A Calculated Romance (15 page)

Jim sported his own grin, due no doubt to his taste of the dacquoise.

"You've gotta try this," he said, pointing his utensil towards the hazelnut treat.

He carved a bit onto his fork and leaned towards Landi.  She parted her lips and allowed him to feed her the sweet.  Again, she shut her eyes and concentrated on the tastes dissolving on her tongue.  She enjoyed a crunchy meringue layered with a coffee cream.

"Fabulous," she proclaimed, opening her eyes.

Shocked to see that James hadn't already downed his entire dessert, she realized he'd slowed his usual pace to enjoy each morsel. 

"Have some of this," she encouraged, pushing her plate towards him.  There was no way she would feed James.

He helped himself to a forkful of clafouti, savoring the experience.

"Ooh, I really like the cherries in there," he said.

They continued exchanging bites and enjoying their own sweets until the coffee arrived.  Then, they lingered over the piping hot beverage long after they'd finished dessert.  James recounted a few humorous situations he'd gotten into during his time in Oxnard, making Ireland laugh.

"I missed you, Landi," he confessed suddenly.

"Did you?" she asked, her tone cool.

She wasn't prepared to fall into his arms just yet.  She'd shared the majority of her innermost secrets with him, and he'd fled to the East Coast the first chance he got.  She could only interpret that as rejection.

"Why do you think I call you every night?" he said in a low tone, reaching for her hand.

James lifted the girl's hand to the table.  He rubbed his calloused thumb over her wrist.  She tried to pull her hand away, but he used his fingers to keep her in place.

"I don't know why you call me, James.  I don't know why you do anything."

She stared at him with those piercing green eyes, and he began to feel uncomfortable.

"I care for you, Landi.  That's why I do the things I do."

She looked dubious.  He gave her hand a squeeze, then paid the check.  Henri popped out to say goodbye, proffering a handshake to James and a kiss on both cheeks for Ireland.

Jim drove to the nearby marina and rented a boat while she strolled up and down the dock, enjoying watching the bigger water craft slide in and out of their slips.  She observed one family working the sails on a large boat.  The father trained two sons, shouting instructions as a mother and daughter looked on.  A handsome man with silver hair piloted a small yacht and gave her a playful wave, which she returned with enthusiasm.

"Making friends?" he asked, startling her.

"I hope so," she said with a sheepish smile.

"Come on.  I've secured a vessel for us."  His expression told her he was up to something.  "It's nothing like that, of course," he said, jerking his thumb towards the sleek cruiser that just passed them.

He took her elbow and guided her to where the paddle boats bobbed up and down, moored to the pier.  She burst out laughing when he intimated one would be their ship.

"What, not up to your standards?" he teased.  He liked seeing her chuckle.

"Not up to yours, I think.  You're the Navy man!" she said between giggles, stepping down into the small vessel and almost falling over when the wake of a slow-moving speed boat hit.

"Whoa, careful, Land Lover," James said, grabbing her by the waist.

Once he'd gotten her settled in a molded plastic seat, he untied the paddle boat and took his place.  He glanced sideways at Ireland.  She'd closed her eyes and seemed to be enjoying the sea breeze on her face.

"I won't be much help in the propulsion area," she said without raising her lids.

A sly grin spread across her countenance in spite of her efforts to keep a straight face. 

"Yeah, well I guessed as much," he said, flashing her a look that feigned disapproval.

James worked the pedals in reverse as they bobbled away from the dock.  A few yards out, he switched directions and the dinghy gradually made progress, slowed by the current and wakes from other boats.

"Want to tour the marina?  Check out how the other half lives?" he asked.

"Aye, aye!" she said, giving him a mock salute.

They took in all the slips and observed everything from small, one-man sail boats to several large yachts.  James explained the various features on the different craft and tried to quiz her later.  She had none of it, responding to his questions with giggles or silly answers.  He used a stern tone on her, but that didn't help either.  She seemed to be having a really good time, which pleased him immensely. 

