Fixing Justice

by Halliday, Suzanne

  “S’not gonna happen Jizz, uh, Jas, I mean, Jess,” he ground out in a drunken slur as he shook his head with each wrong pronunciation of her name. The look she gave him suggested she didn’t care what he said. Drunk or not, the randy actress intended to get her way. Drae knew she’d stop at nothing to get him naked and on his back where she could ride him like the bitch in heat she was. The thought made him shudder.

  Searching for his wallet with hands made clumsy by drink, Drae finally located it in his suit jacket not a second too soon for Jessamyn was attracting the attention of the club-goers who were always on the look-out for a celebrity sighting. Watching her fake and phony posturing left him cold. She had this way of waving her fingers – she called it twinkling – that made her look like a spastic twelve-year-old trying to get the attention of whatever guy happened by.

  Tossing a bunch of bills on the table, he motioned to the waitress to let her know he’d left her a hefty tip and that the bar should close out his tab. Getting away from the noise and the smell of Jess’s perfume were priority one. The minute she caught on that he was leaving, she all but jumped on top of him. Drae stood on unsteady feet, tugging on his cuffs and straightening his tie while his brain tried to get in gear with his body. A couple of deep breathes later; he squinted through the flashing lights, marked the exit and then made for the door in haste. Unfortunately, he hadn’t counted on his unwanted companion wrapping around him like a fucking clinging vine.

  Once he’d maneuvered through the mass of gyrating dancers and stepped into the club’s reception area, he knew that getting rid of the actress was not going to be easy. Especially not in the rough condition he was in.

  “Look, Jess,” he said while disengaging her arm from his in as gentlemanly way as possible. “I’ve gotta go. Good seeing you,” he added at the exact moment she shoved him out the door onto the pavement outside. Suddenly she was all over him, twining her arms through his, pressing those fake lipstick covered lips along his jaw as a flurry of lights flashed.

  Drae was instantly furious, all evidence of having drunk a large quantity chased from his system by the presence of a pack of tabloid cameras clicking furiously as at least a dozen paps jockeyed for position. Jess for her part was putting on quite a show, hanging all over him, leaving no doubt in the mind of those watching that she would gladly drop her panties for him at the slightest provocation.

  “Hey Jess!” one of the paparazzi hollered. “Who’s your date, sexy lady?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know!” she giggled as she twinkled those damn fingers of hers and blew kisses to the waiting cameras. He wanted to kill the fucking bitch. She knew he hated the press. For her to deliberately use him as bait for a goddamn photo op made his blood boil.

  The doorman whistled for a cab that materialized out of thin air. Drae pushed his way through the gang with the flashing lights and dove for the door with Jess hot on his heels. When the cab door closed she instructed the driver to take them to her hotel while Drae sat silently, glaring at her with malice in his eyes. Fuck if she wasn’t so completely wrapped up in herself that she barely noticed, prattling on about how shocked and surprised she was by the frenzied pap attack. Yeah, right. Everything she did was calculated for maximum exposure. Amazingly enough, she seemed to be under the impression that he was going to blindly follow her lead and actually return to her hotel where she promised him the blowjob of his life. Maybe tossing his cookies up into her lap wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

  At her hotel, the driver jumped out of the car and opened her door as yet again, flashes from the reporters that hung out at the five star hotels lit up the night. Ever the actress, she rather deliberately shimmied from the backseat in such a way that triggered a thousand camera clicks and more shouts of her name as she stopped and preened for their photos.

  When he didn’t slid out right behind her she looked back and froze when she caught sight of his face. There was no mistaking the anger in him. She leaned into the car saying, “Sorry about the press, darling. But you know how it is. Let’s go up to my room, and I’ll make you forget all about them.” She used her tongue to make a suggestive motion that was probably meant to fire him up but instead made him physically sick.

