Devil Mail (20 page)

Calmly breaking her silence, she asked, “So where are you during the day?”

“Like I said, I go to the client’s house to do repairs.”

“And what about when you’re not on a job?”

“Then I’m at home.”

“Where’s home?”

“Wow, your mother got you rattled, didn’t she? Now you sound like you don’t trust me anymore.”

“I do, it’s just that you know so much about me, and I know so little about you. I don’t even know where you live.”

Kieran rais
ed himself up, pulled out his wallet from his back pocket, and handed it to her. “My license is in there showing the address of my one bedroom apartment in Winter Springs, along with my date of birth; take a look, satisfy your curiosity. You can’t have access to the credit cards though, not yet,” he smiled. The buoyancy of  his comment lessened the tension in the car. She read his name – Kieran Doyle, but the address was unfamiliar to her.

“I don’t know where this address is; you’ll have to take me there one day.”

“Okay,” he agreed distractedly. “Hey, what car does Aiden drive?” he asked with a note of gravity in his voice.

“A black I
nfinity. Why?”

“Don’t turn around and don’t panic,” he instructed flatly before accelerating
and barely slowing down to take the next right turn.

“What’s wrong, Kieran? You’re scaring me.”

He continued to glance periodically in the rear view mirror. “A black car’s been following us from the time we left your apartment.”

“Aiden doesn’t know where I live.”

“He doesn’t?” He thought for a moment. “Well, if he has your name and your number, your address isn’t hard to find.” He took another right turn followed by a swift left, before slowing down and glancing again in the mirror. “I think we may have lost him.” It was like a scene out of the movies.

Angela wondered what asinine reason Aiden would have to be following them.  At least at the office he could present himself under the guise of wanting his transcript, but to risk a confrontation with Kieran on the road was totally nonsensical. Unfortunately, his recent irrational state of mind
, evidenced by his reckless behavior, precluded her from giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Angela implored Kieran to take her home and he obliged, but not without protest.
“Why should we let him ruin our evening?” He made no attempt to conceal his irritation. “If we change our plans because of him, that means he’s won.”

“
Won? I’m not playing a game, Kieran, if he’s out looking for trouble, I don’t want to be there when he finds it.” The ride home was marked by pensive silence.

As they entered Angela’s apartment,
she spoke first. “I’m gonna call him.”

“Don’t do that. That’s exactly what he wants you to do; then he’s got you right where he wants you,
controlling you like a puppet on a string!” Kieran’s response was quick.

“He wouldn’t be doing all these things if I
’d just talk to him, so I’ll put a stop to his nonsense, let him say his piece and move on.”

“And what if he won’t let you move on, Angela? This guy doesn’t seem stable.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“You’re handling it the right way by cutting off all contact with him.”
Kieran then made a case for staying with her for a while in case Aiden was lurking in the area. Seated on her sofa, his arm around her shoulder comforted her in her visibly shaken state. His shoulder was her pillow of refuge.

“I can’t believe this is happening to me,” Angela murmured.
Kieran was silent. “Now that I think about it, he was probably only interested in me because of my job!”

“Why d’you say that?”

“Well, on our date, he kept asking me questions about depositions and the types of mistakes people usually make.” Raising her head off Kieran’s shoulder in alarm, she revealed, “He even asked me if I’d ever altered depositions to help someone out; but he made it sound like a joke. He was probably hatching a plan to see how easy it would be to tamper with the evidence at his deposition.”

“But
how would he have known that you would be handling his deposition?”

“I don’t see how he could have known in advance, unless I’m missing something. This whole thing just makes me feel so uneasy; like he was getting ready to set me
or somebody else up. And now he’s basically stalking me!”

Kieran pressed Angela’s head back onto his shoulder and played well the role of
a good listener as she spewed out details of her misgivings about Aiden and the unfortunate condition she now found herself in at his hand.

“Do you want me to stay here tonight?” Kieran offered.

“Yeah, I don’t really want to be alone tonight,” Angela replied, even though her mind resurrected the memory of what had happened the last time he spent the night, and her conscience prompted her to let the man go home to avoid her resolve crumbling under the overwhelming temptation.

“We’ll spend the day together tomorrow, doing whatever you want to do.”

“Okay, but in the evening I have aerobics class with Julia.”

“Aerobics? You’re really turning down a date with me to go jump around in a box with a bunch of sweaty females
desperate to get into shape?” He grinned. She didn’t care for his caustic humor because for some time now, she was to be counted among the sweaty females who desired to get into shape; but that face of his, those entrancing eyes and his subtly persuasive manner were hard to resist. Julia would understand.

Encircled by candlelight and
lulled by mellow music, the couple reclined on Angela’s sofa in a state of quietude where only their hands conversed. He lightly stroked her upper arm with one hand and she held the other, running her fingertips over his knuckles and along his long digits, which any pianist would be proud to own. She lowered her head to rest on his firm chest, and with the steady beat of his heart, even more euphonious than the music, the fragrance of his cologne permeating her nostrils, Angela was convinced that there was no other place on earth she would rather be.

Impelled by the amorous mood
, she raised her head just enough for him to understand her soft, “I wish this moment could last forever,” utterance.

