Chapter 53
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
The Opposite of Love
JAMIE
Kyle and Shannon distracted the English gate agent guarding the door out to the tarmac with a barrage of questions about membership in their premium private airline, which she gladly entertained. Cliff and Jamie snuck out the door and began sprinting across the tarmac to the Bombardier jet.
When they got to the door of the plane and peeked in, Jamie was sure there would be some sort of security to block their entry onto the plane, but she saw none. Not even a stewardess. She gingerly stepped on the first rung of the pocket door into the plane, and Cliff followed.
They were both able to stand straight up inside the jet and looked around the interior. Outfitted in white leather and polished burlwood tables, it exuded quiet luxury.
The door to the cockpit suddenly opened and there—unbelievingly and in all her brazen glory—stood Lorna Gray, her sleek auburn hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, pilot headgear on, sporting a soft white leather bomber jacket. If she was startled, she didn’t show it.
Only one side of her smile went up when she saw Cliff and Jamie standing there.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t the love birds,” Lorna said, in an oddly welcoming fashion.
Catching her off guard with such an odd salutation, Jamie found her footing and barked, “Where is it?”
“Where is what?” Lorna blinked, guileless.
Cliff piped up. “The necklace, the Golden Cobra. We know you were behind it. The whole thing. Duncan. Melvyn Ott. Even Amber. We know it all.”
Lorna chuckled lightly. “Ah, you’ve got it all figured out, have you?”
Jamie fumed. “The only thing we don’t know is why.”
Lorna looked at her watch, then back at them and said, “I must say I am impressed that you’re here.” She moved over to the cooler, where she got a bottle of water for herself and a bottle of champagne. “Should we do a toast?”
“A toast to what?”
“To the only thing worth celebrating.” Lorna poured two glasses. Jamie took one, and Cliff took the other. Lorna held up her water bottle. “To love, of course.”
They took a sip and Cliff shot Jamie a confused look, but they remained silent, hoping it would beckon Lorna to go on. It was damn good champagne.
Lorna slowly shook her head. “If I’ve learned anything in my fifty-five years on this planet, it’s that loneliness warps people. It’s an insidious sickness, too, because it happens slowly, so slowly that you don’t know it’s affecting you.”
She leaned against one of the burlwood tables and continued, “Duncan and I were kids together. We met when we were nineteen at on campus. I fell in love with the sweetest boy in the world. In college, we had big dreams. Duncan was there when email was created. I had a knack with people. Together, we had an idea to use technology and the delicate craft of matchmaking to create a new way of dating. And then, we brought the whole thing online.”
“TwinFlame,” Jamie acknowledged.
“Yes,” Lorna confirmed. “Of course, we had no earthly idea how perversely the original app would affect the world, and even us. My original intention was for it to be a thoughtful online meeting place, still guided by my hand, my personal touch bringing together the right people. But Duncan said that idea could not be scaled up. And he was thinking big. Too big. ‘Let people choose each other,’ he said. But we all know that usually ends in disaster. Most people have a hand in meeting the right person: a friend, a workplace, a doting mother, or a matchmaker. Left to their own devices, people pick the worst possible mates for themselves. You two, for instance. Terrible pickers on both of you.”
“Hey—” Cliff said defensively.
“That’s not fair,” Jamie retorted.
Lorna rolled her eyes and pointed at Cliff. “Need I remind you of Amber?” Then she pointed at Jamie. “And that putz, Chaz?”
“Did you put me in the path of Amber?”
“You do have a type, Cliff. And you performed exactly as I thought you would. People are not hard to predict.”
Cliff grimaced.
“Anyway, I told Duncan I didn’t want to be a part of creating a toxic cesspool of broken hearts, disappointed people, and meaningless hookups.
TwinFlame had the potential to ruin modern dating as we knew it.
I implored him to pivot to something more positive.
But by that time, we were making so much money, it had become a beast of its own.
It didn’t take long for all that power and money to change us.
That was back in the days when I was naive enough to think the love we had was real, or even enough. How wrong I was.”
“Duncan left you,” Jamie surmised.
“Oh, he did much more than that. His ego became overwhelming. Started to think he was a king, invincible, as if nothing could touch him. And worst of all, he no longer saw me as an equal. He made me feel worthless. That kind of damage lasts. He was the person I loved most in the world. Ironic, right? I’m a purveyor of true love, but I found myself in a false one.
His greed took over. There is nothing more devastating than understanding the person you have put your whole heart, life, time, sweat, and energy into doesn’t give a shit about you.
Wouldn’t cross the street to pull me out of a burning vehicle.
His apathy toward me, after all we had shared and built together, ignited a deep rage in me that I didn’t even know I had.
What is the phrase? It’s a razor-thin line between love and hate? I have crossed it.”
Cliff considered this. “So, you wanted to hurt him.”
“If I’m guilty of anything, it was believing in the power of a love that was false. In my case, love turned into something else.”
“Revenge,” Jamie said quietly.
“Yes.” Lorna nodded almost imperceptibly.
“But how can you hurt a man like Duncan Reeves? He can buy himself out of most problems, he can purchase anything or anyone he wants. So, I waited. It was only a matter of time before Duncan’s desire overextended his currency.
Chanel and I instantly struck a connection and her friendship yielded information I needed.
I pulled him hook, line, and sinker into this over-the-top gambit that left him completely and totally exposed. ”
Cliff looked puzzled but also mesmerized.
“You two have been blessed with the gift of hardship. It teaches you how to survive, sharpens your senses, keeps you on your toes. Duncan has lost those skills. So, I gave him a gift: the gift of fear.”
“You stole the necklace and then tipped off the Brotherhood,” Jamie said quietly.