  “No thanks. That mouth of yours is played out as far as I’m concerned. If you need a dick to suck, I suggest you ask one of your adoring fans or any of that rowdy crew taking your picture.” He shut the door on her shocked expression and barked at the driver to pull away.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck was all he could think on the short drive to his hotel just a few blocks away. Maybe New York was past its expiration date. For the first time in days, all he wanted was to go home.

  The commotion at the Villa when Lacey and Cam returned from their honeymoon gave Tori plenty of much-needed duck and cover. The longer Draegyn stayed on the other side of the country, the more Alex fretted. Everyone, it turned out, was shaking their heads behind her back.

  This morning, her boss was down at Cameron’s cabin, enjoying a bit of family time with the blissfully happy newlyweds, leaving her to putter aimlessly around the office. She’d gathered a huge can of paper to recycle and even sharpened every pencil she could find in an effort to keep busy. Truth was, she was one unhappy camper. In the three weeks that Draegyn had been gone, she’d put on a good show of pretending that all was happy and pleasant in her world while she silently crumbled, bit by agonizing bit.

  He’d talked with Alex a couple of times but never asked about her or sent a greeting in all that time. She knew this because after every phone call, email or text, her boss got quieter and quieter. She felt awful about him being caught in the middle.

  Looking for something to occupy her time, Tori decided to take on the task of cleaning Alex’s ancient coffeemaker. Maybe freshening it up would make the coffee taste a little better. She had to remember to bring one of her oversized insulated travel mugs with her from home each day so she wouldn’t have to drink the crap her boss thought passed for coffee.

  It took at least ten minutes to shift equipment around enough so she could crawl under a table to unplug the brewer but finally, she’d pulled the right plug and freed it up so she could carry the whole thing to the kitchenette sink for a thorough cleaning. For a good minute she considered accidently dropping the unit in the hopes that it would smash into a hundred pieces but quickly dashed that idea. Knowing Alex and his penchant for tinkering with anything electronic, he could probably put it back together with a roll of duct tape and not much else. No, cleaning the brewer was her only hope of getting some decent coffee out of it.

  The minute she yanked the brew basket out to empty it, the smell of burnt coffee grounds made her gag and shudder. “Ew, yuck,” she muttered aloud, quickly banging the basket into the trashcan to dispose of the offending mess. Unfortunately, the trash now smelled awful, filling the room with the nauseating odor. Sweat began beading along Tori’s hairline as she fought back the urge to vomit, making her drop like a stone into a nearby chair. She tried fanning herself with a magazine but the roiling in her stomach refused to back off. Oh man, this isn’t good, she thought, leaning forward to drop her spinning head between her legs.

  It took a good minute or two for the nausea to ease off giving Tori the opportunity to study her shoes, the tile under her feet, and the couple of pieces of trash that had been tossed at the can but ended up on the floor instead. Somewhere in the midst of that distracting reverie, came a thought that lit up in her skull like the fireworks on the fourth of July. What was the date?

  Scrambling to her feet hadn’t been such a swell idea as her head started spinning like a top but she had to find a calendar, stat. Cautiously picking her way across the room using the furniture as aides, she found her phone and brought up the month at-a-glance and started counting. After the third time, panic fed into her senses accompanied by a shortness of breath that wasn’t helping matters.

  “No!” Tori squalled as the dawning realization that she had missed her period caught up
with her. Shaking her head vehemently she kept on saying, “No, no,” as if the words would change things. Soon the “No” changed to “Oh my God, oh my God,” as her emotions ran the gamut from denial to possibility to inevitability.

  Just like that her stomach heaved sideways and her eyes began watering as she made a frantic dash to the restroom seconds before she emptied her guts into the toilet. Did it actually happen this fast she wondered? Did everyone experience the feeling that everything was dandy one minute and then changed forever in the next as wave after wave of unimaginable nausea swept you away?

