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“Asians call them ‘rabbit’s lips,’” he said. “The Dutch prefer ‘lion’s lips.’ But when you squeeze the blossom”—he did so—“it opens up into something that resembles a dragon’s snout. Thus, snapdragon.”
“You’ve come here to tell me what I already know,” she said bitterly. “This is my home, Michael.”
He stood, smiling. “I always did like my name on your tongue.”
“Why are you here?” she demanded.
“I noticed your parents’ picture on the restaurant wall,” he said. “I’d like to meet them.”
She squinted against a nonexistent glare. “I recall you having the opportunity to do so,” she said, “and not finding the idea that attractive at the time.”
He nodded.
“You loved me,” she added. “But not the realities of my life.”
“The inconsistency of youth,” he said. He didn’t dare cheapen the moment with a smile, even though the muscles in his face wanted to settle into one. Cameron Dias, “with an S and not a Z like the actress” she’d pointed out those first moments after their initial meeting those years before, had stirred in him something he thought impossible. Love.
His first taste of it.
A taste that lingered to this day, he realized in a moment of clarity.
College sweethearts.
Her dream was to own the same little piece of Southwest Florida paradise her parents already claimed. To cultivate it right alongside her mother and father. A simple dream.
Michael’s dream was to own the world.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She nodded. “For years I looked for you to come. Like a romance novel. You’d walk in the door of my parents’ restaurant and tell me you loved me and all you wanted was me and what I wanted. I made wishes under countless banyan trees, Michael. Many.”
Indigenous to Asia. Sacred to the Hindus. The trees were believed to represent eternal life. A wish under a banyan tree was certain to be granted.
“I’m sorry,” Michael repeated.
“That wish, that desire,” she said. “It died a long time ago, Michael.”
“I’m in trouble, Cameron. Please. I have nowhere else to turn.”
That sounded incredibly selfish, came out completely wrong. He regretted it immediately.
She smiled a smile that wasn’t one. “I don’t doubt it. Trouble seems to follow you.”
“Speaking of countless,” he said, recovering, “I’ve thought of you innumerable days.”
“Before, after, or while you were making love to your wife?” she asked.
His turn to be shocked.
Her smile turned to a real one. “And how is work? CEO yet?”
“Cameron…” Using her name as a placeholder, unsure of how to proceed but also aware of the damning judgment that silence would sentence him to.
“I never aimed to stand between you and your dreams, your ambitions, Michael. Those people made me feel cheap. They destroyed everything I believed in. That alone is enough for me to never forgive you.”
Michael frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Cameron.”
“The Ferrers,” she said.
Michael was suddenly aware of his heartbeat. He whispered, “The Ferrers?”
“Malcolm Ferrer came to see me right when you were deciding whether to leave that company you were working for up north and join me down here. I admit, he was quite charming, despite his motives.”
“And…”
“He expressed how much he wanted you to move over to his company and work for him.”
A time of indecision for Michael. He’d been working for a corporation in New York, while longing for Cameron, frustrated by their long distance romance, not believing in its stability. On the verge of chucking his dreams to go ahead and join her. Then came the odd recruitment from MRF Global. He’d done work with them, had lengthy involvements with the old man. Obviously impressed him.
The great Malcolm Ferrer. The courting was more seductive than anything Michael had ever experienced before. They’d shared expensive drinks over numerous discussions. Malcolm had surprised Michael with an exotic beauty content in giving mind-numbing pleasure. On some days Michael still could feel her warm mouth enveloping his penis. So had begun his dance with the devil.
“But I told him I was coming here,” Michael said. “And then shortly thereafter you broke things off with me and…”
“I don’t know about any of that,” Cameron said. “But I do know he offered me a substantial amount of money to push you away.”
“Money? You’re kidding?”
“And when I shredded his check to pieces, he later sent his daughter to gloat that you’d taken to her bed and were getting married. She sickened me with specifics about your…attributes. So don’t deny it. There’s no doubt she’d been intimate with you, Michael.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Michael screamed. “I do deny it. Rachel and I didn’t start dating until some time after I took Malcolm’s offer. I didn’t even know Rachel then.”
“Rachel?” Cameron frowned.
“Malcolm’s daughter. My wife,” he admitted.
“What kind of game has this been, Michael?”
“What?”
“The daughter that came to see me,” she said. “Her name wasn’t Rachel.”
Michael’s eyes tightened in confusion. “Malcolm has only one daughter. What was the woman’s name that came to see you?”
Cameron studied him for a moment. Then: “Soledad. Her name was Soledad.”
CHAPTER
FIVE
A wake, but dreaming. Walking, but floating. Michael hovered above a trolley car as it sputtered by. A white ibis parked itself around a banana tree, its severe, curved orange beak burrowed in the soft dirt at the tree’s base. A man and woman flirted under the cover of an umbrella at an outdoor table of a bistro. Oleander blossoms seasoned the air. White, pink blossoms against the dark green leaves. Easy on the eyes, but their oils were a skin irritant. The hem of Cameron’s sundress rose and flapped as she walked. The strong legs of a gymnast or ballerina.