"I'm done," he said, stretching his arms behind his head with a protracted yawn.

He'd paddled away from the docks, and the boat bobbed up and down, surrounded by water on every side.  They'd been at it for a couple of hours, and now the late afternoon breeze kicked up as the sky clouded over.

"What do you mean
you're done
?  We've got to get back to the pier," she said.

James reached for her and placed an arm around her shoulder, pulling her close.

"I'm content right here," he whispered, giving her a squeeze.

She tried to pull away in order to scold him, but his grip was too firm.  His breath on her neck sent electricity up her spine.  Just as she started to panic, he pulled her onto his lap, wrapping his arms about her waist.

"Hey!"  She squirmed.

"Shhh, Kumquat.  Hold still and let me kiss you."

She risked a glimpse at him as he slid one hand up her back to the nape of her neck.  His deep blue eyes glowed with an inner fire she'd never seen before as he fixed his gaze on her.  He lowered his mouth, and she closed her eyes as he allowed his lips to linger, barely touching hers.  Time seemed to stand still until he took her mouth in a full-on kiss.  Rockets exploded in the girl's brain, and she forgot she was in a paddle boat in Oxnard Harbor.  She thought her heart would pound right through her rib cage.  Landi briefly tried to pull away, but he ignored her efforts, deepening their kiss and pulling her against his chest.  She felt a growing passion course through her veins with each heartbeat.

Her world spun in circles as she fought to separate herself from him, at least mentally.  It seemed to Ireland that they were becoming one person.  His scent and touch combined to send her into a dizzying state.   Even as her mind struggled, she felt herself melting against his hard muscles and returning his kisses.  She felt one of his large, calloused hands on her throat as his thumb and forefinger held her face, while his other hand pressed against the small of her back, drawing her even closer to him.  She'd wrapped her arms about his neck, instinct driving her actions, when she suddenly felt his whole body go taut.

James grabbed Landi's arms and pulled them from him, then placed her back in her own seat.  His ragged breathing matched hers.  She raised her fingers to her lips, and he saw the hurt look that passed over her countenance.  It nearly broke him.  He snatched the bandana from her head and ran his fingers through her hair, pulling her into one last kiss.  He could tell she held back.  She stiffened and gave him nothing like her previous passionate response.

"I had to stop before I got carried away, Ireland.  I mean, before I got even
more
carried away," he said, releasing her at last.

He brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers, allowing them to linger on her neck before withdrawing.  He straightened and resumed paddling, this time back to the dock.  Several yards out, he stopped, allowing the boat to coast to the pier.  James grabbed Landi's hand and turned to look her in the face.

"I'm crazy about you.  You are unlike anyone I've ever met, Ireland, and I hope you'll be patient with me a while longer."

Before she could answer, he jumped from the dinghy and tied the vessel to the dock, utilizing its nylon rope.  She looked at his outstretched arm, unable to quite believe his words.  He flapped his hand, gesturing for her to come.  She tentatively placed her small hand in his large paw when he yanked her from the boat, laughing.

"You aren't afraid of me now, are you?" he whispered.

His lips grazed her earlobe, sending an electric current through her body.  She found herself tongue-tied for a moment.

"Yes, I am," she responded, nodding.

"Don't be, Darling."

On the ride back to Venice, he told her he'd come back to Southern California to stay.  His company didn’t need him on the East Coast any longer, and he'd be getting some days off as soon as he finished his current assignment, which wouldn't take long.  He told her he wanted to spend more time with her, away from Katrina's apartment.  James declared that he wanted to date her. Ireland couldn’t believe that someone like James would choose to go out with someone like herself.

"Well?" he asked when she didn't respond.

"Well what?"

"I said, I think we should start seeing each other exclusively.  I don't want you straying, Kumquat."

She let a smile escape her lips, and he saw it.  His eyes lit up as soon as one corner of her mouth twitched north.

"Good.  It's settled then," he said, pulling to a stop outside her apartment.

