Shimmers of Pearl (The Pearl Trilogy, Part 3) (12 page)

There he is….gorgeous as ever.

He turns on his heel and observes me with wry amusement stealing across his face, ready with my toy gun.

“Sorry, baby,” he whispers, “I didn’t want to wake anybody so I thought I’d slip through the door quietly.”

I should be furious but all I can think is,
what took you so long, I’ve missed you.
My heart is racing with left-over fear of thinking I was being broken into, and renewed fear of being broken into…my body being broken into. No sex, the doctor forbade it. I keep saying this mantra to myself in my head. Despite all this, desire is circling me like Cupid with his arrow and I’m only too aware of an aching need for Alexandre to hold me.

Until I remember the L word.

I’m wearing pajama bottoms and a thin cotton tank top and his glittering green eyes stray to my swollen breasts. A low rumble comes from deep within him like a lion about to devour his prey. He doesn’t say anything, though, but I can see the rise and fall of his chest – his heart is also pounding. His desire for me is palpable and I sense the familiar tingle between my legs.

“You need to leave, Alexandre.” My voice is weak, laced with yearning. My sexed-up pregnancy hormones are not helping one bit.

“I need to hold you, baby. To breathe you in.” He comes towards me. I’m still grasping the gun and his half-cocked smile breaks into a grin. “But I think you’d better put that gun down, don’t you?”

In a moment of foolishness I grip the handle even tighter and wave it in front of me.

He grins, “Love the toy gun. You and I have more in common than you can possibly imagine.”

But I’m not smiling back. “I mean it, Alexandre, you need to leave me alone and stop torturing me this way.”

His smile fades and he says sadly, “yes, it
is
torture – you’re right. I just can’t go on like this – I can’t stand it anymore.” He slumps against the wall and slides down so he’s sitting on the floor. His big boots drip with melted snow on the polished parquet wood. Tears are welling in his eyes. I’ve never seen him look so vulnerable and it’s breaking my heart.

I set Amy’s gun on the hall table and sit down opposite him. He holds his dark ruffled head in his hands. He’s wearing the long World War One overcoat. He looks so handsome, like a movie star – the Hollywood legend kind, the kind they don’t make anymore.

“Why are you doing this, Alexandre?” I speak in a whisper because I don’t want to wake Daisy and Amy. “Why can’t you stop seeing Laura?”

He looks up at me and a tear falls down his cheek. I want to hug him but perhaps this is all part of his little-boy-lost act, the act that makes dumb women like me swoon and lose all reason. Talk about Hollywood. This guy’s a good actor.

“My plan was to come here and fuck you, Pearl. But I can’t play that game anymore. It isn’t fair on you.”

My heart starts thumping like an oil well. What’s worse than him wanting to use me for sex? Not wanting me at all. A lump gathers in my throat. “What’s going on, Alexandre? Why are you…practically crying?”

“Because all I want in the world is to be happy with you and it doesn’t seem possible.”

“But that’s your choice, Alexandre. It’s
you
that’s putting up all these barriers. All I want, too, is for us to be together but I can’t be in a relationship with three people. You have to choose – me or Laura. You simply can’t have us both.”

“That’s why I keep asking you to marry me, baby….despite Laura. So you’d be my wife and you couldn’t testify against me.”

I flinch. “What the hell are you talking about?”

He temples his hands over his nose and lets out an exasperated puff of air. “I literally don’t know what to do! With all my money and influence…yet still, she has me beat…I swear I don’t know what to do.”

“You’re being so obtuse and enigmatic, right now, I’m completely lost.”

“Please come here, chérie – I need to hold you. I swear I won’t do anything. I won’t even try and kiss you. I promise.”

I tentatively shuffle my behind over to his side and sit close to him. He puts his arm about me, his fingers squeezing me tight. He smells of the night air and his Alexandre elixir that weakens me every time. I stroke his head and he sighs, closing his wet eyes and biting his lips…perhaps to stop himself from actually weeping. I’m dumbfounded by his demonstration of emotion and understand, now, that it is for real. I lay my head against his shoulder and we just continue sitting there on the floor in silence with only the sound of our breathing between us.

Finally I say, “Why?” I don’t even know what I am referring to but ‘why’ seems like a good thing to ask.

