8. Gage
CHAPTER 8
Gage
I close the apartment door behind me and walk into the ample open space that includes the living room and kitchen. The AC, running at full blast, immediately hits my hot, clammy skin, and I finally feel like I can breathe again.
Today, I went for my run a whole half an hour earlier than usual, but the heat still almost did me in.
How can the sun be so damn hot before six a.m. is beyond me!
Yet, even though it felt like I was making my way inside the circuits of a switched-on hairdryer, the run did me good.
It helped clear my mind a bit.
Ever since I saw that girl, I’ve been in a total fog, and it seems the only times I find some peace from thoughts of her are when my Nike-clad feet are pounding the hot pavement of the streets while I run the course of the nearby park.
Perhaps it’s the suffocating heat or the way the sun blazes down on me that keeps me focused on the path ahead and prevents my mind from drifting. I’m not sure.
What I do know is that every other waking moment is otherwise spent plagued by this newly awakened obsession I seem to have for this stranger.
This is weird as fuck since I've never been the type to feel this obsessed with women in the past or felt so… possessive over one. Not even with the ones that have been actual girlfriends, let alone with someone I’ve only seen once in my life, and only for a few minutes to boot!
It has been three days, and I haven’t been able to get more than a first name for my mystery baby doll yet.
Piper.
I was sure in this day and age of people putting damn near everything they do down to what they had for breakfast on socials and documenting with pictures and captions every fucking step they take, that once we had a clear photo of her and at least her first name —which we got from the driver— that it would be easy to do a reverse image search or something and find her, but, Anthony, my head of security said they couldn’t find a single hit.
So, on Monday, after I took care of all the stuff on my list and then some since there’s always some last-minute stuff that you somehow missed that ends up on your plate if you’re the boss, I went home even grumpier than I was while experiencing the worst of my air-sickness and being tortured by Aerosmith –a band, I might add, that even as recently as the day before last Friday’ happened to be a favorite of mine while now… not so much.
My mind was full of visions of this beautiful stranger that for no reason at all that’s apparent to me –or that I could explain in any rational manner if I tried– has come to mean so much to me.
I couldn't sleep a wink and haven't done much better in the last couple of days, either. I wish I could tell myself that my insomnia is entirely related to my body still being on Tokyo time, but I know that if I did, I would only be fooling myself.
It’s because of her that I can’t sleep, no matter how tired I feel and it’s because of the way I feel every time I think I'm never going to find her, never going to see her again, and the way it fucks me up inside that I’m in such a lousy mood.
I should be able to find a person.
I’ve got all the resources available, after all, and yet, for the first time in my life, I can’t have a thing that I want, the only thing I’ve ever wanted this much: five minutes with this woman and the chance to ascertain the nature of my feelings, to try and understand what she does to me, what she means to me, and what she could come to mean to me in the future.
Normally, I'm not one to use money and status in this way. I have a moral code and a strong distaste for unethical practices. Still, one look at this woman, whoever she is, and I found myself asking my people to push those boundaries that were firmly set by me, to bend all the rules that constituted stumbles blocks in my research of her, and I still couldn't find her. The cab company is acting all prissy and won't disclose the personal data they have on her no matter what strings I pull; the driver, with sufficient bribing, went so far as to share the three pieces of info he had on her for a price, but they didn't help much.
He told us the pick-up point, which I already knew.
The destination of her drive, which was an Internet cafe downtown frequented by thousands of customers every day.
And her name. Piper.
A punchy, energetic name that sure goes well with those bold hair and sexy curves of hers.
If it's really her name, that is.
Anthony confirmed my belief that the displayed name that a driver sees when giving their availability to pick up someone for a ride is chosen by the customer and, therefore, could be entirely made up or a nickname.
So here I am, no closer to finding Piper than I was on Monday, still as headachy as I was before meeting her, both from the lingering jet lag that won’t budge and from having slept no more than three hours at a stretch in any of the nights since she firmly entrenched herself in my mind.
This thing is frustrating me to no end, but no matter how difficult it will be to find her, I already know that my mind is made up, and I’m not going to stop looking for her until I can clap eyes on her once again.
This is the way I’m wired. When I feel that something is right to pursue, I put my hundred percent behind it, and I don’t think there’s ever been something or someone in my life that has ever felt this worth pursuing.
I grab my phone from the breakfast bar and swipe a finger over it to bring the gallery up. My eyes eagerly alight on the one picture my team pulled from the cameras around the building, and as soon as they do, my whole body reacts. My heartbeat picks up its pace, my hands start to shake, and my cock immediately goes north.