“I cannot confirm or deny that. Or whether Duncan has the necklace in his possession or not, but the Brotherhood thinks he does.” Lorna smiled ruefully.
“And, judging by their reputation, he will be hunted down like an escapee from an Alabama prison by those zealots until they get their necklace back.” Lorna sniffed.
“It’ll be good for him. A little hardship.
The best part is that Duncan will have to face the fact that his own ego is what landed him there. ”
Admittedly, there was no love lost on Duncan Reeves from Jamie’s point of view.
Why did she care if Duncan lived under threat of prosecution or prison?
She tried to reconcile her feelings but was having trouble with the whole theft part of the plan.
She looked at Cliff, who seemed to be laboring under the same confused state.
Though maybe only because Lorna’s plan had landed him in the slammer.
“So, we were just pawns in a game of revenge?” Cliff asked.
Lorna tipped the bottle of water up and took a decent swig. “Love is what makes the world go round. But it can also burn it all down. Consider me the embodiment of an avenging heart scorned by love.” Lorna bowed, like a ballerina accepting applause for her part on the stage.
Jamie felt a pang of anger. “You can’t get away with this.”
Lorna’s graceful mask slipped just then, and Jamie swore she almost saw something dangerous in her eyes at Jamie’s threat. “That’s my cue. I have to ask you to get the fuck off my plane.” Lorna turned back toward the cockpit.
“Wait! You used our loneliness against us!” Jamie shouted.
Lorna let out a short bark of a laugh and thundered back, “What else is it good for?”
“You conned us!” Jamie retorted, feeling her emotions rise.
Lorna quickly stalked back to stand right in front of Jamie and Cliff with a steely glare. “Exactly how did I con you?”
“The group blind date was a lie,” Cliff interjected. “We all unwittingly had a role in your scheme. You only put us together to use us!”
“Is that so?” Lorna tapped the side of her temple. “Excuse me, but how are Kyle and Shannon getting along?”
“They’re together at the moment, but—” Jamie offered.
“Rick and Holly?” Lorna asked. “The liar and the truthteller? How are they doing?”
“They’re in love,” Cliff admitted.
“And how about you two?”
Jamie gave Cliff a sidelong glance. Cliff’s jaw dropped slightly.
Lorna sighed, and with a confident, knowing gaze, she offered, “Exactly as I thought.” Lorna pointed her attention at Cliff, whose eyes were locked on Jamie, and said, “You’re in love with her, Weston.
Your Achilles’ heel is believing you cannot change.
Famously stubborn with no idea how to get out of your own way, I put you in a situation in which you could prove to yourself—and to her—that you, in fact, can change.
That you are more than your past. You just needed a reason to change. ”
Jamie was thrown off balance by Lorna’s assertion that Cliff was in love with her. Love doesn’t happen like this, her brain protested, but it was silenced by a whisper from her heart. Or does it?
“As for you, dear Jamie,” Lorna began, “when I first met you, it was obvious you would never let yourself be happy. Not consciously, anyway. You wouldn’t trust real love unless it was a terrible struggle that ended in a self-made tragedy.
That thinking, by the way, is an emotional fungus you can thank your mother for.
It’s a hard lesson to unlearn. So, I may have created a situation where you didn’t realize what you had until it was locked away, and by your own hand.
You only believe in love if you’re suffering. You’re welcome.”
Jamie’s mouth fell open.
“So,” Cliff retorted, “you got us to meet at the Petal Café? And then again at the Arthur J?”
Lorna squinted at him. “Wait a minute. Are you telling me you both met, like in the wild? Before I set you up at the dinner?”
Jamie and Cliff both looked at each other and then back at her. They replied in unison, “Yes.”
Lorna chuckled and then said, “Then I’m better than I thought.
” She gazed at both of them, her eyes steely though edged with the slightest hint of mirth.
Jamie couldn’t help but think that everything she told them was true.
“You can say a lot of things about me,” Lorna said as she checked her watch, “but you can’t say I conned you. ”
Jamie turned wordlessly to Cliff, who stood there gazing at her, his eyes burning bright and insistent.
He was biting the inside of his right cheek, as if he was weighing his next move.
Jamie felt the beginning of a thaw around her heart.
In spite of her internal warning system, again, something truer was coming to the surface, something full of hope and promise.
Lorna interrupted with a brisk declaration, “All right, time’s up, love birds. I’ve got to hit it.”
Lorna ushered them both off her plane like thunderstruck children, closed the pocket door, and in moments, began taxiing down the runway, leaving Cliff and Jamie speechless on the tarmac among the jet fuel fumes.
Cliff turned and instantly pulled her into him, away from the disturbed air coming from the plane’s engines.
She threw her arms around him and they stood like that for a moment just the two of them, as if the rest of the world outside their bubble had stopped turning.
Cliff pulled back and touched her cheek with one hand, eyes ablaze, he murmured.
“It’s true. I don’t know how or why. But when I am with you I feel less lost, more myself, more like the man I want to be. Can be. Will be. Want to be. For you.”
She let the words reach hang in the air. A tear fell. “I’ve looked for you in everyone. I just didn’t know how I’d know.”
“Do you know how now?” he asked quietly.
She nodded. “I do. Somehow, I do.”
Cliff delivered the slowest, softest, longest kiss of her life and in it, she finally felt safe. And in that moment, she began to understand that love isn’t in the drama, but in the calm.
Jamie and Cliff realized that Lorna had masterminded the perfect crime, framed an innocent man, and exacted revenge on her awful ex. All over the course of one dinner.
Lorna Gray may have been a wicked, lying, scheming, love-scorned mastermind.
But she was a damn good matchmaker.
Perhaps the only true justice was letting her go.