Belle Pearl (7 page)

I
had
planned for Bora Bora, but who cared? As long as we sealed the deal, we could go anywhere. I grabbed the keys from the ignition and scooped Pearl into my arms and then flung her over my shoulder, so I had my hands free. She was kicking like a child, screaming like a little girl.

“Put me down Alexandre! This isn’t funny!”

“Then why are you laughing?”

“Because this is preposterous! You’re being outrageous!”

I strode over to the trunk of her car and took out her suitcase; a vintage Luis Vuitton, the weight of which was hard to manage with Pearl jiggling and kicking and flailing her arms about and thumping my back. My Taekwondo training certainly helped me manage this little vixen.

“Enough, Pearl. Stop behaving like a child. Or I’ll have to spank you.”

“Ha, very funny. You are
insane,
Alexandre Chevalier! Let me down! I won’t marry you. I won’t, I
won’t!”

“Yes, you will. Stop playing games.”

“Don’t you dare try and control me, you arrogant French shit!”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Pearl. I know what I want and it’s your crazy ass. You know it, and I know it. You
know
that we’re meant to be together but you’re just too stubborn to accept it right now. Stop wasting time because in the end, I’ll get my way.”

“Ha!” she squealed, still laughing. “You can’t marry me because you don’t have proof of my divorce!”

Pearl had underestimated me. I’d gotten my hands on her divorce papers weeks ago. “All taken care of, baby. All will be quite legal I can assure you.”

I practically threw her into the back of my Mercedes and quickly locked the door. Child safety locks. She couldn’t get out. She was pummeling the windows and I too, knew that I was behaving like a madman. But I didn’t care. I wanted Pearl Robinson—soon to be Chevalier—and I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I drove off. I could see her through my rearview mirror pouting like a ten year-old in the back seat. The Sophie topic came up. Of course. Pearl was convinced, now, that Sophie was out to kill her.

She announced, “Laura called.”

Shock horror!
The word, ‘Laura’ made my body flush with heat and nausea. Had she revealed all to Pearl?
Oh, Jesus.
My stomach churned.
What is that psycho up to now?

“She told me that Sophie is sure to have me killed in Vegas. That she owns chunks of it…hotels, everything; that she’s powerful and owns politicians and police and—”

“Nonsense,” I interrupted. I tried to sound nonchalant. It was true, Sophie did have important contacts in Vegas…did own hotels there. But the last thing she’d do was hurt Pearl. Hell, she wanted Pearl to be her friend!
Oh Laura, oh Laura, why can’t you fucking stay out of my life?

Pearl pounded her fist on the car seat. “Why are you ignoring me? Sophie will have me murdered—I’ll end up in a dumpster somewhere in Vegas, all because you won’t take this seriously!”

In that second, I so wanted to come clean. Tell Pearl about Laura drugging me. Assure her that Laura was making this rubbish up. But I knew that it would make things worse with Pearl. She was on the edge. Admitting that I’d had Laura on top of me, naked, would hardly be the right move—no, Pearl wouldn’t have accepted that for a second. So I said nothing, just kept driving to Van Nuys airport where the jet would be waiting.

“Sophie’s insane,” Pearl went on. “She stabbed your father in the groin!”

Something in me snapped. If it hadn’t been for Sophie, I’d be in a loony bin by now. I bashed my closed fist on the steering wheel. “Don’t you fucking bring my monster father into this!” I shouted.

Pearl was silenced for a while. I could hear her uneven breathing. She really did believe that Sophie was going to have her topped off, but my hands were tied.

I changed gear. “She’s jealous Pearl, that’s all.” What else could I say?
Laura tried to fuck me?
“Sophie will get used to you.”

“She won’t fucking get ‘used’ to me because I’m bailing, Alexandre. I value my life too highly. I love you. I’m
in
love with you, but I refuse to marry you with that crazy woman in the picture!”