He leaned over and gave her another long, passionate kiss
—o
ne to remember him by later that night.  He left her breathless.

Landi pulled herself from the car before he could get out.  She held her hand up, motioning for him to stay put.  She wanted to get out while she still could.  His kisses were unlike anything she'd ever experienced, and she didn't trust herself alone with him, parked on a dark street.  She smiled and trotted to her door, key in hand.

James spotted the bandana she'd left in his car and pulled it to his face.  Her perfume intoxicated him.  He watched her dark outline against the building wave goodbye and turn to unlock the door before he started his car and pulled away from the curb.  He couldn't believe how lucky he was to have found her.

Chapter 14
-Reckoning-
 

Landi had just inserted her key when a noise from behind alerted her that Jim had returned.   She turned just as she felt him grab her shoulder.

"Ja—" she started to say as she spun to greet him.  A sharp pressure on her windpipe prevented her from continuing.

A face contorted with rage, less than an inch from her own, met her.  Lifted from the ground by the neck, she flailed wildly, unable to scream for help.

"Did you think you could move on that easily?" Rick hissed.

She recognized his voice before his features.  Seconds slowed to what seemed like minutes as her initial fright faded to a surreal peace. 

He's going to kill me this time.

She tossed her keys as far away as possible as she thrashed, knowing her apartment remained locked.  He didn't seem to notice.

At least he can't drag me inside.

That threat removed, she tried to relax and force herself to go limp.  Ireland moved her head slightly back and forth to intimate that he was mistaken about her moving on.  Always tall and wiry, Rick seemed to possess super human strength, elevating her with only one of his arms while pinning her shoulder to the door with the other.  She made a raspy, croaking sound, trying to pronounce his name.  She touched one tip of a tennis shoe to the ground, then the other, attempting to support her weight and relieve some of the pressure on her neck.

He dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans, no doubt to fade into the background while lying in wait for her.  Rick wore his raven black, straight hair longer than the last time she saw him, but otherwise, he appeared the same, right down to the crazed look in his large, dark eyes.  His pale, white skin revealed his nocturnal nature—his preference to darkness over daylight.

Just as she began to lose consciousness, his arm began to shake and he lowered her enough for her feet to touch the ground.  He kept one hand around her neck but slightly lessened the pressure he applied.

"You owe me, Landi," he spat in her ear.

She could feel his hot breath on the side of her face, and it repulsed her.  Gasping for air, she forced herself to remain calm, to appear submissive.  Her mind raced for a way out of the situation, knowing he wouldn't fall for the same ploy she used last time.  He'd cut off her ability to scream by bruising her windpipe.  Only a rasp escaped her mouth when she tried to call for help.

He continued, his hissing voice almost a jeer. "I waited for you.  Not just the night you ran away, either.  I could have had any number of girls, Landi, but I waited for
you
and
you
decided to cheat me out of what was mine.  Nobody cheats me!"

Rick slowly licked the side of her face, from her jaw to the top of her ear.  She recoiled before she could stop the reflex, and he responded by squeezing his fingers tighter around her throat.

"What's wrong?  I'm not good enough for you anymore?  Your mother thinks I am.  Hatti told me where to find you."

Rick's lips stretched from ear to ear, revealing an evil grin.  She'd never seen him like this.  His expression didn't even seem human.  Instinctively, Landi tried to look away, he appeared so horrible.  He used his fingers to trap her chin and lift her face to his.  He pressed his body hard against hers so that she could barely breathe.  The door knob dug painfully into her back. He slowly lowered his mouth to claim her lips.

"I'm not letting you go again," he sneered just before taking her mouth.

* * * * *

James rounded the corner onto Venice Boulevard, an uneasy feeling growing in the pit of his stomach.  Something didn't seem right.  He couldn't see Ireland's face as she waved goodbye.  Normally, the light above her door illuminated the girl clearly.  The bulb must have gone out.  Believing he had his answer, he breathed a sigh of relief as he accelerated towards his sister's apartment.

