he said at last, breaking into her thoughts. “I know we stepped on the wrong foot at your dad’s party-”
“Why are you doing this project, Nicholas?” she cut in.
He glanced up at her over his brow. “Your father asked me to. You know well that he rarely trusts anyone with something that is precious to him.”
“And he trusts you?”
“I would like to think so.”
“You are certain there is no other reason for your association with this project?”
He frowned, considering how he should answer that. Philip didn’t needed to verbalize that he had entangled both he and Anne in the project in the hopes that Anne would grow warmer in her feelings for him. But what made Philip an artful businessman was his knack of drawing the line between sealing his lips and spilling out the details. There was a reason he hadn’t mentioned this little trivia and he would have to trust him on that.
“If there is one, I haven’t been briefed on it,” he said, narrowing his eyes. It wasn’t a lie. And his conscience shouldn’t have prickled him. He wondered how much she knew of his father’s intention to have her married to him.
She nodded her head. “This school was important to my mother. It was her vision and my father helped fulfill it. I’m hoping we can put our differences aside and deliver our best on this project.”
“It’s all I want,” he said. For now, he added silently, his eyes roaming over every contour in her face, her wide green eyes and then finally resting on her lips.
“Oh fuck,” his wife moaned. “Your cock is so huge, Drew. You’re so much bigger than my husband.”
Cunt, Kurt swore as he watched his wife being hammered by the other man. Monitors graced his desk as spy cameras recorded every intricate angle of them fucking on his bed.
He poured himself a glass of expensive whiskey, the sounds of his wife’s groans and the bastard’s grunting filling the air in his spacious study. He leaned against the desk as he watched Drew Patterson’s head bob between his wife’s thighs. He could hear the slurping of his tongue in his wife’s gash.
“Oh Drew… fuck… Drew.” Her body thrashed beneath his, her thighs clenching his head as a wave of orgasm overtook her.
Drew raised his head and grinned. He sat up and threw her on her stomach. She crouched on her fours and then pulled apart her ass cheeks so he could see her puckered hole. He pumped his shaft a couple of times and then pushed roughly into her to the hilt. She gasped, “Ohhh… fuck.”
> She turned to one of the spy cameras and smiled. Kurt felt his cock jerk. For once his wife had performed so brilliantly. When he had given Stuart Clarke the task of finding Drew Patterson’s weak link, he had never imagined that it would be a fetish for fucking married women.
He remembered how he had walked into the pool area while she was sunbathing on a sun-lounger. She had lifted her head slightly and then ignored him as she continued on with her sun-tanning.
“Do you need help rubbing sunscreen on your back?” he had asked her.
She lifted her brow and then turned over without an answer.
He picked up her sunscreen bottle and poured a dash of cream into his palm. He slapped his hands together and then massaged the lotion onto her back.
“What’s with all the niceties? It doesn’t suit you, Kurt,” she mumbled.
“I want you to do something for me.”
“Well that certainly is new. You’ve finally found some use of me in your life.”
He smirked. “You’ve ever only been good for one thing, Phyllis. I need you to fuck someone for me.”
She turned towards him and frowned at him suspiciously. “I never imagined you to be a cuckold, Kurt. What is this about?”
He ran his fingers down her sides and to her taut, trim belly. “I noticed you had your eye on that red diamond ring you were admiring at the jewelry showcase last week. How much was it?”
“Two hundred and seventeen thousand,” she said slowly.
“How about a fuck for the ring?”
She nipped at her lips. “You’re my husband, Kurt. You shouldn’t be asking me do such a thing.”
“You spread your legs apart for the entire town, Phyllis. Why would this one make a difference?” He sneered.
She smiled as she untied the halter neck knot of her bikini top. “It’s been a while since you’ve made me so wet, Kurt.”
He grinned. “I’m glad we’re finally beginning to work on our marriage.”
His fingers played with the crotch of her bikini, moving it to the side as he glanced down at the lips of her pussy. He pushed her fingers into her and she let out a small moan as her juices dripped deliciously onto his hand. She was right. She was wet. And he was hard.
A Jar of Dreams Page 19