Plastic Confidence (Good Bye Trilogy #1) (20 page)

THIRTY-TWO

JULES

Pierre totally surprised me
when he came into the kitchen and saw us half naked. I thought he would run out screaming and/or crying but he remained pretty cool. He took in Brennan’s and my appearance with grace. I identified that Brennan was uncomfortable with me leaving. He wanted me to stay and play house and so did I. Conversely, I felt gratitude for the man that had been clearly pining for me since the day he rescued me from my wrecked sailboat.

“No French today, ok?” I
stated rather than asked. The only thing French I wanted was a kiss from Brennan. It was official. I was a sappy cheese ball.

Pierre laughed. “
OK, no French. Let’s just wash the boats and you can tell me about Brennan. He is... a surprise, no?”

That seemed
like a fair enough lead in. It was probably killing him since he walked in to the house. Pierre probably wanted to know if Brennan was a full time live in lover or if he would be booted out the next day. His reappearance in my life was out of the blue for me, as well.

Maybe talking to him would firm up what I was feeling which was terribly nervous
. Brennan and I did not have a good track record and our past pulled me into thinking that this may not work out...
again
. Maybe talking to someone about where we were headed would help me figure it out, too. I started to explain how we met and our instant attraction. I talked about the open marriage and Johnny. I talked about poor timing and his way of shattering something in me that I hadn’t felt with anyone... ever. I saw him flinch when I said that and mentally kicked myself for being such a heartless bitch.

“Yes, I admit I did know who you were,
Jules,” he stated. That was so far from what I cared about in that moment that I just nodded. I already knew I was the lead singer of Love Sick Ponies. It was how he responded to it that made me like him more. I wasn’t a celebrity. Pierre liked me for the girl that I had become on the island. The girl with the bucket list.

“That’s cool. I figured you did but it was so nice of you not to say anything.
You made it feel... I felt normal for once,” I appreciatively responded as I grinned at him. His answering smile was so heartwarming but it wasn’t all there. He was hiding something from me. Perhaps I had really hurt him with Brennan being there but he had to understand that I had never felt anything for anyone like I did for Brennan. I truly believed, especially after vomiting out the whole story that he was meant for me.

It was a slightly windy day on the island which made the docks a bit harder to walk on. My sea legs instantly found the board of the dock and I watched the sailboats and motor boats start to head out for the day. I needed to buy another boat. How I would love to lay on the bow and sip wine with Brennan on a stunning day like today.

When we were down at the docks, he showed me the two boats that needed the most cleaning. I noticed that a lot of people were off their boats. They were most likely perusing the town. It was a beautiful day. I took his bucket of water and the hose. Someone called Pierre’s name from down the dock and he excused himself while I got to work on the first boat.

Pierre took care of most boats as they came in to dock. I was pretty sure that was how he made money to stay here. I had never visited his place and that was my choice. He had asked me several times but I never felt comfortable enough to go. Call it instinct or just call it that I didn’t want to give off
“love vibes.”

I was just about to start with the
hose on the bow of the boat that I had already soaped up when a loud song started to play. I froze. I hadn’t heard that song in years.
I Sang for You
was taunting me in a boat not far from me. Did someone recognize me and they were playing some kind of joke? My heart restarted when I noticed that it abruptly stopped. I started the hose and tried to focus on my task when that fucking song started again. This time my feet were on fire. I needed to go shut the fucking music off. It wasn’t until I followed the music that I noticed that the song skipped a few verses. It was someone’s ring tone on their cell. I followed it three boats down from where I was working and realized that it had stopped again.

I ducked my head into the cabin and yelled out
for permission to come aboard, something that Pierre insisted I use anytime I was on the docks. With no answer, I heard the Love Sick Ponies and my voice start to ring through again. I stumbled in towards the kitchen table and found the sickening culprit. I nearly lost my balance when I saw that the display read “Johnny Lennox”. Who’s fucking boat was this?
Holy shit
. What the fuck was going on? Johnny. Johnny was this one phone call away. He was calling this boat on this dock in this town on my island. How?

With shaking fingers, I pressed answer.

“Hello Johnny,” I said in a surprising solid and cool voice.

“Who is this? I need Mark.” His reply was
irritated and unpleasant. I cringed at his brazenness and tried to figure out who the fuck Mark was. I mentally went through all the people I had met this summer and Mark was not a name I remembered.

“Mark who?” I
questioned in a crossed tone.

“Wait, who the fuck is this?”
Johnny spat out.

“Oh you would probably remember me as your ticket to fame,” I answered in a taunting asshole voice.

The phone went dead. He fucking hung up on me. Coward.

I looked around the area for any clue who the person was that owned this boat when I saw it. I stopped still and my heart was dying. I was dying. This was it.

The OUIJA Board.
THE
very one with my initials lay out on the boat couch. It was in perfect shape. I went to touch it when a male cleared his voice behind me. I slowly turned around to see Pierre looking back at me. He looked at the OUIJA board with a smile.

“Do you know whose boat this is?” I asked in a scattered rush of words.

Pierre’s perplexed look told me he didn’t. He shrugged it off. He was casual but something was definitely off with him. He wasn’t giving me the adoring looks I had grown accustomed to.

“
Jules, you have to ask for permission to come aboard.” His voice was fatherly, scolding the little child that had trudged mud into the house from the outside. Or that was what I imagined a father would sound like. I never allowed anyone to speak to me in that tone of voice.

Not since Johnny.

“I know, I know. But I heard the phone... and... ” I stopped myself. That is when it hit me. Pierre was Mark. This boat was his. That phone was his. He was friends with Johnny.