But something still nagged at him.  He'd learned over the years to trust his instincts.  Jim made a U-turn and headed back towards Landi's apartment, going over everything he did and saw from the time he parked his car in front of her building.  His learned this method during his Naval Intelligence training.

Everything except her being in shadows seemed normal, until he relived turning off her street.  Around the corner, he'd observed a dark muscle car.  Now, he realized that vehicle was out of place.  It wasn't normally parked there, or anywhere else around her residence.  He'd seen one like it somewhere else—but where?  A similar black automobile had pulled in front of Hatti's and idled its engine during his visit to Cadiz.

Oh, God.

He sped back to Ireland's apartment, running red lights and squealing around corners.  He came close to hitting several parked vehicles.  As soon as he turned onto the girl's street, he screeched to a stop and leapt from his car, leaving it in the middle of the lane, its door ajar.  The entrance to her unit was on the end of the building, around its corner, and he sprinted there at full speed.

He caught a glimpse of strawberry hair, but every other part of her was engulfed by a dark form.  James saw red.  He grabbed her attacker, hit him in the face, and threw him into the alley that ran behind the apartment.  Rick's body hit a metal dumpster with a sickening clang, leaving a large indent in its side.  He now lay motionless on his stomach on the asphalt, a strange gurgling sound coming from his lungs.  James took two steps towards him, prepared to finish him, when a faint rasp grabbed his attention.  He turned to see Ireland crumpled on the ground against her door. 

In a split second, he was at her side.  He saw plum colored marks on her neck and knew she'd been choked.  With one smooth movement, he gently scooped her up in his arms and tried the knob.  It remained locked.

"Ireland, can you hear me?" he asked, his voice unsteady.

She nodded and shifted her gaze from some far off point to James.

"Are you all right?"

Landi nodded again and mouthed,
Can't talk
. She fixed her eyes on his and tried to smile.  Tears began to roll down her cheeks even as the corners of her mouth twitched upwards, her lips trembling.  She began to shiver.

"I'm taking you to the hospital."

As James carried her towards his car, she dug her fingers into his shoulders and shook her head. She tried to say
No
several times.

"You're hurt.  You need to see a doctor," he said, placing her in his passenger seat.

"No," she rasped.

Her eyes grew large, and she appeared frightened.

"Did you know that guy?" he asked in as tender a tone as he could muster.

Rick
, she mouthed while nodding.

"Your ex?"

She nodded again.

"My keys," she said in a faint whisper.

"Where are they?" he asked.

She gingerly moved her head in the direction of her apartment.

"All right."

James gently placed her in his car and locked the doors, returning to her stoop.  He could still hear the gurgles coming from Rick but didn’t care.  He understood that Ireland didn't want to deal with the police.  She wanted him to find her keys so there would be no evidence of her attack.  He glanced around the immediate area, looking for a glint of metal.  She was right-handed, so she probably flung the keys in that direction, he reasoned, spotting a nearby bush.  Groping through its dense foliage, he found what he was looking for.  He slipped them in his pocket and returned to the car.

Once on the freeway, he phoned one of his associates and reported that someone needed help behind the apartment at Landi's address.  Ireland only caught the jist of the conversation but she knew she hadn't been mentioned.

James drove straight to Palmdale.  Before arriving, his coworker called him back, reporting that the local police had found Rick, after a tip-off informed them of his location.  The guy had been taken to the nearest hospital and was being treated for a punctured lung, broken ribs, fractured cheek bones, and a serious concussion.  It turned out that he was wanted by the San Bernardino Court for a
Failure to Appear
involving armed robbery charges, and across the border in Arizona for skipping out on bail in a drug case.  His friend informed Jim that Rick Jones would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law in those instances, and any other law enforcement might uncover.

"What on Earth?" Donald Crimshaw exclaimed when he opened the door to find his son cradling Ireland in his arms like a baby.

