CHAPTER 5: Give Me A Sign

Ares sat at his desk in his home office and groaned. He was distracted and it wasn’t like him in the least. He was entirely focused on the sweetest, prettiest girl he’d ever met in his life and his lust for her was out of control.

The file he had his security pull on her beckoned him again and he forced himself to leave the icon on his screen closed. He’d already committed it to memory anyway.

Magda Onassis. Recently turned twenty-six. Masters from MIT. Only a handful of dates and no real number of boyfriends. He counted a high school boy and a married man in the months before she went to the UK. She had three close friends but he glossed over their details. He didn’t give a shit about any of them. Just her.

His VP of operations had arranged the meeting with the developers of the app they had been beta testing. Feedback had been more than remarkable and he was ready to give the group an easy payday so he could take their product, implement it, and improve it. With what the three-techy people had done already, his entire team would be able to improve upon. He was confident in his IT department but the trio had developed the product had been smart enough to patent and if anyone tried to use their proprietary information, they had a lawyer on the ready. They made it clear when they were doing their beta testing. They were ready to relinquish control now, likely because they had gone as far as three people could go and he wanted the app. He wanted it all. It was going to make him hundreds of billions of dollars once he loaned the rights to every banking institution. A billion or two up front would be nothing for what this product would earn him in the long run.

So, he’d agreed to the meeting and when he’d walked into his boardroom with his legal team, VP, admin assistant and his CFO, he was ready to hammer out details. Then he’d seen her. Magda Onassis. The minute they had locked eyes when he had entered the boardroom, he had felt the wind get knocked out of his lungs as if he were his bodyguard Jake’s personal punching bag.

The emerald eyes, the hair which was unruly as hell even when she tried to put it in a bun, and the mouth a hair to wide for her rounded face made his dick harder than it had been in ages. His reaction to her was visceral and unholy. He longed to shock her to the core and make good on every filthy promise he could come up with. She was the image of the consummate good girl with make-up free skin, the nerdy glasses, and her overall quiet demeanor. He wanted to teach her how to be naughty in every sexy way possible.

He grinned to himself as he recalled the surprise on her face when he’d met her in line this morning at the beach. He had paid his surfing buddy a hundred bucks to send out the mass message to everyone about this morning’s waves and then made sure he was there if she showed up. He’d watched her surf for nearly an hour, keeping his distance. He wanted to see who she was with, who she spoke to the most, and what group she gravitated to.

Interestingly enough, she had waved to multiple groups but hadn’t actually gone to any of the cliques he had expected. She had been focused on the waves and not the comradery most surfers enjoyed. She was truly there only for the sport. She was poised and elegant on the board. She held her own with ease and even after a particularly harsh wipeout, she’d come up laughing loudly, high-fived one of the guys who had checked on her and got right back up to go again.

When he’d approached her, he knew he’d startled her. She hadn’t expected him but he’d been struggling to keep his distance. The way she’d shot down one of the guy’s flirting had made him know there was more to her than he was expecting. Though, if he were honest, the way she’d snarked back a response to him the week before in the conference room when he’d told her he presumed she was the admin assistant had his blood pumping.

Magda Onassis was who came to mind when he thought of one of his mother’s favorite sayings. Still waters run deep. She might be serene, calm, and docile on the outside but inside she was a force. He wanted to unleash her inner demons and claim them all for himself.

Her blatant lie about not checking him out in the meeting had gotten his mojo running. Cheeky thing thought she’d been far sneakier than she had been. She had blushed when he’d called her out. He wanted to see if the blush was only on her cheeks or everywhere.

His phone rang and he realized he had spent another ten minutes thinking of Magda instead of doing what he’d sat down to do at his desk and chuckled. She was under his skin. He couldn’t wait to see her again.

He answered his phone, smiling at the number. “Hi Mama. How are you?”

“Are you coming to play gin with me today?”

“It’s Sunday, isn’t it? Would I forget my favorite girl?”

“Do you know Ares; I have had a hankering for one of those big coffees with all the whipped cream on them?”

“I did not know this mama. Would you like me to bring you one?”