  Thankful that Alex wasn’t around to witness what just happened, Tori waited for the spinning and churning to back off, then washed her face and hands as calmly as she could. After swishing water through her mouth, she straightened with a wet paper towel pressed against her forehead and caught sight of her reflection in the mirror.

  She looked like death warmed over. Dark smudges under her eyes gave them an owlish look as she blinked over and over trying not to give in to the tears. Her face was pasty white making her cheekbones stick out. Suddenly, everything made sense. She was moody and cross one minute, sad and melancholy the next with occasional bouts of giddiness that came out of nowhere. In short, she was fucked. Big time, if what she suspected was true.

  She’d have to get right on ordering a pregnancy test online. The idea of going into town and picking one up at the local drugstore made the whole thing seem way too real. It would be easier to stock up on toiletries and hide one in her order so she could continue pretending this wasn’t happening. Feeling like the weight of the world was crushing down on her, Tori grabbed her keys and purse, stuffed her cell phone into a pocket, and headed back to her apartment and her laptop. Strings of pithy, colorful swear words rang in her head the whole way.

  She hadn’t made it very far when Tori came upon Carmen and Ria, their heads together as they whispered back and forth while looking at something spread out before them. Coming from behind, she saw that they were reading one of the trashy gossip rags that made Tori tense up. There was never going to come a time when even the smallest reminder of the hell she’d been through was going to let her look kindly on that tabloid garbage.

  “Men! Such idiots.” She heard Carmen mutter. “You think anyone else has seen this?” she asked Ria as the older woman shook her head in the negative.

  “I don’t think so. Not yet anyway. My granddaughter left this in the car when Ben took her home.”

  “Hey, whatcha’ got there?” Tori asked, curious about whatever they were discussing. “Brad and Angie have a fight or something?” The two women reacted to her unexpected presence like they’d been shot. Carmen slammed the paper shut and rolled it into a tube while Ria rushed toward her with concern etched on her face.

  “Miss Tori. I didn’t hear you coming,” she muttered as she and Carmen exchanged anxious frowns. “Where are you off to?”

  “Well, I was going to run home for a bit. There’s uh….um, there’s something I have to do.” Tori motioned to the newspaper Carmen was clutching in her hand. “What’s going on ladies?”

  A heavy silence descended upon the room. Tori’s curiosity was definitely piqued by the odd way the two women were behaving. Something was clearly going on. “What’s wrong Carmen?” she asked sharply, thinking she was more likely to get a direct answer from her than from Ria. “Don’t try and bullshit a bullshitter,” she muttered while the cook and housekeeper engaged in silent communication that made Tori’s skin prickle. Something wasn’t right.

  “Show her,” Ria finally said. “She’s going to find out anyway.”

  Carmen didn’t look happy about it but she handed Tori the gossip magazine anyway. “Open to page four” was all she said.

  There was a déjà vu quality to whatever was happening making Tori hold her breath in apprehension. Was there another one of those blasted articles about her? She couldn’t imagine why there would be. It had been months since the financial scandal had quieted down and while she didn’t know the exact details, she knew Wallace had plea-bargained his way into a shortened sentence that would keep him locked up until next year. Dropping her purse on the counter she cautiously opened to the page Carmen indicated as if the paper contained a booby-trap. What she found staring back at her was pretty much the last thing she ever expected.

  Award-winning actress out on the town with Sexy Playboy, screamed the bold-faced headline. Underneath were a series of pictures that instantly tattooed themselves on Tori’s brain. Shots of Draegyn with Jessamyn Winters partying together in New York City. One of the photos showed the glamorous superstar draped around him like a fur coat on a cold evening. Another, one of those hideous up skirt angles, clearly announced the actress had gone commando as a sickening shot of her flashing a neatly manicured landing strip was there for all to see. It was the photo though of the Winters woman kissing Draegyn, leaving a trail of lipstick along his jaw that made her physically sick.

