Personal Possessions (17 page)

“Elleny, I would like to
introduce you to Mr. Trevor McHale of the Mac-Gentry Firm, Mr.
McHale, this is Elleny Harper-Jackson, my assistant.”

Hearing the introduction
that Stevens was going through, I swallowed and stuck out my hand,
“Mrs. Jackson, I believe the pleasure is all mine,” My eyes were
glued to hers. God, how I missed looking into those eyes. What I
could see in those eyes told a story, a myriad of tales that all
had the same happy ending.

Memories that placed us in
a lake, fighting over who loved each other more. Sitting in the
back of my truck, looking up at the stars... All these old feelings
I could get lost in, were in her eyes. Transported to another world
that contained only her and I, and we were content, totally sated
from each other.

Her voice brought me out
of my thoughts and back to a reality with her standing right in
front of me, it took everything in me not to lean over and kiss her
so fucking hard she couldn’t breathe.

“
It’s a pleasure to meet
you Mr. McHale. Please, call me Elle.”

Oh fuck, I was dying
inside. Like I wouldn’t call her anything else…I gave her that
name. I had to tell myself to take a breath. This was so much
harder than I thought it would be.

Elle held out her hand for
me to take and I was literally shaking, I don’t know if she could
see it but I was quivering out of desire for this woman. I grabbed
her hand and felt something I hadn’t felt in seventeen years,
emotion.

I felt as though the hole
in my chest was mended; I was actually smiling inside. A slight
vibration passed from her hand over to mine, I don’t know if she
felt it but I sure as shit did. With the vibration was a peace that
transpired and I knew that I had to have this feeling every day for
the rest of my life. She was the creator of this peace.

MINE.

She was going to be mine,
and this time anyone who tried to take her away from me was not
going to like what he was up against.

“Elle, you alright? You
look pale. Like you’ve seen a ghost.” Stevens’ voice brought me
back to the meeting and as I looked at Elle, it was like the life
had been sucked out of her. Her face was as white as a sheet. Elle
yanked back her hand from me, I didn’t realize it but I must’ve had
a grasp on it a bit too tight. She put her hand to her
head.

“Actually Lor … ummm, Mr.
Stevens, I’m not feeling so good, I think I’m going to take a
minute in the powder room. If you gentlemen will excuse me. Mr.
Stevens, everything you need is right there. I will send Ginger in
to help you with the presentation.”

As she walked out of the
conference room, Kip was coming in. I looked at him, he nodded once
which meant that what he needed to do was accomplished. I took a
breath and clasped my hands together and announced, “Well, I think
I have a life to sign away.”

We finished the meeting in
no time. Actually, I sat there as Loren went over all he had to go
over, while I thought over that handshake and those eyes that
pierced straight through my soul. I couldn’t get them out of my
head.

How many times had I laid
looking down into them, they held my entirety. My past, present,
and now they held my future. The future she now was a part
of.

“Now if you will open your
folders to page three…” Steven’s voice was now prominent over my
thoughts, which was my signal.

“Thank you, Stevens. We
will be in touch.” I closed my folder, and began packing up my
other paperwork. I looked over at Kip and noticed he was doing the
same. Looking over at Loren, he looked like a deer in
headlights.

“Don’t worry. I just need
to look over a couple of things before I put my John Hancock on
these. You know, you can never be too careful.” I grabbed my
briefcase and started to the door, Kip right on my ass.

”But…but…Mr. McHale…
gentlemen, we can’t prolong this transaction any longer, the board
of director’s at Richland Manufacturing wants to close this deal as
soon as possible,” Stevens stuttered.

“We understand that, Mr.
Stevens,” Kip advised Stevens, which made it look real good since I
hadn’t heard him say a word all fuckin’ morning.

I began walking in the
opposite direction of the elevators, and headed for Elle’s desk
where I saw her sitting, acting as if she was actually working. I
stopped right in front of her desk, this conversation was going to
include her, might as well let her know about it now.

““
I’ll tell you what,
Stevens. I know that you and…” I turned to look at Elle again.
Jesus, I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her. Her hair had just a
touch of gray, telling me she was not the eighteen year old girl
she once was. She was a woman now, beautiful and
elegant.

I was a selfish bastard
and I was damn proud of it. Really, I didn’t give a fuck what
anyone thought or what anyone had to say about it. She was going to
be mine.

”
Miss…I’m sorry. Miss,
what was your name again?”

I could see that she was
faking a smile, in fact her face was saying, “Fuck off,” to me, but
I couldn’t help but smile a true smile.

“Mrs. Barker-Jackson, Mr.
McHale. My name is Elleny Barker-Jackson.”

I could not wait to hear
her say my name. Mr. McHale was my father, I was TJ to her and the
sound of that rolling off of her tongue was a fantasy to
me.

“Ah, yes that’s right,
again, my apologies. Loren, I know that you and Mrs. Barker-Jackson
have worked long hours on this arrangement, let’s you and I make a
little deal. Strictly off the record, of course. You give me
forty-eight hours to go over this contract and on Thursday, Ms.
Barker-Jackson can meet me in my hotel’s restaurant, twelve-thirty,
where she can pick up these contracts signed and agreed to, no
stipulations.”

I looked over at Kip who
was standing there practically in DT overload, jonesing for a
cigarette where I saw him nod once in his approval. Hell, he didn’t
even know what he was saying yes to, I just told him to follow
along.

I looked over at Stevens,
who was breathing heavily, more than likely demanding his
subconscious to calm the fuck down. As I looked over at Elle, I
could see pure terror written all over her face.

I could tell that she was
not up for this option “Mr. McHale, I don’t think-”

“You’ve got yourself a
deal, McHale,” Out of nowhere Stevens chimes in.