“Remember I told you I was protecting someone I love?”

“Yes,” I say bitterly, conjuring up a host of ex girlfriends. Or is he talking about Laura, herself? The idea of him loving someone else sends a wave of jealousy to course through my veins and circle my stomach.

“I was talking about my mother,” he says in a grave tone.

I exhale with relief but then ask, confused, “What on earth does Laura have to do with your mother?”

“Laura’s threatening her.”

“What?
How?
”

“Laura has something that belongs to her, something incriminating, something…Look, Pearl, I’ve already said enough. I made a promise to my mom that I wouldn’t ever say a word and…” His eyes tighten as he starts chewing his lip with worry.

“Your mother did something and Laura has evidence?”

“I knew if I said anything you’d pick up on it straight away. I’ve revealed way too much, I need to go, I—”

“You can trust me. I don’t care what your mother did, or what you did – I love you,” I plead. “I would never say a word. Never.”

“Please come back with me tonight. I need you in my arms, baby. I need to sleep with you. I’ve been going crazy without you.”

I take his head in my hands and say, “Look me in the eyes and tell me the truth.”

He nods.

“Have you had sex with Laura since you’ve been with me?”

He fixes his gaze on me and I feel sick for a moment. The dark flecks in his green eyes flicker with hesitation. Can I bear what I’m about to hear?

“I swear by my mother, by Sophie and Rex and all those who I love. I swear by you and the moon and stars, I have not touched, nor even kissed any woman since I met you, least of all Laura.”

The relief I feel right now is indescribable. I search his eyes for clues – he’s telling the truth, I’m sure of it. Now it’s my turn to well up. A hot tear rolls down my cheek.

He continues, his mouth pinched, “I despise Laura. She’s trying to ruin my life. If it were just
my
life she wanted to butcher, I might be more forgiving, but she’s threatening my mother. And you.”

“Me?”

“I know you, Pearl. I know that if you don’t spend the rest of your days with me you won’t be truly happy. I don’t mean to sound conceited saying that but deep inside me, I feel exactly the same. If we can’t be together we’ll both go through life half dead. Without you, I feel my flame has been snuffed out. I function on auto-pilot. Without you I am half the person I should be.”

I take his chin in both hands and tilt his mouth towards mine. I run my tongue along his upper lip to ease the tension in his angry mouth and we kiss gently. To my surprise, he’s not ravenous for me but just returns the kiss sweetly. Innocently, even.

He breathes into my mouth, “If I can’t marry you, Pearl my life will be running on empty.”

“I want to marry you more than anything,” I whisper back. “I love you. I can’t be without you, either.”

“Will you come home with me tonight and we can talk?”

“If you promise to tell me the whole story. If you promise to trust me. I don’t care
what
you’ve been hiding from me,” I say honestly. “What hurts me is that you’ve been hiding it.”

“If I tell you everything, will you promise to marry me, Pearl? No more running away?”

For some reason, his request causes a rush of adrenaline to stream through my body. Fear? Excitement? Panic? This is it. I’ve been running from him, using every excuse. But I can’t run anymore. I need to trust him, to show my loyalty. I take a deep breath and reply, “I promise.”

Alexandre gets up onto his haunches and lifts me up, cradling me in his arms as if I were a baby. His eyes stray to my pregnant breasts again. But I don’t care if he has sex on the brain - I want him even more than he wants me. I can feel my nipples pucker with desire, my breathing’s shallow. He sets me down and kisses me lightly on my temple. I grab my long overcoat from the hall closet, my Birkin bag and slip into my thermal boots. I can’t get back to his apartment fast enough.

“You’re coming just like that? In your PJ’s?” he asks, surprised, yet eyeing up my ass with a look of lust.

“I think we’ve both waited long enough, don’t you? I just want to be back in your bed even if Rex
has
taken it over.”

He laughs. “You’ve heard, huh?”

“Yes, Sally told me.”

“I’ve been lonely. Missing you like crazy.”

As I’m scrawling out a note to Daisy so she doesn’t think I’ve been abducted, I say, “Are you going to tell me everything, Alexandre?”

He nods.

“
Everything
about Laura?” I ask again, double-checking that this isn’t a trap of seduction to get into my panties (or PJs).

“I promise. Let’s go.”

