CHAPTER
I hold the phone from my ear at the shrieking that’s going on from the other end. Jess sounds like a banshee as she expresses excitement of me telling her about the baby. After a week keeping it to myself since I did the ultra sound, I’d decided to finally tell her about. Earlier today I told my grandma and she insists she has to be in Detroit for the birth of her great-grandchild. I would not have it any other way as I’m hoping with her expertise, she will be able to help me. I’ve started reading maternity books but something tells me the experiences in the book couldn’t rightly prepare me to face reality.
Axel reads too about what to expect but his enthusiasm is still down. He’s not as excited about the baby as he used to be and he is always somber or very pensive. It is killing me and I’ve waited for him to come clean with me and tell about Jack but he hasn’t.
“I’m in charge of the baby shower!” Jess remarks.
“Of course you are, hon.”
“You don’t sound very excited. You do want this baby, right?”
“Yes, I do,” I reply. “I just have some things on my mind.”
“Like what?”
“I’d rather not say over the phone. Maybe we can meet up tomorrow for lunch?”
One thing had struck me at the doctor’s office a week ago doing the ultra sound. Jack knows way too much about Axel and me. How could he know about my pregnancy? We hadn’t told anyone prior to that ultrasound. Axel hasn’t even told his family as yet.
“Okay, we’ll meet at one. At the mall?”
The mall is the last place I want to go and bump into Jack. “Let’s meet at Hudson’s Café,” I suggest.
“Alright. Talk to you then, okay?”
“Bye.”
After hanging up, I settle back in bed wondering when Axel would come to bed. Immediately after dinner, he’d enclosed himself in his office downstairs and I’ve not seen him since. He’s getting distant and his lovemaking is now urgent. Still explosive but a little more aggressive in nature.
I get my copy of Belly Laughs I’ve recently become immersed in to see what else Jenny McCarthy has to say about pregnancy. The title had grabbed me when I walked into the baby store and I was in the middle. It’s an okay read but I figure I’ll have to read another book to be more informed on the process my body is going through.
I’m about to give up hope that Axel would ever come to bed when he pushes through the door looking tired.
“Are you finished?” I ask him.
“With what?” he returns and starts getting undressed. I’m a little distracted at his hot body.
“You said you had a contract to go over,” I remind him.
“Oh that, yeah I’m through.”
He’s lying to me but I don’t call him on it. I see him reach for his phone and there’s an angry look on his face before he literally throws it onto the night table.
“Is everything okay?” I query, skipping a page of the book.
“Yeah, just going to take a shower then I’ll join you.”
I watch him finish undressing before making his way to the en-suite bathroom. My heart is pounding in my chest but although anxious, I wait until I hear the tap running for a few minutes. I roll over to the night table on his side of the bed and took his iPhone. My hand is shaking because the last thing I need is for him to catch me with his phone but I need to know. I am driving myself sick with worry because he is trying to protect me and won’t tell me anything.
For the past few days I’ve watched him unlock his phone and believe I know the pattern well. If I could just see if he’s been talking to Jack then I’d feel better. I promise myself if I get the pattern wrong, I wouldn’t try again. I would leave it alone.
The phone unlocks when I trace the pattern I’ve seen him done several times. His background photo is of us on our honeymoon. pushing past the distraction, I pull up his call log. Just as expected. There are several missed calls from Jack. The man had called Axel a total of a dozen times today. There’s one outgoing call to Jack’s number that Axel had placed right after dinner.
I hate it that he lied to me and told me he had work to do. What was he hiding about Jack that he couldn’t tell me?
I tapped his message icon remembering the message he had received at the doctor’s office last week. I’d pretended as though I hadn’t seen the message and Axel had scrutinized me curiously as though assessing if I’d seen the message or not.
The message had since been deleted but there are half a dozen messages from Jack and fear grips me the more I read.
“You’ve got a beautiful wife. Nice body.”
“How’d you feel to lose the most important thing in your life?”
“How about a fair trade? An eye for an eye. You took away my business, I’ll take your wife from you.”
“If you ever try to threaten me again, I’ll blow your brains out, Axel.”
“Just passed your wife at her new office. She’s alone. Now would be the right time…”
“Relax, I’ll watch you squirm some more before I take her from you.”