She stopped as they reached the fountain across from the crab shack. Michael no longer dreamed or floated. His legs felt heavy, though, weighed down by emotion he couldn’t quite finger. Betrayal or one of its cousins. Soledad’s long ago deception was a hot coal in the pit of his stomach. Malcolm’s interference a thorn impacted in his side.
“I can’t imagine the gossip,” Cameron said, looking over at her family’s restaurant. “I hurried off rather quickly.”
“Run away with me,” Michael heard himself say.
Cameron Dias smiled. “Make that wish under a banyan tree.”
“Cameron…” A placeholder.
“I’m heading back inside, Michael. By tomorrow I won’t allow myself to even think your name. By next week this time I will have convinced myself you never came. Six months from now I’ll likely have to run through the same exercise again. And again, six months after that.” She paused, took a deep breath. “You’ve changed my life. Twice. Please don’t make this harder than it already will be. Leave at once. And don’t return.”
“I’m at the Inn on Fifth Avenue South,” he said. “Room 129. They have the Caribbean restaurant attached to the Inn. Come have a quiet dinner with me and talk.”
She left him there without a goodbye. That hurt as much as the revelations about Malcolm and Soledad from moments before.
Could it possibly get any worse?
Of course it could, he realized. He sat down heavily on the bench, dialed with his prepaid cell.
“Michael? I was going to call you.”
Michael sighed. There it was. It was about to get worse. “Let me speak first, Rid,” he said.
“Go ahead.”
“I’ve directed your attention in the wrong direction,” he said. “I need you to reroute. Regroup.”
“What’s going on?”
Michael told him what he could. Without mentioning Cameron’s name.
“How did you come to suspect Soledad?”
“That doesn’t matter,” Michael said. “Will you keep an eye on her for me?”
“Of course.”
“Be discreet.”
“You know who you’re talking to, boy?”
“Sorry,” Michael said. “Now what did you have to tell me?”
Ridley sighed. And told Michael all of it.
They disconnected the call once he’d finished.
Could it possibly get any worse?
Michael didn’t bother speculating.
Two homicides on his head now.
CHAPTER
SIX
My God, I am sorry for my sins with all my heart.
In choosing to do wrong and failing to do good,
I have sinned against You whom I should love above all things.
I firmly intend, with Your help, to do penance, to sin no more,
and to avoid whatever leads me to sin.
Our Savior Jesus Christ suffered and died for us.
In His name, my God, have mercy.
Amen.
The prayerful words of the Act of Contrition left her moist lips the moment she crossed the hotel room’s threshold, a smile growing with each recited word. He listened quietly with no expression. Just as she said her Amen, like a scene from a movie, the sequence transitioned with the ringing of his cell phone from across the room.
“Sympathy for the Devil.”
“How’s that for irony?” she said, starting to slowly work her buttons as he stared at her and ignored the ringing cell phone. It was a long warm-looking coat. Wool and nylon and cashmere blend. With a polyester lining. “You should answer that,” she added, when the cell phone rang again a moment later. “Otherwise, it might continue to ring and cause coitus interruptus, which we’d both hate, I’m sure.”
“You use the term incorrectly,” he said.
She smiled, worked another button undone.
He swallowed and decided he needed a diversion, turned to retrieve her wineglass from the nightstand. Red. Shiraz. Her usual. The carpet swallowed his footsteps as he padded across the room, and hers as well, so he didn’t hear her easing up behind him. Shouldn’t be here as if this is some great celebration, he thought. There are still loose ends untied. Where is your focus, man?
And then he turned back with her wineglass in hand…
His next breath caught in his chest. She held the long coat open wide, bunched at her hips by each hand. A model’s pose, executed to near perfection. He eyed the ultra sheer, stretch mesh chemise underneath the coat. Thong sold separately.
“I’d imagine you’re cold in that,” he managed.
“Actually I’m quite warm,” she said, with plenty of eye contact. Reaching for the wineglass. Taking a long sip with her eyes closed once she had the glass secured in hand.
Now he had a choice of his own to make. The Glenlivet 21. Amber-colored with copper shades. Oak, cinnamon, ginger on the palate. Or, his personal bottle of red wine. Not Shiraz, but the Chianti he preferred. A squat bottle enclosed in a straw fiasco basket.
Either way, he needed a drink himself.
Badly.
“Sympathy for the Devil” chimed again while he considered his options. Once more, he ignored the phone, poured himself a glass of Glenlivet and took a careful sip. A soft knock at the door interrupted his next sip.
“There’s an interruption we both will enjoy,” she said, smiling wickedly. “Three’s company.”
She handed him the glass, shrugged out of her long coat and dropped it on the back of a chair. He watched her naked ass through the sheer chemise as she moved to answer the knock. A sashay that made him hard at his core.
Another woman stepped inside the room, tentative, ill at ease. Not nearly as relaxed as all of the other times. He wondered why that might be as she removed her coat and handed it to the first woman. No lingerie underneath. Turtleneck sweater, and fitted business suit pants.
He wouldn’t allow that to disappoint him.
