Chapter 5
LILA
I start my new job on Wednesday, so I go back to town on Tuesday and shop for a different type of dress.
Skintight, sexy little numbers that make me feel like an impostor, yet absolutely necessary in my view for going on a date with that guy.
While out shopping, I pick up a two-piece swimsuit. The flamingo pink works well with my brown blonde hair.
Other than that, I manage to get the code gate every morning from the housekeeper.
Damon West seems to have left town as well, or maybe he uses his wife’s absence to sleep someplace else.
Not my business. I’m just saying.
I have the beautiful estate at my disposal. No more late-night encounters. No more sneaking food into the bedroom. No more struggling to understand who ate my last piece of the pecan pie.
I get used to working at the donut shop fairly quickly, and come Friday evening, I’m ready to go out with Keira.
I meet her at the bar.
She wears a blue dress. I wear a pink one. I’m into pink a lot lately.
Her face glows with a smile.
“Mmm. Look at you. This dress looks fantastic,” she says.
“So does yours.”
She studies the straps, scoop neckline, and the way my dress hugs me in all the right places before she whips her eyes up.
“You’re probably going to be disappointed,” she murmurs, putting a stray strand of my hair back into place.
“Why?”
“Frankie called in tonight. Someone is replacing him. And this new guy…” She sighs. “He’s more like Nicky.”
“Fuck.”
“That’s what I said. I don’t know much about him, but I can find out stuff about him if you want me to.”
I jerk my hand up, annoyed.
“No. Forget about it. I’m not doing this anymore. I mean, if it happens, fine. If not, I’m good. I don’t need to meet anyone new tonight. We’re here. It’s Friday. Let’s have some drinks.”
“Perfect. What about your curfew?” she asks, signaling to the barman to open a tab for us.
“It’s still in place. It’s not a curfew, but I’d better not go home tonight. I’m not calling these people for a stupid gate code again. So, what are we drinking?”
The place is busy and loud.
She picks up our cocktails from the barman and hands me one.
“Try this one. You’re gonna like it. It was the most popular drink with the ladies last summer.”
It’s good, indeed. Fresh and flavorful. That’s all I know about it.
As the night unfolds, we’re having a lot of fun.
We drink, dance, and meet new people. None of them is Frankie, or Frankie’s replacement. Or even Nicky, who, Keira confesses, was supposed to show up at this place as well.
She invited him here in the hopes that he and I would click.
It probably scared the poor guy away.
Around midnight, we’re getting hungry, so we leave the place and start scouring some local joints for food.
We end up at a small place where we order burgers to go and a cab.
Later, we eat at Keira’s.
Her place is small, and despite what she said to me before, it can’t accommodate another person.
So against my better judgment and regardless of her loud protests, I head home.
The cab drops me off in front of the gate at one in the morning.
I climb out and stare at the back of the car as it slowly crawls away from the estate before I move my eyes to the gate in front of me.
How hard can it be to climb over this little thing?
There’s no barbed wire, and I hope it’s not electrified.
Does it want to take a picture of me? Take a picture of me, stupid gate.
I move away from it and search for a section of the fence that is dimly lit.
Good luck with that.
Still a bit tipsy, I laugh by myself at how stupid this must look.
Rocking a sexy pink dress, failing to find a man in Georgia, I’m now struggling to climb over a stupid fence.
Finally, I find a little step that could bring me closer to my ambitious goal of hopping over the edge.
Had I not had alcohol still flowing in my blood, it would probably occur to me that no secured gate is connected to an unsecured fence.
Oblivious to what could wait for me on the other side, I place my bag on top of the concrete edge and do my best to pull myself up.
Giggling surely doesn’t help.
I swing a leg up and fail––my skirt won’t let me open my thighs much––before I roll my skirt up to my hips so I can do it.
Ready for my second attempt to swing my leg up, I suddenly get engulfed in a thick shaft of bright light and freeze with a leg lifted to my hip level, and my hands up.
As if I don’t look ridiculous enough, I glance over my shoulder, not knowing what to expect.
“What did I tell you?” Damon West barks behind a wall of light that blinds me for a moment.
I put my leg down, struggle to maintain my balance, turn to him, and lift a hand to my face to shield my eyes.
“Mr. West? Is that you?”
I need to be polite. What if Henrietta is with him? Wasn’t she supposed to return in a week?
It’s almost a week, isn’t it?
“Get down, please.”
He sounds bored and distant.