Yep, whatever this is, I'm still one hundred percent on board with it. The effect she had on me at first impact might have been weirdly strong and inexplicable, but it definitely wasn't a fluke.
After firing yet another text to my PA asking him about Piper-related news, I put my phone down. Then I grab a cold bottle of water from the fridge, forcing myself to drink it slowly as my body gets used to the much lower temperature of the room.
I strip my sweaty T-shirt off and walk into my bedroom.
Piper or not Piper, obsessed or not, I’ve got lots of work to get done today, and only having her in front of me would make me cancel my many commitments of the day, which, unfortunately, is not very likely to happen since Piper seems to be one of those rare-breed old-fashioned types that’s allergic to social media —which might be the cause of all my present inability to find her, but it’s something I know we have in common at least.
I sigh, my eyes going over the work clothes I laid out on the bed.
Her beautiful face flashes through my mind, and my cock yet again takes notice, hardening even more than it already did from the one tiny peek at her picture. If I’ve learned something in the last few days, it is that trying to will my misbehaving appendage into a calmer state won’t work unless I stroke one out, which is not on my agenda —I’m not that desperate. Yet.
So, it looks like I’m going to have to get through another ice-cold shower today.
I step into the en-suite bathroom, finish undressing, and then walk straight into the shower stall. I switch on all the jets and shiver as soon as the cold water hits my skin.
And that’s when it happens.
That’s when I hear it again.
Du, dum, dum, du, du, du, dum and then the fucking harmonica intro picks up!
Oh, not the fuck today, Satan!
I’m already pissed enough from lack of sleep and want of my mysterious little Piper. If I also have to deal with this Aerosmith-obsessed fool again at not even fucking half past fucking seven a.m. in the morning on top of everything else, I’m going to fucking explode!
I furiously soap up and quickly rinse myself, thinking about how I’m going to throw something on, march out of here, and kick down this inconsiderate jerk’s door, so that I can finally give him the piece of my mind he doesn’t know has been waiting for him since Friday night.
I switch off the water and angrily step out of the shower. One of my feet slips a little, and I almost fall on my goddamned face, and all the while, Steven Tyler is crooning and screaming as he wax poetic about pink stuff. I manage to hold myself up against a wall and then rip a towel off the hanger.
I storm into my bedroom, drying myself as I go, and then I throw on a pair of sweats and a tee as fast as I can, not even bothering to dry my chest thoroughly. The cotton sticks unpleasantly to my wet skin, adding to my annoyance, but I can't worry about such mundane details now: I've got the loudest scolding of my life to deliver in about sixty seconds.
I don’t even put shoes on. There’s not a moment to lose.
The song fades out as I reach the door, but the respite is short-lived because the harmonica intro starts up once more, immediately following the blistering drum session.
The little rude bastard has the damn track on a loop again!
I throw my door open and I’m about to pass the threshold when I hear my cell going off in the kitchen.
“Shit!”
I stand there for all of thirty seconds and then turn back. This could be important. If it was merely work, I could get back to them after I was through yelling some sense into this maniac, but the caller could be either Marcus or Anthony with news about my baby doll’s identity.
I walk into the kitchen, forgetting the door wide open with the song blasting my fucking brain out of my fucking ears, and grab my phone off the table. It is indeed a call from Anthony, so this has got to do with Piper.
I swipe right to answer and put the phone to my ear.
“Anthony? Any news?” I ask, and I have to stick a finger in my other ear to hear the other man’s voice over Tyler’s screams and the electric guitar riff bombarding me.
I can’t make out a single fucking word coming out of his mouth.
“What? What did you say? I can’t hear you. Say that again? Piper? What?”
Fucking hell!
“Boss, where the hell are you? I said we might have…”
The rest of his sentence is covered by Steven Tyler yelling ‘ Yeah!’ at the top of his lungs and then howls about pink being love at first sight!
The fucking irony is not lost on me.
"What? You may have what?" I shout into the phone, and the electric guitar and bass jams cover entirely my head of security's answer.
A veritable growl escapes my throat as I get more pissed off by the second, my frustration rising in tandem with my blood pressure. Both my jaw and one of my eyebrows are ticking away as the relentless mid-time thudding of the drum session of the track invariably fills my ears.
As soon as I get off this phone, that jerk of my neighbor’s gonna get it. I’m going to kick the pink off of their ill-mannered ass!