  That fucking pig. He’d left her without so much as a backward glance and jetted off to the Big Apple, on business Alex had insisted. But that hadn’t stopped him from hooking up the first chance he got. For a brief moment the room started to spin as the cold reality of the situation slapped her upside the head. Fuck him.

  Slapping the paper on the counter, Tori forced her spine to stiffen a second before she loosed a somewhat hysterical laugh that set the women staring anxiously at her back a step. “Boys will be boys, right?” she bit out. Snatching up her bag once again, she laughed some more and put on a rather convincing show of not giving a shit what the high and mighty Draegyn St. John had been getting into in the big city.

  Winking mischievously at Carmen, Tori lowered her voice to a whisper, “Find, feel, fuck, and forget. Some things never change.” And with that she calmly walked out of the kitchen like nothing unusual at all had just happened. By the time she reached the door of her apartment, her heart was well and truly shattered. Stepping inside her comfy hideaway she quietly shut out the world and sank slowly to the floor, tremendous sobs bursting from her chest as an unending torrent of pain and loss ripped apart her soul.

  TO: Draegyn St. John

  FROM: Ted Collins

  RE:Legal Advice

  Drae,

  I’ve put together some information for you and your wife to look at. As I explained in our last conversation, the most prudent way forward will be not to make any changes to the status quo for a minimum of six months so we can establish the hard facts necessary to move for a divorce based on irreconcilable differences. During this period it is imperative that two separate households be maintained and neither of the parties involved make any effort to solidify the union in question.

  Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. If anything changes, please inform me immediately.

  Ted

  Humph. So much for checking email when you’re in a lousy mood, Drae griped. He’d been home for less than an hour, after a God awful plane flight and had managed in that time to neatly avoid seeing or talking to anyone. The message from his lawyer was the icing on his cake of annoyance.

  He considered heading over to the cabin to welcome the newlyweds home and see how they liked the theater room he’d designed but something about facing the happy couple left him cold. Right now, he had no interest in seeing his old friend basking in some sappy romantic glow. Not while he was all tied up in knots.

  The only visit he knew should be on his agenda was to Victoria. And not because he had news from his lawyer. It had taken him awhile to get there but eventually he’d been forced to admit that he missed his little spitfire and the messy havoc her appearance in his life had caused. Behaving badly wasn’t something he was comfortable with, especially not when he had in fact behaved like a king-size dick.

  Maybe it was the chat he’d had with his sister last night that helped clear his head. Desirée grew up in the same cold, loveless environment he had. She knew the bitter truth about their parents’ marria
ge and how it had more or less been a business deal with payment for each healthy offspring. But she hadn’t let any of that steal her ability to develop into a beautiful, accomplished woman who found not just love but a life that was fulfilling, with a husband and children she adored.

  She said something that kept repeating in his head; that instead of letting their parents damage her life beyond repair, she’d felt challenged to prove them wrong. By not giving in to the forces of money, greed, power, and social standing, she had gone out and fought tooth and nail for a different life. Even after a day when the kids had been off the wall and her husband a boob, she still looked around and gave thanks for her sometimes-messy life. If she’d wanted surface perfection, then she would have gone down the same path as their mother and father.

  Hearing Desi say all that had made him feel like a coward. Instead of being brave and fearless as she had been, he’d let the twisted life of their family follow him like a tracking device. He was a thirty-five-year-old man who had never been in an actual relationship. Protecting his emotions at all cost had left him no real future to look forward to. Even the big house he built with its empty bedrooms was a constant reminder that he was alone and probably always would be.

  Victoria had managed to squeak by all his defenses. She was the first woman who had ever stepped foot in his home. How fucking sad was that? While he could pretty much have any woman he desired, he hadn’t counted on meeting a witch with a smart-ass mouth who was so not interested in falling at his feet. Served him right.

  Maybe I should text her, Drae thought, reaching for his phone. Coward, whispered his overworked inner voice. Fucking moron, came the response of his conscience. The grimace that followed felt glued on his face.