He’s probably not alone.
“I’m sorry. Can you turn off the headlights? I can’t see a thing. I thought it was the police for a moment.”
“Why would I call the police when the cameras alert me if someone attempts to break in?”
“Interesting question,” I murmur to myself, trying not to fall on my ass as I make the trip back.
Yet I don’t move away from the fence.
“What was that?” he asks as the headlights dim a little and I can see his car.
What the…?
Was he watching me from his car? Was he waiting for me? Am I being watched by him or his men at all times?
And why wouldn’t he need the help of the police?
As I move closer, I notice that he’s propped against his dark sports car, hands in his pockets, legs crossed.
He wears a fancy suit, black on black. He looks like he’s coming from a club, or going to one.
All things considered, he was here, waiting for me, and I didn’t even see him.
That is weird.
I didn’t hear him as well. Am I getting so hard of hearing all of a sudden?
Seemingly.
His eyes are pinned on mine as I close the gap between us.
“You wanna get in?”
He tilts his chin toward the house, and I gather from his casual stance that he’s alone.
“I would like that very much, yes. Can’t you just not change the gate code every night? Or at least, make the change during the day so I can get it without bothering you. No offense, but I’d rather talk to Livia than you.”
He purses his lips, and I’m thinking he ponders the matter before he removes a hand from his pocket and hands me a remote, the size of a key fob.
“You can’t drive a car with it, but you can open the gate. No need to worry about the code every day. Make sure you won’t lose it. I’m not giving you another one.”
He pushes off his car.
“Now get in,” he says.
“You’re driving me home?” I murmur with a hint of fake enthusiasm mixed with genuine irony.
“I will, just not now,” he says, ignoring my amateurish attempt at being comical. “You’re coming with me.”
“Wait, what? Why?”
“I promised Henrietta I’d keep an eye on you. You’re drunk. There’s a pool at my house. You like to skinny dip at night. Bad things can happen. Besides, I want to show you my club. Maybe you’ll reconsider working for me.”
His eyes move like melted butter over my body in a brief assessment.
I wonder if my dress is what he had in mind when he pitched me his idea of me working for him.
He signals me to get in before noticing the small package on the step I used to harass his fence.
“What’s that?”
I look at him, smiling.
“That would be my spare burger,” I say, utterly amused.
“Your spare burger? There’s food in the house, you know.”
“I do. I just like my burgers in a certain way.”
“Uh-huh. And where exactly did you get it?”
“I went out with my friend,” I say, slowly heading to the fence to pick up my midnight snack.
“Never mind. Wait here. I’ll get it,” he says with a flash of impatience in his voice. “And go on,” he adds, turning his back to me and walking toward the fence.
He picks it up and returns.
“I’m listening,” he says, gesturing at his car again.
I get in and slide into the passenger’s seat.
He drops the box in the back and claims the driver’s seat.
The car glides away smoothly as I stay silent, distracted by his ride, the view of the estate, and, more importantly, his presence and the spicy smell of his cologne.
“What are you wearing?” I ask, ignoring his request.
“You mean clothes?”
“I mean this.”
Without the slightest hesitation in my body, still emboldened by the alcohol in my blood, I shift in my seat and lean toward him.
Cheekily, I press my nose on the side of his neck and then tilt my chin a little and run my lips along his jawline.
“This. What is this?” I murmur.
“You like it?”
He turns his eyes to me, and only now do I realize what I’m doing, how close I am to him, and how dangerous this is.
Sobering up can’t come fast enough.
I jerk back at once, quivering inside.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. How rude of me,” I say.
Grappling with embarrassment, I make myself small in my seat.
“It just smells nice. It doesn’t matter,” I say in a completely different voice.
Blank, void of emotions.
Clear. And also more mature.
“So, I went out with a friend,” I restart my story to move away from my bold trespassing. Why did he let me get so close to him? “We wanted to celebrate my new job, and also…”
I ponder while he listens in silence, concentrated on the road in front of us, or so it seems.
“She wanted to introduce me to a friend of hers.”
He shifts his eyes to me, an eyebrow lifted, a stern expression on his face.
“You know you don’t need to work at that donut shop.”
That’s not what I was talking about.
My eyebrows slide up.
“How do you know about my job?”
He shifts his attention back to the road.
“I just know.”
“What makes the job you offered me better than this one?”
“For one, I can keep an eye on you at all times if you’re working for me, so it’s safer.”
