Taking Jana (Paradise South #2) (20 page)

CHAPTER 28

J
ana felt good
Sunday morning. It had been a late night, so she was definitely sleeping in.

She reviewed the weekend in her sleepy mind. The girls rocked it on Friday night and were all
well-funded
for their efforts. And last night was further proof positive. All the girls had left the club ecstatic and exhausted. Gloriously, happily, wiped.

But with only fourteen girls split between the stage, the
semi-private
, and private back rooms, she hoped the inflated results the girls were so pumped about didn’t backfire on her when she did find more dancers.

And the ‘finding more dancers’ fun, she learned, would take her more time. Her efforts in scoping out the surrounding clubs didn’t yield a lot. Jana was only able to find three dancers worth stealing, and of them, only two were willing to come over to The Wet Spot, but not until next Thursday.

She had to thank God for Antonio, the only reprieve between each of the dives she had to venture into. Getting back into the limo to his calming presence, which contrasted so sharply with the oozing sleaze of the clubs, she’d felt soothed. And he’d have a cup of coffee for her, or a joke, a news report, or an unimportant weather update at the ready. He made her smile.

She smiled thinking about those small, stupid gestures of his. Until the club cell buzzed from the nightstand. She grabbed it fast, hating the jarring vibration.

“Hey…sleeping in?” Johnnie asked when the phone met her ear.

“Yeah, no. Just, yes. Really late night after you left. How are you?”

“Good. Really good. Fabulous weekend. I would have never thought it would be this quick. You’re magic, woman. Simply magic.”

She smiled with her eyes still shut, wishing sleep would stay, even as she talked to Johnnie for what she hoped would be a quick
touch-base
. “Awesome. Feels good. I’m really glad. For the club, the girls…”

“For you, Jana! My God. I’m gonna bring last week’s balance and this week’s pay to you on Wednesday, plus a sweet little bonus, just because.”

Although in a haze, she calculated quickly in her head—
fifteen grand
. That would be a relief. With her bank account receiving the credit card advances on Wednesday or Thursday, she’d have the hospital administrator off her back for at least a few weeks she hoped. “Thank you, Johnnie. I appreciate it.” Then there was silence. She so wanted to go back to her
half-sleep
.

“Are you in bed?”

“Yeah. I’m totally addicted to these sheets against my skin!” She rolled over and inhaled the fabric softener smell and laughed. “Why, are you?”

He responded with a low, quiet moan. “Yes. I am.”

“Resting up for another long week?”

“Yes, another long one.” A pause, then, “Jana? Do you have clothing on…? I mean, enough clothing? Do you need anything, like sleepwear? For me, in summertime, the heat leaves me wanting nothing on at all, you know?” A muffled laugh followed. Then breathing. Deep, heavy breathing.

She lifted her head off the mattress and placed it back onto the pillow, situating the phone more squarely at her ear. To hear better. To hear correctly. Because his breathing was definitely…thick, sultry. “I’m good with clothes. And the AC in the apartment helps. So, I’m really fine, Johnnie. Thank you, though.”

A long low hum hit her ears, then morphed into words. “Good. Really good. Jana, do you like the apartment?”

Was he kidding her? Seriously.

Now, she’d
consensually
phone-fucked
past boyfriends. Operative word, ‘consensually.’ And had done so enough times to know Johnnie needed her voice, her details, and her reaction. But she’d been clear with him, clear as fucking crystal. “Sorry, Johnnie, it’s the hospital, gotta go. Talk to you later.” And she hung up.

Jesus. If he would’ve asked. Not that she would have said yes, but who knows? Because she sure as hell could’ve used the release too. Maybe her line would have accommodated some innocent—and again, goddamn
consensual!
—phone sex.

But now she was just skeeved out of her mind.

And hanging up by using a white lie? Asians believed in Karma, and she was definitely brought up
shoes-off
-
in-the
-house,
incense-burning
Asian. She’d also
never
use sickness as an excuse to get out of something, lest the real thing come to light. That was karmic law. But she wasn’t about to let him use her like that. She felt gross, a little defiled even. And it really
could’ve
been the hospital calling her about payment or a donation, not necessarily anything to do with her father’s status.