I click the button to lock the phone and replace it to the bedside table, trembling. I need answers tonight and I wouldn’t stop until I get some. This guy I don’t know from Adam is threatening my life and I deserve to know at least why.
Now it makes sense Axel drops me to work every day and picks me up. He’s trying to protect me but this isn’t the right way to go about it, by hiding the truth from me.
I listen to the sounds in the bathroom, hearing the tap being turned off. I hear him brush his teeth and gargle before he walks into the bedroom. He’s completely naked and makes no attempt to cover up.
He wants sex, I can sense it and I don’t have the heart to resist him. he slips beneath the covers and without speaking pulls me closer to his body. I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him, returning his fervor. We are both panting and hot for each other. I need no foreplay to prepare me for his entrance. He lifts my negligee over my head and kisses my neck, down the gentle curve where out baby was starting to make his presence known.
When our bodies join, the sex is just like the other couple of nights. He kisses me desperately as he thrusts into my body over and over, working my thighs apart with his hands. He sucks my nipples which makes me erupt into his arms.
“I love you Axel!” I cry clinging to him as he continues to slake his lust until he too is driven over the edge. With a groan, he flops over to his back and pulls me into his arms. I go willingly and lie on my side with a leg thrown between his, my fingers drawing patterns on his chest.
“Axel,” I say softly, hoping tonight I’ll finally have the truth. “Will you tell me about Jack? Please.”
My head is on his shoulder so I know his heart skips a beat. “There’s nothing to tell.”
“I read the messages in your phone,” I confess. “And they don’t seem like nothing. Plus you lied to me about what you were doing in the office earlier.”
“You went through my phone?” he asks in shock. “What happened to the privacy you begged for when I answered your phone some month ago.”
“I had to. You were hiding it from me and I could tell it’s bothering you. Axel.” I hesitate to add but plunge right ahead. “Even our sex is different.”
He stiffens. “What? Bad?”
“No, not bad. It’s just a little more aggressive.”
He stares at me in alarm. “Did I hurt you? The baby?”
I shake my head. “No, we’re fine. I’m just saying all this is affecting us in every way and you deserve to tell me who Jack is and why he wants to hurt me.”
“It’s not really you he wants to hurt,” he answers and rubs a hand over his face in fatigue. “He wants to hurt me but he knows the one sure way to do that is to get to you. But he doesn’t know I’d die before I let anything happen to you, Joyce. And the baby. If he so much as touches a hair on your head, I’ll fuck him up good and he’d have no idea what hit him. Nobody messes with you and I don’t give a damn if he was my best friend.”
The anger in Axel’s voice send shivers down my spine and I know he means every word of it. “Your best friend?” I parrot.
“Yes,” he sighs. “Jack and I were best friend from high school. He was always ambitious and we went off to college together. When we were finished, with my inheritance and his we started a new business venture. I should have questioned where he got his capital since he doesn’t have wealthy parents like I do. Anyway we started the company and I started hearing rumors about Jack and him wielding threats and intimidating clients. He wasn’t above using every dirty trick known to man. Sometimes those tricks were illegal.”
“What did you do?” I ask, prompting him.
“The business was doing great but I didn’t want to have ties with him after he refused to listen to me,” he continued sadly. “So I offered him the opportunity to buy out my share of the company at half what it was valued. At the time, I wasn’t into the money, I just wanted to get out. It turns out, a lot of investors and clients only wanted to do business if I was also a part of the company. So the business failed. Miserably.”
“And he blames you,” I conclude for him.
“Yes, he thinks I took away the business from him,” he adds. “Especially since recently I acquired a business deal he had been hankering for and without it, he has no hope to regain confidence in the last of his clients. He’s had to file for bankruptcy.”
I digest the information he is parting. Axel had said he was unscrupulous in business but so were many businessmen. Would he be harmful though?
“Do you believe his threats?” I ask. “Or do you think he’s bluffing.”
Axel’s arms tighten around me. For a few minutes, he doesn’t say anything. His hand reaches down to caress the beginning of the gentle swell of my belly. Turning his head to regard me, his lips cover mine in a soft, sweet kiss, possessive kiss.
“He’d have to go through me first before he can hurt you,” he whispers against my lips.