             
He bowed his head and kissed her hair. Moving his head slowly and purposefully he allowed his warm breath to penetrate and tickle her ear. “You can be Ruth to my Boaz,” he breathed gently into her ear. Startled, Angela briskly sat upright.

             
“What did you say?”

             
“What? I said you can be Ruth to my Boaz. What? It’s a Bible story about…”

             
“I know what it’s about, Kieran… but you… you’re…it is you! That’s where I recognized you from! You’re Boaz from Christian Blend aren’t you?” She leapt to her feet, a million notions filling her head – none of them good.

             
“I….I…. have my profile on the website, yes, but…but…” he stammered.

             
“I sent you a message telling you that I was seeing someone else, so what are you doing? Why are you here? Have you been stalking me?”

             
“No, of course not, and you didn’t say anything about seeing someone else.”

             
“Yes, I did, Kieran. It was on a Sunday evening a couple of weeks ago. So… how did you find me?”

             
“I met you at church, remember?”

             
“And that was just a coincidence, was it?”

             
“Partly; I did see the name of your church on the website, but I was looking for a church to go to anyway…and…”

             
“So that’s how you knew so much about me! You need to leave,” she seethed, her volume reduced and her tone firm.

“
Leave? Why?”

“
Just go!”

“
But I don’t understand what I’ve done wrong.”

“Are you
stupid as well as being a liar? I hate liars!” The words spurted through her clenched jaw.

“
I haven’t lied to you, Angela; please, I don’t want to leave you alone tonight.” His attitude of suppliance, although touching, was a woefully inadequate match for her wrath.

“I
don’t need you to take care of me. I was just fine before you crawled into my life, and I’ll be fine right after you crawl back out!”

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he muttered feebly, accepting defeat, and making his way to the door.

“Don’t bother!” she yelled after him, slamming her front door for maximum effect.

She blew out the candles, turned off the music and plopped herself down on
the same sofa where just a short while ago she floated on clouds of romance. She tried to piece together all that had happened, but the timeline of events that took place between herself, Aiden and Kieran became muddled. For the first time in days, she logged onto the Christian Blend website. The fact that nineteen men had viewed her profile and seven of them had sent her new messages brought her no joy. There was only one profile she was interested in. She went digging for Kieran’s, anticipating the lies that she would catch him in. When she found nothing that was at odds with anything he had told her, she read through his profile again, convincing herself that there must be something that this sly guy slipped up on. There was nothing. She looked at his profile picture again and wished that she had had the alertness to have recognized him the very first time she saw him at the bowling alley, however, the pictures looked like they had been taken a while ago.

A review of her sent messages confirmed that she had erred in her recollection of the facts – he was right, she hadn’t mentioned that she was seeing
someone else; she only stated that she didn’t think they were a match. That hardly mattered now. What did matter was that he had not approached her in honesty.

There were no messages from Matt, whom she did not expect to so readily accept the news of her choosing someone else over him. She wondered if she had acted too hastily in burning that bridge. He seemed like a down-to-earth, honest
hardworking man, and maybe over time she would have been able to love his zeal for random, inconsequential facts. That didn’t matter now, either. She couldn’t go crawling back to him now that her chosen options had come to naught.

It was late, but she had to talk to someone. “So, you told him that you didn’t think the two of you would be a match
, he wasn’t prepared to take ‘no’ for an answer, so he pursued you, found you and began courting you. Tell me the crime that you’re accusing him of again,” Julia begged, “because it sounds quite romantic from where I’m standing.”

“Bu
t he lied to me,” Angela countered.

“What did he say that was a lie?”

Angela paused, then frustrated that her own sister was siding with the enemy, she blurted, “Well, he wasn’t forthcoming with the truth about who he was. Even when I was saying that he looked familiar, he could have fessed up to sending me a wink on the Christian Blend website, but he didn’t.”

“Th
at’s hardly a lie though, Angie.” Julia continued to defend him, adding to her sister’s frustration.

“
If you don’t tell someone the truth, and lead them to believe something else, it’s a lie of omission. It’s the same thing, Julia!”

“No, it’s not.
  A lie is where you say something that isn’t true. He didn’t say anything that was untrue.”

“
Argh! This conversation is pointless. He’s obviously pulled the wool over your eyes.” The sisters agreed to differ on the subject.

Angela
thought Judith would lend a sympathetic ear, since she appeared to dislike Kieran from the beginning. She didn’t. Rather than dogging him out, like Angela expected and needed at that particular time, Judith sought to walk her to the road of self-reliance to find her happiness. A place where she would not rely on others to bring happiness into her life and where she would not open herself up to be hurt so easily. As far as Angela was concerned, Judith had walked her to the road of regret, whereby she rued the moment she dialed her number. If she wanted to hear from a didactic lecturer, there were several other people she could have called.

A storm blew through the next morning. Typical! A public holiday, Angela didn’t have to go to work, she had caught up on the backlog of work, had the entire day free to do whatever she wanted to do - so it rained. In reality, the overcast, dreary day was a mere reflection of how Angela felt when she arose. It was a day that she would probably spend moping around her apartment feeling sorry for herself. Thoughts of Kieran didn’t make her quite as angry as they had the night before. She had had a chance to calm down and think things through. She would have preferred him to have identified himself when they first met, but the mystery of his identity didn’t now seem so deceptive. She did partially see the romantic element in his decision to pursue her, despite her snub.