She was now even gladder that Johnnie would be in Merrick again this week so she wouldn’t have to be around him so much. But shit, she’d see him on Wednesday for the damn show. He’d be bringing a chunk of her pay with him. So she had to go. No matter how badly she wanted to get out of it, she had to. It would totally piss him off if she didn’t because he had bought her the dress. What the hell had she gotten herself into?

No, it wasn’t anything as bad as Laynie probably had it, or God, Char or so many of the other girls. But she was under this guy’s thumb, and she couldn’t deny that she’d been warned.

Then her personal phone rang—the hospital.

Karma.

*

A shower. An ice cold shower. That’s what he needed.

Antonio rolled out of bed and shook out the image of her from his head. He felt guilty, fiendish, like she’d had enough men stealing her image for their own sexual fantasies. But he’d gone to sleep thinking about her every night for the last several nights and woke up the same way.

His thoughts, he justified, were different, though. She was singing in his visions, or speaking to him, telling him her thoughts and ideas. Stories. Sometimes in her lulling Spanish. God, that really got him. And sometimes just her giggle would fill his internal mental movie because he was the source of her laughter.

But he couldn’t lie. Her sensual body, her being, her angelic silhouette, she was all there, there in his dreams. And, God, it was as if her form was sent from heaven to torment and torture him. And the more he tried to stay respectfully objective when looking at her stunning figure, the stronger the magnetic pull got, and the more he wanted to connect with her. A deep,
locked-in
connection.

But his dreams of Jana had at least replaced his nightmares of Michelle. He could only feel relief, an inner liberation from the hold his wife, God,
soon-to
-be
ex-wife
, had on him. With Jana taking over his dreams, the image of Michelle became fuzzy, blurry. It was better. He felt stronger.

The shower sputtered to a start, and he stepped under the water. Not having even turned on the hot, he had nothing to wait for. His
hard-on
was bordering on painful.

As soon as the water hit his chest and stomach, he blew out a stream of air with the shock. This would do it. This would cool him off, at least until noon.

He dropped his chin to his chest, letting the showerhead’s icy daggers attack the top of his head and spill down his back. Shivers sprang from his shoulders, and he had to work to unclench his teeth.

He took the bar of soap and spun it around in his palms. Lather bubbled up through his fingers as he started humming a song from his playlist, one that Jana had been singing incessantly all week long, an older ballad by
ARBY
. It was officially stuck in his head. That might help his
hard-on
die down. Because without Jana’s voice, only the words to go by, it actually made him think of Michelle, and she was a definite
erection-killer
.

Raise up. Or
die.

Stand up. Just
try.

You expect her to leave you, she
will.

Don’t just wait for it, you go
first.

So just tear it up. Tear it out. Tear it
down.

You be the one with the whip. Not in the
ground.

And they’re the ones begging for
mercy.

They’ll be lost and you’ll be
found.

Lost and found. Lost and found. You’ll be
found.

He slammed his fist on the wall. And then again.

If he’d just opened his goddamn eyes. Damn her. He pounded the tile a third time and immediately forced his mind’s eye to replace Michelle with Jana. Jana’s eyes, Jana’s neck, and her body’s curves. Then he imagined her voice.

Jaws clenched, feet anchored, biceps tightened, he thought of Jana. She was with him in his mind, right behind his tensed body. Her wet, slippery skin, radiating warmth; her nipples pressed against his back. Her hands held his hips and then slid around to his front and down, teasing his engorged length with her light, soft touch. He imagined her taking him in her slender hands while he took his rock hard cock in his right fist and stroked its pulsating length to its crown. Then he slid it back down, tight and hard. Her lips, he imagined, pecked light kisses on his back, down his spine, then back up to his shoulder blades. Her imagined breath gave him the chills and pushed him closer to the brink. His left arm rose up and slapped the wall and pressed forward, keeping him stable. He widened his stance, bracing himself. His fist glided along his thickness faster and faster.
Oh God, Jana.
His glutes tightened, his abs tensed, his shoulders held strong, supporting the quickness of his stroking arm, driving him closer and closer to release.
Jana.

