Soul Mates. The Beginning.

by Christine Wood

  Dad paid for the best all male boarding school he chose an all male school to make sure I didn’t have any fun too, though he said it was to make sure that I concentrated on my education and not on girls, he did it out of spite and spite alone. Even though we spend weeks apart, he and I still have as little to do with each other as possible. He’d send the jet and a member of his staff to pick me up for school breaks, to spend quality time at a place Dad liked to call home, the top floor of his hotel in Vegas. I hardly saw the man who fathered me but hell what you have never had you never miss, right?

  I graduated high school and I graduated from college, giving the valedictorian speech on both occasions. My cheer squad at my graduation were my grandmother, Glenda and Jefferson oh and not forgetting ‘Mouthy Mel.’ Gran had had no choice but to sort of adopt Mel too, because after her mum died Mel was sent to live with Dad and me, so she was made her an honorary granddaughter, given that we spent a lot of time together and whenever we could, because we were at different boarding schools, schools that I was sure were purposely on differing sides of the country just to stop us being closer, and yes, our father was that petty. Neither she or I were as dependant on my father as he had hoped and unlike the other Holland Bastards, didn’t need or want him, my half brothers and sisters, and I had a few, were from Boudoir Bunnies who were cast out when they refused to terminate their baby bunnies which they had in hopes of trapping him into marriage. My father only married the one hotel heiresses, my mother, the rest were women he used and threw away.

  He saw his other bastards, his words for his children not mine, when he had too, even then they were left with my Glenda in the hotel suite that was mine and Mel’s, they stood around for days when they first arrived, waiting like I had to, for an appointment with God. I gave up needing him in my life and waiting around after the summer he stopped coming out of his room after one of my sisters and her mother died. My life was fine without him but the others needed him and they needed him, if only to suck up to Daddy for his money. Mel and I we were from rich mamas so didn’t need him. Much to his disgust. We were not willing to give him more than he ever gave us as he got older and why would we, and he hated us for it. Mel and I we loved winding him up, he knew we didn’t need him, but he needed us and that felt good!

  He planned on me attending his alma mater, but I didn’t like that idea of following any of that fools footsteps and so I travelled my own path. I skipped out on University after two years because I figured I’d learnt as much as I could from books and needed to learn stuff from the real world. I had enough money of my own, as I inherited Mum’s trust fund at twenty-one, it was the biggest blessing and gift I ever got, because when I had it, I didn’t need then to depend on dear ole Dad, and neither did I need a bog-me-down-job that paid me a crap dollar amount every month, nor did I want to work for my dad, but I still needed excitement and challenges that a challenging career would bring.

  I was an adventure sports junkie, I always had been and wanted the same rush in my work life, I wasn’t a studious guy, but I did have a high IQ and was just too damned clever for school. I found that excitement within the world of mergers and acquisitions. There I finally found the adrenalin rush I needed. It was a gamble giving up the academic side of my life, but one that for me paid off. I have a great sixth sense when I find a certain business or if I’m approached with a good idea. I’m a modern day gambler, come game hunter all rolled into one. I get a head rush with each new business deal I do. I’m always looking for the next big take over because I love the mundane research, the brain psyching planning, the heart stopping financing, the adrenaline of the chase, the head rush of the capture, and unfortunately as is the case in the majority of deals I do, the killing of a business. That is the worst part for me, that painful feeling of failure, the unpalatable task of stripping down the business that’s too messed up to be saved.

  Hey, I have to tell myself, I didn’t kill it, the previous owners did and I can’t bring back a corpse that’s been dead for years, no matter how much money I throw at it, so I don’t. I strip it down, sell what I can and build on the land, replacing the dead business I’d acquired and I then try replacing it with new workable businesses that the area needs. I was green before green was not just a colour in art. I then research and build, I hope at least, a business capable of being sustainable, profitable and one that is able to bring jobs to the area. I feel I need to give them something back and in doing that I hope I am creating for the areas future, so far this has worked and made me very wealthy, and liked by many people who work for me, I am a great boss and landlord.