“Are you Mark?” I
accused him. I watched his eyes for any hint of fallacies. His body tensed just the tiniest bit as his eyes shifted to the cell phone on the kitchen table.

“
No, I am Pierre,” he said with his normal sexy smile. I would have believed him except his fucking French accent was gone. He didn’t even notice since he started to grab my hand to bring me back out to the docks. I flinched away from him.

“
Where is your fake fucking accent, Pierre? And while we are at it, how long have you been working for Johnny?” I demanded.

I was shaking now. I nee
ded Brennan. Why the fuck had I come with Pierre? I should have stayed with him and now… Oh my God, Johnny knows where I live. He will know everything. He probably already knows everything. I was duped.

“Mr. Lennox is a client of mine. I was sent here to watch over you. He was just making sure you were
doing okay since you left without word,” he answered in a tone meant to calm an agitated animal. Again, Pierre... Mark started to move closer to me. I backed up and tried to find anyway to escape his grasp.

“Bull
shit!” I spat out. “Johnny is completely aware that I left
with
word. I believe my last words to him were fuck and off.”

“
Okay then, Jules. His other message is that he would like you to know that Grace came back to him while you have been gone. He says that you really are a slut and that board doesn’t lie. I even tried it out,” he confirmed with an adoring look at the board. “No matter who you have fooled here on this island, you can’t untie yourself from that little wonderful quality of yours.”

The fucker
was on top of me in two seconds. I actually had counted them as it was my new method of calming my body and brain in tricky situations. This qualified as a fucking tricky and freaky and fucking awful situation. His hands went straight to the short shorts that Brennan had told me not to wear and where he started to assault me with vigor. His hands and fingers gave new meaning to grabby hands. It was disgusting and repulsive.

I screamed
... loud. He blanched at me before he slapped me clear across the face.

“Come on
Julia, you know you want it. You want me. Johnny tells me you are an easy lay but you have made me work for it,” Pierre...
fuck
, Mark hissed out. His hot breath on my upper chest made me cringe. If he kept up with the French accent, I may have been a little nicer to the guy but I was one hundred shades of pissed off.

I let him do his thing
for a few moments while I thought of the moves I had learned in self-defense class. Bucket list. Check. I wondered if he had been following me back then, too. Fuck it. I was doing this and getting the hell off of this boat, away from Pierre, that stupid OUIJA board and the song that started to play on the cell phone once again. Johnny. I needed to run far from Johnny.

With a two finger jab at his eyes and a swift kick to his nuts, I watched Pierre or Mark or
whoever the fuck he was fall down in one swift thud. I high tailed it out of there but not before grabbing his phone. I got to the end of the dock before I called the Island Police and told them Pierre had attempted rape. I told the woman as I started to cry that I needed to go home. They could and would find Mark on his boat or near the docks by either land or water. The female police officer was blatantly adamant that I was to go directly to the station or find a safe place nearby for the police to question me. I snapped that I was going home and again told her that they could find me there. I needed Brennan. As I hung up I realized that there wasn’t any DNA to make the accusation stick but at least we would all find out what Pierre’s real identity was.

When I got to the house, Brennan and Loves were both gone. Fuck, he said he was going to the beach. I went to the last back bedroom and locked the door. I sat in the corner and went through Mark’s phone. There were thousands of pictures of me.
I was eating at my kitchen nook. I was smiling with Kelly. I was tossing the ball at Loves on the beach. I was taking a shower? I immediately went to hit delete but thought better of it. The more sick photos on his phone, the easier a restraining order would be made on him.

Emails and texts sent back and forth to Johnny showed that Johnny was planning his trip to the Vineyard within the
very next week. He was obviously livid that Brennan was back in town. There were even photos of Brennan at that wedding with Sasha. She was looking up at him. He was wearing a suit. He looked stunning but his face? He was obviously lost and not returning any of Sasha’s smiles. He looked downright miserable and a small smile crept on to my face. Brennan loved me.

Pictures don’t lie. That was the only lesson that my absent father ever taught me. I will never forget that day. The one day that my father gave five solid minutes to me and me alone.
I snapped out of my reverie about my father and looked at the next fifty photos of Brennan. Why the hell were there photos of him, too?

I thought about the
OUIJA Board. Johnny had claimed that he had gone out that night at my brother’s and tossed it. I never did see the board again but he could have hidden it in his bag or his suitcase that weekend. Why would he have kept it? Why did he lie to both Kent and me that it was gone for good? Was it the OUIJA board that finally brought him to the realization to monitor me? Why did Johnny want me followed? What did he have to gain from doing this to me?

I heard the loud
obnoxious knocking on my front door. It was the tell-tale signal of a police officer. I swear they had a class about how loud to pound on people’s doors.

I jumped up, unlocked the door
, and rushed down the hallway to look out the window. I saw the three island cruisers in my driveway and sighed a breath of relief. I opened the door to my preferred policeman, Officer McMains.

Mitchell McMains
and I got to know each other over coffee down at the landing one morning last winter. I remembered it was freezing and he asked if I wanted to watch the water from inside the cruiser. Winter views of the ocean are extraordinary. Two hours later and we were best pals. I went to him whenever I had an issue with people not picking up their dog’s shit on the beach. He would laugh and hand me a donut to appease me. It always worked.

“
Jules, you poor girl. We got Mark Drury down at the docks. He was trying to untie the ropes when we got to him. He is not a happy camper right now. Did you know that he is a private investigator?” the older white haired man remarked. I hugged against his tensed up frame and brought him to the kitchen. I dished out a piece of banana bread and poured him some coffee.