And when he went, the torrential groan that rumbled in his throat echoed in the small space of the shower and in his ears until he got to the very end of his intense orgasm. He still imagined Jana through to the aftershocks, exhaling hard with her name on his lips.

CHAPTER 29

H
e answered her
call after many rings. His voice sounded raspy to her, spent. She had woken him.
Shit!

“I’m so sorry, Antonio. Shit, I should’ve just called a cab—”

“Jana, what’s wrong? Hell, it doesn’t matter. I’m on my way.”

“No, you’ll miss your class.”

“No arguments. You’re at the apartment?”

“Yes. I’ll wait out front.”

Ten minutes later, Antonio pulled up, his dark hair a bit shaggy and wet, like he’d just jumped out of the shower, not even having time to drag a comb across his head.

“My mother called. Wouldn’t say what happened. Just to come quick, and then she hung up. She won’t answer her cell now. No one is picking up the hospital room phone either. And I’d rather just start heading up there while I wait through the
never-ending
cycle of the hospital’s automated system, you know?”

“Buckle up. I’ll be driving a little faster than normal.” He pulled out and his tires screeched. “Don’t worry…if we get pulled over, I have friends on the local force and in the state patrol. My students. We won’t be delayed.”

Antonio said not another word, completely focused on the road while Jana hung on hold through the various departments and levels to try and get any more information about her mother’s call.

They were nearly to the hospital’s exit when she finally got connected to the right unit. As she explained who she was to the operator, a text message flashed on her screen.

From her brother.

She put the call on speaker and looked at the text while waiting for another transfer.

Irresponsible much? Dad’s being downgraded rms. for unpaid
bill.

“Stop the car. Please. Just…pull over or get off the highway. Just stop the car, Antonio. Anywhere.” Her breath was shallow. Her words pushed through clenched teeth. A freight train roared through her veins, to her chest, then her forehead, to the top of her skull.

“What? Is everything okay?”

“There is. No. Emergency.” She exhaled the statement like a dragon decimating a village with one fiery flame.

“Your dad is—”

“Fine. He is the same. The big deal was him being moved into a room without a goddamn television.” Her mother’s cryptic phone call, the one that gave Jana a
near-heart
attack, was about the billing department ‘needing’ payment. Even though she’d been in daily contact with the hospital since last week when she couldn’t take her mother as the middleman any longer.

And fucking boo hoo for her dad. No entertainment? Hell, maybe the lack of a TV would motivate him to get out of there, to get home. Maybe he’d get serious about his health, his life?

And then reporting to Dane? Again! The nerve of her mother, and the bloody gall of her bastard brother. He never even called her to check on things, let alone send a dime. Or better yet, how about coming out to check on their beloved dad? Fucking asshole! Even for a day? Oh no, the cost! Right.

She brought her attention back to the here and now. “Sorry, Antonio. Didn’t mean to snap.”

His eyebrows drew together while he shook his head. “No worries and don’t be silly.”

They drove for a few minutes, she didn’t know where, and she didn’t care. She knew they were no longer going north to Fort Lee, and that was all that mattered.

*

When her mind stopped reeling, her eyes came into focus on a road sign out her passenger side window. ‘Welcome to Palisades State Park.’ And the next thing she knew, they were stopped at a grassy expanse, a hill in front of them, blue sky beyond.

“Come,” he told her, his eyes sweet and understanding, his voice comforting, yet solid. Antonio the Guardian. He was her glowing torch, lighting her way out of a dark, dismal hole.