  I don’t go into a venture intending to strip them down, it’s just the way this business is, but occasionally I love finding the one business that can be saved, the odd diamond in the rough. The businesses I like saving the best of all are the ones where I know the old owners undervalued the opportunity they had and let it fall through their fingers and into mine. I love actually sticking my finger up to the business world and saying I was right it could be done, and I did it better than you did. I love that first step into the unknown, the risk I take could end up being disastrous, especially going on just my initial gut instinct, but I have been lucky I guess, because every business I approach could have the potential to be a horrific mistake? The next deal could be an epic fail and leave me with massive losses, but as yet that hasn’t happened, and touch wood my gut instincts don’t ever let me down.

  I’m busy running through some figures for the new land I need to expand my little mining operation, one I had purchased in Australia a few weeks ago, when I opened up my emails for confirmation of the purchase of yet more land, and to my surprise I’d received an invite to the Humphries Hotel Benefit Ball. I was shocked, really that had come around so quickly again? Every year I get one, and unfortunately whilst in college and uni it clashed with exams and the last couple of times I was in Australia, chasing the next big deal and unfortunately was too engrossed in making the next buck, greed meant I was too busy for my faux family, that and running around chasing skirt, drinking and having a wild time. It seems I am more like my father than I thought. This one though had a personal note from Hugh, which sparks my interest.

  ‘Please be part of Isabella’s sweet sixteenth, we would dearly like to see you, and it’s been a while since we last saw you. The parties in the Las Vegas H and you know we’d love for you to come and be there, it is after all your birthday too, Son.’

  My lord she was four or five the last time I saw her, shit. Just where has all the time gone? I in-boxed Hugh with my acceptance saying that I’d love to come and be a part of it, after all I was going to be in America, what’s the harm in a small detour to see Bella and Maria again? I’m now heading to that baby’s sixteenth birthday party. I feel really happy I am going to see them again. I felt yet another pang of regret, regret that I hadn’t spent enough time with them all. Luis and I met up for boozy weekends, were we’d spend the weekend doing man stuff, sailing, golfing, rock climbing and all the big adventure stuff and the occasional ride out on my horses, my other passion. My horse farm and my sanctuary from madness.

  I’d not seen Bella and Maria in a long time, for my shame I’d only seen Maria a few times more than Bella as I grew up and moved on. Until getting this year’s invitation I hadn’t given them a lot of thought at all unless I was drunk and maudlin that is, and considering they were all I thought of before I hit my rebellious teen years, I feel like crap in my failure to keep the connection we had going. My mind is a shipwreck at the moment and is crowded and right now thinking about it, it’s a lonely place and it needs filling with family, even if it is with my faux family. I’d had a business deal to finalise first, so it meant a stopover in Miami. My life is lived on planes and in the numerous offices I have over the world, so when there is an opportunity to relax and let my hair down, I indulge and last night was no exception, but why in hell’s name did I go out afterwards, especially with nothing to eat inside me and all with very litt
le sleep?

  I’m now paying for it because I’m above jet lagged. I’m now hung over and in need of coffee. In the last week I’d been busy and made millions and spent far more to acquire more. I’d done the deal for the land to build my new shopping mall on in Miami a couple of nights ago and I am suffering for it now. I also bought into a new chain of Asian hotels, which were heading down the flusher. The ones I really wanted however were the diamonds in the rough I occasionally find, those were the hotels with casinos and a couple even had clubs attached, they are in Hong Kong were they like to gamble and the younger generation love nightclubs clubs. The one I knew would be a winner was called number eight, the date of my birth on the eighth month in the year nineteen eighty, yes, my lucky number is eight, so with my gut telling me it was a winner, I’d bought the struggling hotel chain.