***

The whole time I have been in my new apartment it has felt like Limbo and, now back at Alexandre’s, I know I’ve come home. We’re sitting on one of the huge white couches in the living room, snuggled up with Rex. I’m keeping the bedroom at bay, for fear of letting desire get in the way of my mission; to find out everything I can. If Alexandre doesn’t come one hundred percent clean about this insidious situation with Laura, which has been eating into our relationship, then I will give up for good. This is Make or Break time and I think he senses that.

My eyes stray to the bald patch on the wall where my engagement gift was; the Jim Dine painting of the big red heart that is now hung in my new apartment, and I feel a wave of sadness. So much time has been wasted because of our own fears. It has all boiled down to trust. I have not trusted him; not trusted his judgment about Sophie – of course he would never have put me in danger; of course he knows his own sister. And now, he has been keeping secrets from me for fear I might abandon him, or worse, report him for whatever wrong he or his mother has done – that I would betray his family.

I lie back with my head in his lap as he strokes my hair, the soft touch of his long fingers caressing me, making me remember that I belong to him and nobody else.

“I’m breaking my promise to my mother but if I don’t tell you, I know that our lives will be ruined. I’m trusting you to keep this to yourself, take it with you to your grave, Pearl.”

“I swear.” I make a cross sign on my heart.

“You know what I told you about my father? That he disappeared?”

I hold his hand to let him know that I’m on his side, no matter what he tells me. “Was it a lie?”

“Yes. Not all of him has disappeared – that’s the whole problem.”

“What do you mean?”
This is sounding really crazy.
“Sophie told me that he had gone to Rio - that he’d been spotted there.”

“That’s what she still believes. I told her that a friend of mine had seen him there. This friend doesn’t exist, of course. My father’s dead, Pearl.”

“Did you kill him?”

He says nothing for a beat and then answers in a cold voice. “No. My mother did. No, let me be completely honest here. She didn’t just kill him, she murdered him.”

I try to sound unemotional. I don’t want to spook him away. “Was Laura witness to the murder, then?”

“No. It happened when I was only nine.”

“Well what does Laura have to do with it? Even if you told her, she has no proof!”

“Oh, but she does. She’s got proof that he’s dead. And he has never been declared dead. No death certificate, nothing. Officially, he’s still alive. And there are some people still wondering where he is. His brother, my uncle, for one.”

“I don’t understand – how does Laura
know
he’s dead?”

“He was lying peacefully in his bath. Ironic that. Some of the only times when he was being truly peaceful was when he was wallowing about in warm water. My mother had bought him his favorite Scotch. She was plying him with it so he was completely relaxed. She’d had enough, and knew that the only way to be free of him, once and for all, was to kill him. He’d threatened her that if she ever left him he’d hunt her down and kill her – then search for us, too.” He looks at me and hesitates.

I absorb all that Alexandre has said. It sounds crazy but you read about these people and see them on the news often…the nutters that shoot their families down, killing each and every member, or massacring them in a stabbing frenzy before doing themselves in, too. I squeeze Alexandre’s hand. “I empathize, Alexandre. I really do. Please go on.”

He stares into space as he reels off the story in a monotone, hardly stopping for breath. “She had the electric heater plugged into the wall with the extension cord. She’d planned everything. When he was lying back with his eyes closed she came into the bathroom with the pretense to top up his drink and threw the heater into the water to electrocute him. She was even wearing rubber shoes and gloves just to take extra precaution.”

I gasp. What a scene that must have been. “Did he die instantly?”

“I don’t know. My mother had assumed she could pretend it was an accident but there were huge burn welts where the water level was. It was obvious it was cold-blooded murder. She had to think on her feet. Had to get rid of the evidence – there was no way she could pass it off as an accident.”

“So then what happened?”

“Luckily, she had some French doors in her apartment that led onto a balcony. She unplugged the electricity, drained the bath, hauled him out, little by little, and rolled him into bed sheets, wrapping him like a mummy. Then she pushed him off the balcony in the dead of night. Once she was sure nobody had woken from the thud of the body landing on the ground – she was two flights up – she dragged him to the car. Amazingly, nobody saw her, or if they did, they never said a word. The neighbors hated him anyway – even if they’d seen something they would have probably been relieved. She managed to haul him into the trunk of her car.”