The Penance of Black Betty (4 page)

              “Thanks. Wait!” Barb turned around. “I was wondering if you had any of those celebrity magazines you were talking about. I’d like to look at them.” She gave a sly smile. “Always good to be one step ahead of the game.”

              Barb laughed. “I’ll grab a couple from the break room and bring them in.”

              ***

              The headline on the front page of
The Hollywood Harpy
read: Real Life Black And Blue For Alistair’s Dominatrix. Chessa Bond was named in the byline.

             
Dominatrix?!?

              Bethany put her fingertips to her throat, felt where the leather collar had dug into her neck. She was as submissive as a woman could get. If she wasn’t…Trent would teach her…

              She shivered at the remembered brutality.

             
It’s all in the past. It’s 2013 now.

              But, that word—dominatrix—staring up at her from the black and white newsprint. That couldn’t be right. She read on:

              “Bethany Stavars, a.k.a. Black Betty, ex-employee and dominatrix at Las Vegas private men’s club, Dolls & Doms, has been hospitalized after a break in at the Hollywood mansion where she’s been staying.

              Stavars’s Pretty Woman-like escape from the seedy Las Vegas underbelly to the luxurious Hollywood mansion of actor Alistair Ingram has ignited an uproar among fans of the mega-popular celebrity. “He could have anyone he wants,” says Lindsey, 28, Kansas City, Missouri. “Why a stripper from Vegas?”

              “I think it shows what kind of person he is. He obviously has self-esteem issues if he dates so far beneath him,” states Trish, a fan from Brooklyn, NY.

              After being admitted into the ICU, Stavars is now reported to be recovering in her own room. While LAPD has made no comment on the case, word has been leaked that nothing was taken from Ingram’s home and speculation runs rampant. “Her ex has given her some problems in the recent past,” a former co-worker of Stavars’s has told us, asking to remain anonymous. “Wrecked her condo here in Vegas. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was behind this.”

              Filming for Ingram’s blockbuster hit of next summer, Hues of Black And Blue, has been delayed while Ingram is off-set. While Producer Henry Wallace has issued this statement: “It is a tragedy that Mr. Ingram has had this happen in his personal life and had to leave the set. We wish Ms. Stavars a speedy recovery,” allegedly he’s days away from replacing Ingram for the lead role.

              “It’s a shame,” says actress and Ingram’s ex-fiancé, Heather Winston. “He has such a bright and promising career in front of him. I hope he doesn’t throw it all away.”

              Ingram and Winston’s very public break-up due to his infidelity with Stavars almost cost him being cast as the lead in Hues of Black And Blue. Now that he’s in the driver’s seat on the film, he’s once again been derailed by Stavars. With this latest domestic problem, she might be a permanent road block to his career if he’s not back in Seattle filming by the end of next week.”

              Bethany felt like she was reading about someone else’s life. This couldn’t be hers. She’d been dominatrix at a place called Dolls & Doms? She couldn’t even perceive how that could’ve come about. She probed and prodded her memory for one single shred of evidence that she was the Bethany Stavars in the article. She had to be—she knew—but how?

              Then there was the fact that Alistair had risked—and was still risking—his career for her. Losing fans for her. His story about how he’d been in need when they met…she understood, but couldn’t quite make the dots connect. Nobody had ever sacrificed anything for her. Not her parents growing up, not Trent—that she could recall—
nobody.
Why on earth would Alistair Ingram, the movie star, put his career on the line to be with her?

              “She’s right in there,” Bethany heard her nurse, Barb, say from the nurses’ station outside her door. “Room five oh three.”

              “Thank you,” Alistair said. She heard his footsteps approaching and tossed the Hollywood Harpy on the floor between her bed and the side table just as he stopped in her doorway. “You’re awake,” he said, smiling brightly.

              She smiled back. Inside her chest, her heart crashed. Her emotions were all over the map. Who was this man? She had no idea. No real-life memory of him at all. Not his eyes, his voice, nothing that wasn’t from a movie or T.V. show—something—ten years earlier. Wait. Were her memories of him from ten years ago?

              “You were a waiter,” she blurted. His eyebrows rose in surprise as he eased into the room. “It was a movie about a rich older woman you seduced.”

              “Serving Jane,” he said, tilting his head. His brow creased. “You remember that? That was only four years ago. Are memories coming back?”

              She shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. That’s the only way I know you.”

              His face fell. He licked his lips. “Oh. Right.” The smile was back, but didn’t seem as sincere, more a forced show of faith for her. “Well, everything will come back in time, I’m sure.”

              For a moment, she wanted to reach for him, hold him, protect him from feeling abandoned by her faulty memory. “I’m sorry,” she said.

              He took her hand. “Nothing for you to be sorry about. You’ll remember. If you don’t, we’ll simply start over. Reliving the best days of my life would be a pleasure with you.”

              His eyes held hers as he leaned over and kissed her hand. Her heart knew even if her head did not. There was something very big, very strong between them. She had to find it again.

             
EIGHT

              Alistair knew he should want Bethany to get her memory back—and he did, but only certain pieces. He didn’t want her to remember what it was like to be closed off and locked behind that wall she’d put up between herself and men. Between her and
him
. It took him a while to get that wall knocked down and if she remembered then there was a chance she’d put it back up again.