The truth was on the tip of my tongue again. I wanted to blurt it all out. Assure her Laura was nuts. But if I did that, Pearl would want to know why. No, with the state she was in—her nightmares, her instability—now wasn’t the time. So I just said, “I made some calls tonight. I’m selling HookedUp to Sophie, once and for all.” It was only half a lie. I
had
discussed it with Sophie but nothing had been set in stone. “Satisfied?”

The truth was I wanted those wedding bands on our fingers, first. Seal the deal. My mission was to marry Pearl and sort the rest out afterwards. Typically male, I realized later. I should have laid all my cards on the table.

But I didn’t.

And it got me into more of a mess than I imagined possible.

“Don’t try and pussy-whip me, Pearl,” I said, ridiculously grabbing onto any excuse, like a child holding onto a balloon, hoping it will whisk him up and away into some fantasy land.

There was silence and then Pearl said in a quiet voice, “I got pussy-whipped tonight.”

Then the second set of secrets was revealed. Pearl told me that she found a photo of Sophie and Alessandra in an embrace. So
that
was who Sophie was seeing.
Jesus, the plot thickened.
I looked guilty as Rex with a stolen bar of chocolate. The fact that I had no idea that Alessandra was Sophie’s new romantic partner didn’t let me off the hook. I hadn’t told Pearl that Sophie was gay—that was her private life. Sophie was bailing out Samuel Myers and acting as a silent partner on
Stone Trooper
. Sophie and Alessandra were in each other’s panties. Alessandra had also wheedled her way into Pearl’s panties, or so it sounded from Pearl’s pussy-whipped quip.
What a fucking tangle. All the more reason to abduct Pearl and take her away with me and get that bloody ring on her finger.

“Interesting,” I mused. “Sophie met Alessandra after that play we went to see her in in London.” I laughed. This whole scenario could have been some silly sitcom.

“Did you hear what I said, Alexandre?” Pearl was leaning forward, still in the back seat, her angry breath on my neck. “I got pussy-whipped by Alessandra.”

“Well I’m not surprised,” I answered, coolly. “She was all over you.”

“She seduced me and I let her! I have a sore ass. I’m a fucking head-case. Why the hell do you want to marry me, anyway? I’m a quasi lesbian. I can’t do a work deal without being screwed. Yeah, I’m screwed in every way you look at it. I’m a mess, Alexandre.”

I couldn’t help but let a smile curve onto my lips. “I know.”

“No you don’t! You thought I was perfect!”

“Perfect for me, chérie. Perfect for me. I guess you must have figured out by now that I’m hardly normal myself. And what happened to you in the past has only made me love you more. We need each other, baby. We’re both two dysfunctional peas in the same pod. And we won’t be able to
dis
-function properly without one another, you’ll see. If you try and run away from me, from
us
, you’ll come back because we’re destined to be together.”

Famous last words.

Little did I know that ‘run away’ was exactly what Pearl had planned.

With the car parked, and Pearl desperate for the ladies room, we went inside the small airport of Van Nuys. She dashed to the toilets.

I waited for her. And waited.

I stood there like a fucking lemon, holding Pearl’s handbag. At first I wasn’t paying attention because I was so busy talking on my cell, organizing our wedding. What a fucking joke. I called the car rental people to ask them to come and pick up the car key from me.
Hang on a minute…where’s the bloody key?
I fumbled in my jacket pocket…no key.
Did Pearl have it? No, why would she?
That was the first alarm bell. When I saw that the coast was clear and no other women were in the ladies room, I snuck in.

“Pearl? Hurry up, baby. Are you done?” She had told me that she needed to change her tampon. Nothing. The place was empty. I peered into all the cubicles.
What the fuck?
Then I saw…I looked up and there was a tiny window, wide open. I dashed out of the room, through some double doors, and onto the tarmac to the spot where I’d parked the Mercedes.

Gone.