  Whilst doing the land deal in Miami, I went to a bar to celebrate with the seller of the land as he was in the chair. Too right he was, because he had just been paid millions of my hard earned money, and yeah, we celebrated around the clock. Two days later and with a drink fuelled memory loss, I am arriving in Vegas and I’m agitated, a little sore and in no mood to talk to anyone. I’d had hardly slept on the flight here and when I did I dreamt of the Humphries family, so I was feeling a tad sorry for myself. Then after being woken at an ungodly hour to take a call of great importance, which it turned out was only my being summoned to a meeting with the great Hoyt Holland, my father and the most sorrowful excuse for a parent anyone could ever wish for. Crap, the cracked record is playing, that’s all I ever bleat on about my Daddy Issues. That’s why I got shit faced this weekend, because I knew I’d have to see that bastard.

  I had hoped he was having heart attack number two, but alas no, he needed something done and now. I wasn’t in the mood for the get right here now thing he demanded, I was however hung over and in need of sleep. I hadn’t even planned on coming to Vegas, not until I got the invite two days ago, so how the fuck did he know I was even going to be there. Ouch, my head aches with all his shit, how does he know where I am? I’d had an extremely heavy day and night of drinking and I’d partied hard apparently with a woman called Valarie? Had she not texted I wouldn’t have known with whom I’d had the pleasure, why did I say pleasure, because it was far from it.

  What was it with me picking up women in dive bars and expecting them to be classy? What woman in her right mind and within ten minutes of saying hello handsome what are you called, is allowing me, a stranger to nail her hard and in her own hotel room? What woman in her right mind does that, offers up unprotected sex, just so she could feel me in her? A desperate one that who. What did that make me? I know, like my father. Maybe in hindsight I should stop going in those types of bars, and thus I’d stop meeting those types of women?

  I step off the jet and I turned my phone back on, I noted the sheer amount of messages and text’s from last night’s woman, Valerie. Her name was on my caller ID, she had texted then phoned and left rather a large number of voicemails, like thirty or more and all this between me skipping out on her at her hotel, to me getting onto my jet. Being as I was still damn hung over, I’d turned that phone off to grab some sleep. Now it buzzes like it’s going to explode as text message after text message comes in. Wow, not too stalkerish at all, I read the things before I delete, maybe I had met a classy woman, maybe she was just saying thank you?

  Val: Baby thnx for evrythin, hope to do it and you again soon X

  Oh she was being polite, what a surprise.

  Val: Call me X

  Gheeze, gimmie a chance to read it before you demand more. Forty seconds between texts, I’m slipping and I’ve picked up another stalker.

  Val: Honey call me Pleazzzze X

  Two minutes between the texts, umm she’s getting the message.

  Val: So I was thinkin, I could fly and meet you X

  What the hell did I tell her, I pray to God it’s not where I as heading? Shit, just how drunk was I?

  Val: Getting hot thinking of last night X

  Val: Going to bed, thinking of you X

  Val: Rubbing myself, there but you do it better baby x

  Val: I’m all wet for you, baby come see X

  Val: I’m coming thinking about you as I put my fingers in the place you visited wow damn baby I’m coming X

  Val: Baby, baby, baby I need you to fuck me again X

  Val: Fuck me hard and spank me master X

  Val: Damn, you have the biggest dick I have ever had. You touched the back of me, and I ache and I doubt I will be able to walk straight, and I’ve had a few good lovers. None like you X

  What a surprise I picked up a desperado and there you have it I am like my father, the last dozen texts are the reason there will be no revisit, she wasn’t even that good in bed. She was just someone to blow my load in and get home. More texts arrive and they are doing nothing in helping to arouse me, that part is dead, but I suppose one side texting is just a text, not sexting. I read and see what else I’m good at, as I do like a good review. I laugh and read on.

