Delusive (5 page)

Elias’s eyes darted across the lot, zeroing in on a man and his daughter—or girlfriend—on the cusp of entering the restaurant.
 

“Excuse me, sir?” Elias waved his hand in the air, calling the man over.

Alerted and slightly confused, the stranger grabbed his daughter or girlfriend’s hand protectively and came over to us.
 

“My name is Elias Cari, I live… Take this down.” He nodded to the man, waiting for him to take out his cell phone.
 

The man hesitated, having noticed the way his companion stared longingly at Elias.
 

Elias snapped his fingers to draw the man’s attention and gave him a glare so cutting it coerced the man into compliance. Elias proceeded to give him his home address and cell number. The man tentatively entered the information into his phone. “My friend’s name is Hanley Harper and her number is…” Elias studied me, urging me for my phone number.

Knowing that it could’ve been a trick to obtain my number, I sighed and reluctantly gave it to the stranger in front of us.
 

“I want you to call Miss Harper in an hour. If she doesn’t answer, call the authorities and have them sent to my house.” Elias turned his attention toward me. “Does that make everything better for you?”

“You are…way too much,” I muttered, my expression lightening.

“It’s
never
too much” he retorted with an antagonizing grin.

With a nod, the stranger began to walk off. Taking the hand of his companion, whose feet had suddenly grown glued to the ground, he urged her to follow him by nearly dragging her along.

After quiet contemplation, I got into Elias’s car, allowing him to close the door behind me.

The car smelled like him: all citrus, fresh cotton, and a hint of spice. The heat was on full blast and a very welcome perk. When I looked at the dash, I frowned. The modernization of the interior ruined what could’ve been a perfect model for a classic muscle car.

“I wouldn’t peg you as a classic car connoisseur.” He effortlessly slid into his seat, pulled the seatbelt across his body, and slid it into the locking mechanism.

“What do you mean?” I questioned, fingering the quilted black leather panel with gold trimming on the door.

His left hand gripped the lower left quadrant of the steering wheel, preparing to turn the wheel. “The look on your face is that of a classic car purist.” He revved the engine, before shifting into reverse. Deftly manipulating the wheel with one hand, he backed out of the parking space. When he shifted to go forward, he picked up his speed—shifting and accelerating, nearly burning rubber.

He took the turn of a curve without using the brake. I grasped the seat to avoid slipping toward him.

“You have no reason to be nervous around me, Hanley. I control the machine, not the other way around. Besides, I race as a hobby. I learned from the best.”

“Street racing, you mean.”
 

“Sometimes drag, occasionally street.”

“That sounds…dangerous. Not that I would know anything about what you do, or what street racing is like.” I scrutinized his face, wondering if pretending I knew nothing about racing went over well.

“Why would you know? We aren’t familiar with one another.”

The glint of white between his lips made me glance at him. “Oh,” I replied. “You were joking.”

“Obviously very badly.”

Trying to relax, I rubbed the back of my neck and tried to imagine I was someplace else. The combination of the familiar car and his mere presence were all factors in what had begun to ruin the illusion of who I had to become—who I was made to be.
 

Stealing a glance at me, his smile grew mischievous. “Why are you always uncomfortable around me? Was it something I did?”

I wasn’t sure if he was fucking with me or not. Men as arrogant as he was knew the affect they had on people. He clearly enjoyed making me react to him. “I’m fine.”

He picked up my wrist and held up my lightly shaking hand. “Your hives have returned.”

I quickly took my hand away from my neck and settled it across my torso. My stomach felt as though it was tied into painful knots. “I had a lot of coffee today and…”
 

He shifted, slowing down his speed. “Better?” When I didn’t respond, he answered for me, “I didn’t think it would work. Where am I taking you?”

“Forty-two ninety-three Prescott. It’s in Trilogy at Kings. The gated community on the golf course…” I fell silent to prevent my sudden need to over-explain.
 

At another red light, he examined me with such intensity I felt like my most private parts were on display. His dark emerald hues flickered against the dimming light, indicating dusk was at an end. “I can’t say I’m used to women reacting to me this way.”
Which I find completely inconceivable.
“It makes me think something happened to you. Care to tell me what that was, Hanley?”

“Personal boundary breach,” I responded coldly.

He frowned and hit the button on the stereo system for the music. The unexpected sounds of Miles Davis’s “Blue in Green” tempered my sour mood.

With no signs of slowing down, he approached the off ramp for the road to my house. The turn off for my street passed me by, and eventually, was only seen in the rearview mirror through the darkly tinted back windows.
 

I cleared my throat to get his attention. “You missed the ramp that leads to my street.”

“I want to show you something,” he said, his voice carrying a melancholic tone.

“You said you’d take me home,” I protested, “and you made a promise to some random guy to get me home within an hour.”

It didn’t shake his demeanor. He easily shrugged it off, nonverbally telling me he was going to take me where he wanted me to go, whether I wanted him to or not. “What I want you to see won’t take long.”

Roth was my character study and turned out to be very easy to figure out, until he turned on me. Elias had very little information readily available on him. His past, his business dealings, even his current relationship status was impossible to find. Being in his presence didn’t offer any clues about the man. Other than his dominant nature, I held no faith in his inability to take me somewhere and kill me.
 

He exited the town limits, heading toward the county’s more rural areas with narrow roads and fields full of crops yet to be harvested. He pulled off onto a gravel road leading to a patch of land with a beautiful variety of flowers and plants. The full moon and starry night illuminated the flowers, and the array of colors made a rainbow.

My nerves became completely frazzled. I thought about chewing on my nails. After looking at the pristine red manicure, I changed my mind.
 