All six of our eyes pasted
to him. I was literally rolling in hysterics on the inside at what
the hell this meeting had turned into out here, in a lobby, by a
secretary’s desk. The other half of me is in hysterics just because
I haven’t laughed in so long, I missed the way it felt.

“Mr. Stevens, I’m sorry
but I think that this is highly unethical-” she tried
again.

“Elle, we will discuss
this at a more suitable time,” Loren scolded.

They can say whatever they
want to; they weren’t going to turn this opportunity down. I was
willing to pay exactly what they were asking, I just wasn’t going
to let them know that. This was about me getting my time in with
Elle. I would’ve paid whatever I had to just so I could get
it.

“Gentlemen, I want to
thank you for coming in and I look forward to receiving that
information Thursday afternoon.”

I shook Loren’s hand, as
my eyes looked back over at Elle. My eyes were apparently working
on their own here, and obviously, it was being noticed by
her.

“Until Thursday, Elle.
Loren, it is always a pleasure.”

“Mr. McHale,” was her only
response.

Kip and I walked to the
elevators, and I waited until they closed to start my discussion.
Loren standing there until they closed.

“You get it?”

Kip pulled out his cell.
He had downloaded her entire address book from her cell to his own.
I wasn’t sure if I needed those numbers or not, but I felt better
having them.

“Awesome, anything
else?”

“I got her email addresses
too. I will email those to you when we get out to the car so that
you can have them.”

“Brilliant.”

We rode the rest of the
way in silence. I was lost in my world of Elle, and knowing Kip, he
was in his world of cigarettes and whisky.

Just about that time, my
cell rang. I was expecting it to be the office but when I looked
down I saw who I was not wanting to explain shit to as of yet. I
guess I didn’t have a choice.

“Hello.”

“What the fuck do you
think you’re doing, McHale?” Rachel’s voice sounded concerned but
to mask that she exposed her anger.

“Rach, so nice to hear
from you.” I didn’t want to get into this with her right now, not
in front of Kip and all of Richland. I just wanted to let her know
that all was well, and she had nothing to worry about.

“Don’t bullshit me Trev.
What. The. Fuck!”

I took a deep breath, and
let it out.

“I’m getting her back,
Rach. I can’t keep doing this. I see her everywhere, in my dreams,
in visions, even while I’m fuckin’ other girls. Rach, she consumes
me.”

It was quiet for a moment.
“Ok first that was
way
too much info. You could’ve left the fuckin’ other skanks
out, but my only question I have for you is - what the fuck took
you so long?”

I smiled. A smile I hadn’t
felt on my face in seventeen years. A smirk that made me realize
that right there, in that building held the answer to healing who I
was, who I had become and there was no way in hell I wasn’t going
to fight and win back what was rightfully mine. Make everything
that I had planned for us seventeen years ago a reality.

Chapter 10

It was evening, I had
decided to go grab something for dinner and eat in, mentally
exhausted from today’s events. Around eight, I jumped in the shower
and headed to bed to catch up on some CNN. Shortly after laying my
head down comfortably on the pillow, my cell phone started
buzzing.

“This had better be
important,” I challenged whoever it was calling my
phone.

“Your buddy looks like
he’s working a second job over here at Toppers, you wanna come
check it out?” It was Kip and he was following Bear, I sprang up,
adrenaline pumping.

“I’ll be there in ten -
stay with ’em.”

I told Kip I’d be there in
ten, I was there in eight. Jumping in his rental, we sat there
watching on the side of the building four men and a woman
meeting.

It was dark, but there was
a light on the back of the alleyway which shown a trace of light
right where the five of them were standing. Recognizing Bear
instantly, he was bigger than he was in high school and when I say
bigger, I don’t mean muscles. He looked as if he added an
additional thirty pounds to his already stocky build.

All of the sudden, one of
the men, a tall lengthy guy who I didn’t recognize grabbed the
woman. Holding her as one of the other men began hitting her. One
fist to the stomach, another to the face. It took the other two men
to hold Bear off from attacking. Her cries and screams echoed in
the alley, as she begged them to stop.

I went for the door
handle, because I really didn’t give a shit who you were, no woman
deserved to be treated like that. Kip grabbed a hold of me, halting
my movement.

“Stop. Don’t you even
fuckin’ think about going up there. Don’t do this, Trevor. I know
why you’re doing what you’re doing, and if you go up there - you
will blow everything! That person that is sacred to you and you
know exactly who I’m talking about, will be dust in the wind if you
go up there!”

He wasn’t asking me, he
was ordering me not to go over there.

I stopped right where I
was, not because he insisted I didn’t do it, but because he called
me Trevor. He never called me by my first name, he always called me
by my last. Kip was concerned and for that, I turned back around to
watch how this all played out.

When I saw another man
come out from the shadows, dressed to the ‘T’, the men dropped the
woman to the ground. His suit had to cost as much as mine. He was
not tall by any means, short in fact. His build was stocky, almost
matching Bear’s build, but this guy was thinner. You could tell he
was not one that got his hands dirty, he was either a manager or
owner of the bar.

He went up to Bear,
stopping to stand in front of him. Bear straightened up and puffed
out his chest, like he wanted to show he wasn’t afraid of him. The
man took his hat off, holding it out for one of the men to take it.
Once one of them grabbed it, he reached into his pocket and pulled
out a knife.

“What the fuck,
Kip.”

I just knew we were going
to witness a murder happen right before our eyes. The man in the
alley flipped the knife open, rubbing it up the side of Bear’s
face. The light catching on the metal blade of the
knife.

Kip looking through
binoculars, began narrating to me what was happening.
“You know that man?” He asked.

“Not that I can see,” I
answered truthfully.