She got out of the car, conscious enough to take her purse, but sensing the pureness of her surroundings, she felt almost silly doing so. They’d entered what seemed to be an unspoken
safe-zone
. Between the lush, pristine park setting and Antonio as her guide, she had not a question in her mind that she was as safe and secure as she’d ever been. But she slid her shoulder strap across her body even still. After five years in the City, she’d become an official New Yorker it seemed.

They walked along a quaint path winding through the bright green
fresh-cut
lawn, sporadic trees, park benches, small gazebos, and vacant playgrounds that dotted the way. Sunday, early morning, the place was practically all theirs. It was a bit too surreal.

*

Still not a word from Antonio since they’d left the car. She’d only just begun to breathe evenly. The volcano in her chest was simmering, but the molten lava circulating throughout her body was still dangerously hot, scorching right under the now cooling top crust.

She felt calm enough then to speak. They walked on as she told Antonio about her brother who’d abandoned her, robbed her and their parents of much more than money, and her burden, her obligation to her folks, that thankless lunacy. And the dilemma, the constant struggle to reach an unreachable standard in the eyes of her father.

Antonio listened, absorbed, and processed as she continued her dazed, robotic march and monolog while marching through the twisting, turning path.

When her rant was done, Antonio stopped her with a light touch of his hand on her elbow. “Jana,” he said, shaking his head to go with narrowed eyes, and God, clamping jaws, shallow breath. “They don’t, I repeat, they
do not
, deserve you.”

Jana looked away from his drilling gaze. It didn’t matter if they did
deserve
her or if they didn’t. “It just is this way.”

*

“Look,” he said turning her body with gentle hands. “I wanted you to see this.”

A memorial of the Twin Towers stood before her.
Ghost-gray
cement replicas, tall, plain, solid. Their mulch foundation base was formed in the shape of a heart.

Jana crumbled to the ground from where she stood. Staring, tears welling in her eyes.

Antonio joined her there on the ground, his presence a silent comfort, like the day outside the library when she felt him pass her by. And then her tears rolled down her cheeks so slowly and deliberately, she could almost count them as they fell.

How small her huge problems were, how insignificant, puny even. Her satirically selfish brother, her unsympathetic, ungrateful and needy mother and the heartless patriarch of her gene pool, Chang Park, none of them made the tiniest dent compared to the representation of tragic tyranny standing there in front of her face.

“You must think I’m pathetic.”

“What are you talking about? How can you say that? God, you’re anything but.”

“I
have
a family
to
complain about. How many of those people don’t have families anymore?” she asked rhetorically, pointing at the memorial. “My father is still alive. I’m sulking every day for the injustices of my brother, my parents, the financial crap, all while thousands no longer have dads, or brothers, mothers…futures.”

“I didn’t bring you here for you to feel guilty. No more guilt, Jana. This was to show you a mirror of your strength. You stand tall, as tall as these towers did originally and do again today. Despite everything trying to tear you down, you rebuild taller, stronger.”

She let her purse drop on the ground, took a long deep breath and let her head surrender onto Antonio’s shoulder. She exhaled. And let her thoughts go.

*

A long stretch of time went by until he gently touched her back, signaling for her to get up and to continue on with him. They continued their walk in complete and divine silence, entering tree cover, thick green leaves altering and shifting the yellow sunlight above. They reached an open clearing then, with tall jagged cliffs to one side and the great wide Hudson River ahead. She couldn’t believe this existed. In all her life, from Fort Lee to her years dancing in Newark, then to Manhattan, she’d never imagined this piece of heaven existed, smack in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle that was her life. Not even her brief escapes to Central Park could compare.

“I’m married.” He broke the silence as they approached the banks of the river. “Have been driving around with the divorce papers she served me a few weeks ago.”

Jana looked at him. All her thoughts on her own mental bubbles of pain popped one by one as a new, larger one grew in her head. He was married?
Is married.
But divorce papers. Unsigned? Why? Was he still in love with her? Clobbering questions. Unanswered and overwhelming.

And what was her hitched breath all about? Why did Antonio’s being married or not married or whatever he was matter to her?