Shortly after opening his door, he paused to glance over at me. “Come with me.”

I stared at the glove compartment, wondering if there was a weapon in there I could use against him. “So you can kill me?”

“Hanley,” he sighed, not finding humor in my ironic joke. “I’m not going to hurt you. Can you trust me for one second?”
 

I got out of the car and followed him. He led me down a small passageway in the middle of the plentiful acres of greenery.

“Isn’t this private property?” My heels wobbled on the uneven gravel, making me unsteady.

“This land belongs to my parents,” he replied, preceding me along the path. “One of their vacation homes is located four acres behind the meadow.”

We walked farther, stopping our jaunt when we reached a paved circular clearing surrounding a reflecting pool encased in concrete in the center of a private race track. “My father built this for my mother. He wanted to give her something beautiful to look at when they spent the summers here while my father tested his cars. The flowers were imported.” He plucked one, staring at it fixedly. “Ipomoea: what the town is named after.”
 

I took in the scenery of the flowers in hues of white, red, blue, purple, and pink. A few were a beautiful tricolor of white, pink, and purple. “This place is gorgeous.” I sat on the bench overlooking the small manmade pond to the left of the track.

Sitting next to me, he placed a purple ipomoea on my lap and watched me.

“What?” My hand instinctively went up to cover my itchy neck.

“You’re looking at this as though you’ve never seen land before.”

As I viewed the sky, I was quickly mesmerized by the stars set against a blue-hued night. “I have. I just haven’t seen anything like this. My father and I bounced around a lot. I was born in Ocala, Florida, but it wasn’t exactly a nice neighborhood. Luckily, things got better for us and we moved to nicer places. My father preferred urban areas, so every time we moved, he’d get a condo in a luxury high rise downtown. My sister and I always thought he did that to have a good excuse to say no when we asked him for a dog or cat.” I crossed one leg over the other, continuing to be entranced with the beauty of things I’d never encountered before.
 

“Small world,” he said, his voice soft and little huskier than usual. “I was born in Ocala.”

Telling him where I was really born was a small slip up, but I never thought it would get me into trouble, because I wasn’t aware—nor was I told—that we were born in the same town. “You probably lived in a community like Bellechase or Westbury. When did your parents come here?”

“Actually, we lived in Country Club,” he replied, resting his arms on the backrest of the bench we were seated on. “We moved to Ipomoea shortly after my grandfather died. I was eight or nine at the time.”

I glanced at him sheepishly, observing the way he continued to study me. “Is there something wrong?”

“Not at all.” His warm smile returned. He adjusted the arm that lay behind me, moving his hand to finger the lower length of my hair. “I’m stopping myself from making your nerves worse…or having you react the way you do when I compliment you.”

My scalp prickled when it felt the slight movement of his hands, reaching up to finger the strands closest to my scalp. “I…react?”

“You become tense. The look on your face isn’t exactly the look I’m hoping to see.” He turned toward me and reached up to graze my neck, I jolted in response to the touch of his fingers on my skin. “And then, there’s that.”

“It isn’t that your compliments make me uncomfortable. I…” I shrugged, leaving my statement incomplete.

His hand swept across my hair, flipping the side closest to him over my shoulder to reveal one side of my face. “The beauty you are admiring is nothing compared to what I see every time I look at you.”

Confused as to whether I should roll my eyes or make my eyelashes flutter, I remained as still as a statue. Slowly, his posture sloped forward. His face neared mine, the heat of his breath teased my lips.

My lips tingled with desire for something I couldn’t have. My heart began to hammer in anticipation of something I wished I didn’t want. My mind screamed at me, telling me things that might not have been true, but it worked to return me to clearer thoughts.
 

The purpose behind what I thought was an innocent outing had become transparent. How many times had he taken a woman to this very spot to have his way with them by flashing his beautiful smile to get what he wanted? I may have been hopelessly naïve at times, but never intentionally stupid. I knew what he expected, but it wasn’t the way things were going to go. I had plans for the future—my future. A quick, fleeting night would ruin those plans.

Thinking he intended to kiss me, I abruptly got up and took a few steps backward. “I was hoping my snap judgment of you was wrong.” My disappointment was no longer easy to hide. “Why did you have to prove me or Skylar right? Did you run out of women you found attractive enough to fuck, and thought you’d try to get the new woman in town to spread her legs? I bet that guy back at the restaurant was a set up. I don’t spread my legs to cocky assholes. Can you please take me home now?” My vitriol was unintended and involuntary. It was drawn from an unexpected and unfamiliar place. On the brink of apologizing, I was interrupted.

He shot up from the bench with his palms pushing the air. The scowl on his face told me I’d offended him, deeply. “Slow down before you say something you might regret.” His voice boomed despite the control he had over the volume. “Even though I think it might be too late.”

“Yes.” I bobbed my head persistently. “I think that’s a really good idea. To slow down.”

“You think this is a predetermined spot where I take women to fuck them?” His tone was full of enough acridity to make me cringe. “I wouldn’t need a place like this to get what I wanted, if that was what I wanted. I haven’t encountered a woman who would appreciate this.” Placing his hands inside the pockets of his Italian wool slacks, he squinted at me like I was out of focus. “I was wrong in thinking you would.”

“You don’t know me,” I quietly reminded him.

“I’m getting the distinct impression you don’t want me to.” His voice was gruff and harsh with disapproval, matching the sudden hardness of his features.

“Well, I’m glad it’s clear,” I remarked, the projection of my voice continuing to fail me.

The hardness of his ire was thrown at me, silently. "Did you think I wanted to kiss you?"