“Quite overdressed,” the first woman said, and turning back to face him, wicked smile still in place, “Wouldn’t you say we should immediately correct that, Lukas?”
He nodded. Words simply wouldn’t come.
The second woman raised her arms, allowed the turtleneck sweater to be eased off. Wiggled her hips a beat later and allowed the pants moved down off of her hips.
Ten minutes.
Within ten minutes they were to it. Sweaty naked limbs tangled. Mingled sex odors. The second woman down near Lukas’ waist, his large dick disappearing and reappearing and disappearing and reappearing from deep inside her balmy, wet mouth. His dick covered with much saliva and making sucking sounds as it disappeared and reappeared and disappeared and reappeared inside the vacuum of her jaw. The first woman moaning as Lukas feasted on her shaved pussy, licking her swollen clit with practiced expertise. She came a long moment later, in waves, and redirected the scene. Easing down on Lukas’ thick erection while the other woman played with his nipples. And another long moment later, the scene changed yet again. The second woman at the side of the bed, bent forward across the mattress, Lukas’ penis crushing through the folds of her slick vagina. Gone was her apprehension from earlier. She cried out in a way that motivated his efforts. Moaned as though life was close to a sorrowful end. The first woman played with her hair, tossing and twirling it as Lukas rammed in and out in and out, the music of flesh slapping against flesh causing a satisfied smile to paint her beautiful face. This was a perfect scene. An absolutely perfect scene. No, much more.
A celebration.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
The dawn of a new day. Soft azure and pink sky. A cool Gulf breeze. The sand on the beach a brilliant white brightened by the new sun’s glare. The water was blue-green, calm, schools of jellyfish and stingray and loggerhead turtles living just below the surface. Michael spotted Cameron in her usual morning location, at the far end of the boardwalk right before it curved through a thicket of mangrove trees and seagrape.
Even in his own mind, his appearance felt like an intrusion. Not because she’d expressly asked him to stay away, but because she was deeply lost in thought, focused with still concentration on a brown pelican perched on a piling planted out in the water.
She didn’t blink when he eased over. Just continued to look out into the panorama.
Michael settled silently beside her. To speak first would be a second intrusion. Instead, he took her in without staring. No sundress today. A peach-colored blouse tucked into the narrow waist of form-fitting cream shorts. Strapped sandals. Her hair tied back in a severe ponytail. Face scrubbed of any makeup. A spritz of cheap perfume on each wrist. The hint of mint on her breath.
Like a blind man, his senses were greatly heightened in her presence. The polish on both the thumb and index fingers of her right hand slightly chipped. A neglected piercing high up on her left earlobe near to closing. The skin at the nape of her neck as warm as the alabaster sand on the beach.
Greatly heightened.
“Stop staring,” she said.
“Was I?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’ve been watching me, figuring out my routines,” she said. “And you called the restaurant the other day, asking after me.”
He touched the prepaid cell phone in his pocket, nodded.
“You shouldn’t have done this,” she said.
And then they both fell silent again. Silent as more of the sun exposed itself over the water. Silent as fishermen arrived and scuttled past with determined anticipation. Silent as two lovers strolled by, hand in hand. And then the two lovers paused for a kiss that stretched across time and space.
“One of the most romantic places in the world,” Cameron said, finally. “I’d take it here over Paris any day.”
“You always said so,” Michael replied, nodding. “I can’t disagree after experiencing it for myself.”
How different might life be if he’d listened to her those years before? If he hadn’t allowed Malcolm’s courting to seduce him?
Cameron’s hand was on the railing. Michael covered it with his own. Surprisingly, she didn’t flinch, didn’t ease her hand away.
“Tell me about your wife, Michael.”
“Thought you wouldn’t allow yourself to even think my name today,” he said, smiling sadly.
She didn’t respond.
Michael sighed. “She’s beautiful and tortured.”
“Tortured?”
“Her father. Brother.” He paused. “Me.”
“You?”
“I haven’t been faithful to her,” he admitted. “From the beginning.”
He’d been faithful, always, to Cameron.
Until the exotic beauty Malcolm had handed him with no strings attached.
There were always strings attached, he realized now.
“Why the need to cheat?” Cameron asked. Asking it for Rachel and for herself.
“I thought it was because I have an addiction, a sickness,” he said.
“Sex addiction?” she asked, her voice inflected. “Like David Duchovny? Eric Benet?”
“That’s what I thought.”
“But…”
“I realize now that I was wrong.”
“Oh?”
He squeezed Cameron’s hand. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t ease her hand away.
“I was searching for something, Cameron.” Another sigh. “Something so easy to find it shames me now. I’ve caused my wife a great deal of undue hurt. I’ve harmed myself and…”
She turned facing him. Eyes that absolutely broke his heart.
“…you,” he finished.
Her tears were subtle. His less so. Time had healed most of her wounds. Time had only hid his.
“I waited a long time for you to come,” she said.
He touched her face. Soaked up a trail of tears with his finger.
“I couldn’t appreciate the beauty of a place this small,” he said. “The thought of settling in down here felt so constricting. I had such great ambition about how my life should turn.” He sniffed at the thought now.