Because it did. It mattered. Deep in her chest it somehow mattered a ton.

*

But she could only keep quiet. She turned down the volume in her head and listened for the answers to come.

He didn’t say another word, though. He only reached for the ring on his left ring finger and twisted it.

The ring. His
real
wedding ring?

He twisted more, then yanked, finally pulling it off. He drew his right arm back with that gold band in hand, took a skip step ahead, and threw it. It flew so far into the Hudson River, she couldn’t even spot where it landed and subsequently sank.

His chest was heaving, like he was out of breath, but, of course, he wasn’t. It was just tumultuous emotion she was sure.

“Now I’m ready to sign the papers. Ready to be divorced. Ready to be done with her,” he said as if in
mid-thought
. And for now, for her wringing heart, that was all she needed to hear.

He turned to Jana, smiling. He had a glow in his now golden eyes, a new color, a new shade she’d not yet seen. It must have been the rays breaking through the thin layer of clouds above. Diffused but clarifying light and with it, a sense of pure liberation radiated from him.

He plopped down on the grass, laid back, put his hands behind his head, and let out one loud, seemingly joyful breath.

She joined him,
free-falling
into the grass. With the tips of their elbows touching, she stared up at the sky full of those
high-flying
wisps thinking how any woman who’d won this man could ever think to let him go.

“I worked a lot.”

Jesus Christ in Heaven.
It was like he’d read her thoughts! Seriously?

“Well, I still work a lot.” He spoke to her and to the sky above while chills, endless chills, continued up and down her, and in and out of her.

“But she said that’s why she left, or rather, went
elsewhere
. Because I never focused on the most important thing—
her
. But the fact was, every minute I put into work was a minute closer to starting our life together, our family together. It was all for her!” He paused a beat then turned his head to look straight at Jana. “My goal was always to return to my home, to my Vallarta, to start a family, but only after I was financially stable. Completely set. When Michelle and I got together and throughout our blip of a marriage, she was in love with the idea. She said so at least. She
seemed
wholly committed, my dream being her dream too. ‘A slice of paradise with the man I love,’ she’d said. Damn lies. All damn lies.”

“Jesus, Antonio. I don’t know what to say.”

“It turns out, she was nothing but a gold digger. When my prick boss promised her all the bright shiny objects she could ask for, she took back her promise to me in an instant. We’d been married only seven months.” He blew out a long breath and went on. “In the end, she accused me of marrying her for a green card. For a goddamn green card! My
brother-in
-law got me in at the Manhattan gig in the first place. All legit. How she thought I managed such a high position in such a large outfit without being legal, I don’t know? And all I ever spoke of was getting back home. I never wanted a green card or citizenship. I don’t know. I guess I overlooked a lot of her flaws throughout our relationship. My blindness—my fault.”

Jana shook her head. And when her phone rang, definitely the club phone, as she knew the sound by now, she ignored Johnnie’s call. She would have ignored all others too, even Nora’s. She felt like she owed all her attention to the man lying next to her and not a single iota to anyone else.

But she couldn’t think of anything to say to Antonio, and she somehow knew she didn’t really need to. Instead, she began to hum. A song from his ‘mellow yellow’ playlist from the music player he’d loaned her, that first perfect gesture of kindness; at least, the first that she’d been aware enough to notice.

The melody brought her peace as the notes rattled in her throat and slipped from her lips. Then the lyrics came to her mind:

The phoenix, burning up in cleansing
flame,

Just to rise from the ashes, life anew, breathe
again.

The phoenix, incarnation of the
sun,

Deepest in us, never doubt you are the
one.

Never doubt you are the one. The
phoenix.

“You should sing. I mean really sing. For people.” He didn’t hide the damp emotion in his eyes. She’d never known a man to be so raw and strong and completely unabashed. And she hardly even realized she’d been singing out loud and she blushed. Then she broke into a helpless smile. “Thank you. For bringing me here.”

Before he could reply, her phone buzzed the moment away. Johnnie again.