Keeping an eye on me at all times? That makes me weak in my knees. No, thank you.
He scares the shit out of me most of the time.
“Safer than a donut shop? If I’m not safe in a donut shop, I don’t know where I’d be.”
“And yet, here you are. Stupid ideas can come to life everywhere.”
He makes a slow left turn, and we keep moving, farther and farther away from the busiest part of town.
“And then?” I go on, trying to figure out where we’re headed.
I didn’t realize his club was so far away from his house. It always felt like his business was down the road, a few miles away from his place.
“And then you’d make more money, and you’d like it more.”
“I’m not doing it for the money.”
“I know.” He gives me a sarcastic smile. “Yet in the end, we’re all doing it for the money.”
I don’t know what he means by that.
I truly have no idea.
“Are we still going to the club?”
“Don’t worry,” he says, stepping on the gas.
His car lurching forward doesn’t make me worry less about what the rest of my evening might look like.
“I need to pick up something first,” he says.
“Uh-huh.”
I get more anxious by the second.
I hope it’s not a dead body.
“You were saying?” he murmurs, amused.
“I was saying… What was I saying?”
“That you were looking for a boyfriend.”
“No, I did not. What made you say that?”
“You said your friend wanted to introduce you to a friend of hers.”
The houses become scarce as we move down a smooth road cutting through a nice landscape with slight hills and dense woods.
Yeah, that certainly won’t make my hair stand on end.
“I’m not looking for a boyfriend. I just want to get laid,” I murmur, unaware of the words coming out of my mouth, frantically obsessed with where we’re going, while trying to gauge how much I can trust this man.
The car comes to a smooth stop on the side of the road, which makes me shift my eyes to him.
“What happened?” I ask, freaked out.
“You got a job to get laid, yet you couldn’t work for me?”
Interesting logic.
Is that what’s bothering him?
What about the fact that we’re in the middle of nowhere?
“I didn’t get a job to get laid.”
So foolish of me to think that talking about getting a boyfriend would erase that horrible impression I have left by sniffing the aroma of his cologne off his skin.
“I got a job to keep myself busy during summer, and also to stay away from you and Henrietta. Where is she, by the way? Wasn’t she supposed to be here already?”
“She’s been held up. She’s not coming back till next week,” he says without giving me more information.
I make a soft gesture of dismissal before glancing out the window and continuing.
“And then, if you really want to know, I’ve studied hard this year, so I deserve to have some fun. Not to mention that I don’t have to explain this to anyone, especially you.”
“I didn’t say you should. I find it peculiar that you’re having a hard time finding someone to sleep with.”
He looks out the window when he’s saying that, which makes me suspect he’s teasing me while trying to avoid my eyes.
“Well, I’m very particular about my men, if you really want to know.”
“You said the same about your burgers.” He looks at me. “I bet you are,” he adds, irony dripping from his voice.
He sets his car in motion after checking the rearview mirror a few times as if wanting to make sure no one has followed us.
Interesting.
The road is clear in front of us as much as it’s empty behind us.
“What exactly are you looking for?” he asks, reflexively reaching inside his jacket as if he used to smoke at some point.
“Are you really interested, or are we just making conversation?”
He looks the other way.
“Both.”
Before long, he takes a gravel road that leads to a dark house and quickly rolls the car to a stop.
He shifts his eyes to me.
“I’m torn,” I say with more honesty than ever. “I want something that doesn’t exist, and have a hard time connecting with something that does.”
My answer registers with him, yet his focus is on the house in front of us.
“Hold that thought,” he says as if he’s just seen something interesting inside the house, which is scary and odd, since the place is sunk in darkness.
“Don’t be long,” I say as he sets foot outside.
I watch him walk to the house, open the door, and enter.
No ringing the bell, no unlocking the door, no calling anyone. As if this is his place. A place he likes to keep unlocked?
I grow more curious by the moment.
He returns fairly quickly, carrying a suitcase.
“Oh, boy. The much-dreaded suitcase,” I murmur to myself, watching him as he is booking it all the way to his car.
It could be anything. A suitcase full of cash. A dismembered body.
I stay silent as he approaches the car, opens the door, and drops the suitcase next to my spare burger box.
He sets his car in motion with some urgency in his moves, and for a while we travel in silence.
As the lights of town fill the view in front of us, he speaks again.
“The man you’re looking for…” he says, sunk in thought. “You won’t find him here in Georgia.”