The girl looked terrible.  Donald took a step closer and noticed the marks on her neck.  She appeared to be sleeping.  Jim watched as his dad's jaw dropped and his eyes grew wide.

"She needs a place to rest—somewhere she feels safe, Dad," James whispered.

"What she needs is a doctor!" he whisper-yelled at his son.

Donald moved out of the way as James carried Landi inside and down the hall to Katrina's room.  His father trailed at his heels and drew the covers from the bed as James carefully laid the girl down, then pulled blankets over her small body.  Both men exited the dark room without saying anything.

"What happened, James?" his father demanded, gesticulating from behind the kitchen counter.

Mr. Crimshaw measured coffee grinds into his caffeine machine and filled the pot with water.  He flipped a switch, and James took a deep breath as the familiar sounds of the automatic coffee maker brought a small bit of comfort to the former sailor.  Landi was safe—safe in his father's home and resting in his sister's bed.  Now, all he had to do was explain things to his dad.

"I got a disturbing call from your sister today.  She said you'd gotten mixed up with her assistant somehow, hanging out at the apartment instead of working.  I had to talk her out of shortening her honeymoon to come back and sort things out."

"Kiki!" James growled between gritted teeth, his lips curled back inside his mouth forming a snarl.

His father continued, "What have you got to say for yourself, James?  Everyone warned you to stay away from that poor girl, and look what it's come to.  How could you take advantage of her?  She's all alone in the world, Jim.  Don't you understand that?  She's young and all alone in the world!"  Donald's decibel level rose with his frustration to a shouting level.

"No, she isn't!" James snapped.  "She's not as young as you think, and she's certainly not alone, Dad!" he yelled at his father, throwing his hands in the air.

Why did everyone always think the worst of him?  He watched as his father's eyes grew wide with disbelief.

"You'd better start at the beginning, Son," he said, pointing to a kitchen chair.

Jim complied and sat down.  His father brought him a cup of coffee and eased into a chair across the table from his boy.  Donald observed raw spots on his son's knuckles.  James had punched someone, and by the looks of his hands, he'd done some damage.

"Start with what happened tonight," his father commanded, hiding his worry.

His son had been a bit of a handful growing up.  Jim's temper in junior high and the first years of high school earned him the reputation of someone not to be messed with, and the Crimshaws' visits to the principal kept him on close terms with the administration.  James never started a fight, but he'd sure finish one, often coming to the aid of smaller students about to be victimized by bullies.  By his junior year, his reputation set in stone, no one dared try the boy, and he avoided any further brawls. 

He nodded and drew in a deep breath.

"Landi's former boyfriend attacked her.  He's done it once before that I know of.  She was running from him when she came to Los Angeles.  Luckily, I came upon them and stopped him."

"Is he alive?" Donald asked, staring at his son's knuckles.

"Yeah, the scum will make it.  But, he's going to do some serious time in a hospital and then in jail.  He's wanted for several crimes in more than one state."

James saw his father's expression and didn't like it.

"Don't think poorly of Ireland for getting involved with him, Dad.  She's known him since she was a kid, before he became a criminal.  They dated in high school, nothing more."

"So you called the police?"

"Sort of.  Don't worry about it, Dad.  It's all taken care of, and Ireland won't need to be involved or even face the creep again."

"Are you sure she doesn't need a doctor?"

"I don't think so.  I examined her, and I think she's just got a bruised windpipe and some sore spots where he manhandled her.  Her voice should be better tomorrow."

Donald released a long sigh. Jutting his lower lip out, he directed his exhale towards the ceiling.  He took a gulp of coffee, then wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

"Continue," he said, still not at ease with the situation.

"All right, but you cannot repeat most of what I'm going to tell you—and don't be angry with me for any misleading statements I might have made to you and Katrina."

"You mean lies?"

"Whatever you choose to call it, Dad."  James grinned at his father, hoping to lighten the mood, before continuing.  It would be a relief to get this all off his chest.