“I would. When are you going to bring me a girl to talk to?”

“Well,” he thought of Magda, “I met a girl this week. She’s beautiful and different from anyone I’ve ever met.”

“Is she the one, Ares? Your dad knew I was the one right away. He chased me for a whole year. I hope this girl doesn’t make you chase her for a whole year.”

He chuckled, “I think Mama she is going to make me chase her a long time. She’s very smart. To smart for the likes of me.” He teased his mother who believed he was the smartest person in the world.

“Well, then she probably reads on the internet all of those stories about you being a playboy. She’s not going to like those stories, Ares. I warned you it could come bite you in the bottom.”

“Yes, you did warn me.” He had been warned so much though he actually had been heeding his mother’s warnings since the one mishap in college. He might date a lot but he kept his dick clean. He didn’t sleep around and never on the first date. He had one woman accuse him of being gay because by the third date he wouldn’t fuck her. He had laughed in her face and walked away. He was all for sexual empowerment of any kind. If a woman wanted to sleep around, it was entirely her choice and her prerogative but if he was going to risk putting his dick in a woman, she was going to be one who wasn’t going to take him on the craziest ride of his life after. “I date Mama but I’ve always been respectful.”

“Except for Trudy.”

“Except for Trudy because Trudy doesn’t understand when I’m respectful. She hears me only when I lose my temper.”

“She’s sick, my darling.”

“Which is why she is in a psychiatric facility and will likely stay there until her dying day.” He reassured his mother.

“She tried to kill me, Ares.”

“Yes, Mama she did.”

“She was jealous of me. Your mama. What kind of girl gets jealous of a man’s mother?”

“The kind who is sick and needs psychiatric help,” he rubbed his forehead. It wasn’t often his mother thought of her assailant but when she did, it was often hard to put her off topic.

“You only slept with her once.”

“Yes Mama, I did. And I learned my lesson and I listen to my Mom now. I don’t sleep around. Now, I have a bit of work to do and then I will be over with the biggest whipped cream topped coffee I can find.”

“Make it a caramel one.”

“Yes ma’am,” he chuckled as she made a smacking kiss noise and told him she loved him. “I love you too. I’ll see you soon.”

He leaned back in his chair and sighed. At sixty-three, his mother was not in the best of health, with cognitive issues which resulted from Trudy’s attack on his family.

Trudy Turnpike. The woman who had changed the course of his life with a single sexual experience. At twenty-one years old, he had celebrated earning his bachelor’s degree by drinking with the boys. He had met Trudy at a bar and while he didn’t take her home, he had kissed her on the dance floor and gotten her number. She had been gorgeous with curves in all the right places and he didn’t hesitate to call her the next morning.

She’d agreed to go on a date with him the following Thursday. They had spoken on the phone every day between the night they met and their date. He learned she was smart and quick witted, if not a bit sarcastic, but he could take a bit of good with the bad, or so he’d thought. She’d been charming and funny and she’d shown him more cleavage than his twenty-one-year-old self had known what to do with. He had taken her back to his place and they had slept together the first date. Then she hadn’t left. The next day, the Friday, he’d had a job interview and told her to let herself out of his apartment. It had seemed innocent enough but when he’d gotten home after being out all day, attending his job interview and then meeting up with friends, she’d still been in his place.

She had met him at the door raging about having cooked his dinner and he was late. She had thrown a plate of spaghetti Bolognese at him and had started throwing punches. He’d called the cops to get her removed from his place.

The next day being Saturday he’d gone out with friends hiking for the day and they’d had tons of laughs at his expense for having to call the cops on a girl. None of them were laughing when he’d gotten home and she was back in his apartment.

She had, while he’d been gone, rearranged his entire living room and hung-up photos she had found of him in which she’d added cut out photos of her face and body to the images. He’d been stunned. Again, he’d called the cops and his parents this time because he wasn’t sure what the hell was going on.

His father had the super of the building come over and change the locks. His mother had insisted to the police they call the girl’s mother and make sure she was taken care of. Trudy’s mother had responded with a “she’s pulling this shit again” comment which made them all concerned for her mental health. However, the woman had agreed to pick up her daughter from the police station and take her home and get her help.