  Val: Can’t sleep thinking of you X

  Val: Why did you leave me when I fell asleep? X

  Val: Did you get a call to do brain surgery X

  Val: I would have appreciated a note or you waking me X

  Val: I feel used. Gary did you use me? X

  Well I will give her ten out of ten for realising that I may have used her, a little. Okay yes, I did use her a lot, but in my defence, I did not come on to her. I did not ask her for sex, nor was it me dry humping her at the bar. I did not take her to my hotel room, and I was not the one naked and throwing myself at a stranger when we got there, yes, I was a stranger, because not once did she say oh and I’m Valerie, pleased to have you. I was however very impressed when she said she was a zoologist and she loved her job. Maybe, I thought to myself at the time, maybe this girl was a step up from my usual type. Then I’d asked her in what specific field of zoology was she in? She looked at me in all seriousness and said she didn’t work in a field, she worked in the ticket office at Denver Zoo, and there it was, yes, she was dumber than I thought. She worked in a zoo, so she thought she was a zoologist. Sorry, but she had definitely been hit with the stupid stick more than once. So she was just my type, my usual taste in girls was fulfilled, blonde, boobs and yes normally no brains behind the beauty and just looking for a goodtime, also usually drunk and with no ties, I was taught by the best, my father.

  That’s when I told her I was a world renowned brain surgeon and she fell for it, hook line and sinker. She said I looked kind of hot and that my hat made me look more like a sexy cowboy, than a surgeon. She liked the sexy Stetson I wore, she took it off and ran her hands through my hair, putting it on and smiling so cutely, she looked good in it too. I smiled sexily at the complement saying, “thank you, lady zoologist, perhaps I should have come out in my scrubs?” I took back my hat and then she went all kind of dumb on me.

  “Why would you want to come out wearing a bush Gary?” Oh hell, I laugh as I remember the look on her face when she said it too. She was either really drunk or not real smart and I’d go for the later.

  “Oh hell are you for real lady, because a shrub is a bush? Unlike scrubs, which are the things I operate in, you know, like the guys wear on the television shows. You know, what we doctor types are seen wearing in all the soaps and documentaries, you know the blue and green things, the coloured overalls I perform surgeries in?” Her reply was priceless, so damn priceless, so why was it that I was so damn shocked?

  “You’re on television too cool? I’ve done some television filming too. My friend and I had a part in the ‘Girls-Gone-Wild’ thing on our spring break here in Miami last year and we won a competition to come back again this week. That was exciting, the producer’s friend said I could do movies, and have a really good time and make lots of money, because my unnaturally large and yep natural boobs are awesome. Apparently, my big tits are amazing, do you like them Gary?” She was about to pull
her top down to show me them and yes, the rack she had was indeed pretty big, but I didn’t need to see them in the flesh to know that, because there was more than enough on show already.

  “The boys loved them, and all we had to do was parade on stage and get showered with water wearing white tee shirts and bikini bottoms. For some reason they liked it when Wendy and I did our college cheer. We have to do a new one this year, and we have been practising really hard all year, do you wanna come see me dance?” I smiled as her and Wendy gave the whole bar a show, before coming back to me with dollar bills in her cleavage. I bet they did well, she had a really nice ass, but her tits were huge and the good gents of the bar had had a good ole time with my date for the night, Miss Wet Tee Shirt, oh a classic. Then she made another play for me, I’d had a drink or two and was all for calling it a night, but when she started the whole come on, with the hard sell of her body, telling me she could and would give me a ride like no other, all as she dry-humped me at the bar.

  She had her hands down my jeans and began feeling me up, and shrieking at the size of my cock, her hand was shaking as she pulled on it a few times. I whispered to her that it was only a semi at the moment, she smiled licked her lips, then she said whispered back that she hadn’t been laid in a while, and she wanted me back in her hotel room. She had guessed correctly, that I would need a helping hand in getting rid of the hard on she’d given me, and yeah so shoot me. I took her up on the offer, I’m a hot blooded male, and okay, all be it that I was a whiskey fuelled one. One, who’d just had his cock nearly ripped off at the root as she started to jerk me off in the packed bar, and she was right I was so in need of a nameless sex session. I dumped the dude I bought the shopping mall off, in the seat with her friend and I went back with her.