              “I talked to the doctor last night,” he said. “He might let you go home today.”

              She blinked a few times, like the word home was foreign to her. She didn’t remember his house. Her home.
Their
home. It wasn’t like she’d been there very long, and now she couldn’t even recall ever stepping foot inside the door.

              “I live with you?” she asked, but it was more a confirmation than a question.

              He nodded. “Is that okay?”

              “I…I guess. If that’s where I live then it’s okay, right?”

              “If you’re asking if I still want you there, there’s no question. I’ll always want you there.” He took her hand. “If you’re not there, it’s not home. I might as well live in hotels and not bother with a house if you aren’t there with me.”

              He watched her face blush slightly. If he wasn’t witnessing Bethany, “Black Betty” flush for himself, he would’ve never believed it. The past ten years had made her into a totally different person. This woman before him was vulnerable, delicate. Everything Black Betty had despised and vowed never to be again.

              “But, I was thinking,” he said, leaning in closer, “if you would rather go somewhere to recuperate, I know the perfect place. We’ve been there before. You loved it.”

              “Where?” she asked, tentative, but the word was edged in eagerness.

              “Somewhere we vacationed. It’s where we kind of…what’s the right way to define what happened…came together, I guess. Admitted we had feelings for each other and wanted to be a couple.”

              “Oh.” Her eyes darted from mine, down to our hands. “I wish I could remember.”

              “I know. In the meantime, we can go back and you can relax and let the sun warm your skin. What do you say?”

              She looked thoughtful, but a crease above her left eyebrow told him something was troubling her. “Do you know my family? Should they be told about this?”

              Alistair rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. “You don’t speak with any family. It was just you. Then us.” He couldn’t resist running a hand through her hair, pushing stray golden strands off her face. “I’ll take care of you.”

               “You’re all I have?” Again the question was more a statement, a confirmation.

              He gave her a smile. “I hope I’m enough.”

              She stared at him, expressionless, but clung to his hand like she hoped he was enough, too.

              ***

              That afternoon Bethany was released. Alistair went home and packed both of them a suitcase, called a repair man, the cleaning lady and a realtor. There was no way he was ever bringing Bethany back to this house where she’d been brutally attacked by her ex. The realtor would find them somewhere else to live while they were away. The big, square, modern house they’d been living in was what Heather Winston had envisioned for her and Alistair, anyway. He’d always thought it was ugly. So did Bethany.

              They’d start over, her memory fresh and their home a new place just for them.

              When his driver pulled up to the hospital, she was waiting in a wheelchair with an aide right inside the doors. Alistair hopped out of the black SUV and lifted her up onto the seat.

              “I can manage,” she said, but her protest was meek.

              He’d had a pair of yoga pants and matching track jacket and t-shirt dropped off at the hospital for her with her personal, womanly supplies from the bathroom at home. She had her hair up in a ponytail and only enough makeup to help conceal some of the bruising on her face. Alistair couldn’t help but smile. She looked seventeen. This was most definitely not the woman he was used to.

              “I think I packed everything you’ll need,” he said, as his driver took off out of the hospital.

              “Where are we going?” She picked at the seat, nervously.

              “It’s a surprise.” Then he thought maybe the past week had brought her enough surprises. “Unless you’d rather know?”

              He realized as she debated that what he had really asked, without actually asking, was if she trusted him. That was a lot to ask of someone who didn’t remember you. “Cozumel,” he blurted, telling her for his own relief as much as hers. He couldn’t take it if she didn’t trust him, but at the same time, he didn’t expect her to.

              “Mexico? Do I have a passport?”

              “Yes. Everything’s taken care of.”

              “And we’ve been there before.”

              A pang jolted through his chest. He ignored it. “We’ve been there before.”

              One of the best times—if not
the
best time—of his life, and she didn’t remember. Not their private cabana on the beach. Not spending the majority of the time naked. Not making love in the surf.

              Nothing.

              Bethany was a blank slate when it came to him.

              “Cozumel,” she murmured, as if feeling the shape of the word on her tongue might spark a recollection.

              “You love it there,” he said.

              She turned her head and gazed out the window.

              What if she didn’t love it there? What if that Bethany—
his
Bethany—no longer existed? What if this Bethany from the past couldn’t fall in love with him? Was she still in love with her ex?

              The thought exploded inside his brain. If she was living ten years in the past, she would have emotions from ten years ago, wouldn’t she? But, how could she possibly love someone who abused her like her ex had?

              There was no way to know without asking, but he’d be damned if he was bringing up her bloody ex-husband. He’d be damned if he let that man anywhere near Bethany again for as long as she lived.

              His eyes followed the line of her neck, down across her shoulder. What if he didn’t have a choice? What if Bethany didn’t remember and never fell in love with him again?

             
NINE

              Bethany stared out the window at the passing cars on the highway and told herself not to panic.

              She didn’t know Alistair Ingram. She could only take his word that he had her best interest at heart. He was taking her out of the country and she was going along with it. Should she be going along with it?