With the locks changed and her family intervening, Ares had still had a hard time sleeping the Saturday night but eventually had woken Sunday morning exhausted and nervous, to the smell of bacon cooking in his kitchen. At first, he’d thought his mother had come to check on him but no such luck for him. Trudy was back, wearing an apron, making him breakfast.

She had also put his cell phone in the microwave to keep him from making calls. She had insisted they were going to sit down and discuss their relationship over breakfast, while she wielded the biggest butcher knife he’d ever seen. Since he hadn’t owned one, he’d known she brought it with her.

His parents, who he had been supposed to meet for church on Sunday grew concerned when he hadn’t shown up, came to the apartment. When they’d noticed the door had been jimmied open, they called the police and then went inside in search of their son.

This time she was charged with forced entry, forcible confinement, and uttering threats. Her parents paid her bail and she was out in twelve hours.

For six weeks the cycle continued of Trudy following him everywhere, uttering threats and causing scenes. She was insistent the one night they’d had was, in her eyes, a matrimonial connection and therefore he belonged to her.

Then when he’d moved back into his parent’s mansion, with security increased, somehow Trudy got past it all and accused his mother of coming between them. She made disgusting comments about Ares’ relationship being sexual with his parent and accused the gentlest woman Ares had ever met in Pearl Winter as the main force in keeping Trudy and her true love apart. She had shoved his mother down a flight of stairs, breaking her spine and causing considerable traumatic brain damage.

It had been all caught on CCTV in the house, installed when things had started to escalate. Trudy had been arrested and charged but because of her mental illness, she was remanded to a psychiatric facility indefinitely. The one time she did leave nearly five years ago, she’d found Ares within three days and had gotten herself into the lobby of his corporate offices. He’d had her arrested and again she was taken back to the facility.

His mother had never recovered from her injuries. Confined to a wheelchair with a traumatic brain injury, simple tasks such as reading and writing or adding simple numbers were now a struggle for the woman who held a PhD in environmental studies and had been one of the foremost ecological scientists in California.

His father had passed away from a stroke in his sleep two years ago at the age of eighty. The devastation of losing the man she had loved for forty-five years had diminished her abilities even further. Now she lived in the mansion his father had bought her with a handful of nurses who took care of her every need. He had wanted to move back in with her but she had refused him outright. “Children were meant to leave the nest,” she would say and then click her tongue at him.

While it had been nearly thirteen years since the fiasco with Trudy Turnpike, he was still very well aware of the risks of dating a woman who might read more into his actions than he was ready for. And, as a result, he took things slower. He didn’t have casual flings. He didn’t fuck around. He liked to date and dance and have dinner with a beautiful woman but if after a nice dinner and conversation if they were too anxious to get him into bed, he was out the door.

He was aware the tabloids painted him as a philanderer who made all his lovers sign NDAs, which wasn’t a bad idea truthfully, but the reality was, he was content to live his life with having a handful of his past short- and long-term relationships based on more than sex.

For the first time in a long time, though, he was genuinely excited about the pursuit of a woman. He pulled open the file subconsciously and pulled up the photo of her smiling and shook his head. Everything in him wanted to run fast and headlong into her arms. It was an incredible feeling and one he’d never experienced in his thirty-three years. He was smitten.

“Magda Onassis, I don’t know who or what you are or what spell you have over me but,” he traced the image with his fingertip, “I beg of you, please don’t be crazy.” He sent a prayer to his father asking for him to give him a sign, any sign, he wasn’t losing his mind with this sudden infatuation with a girl he’d only recently met.

No sooner had he took his fingers off the screen of his computer and rolled back from his desk did a photograph perched on a shelf of him and his father fall over. He frowned and then laughed as he realized he must have jarred the wall when rolling the chair. “If it’s a sign dad, I’ll take it. If it’s not, I’m pretending it is.”

With that, he pushed away from the desk realizing he wasn’t getting any work done today. He’d go spend extra time with his mom. It’s what good sons should do anyhow.