She’d done a bloody runner! I looked in her bag and she had even left her phone behind. And her credit cards. She was
that
desperate to escape from me. A woman on the run. As if I were a wife-beater or something—she wanted nothing more than to get the hell away from me. Tears prickled my eyes.
This woman does not want me
. I felt as if a hole had been scooped out of my gut. Now I knew the British expression of ‘feeling gutted.’

The jet was waiting.

But without Pearl, I had nowhere to go.

6

T
hat whole night was torturous. I feared that in Pearl’s state she’d drive off a cliff or something, so I called the car rental company and, as I suspected, they had a GPS system fitted underneath the car—Pearl could be tracked. I offered them a bribe, or as I liked to phrase it, “a big tip” so that I could keep her under my radar without causing too much fuss. But it was proving to be tricky because I hadn’t included Pearl in the insurance policy (how the fuck was I to know that she’d make off with the car?) so I bought the car, instead. It was heading toward San Francisco. Good. She was on her way to her brother’s, obviously. My head was like a computer unscrambling data. I couldn’t find a solution to my predicament. The only words I heard ricocheting in my brain were,
Pearl doesn’t want you Alexandre
.
Accept it.

I made up my mind, then and there; I wasn’t going to chase after her anymore. I’d take my own tried and tested advice: let her come to me—the bulldozer technique hadn’t worked. I remembered a couple of adages—ironically given to me by my father (when he was in one of his kind moods):
What’s yours won’t go against you
, and
What’s yours will come back to you.
Was Pearl mine?
I
certainly felt she was. I’d have to wait and see. Wait and see if she would return to me—be mine. And not only come back to me, but stick with me for good. I had to bide my time.

Having paid for the jet, I thought I might as well use it, so I flew straight to San Francisco and checked into a hotel. I totaled up the amount of hours it would have taken her to drive here, and I called Anthony, knowing that by now, she would have arrived. He denied that she was with him. More proof that she wanted out. I told him I had a team of detectives on the case. I wanted her to feel the gravity of what she’d done. I didn’t need a detective; I myself was enough of a Sherlock Holmes to make up for the whole of Scotland Yard. But he believed me, I guess.

After I hung up, I listened to the messages on Pearl’s phone. Most of them from me—but then one from Laura. I pressed my ear to the receiver and heard her sickly sweet-butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth tone:

“Pearl, you don’t know me. I’m sorry to bother you like this. I finally tracked down your number. My name’s Laura, Alexandre’s ex…maybe you know who I am?”

I shook my head in disbelief. This woman was one hell of a piece of work.

“I’m calling to warn you. Sophie’s really crazy. She could be out to hurt you. I’m sorry but…” at this point Laura did a nice little acting job; she sniffled down the line and put on a weak, pathetic, poor-me voice. “I had a terrible accident several years ago and could have died.”
Wish you bloody had.

The message rambled on in a Good Samaritan voice, ending with, “As one woman to another I thought I owed you this…”

I heard a guttural roar tear from my throat as I threw the cellphone against the wall and it smashed to the floor.

I was in this Laura shit up to my neck. She was such a good liar that I feared Pearl wouldn’t believe me if I told her the real story. So I did what all guilty fools do; I dug myself in even deeper. I created more lies to cover myself. To this day, I will never forgive myself for this: I
lied
to Pearl.

The following afternoon, I waited for Pearl in Anthony’s back yard. She came into the garden, her hair wet; she’d obviously been for a swim. She looked so beautiful in a bedraggled sort of way, her blonde hair loose over her shoulders, her eye make-up smudged. She looked as tired as I felt. I took her by surprise, as if she hadn’t expected me. What did she think? That I wouldn’t find her? I wanted to hug her there and then, take her in my arms, but my voice of reason kicked in and told me that I needed to stick to my plan.
Make her come to me. Don’t suffocate her. Give her time to sort out her fucked-up state of mind.

She stuttered, “Alexandre, I…I’m…I’m sorry, I didn’t know what I was doing last night.”

My lips tipped into a crooked, ironic smile and I took a step back. My pride kicked in. “Oh yes, you did, Pearl. You seemed to know exactly what you were doing.”