Chapter Five
Soul couldn’t get Patience out of his mind. He’d pull out her business card and dial her number, only to crumple the piece of paper and thrust his phone back into his pocket. She drove him crazy…whether in the room with him or not.
By the end of the night, the card looked more like a failed attempt at a spit ball and he’d memorized her business number. His fingers moved over the phone screen automatically. It’d only been a few hours, what would he be like after days or weeks? He’d experienced it once already when she’d abandoned him, and something told him this time now that he knew who she really was, it would be worse. He couldn’t lose her again.
Did she want him as desperately as he did her? Was she going crazy thinking about him, lusting for him? That thought stopped him. Yes, she hadn’t been able to completely hide her reaction to him when she saw him. Her flushed cheeks and breathlessness attested to that, but that didn’t mean she desired him the way she had during their one night together. To her, it could have been nothing more than a one and done deal. And when the hell had he turned into an uncertain wuss? Fuck, this woman turned him inside out.
Making a decision and taking charge of his fear, he pulled out his phone, his fingers effortlessly over the screen. He wasn’t sure what to expect since it was obviously after normal operating hours. The moment he heard her voice answering the phone, he jumped and then cursed himself.
“Millennium Manufacturing, Ms. Thorn speaking…Hello?”
He either needed to speak or hang up, but if he hung up, that would be the end of it all. What did he want more: nothing or her? ‘Fake it. You can do it, Soul,’ he encouraged himself. “Ms. Thorn, or should I call you Siren?”
“What do you want?” All pretense at politeness ended the moment he called her by her stage name.
“Dinner. Tonight. I won’t take no for an answer. Something tells me your associates don’t realize they have a Texas treasure working for them. So either you meet me, or I tell them. You’re choice.”
Patience had worked hard to keep her two lives separate, not wanting anyone to judge her or make her job more difficult. When she’d first entered the firm, several men propositioned her. She started to wear less conspicuous clothing, worked late, and made sure she out performed everyone in order to prove herself. It worked and she moved up the ladder. She didn’t advertise her performances and stayed off all social media sites. And now both lives had crashed into each other like a bad car wreck during rush hour and if she didn’t watch it, it might end in tragedy. “Fine. When and where?”
“New York Pizza in Valley Ranch. Do you know it?”
“Yeah.”
“Meet me there in an hour.”
“Fine.”
“I’ll see you there, Siren.” He hung up the phone and cringed. He wanted to win her over, not threaten her, but here he sat threatening her career, which probably meant more to her than almost anything else based on the way she lectured him “I’m a fucking first rate idiot,” he said to no one in the room, “but she’s coming.”
***
Patience wondered if she could get away with shooting Soul in the heart and then claiming self-defense. It wouldn’t be in the back, so he wouldn’t be running away. If she staged it properly and got a good attorney, she probably could.
He’d threatened her, and like all others he proved he was nothing more than a typical guy who did whatever he wanted and expected her to follow like a little puppy. Men never thought of others, only of themselves. And she should have expected it from him, should have planned for it, but she hadn’t and now she was sitting in the parking lot of a dive pizza joint in the middle of Irving a block away from one of the Cowboys practice fields. She knew better than to pick up a guy from Jodi’s and now she was being punished for doing just that.
“One bite and then I’m out of here. That is probably all my stomach can handle of him anyway,” she grumbled as she got out of her car. In all honesty, she felt more disgusted with herself for allowing herself to be caught than at him for setting the trap.
Rolling her shoulders back, she marched into the restaurant and ran smack dab into someone’s hard chest. “Excuse m—You!” She glared daggers when she looked up and saw his dark eyes staring back at her.
“Me.” Soul grinned cheerily. “I wasn’t sure what you’d like to eat, so I waited until you got here before I ordered. Everything here is pretty good.”
“I know.”
“You…know?” He hadn’t expected that, but then again, she said she knew where to go. At the time, he assumed she’d plug the name into her GPS or maps app.
“I grew up in Coppell. My mom still lives there and this is where my friends and I would come for some of our study parties.” She left him standing there with his mouth agape and approached the counter with a grin. “Hello, Mrs. Vitya.”
The older woman behind the counter, who’d just placed a fresh pizza on the warming tray for customers to choose their slices from, glanced up and gasped. “Patience. It about time you came to see this old woman.”
Her thick eastern European accent always reminded Patience of those old Dracula movies, and at the same time it comforted her. “I was here a couple of months ago to see all y’all.”
“Don’t sass me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You eat here tonight?”
Patience’s smile almost faltered because she didn’t want to admit that she wholeheartedly planned on dashing as soon as possible. “Looks like it.”
Her eyes narrowed, but the older woman kept silent until she glanced over Patience’s shoulder. “Date?”
“Who?” Patience demanded.
“Us, and yes,” Soul answered.
Stomping on his foot, Patience sweetly corrected, “It’s not a date, Mrs. Vitya. It’s a business meeting. He’s one of my clients.”
“You sit anywhere. Dinner on me tonight,” Mrs. Vitya instructed.
“Ma’am…” Soul began.
This time, Patience elbowed him and hissed in a low voice, “Trust me, it does no good to argue with her, and you’ll insult her if you don’t let her do this. Her brother is the owner of this restaurant.” To the other woman, she smiled. “Thank you, Mrs. Vitya.”
They sat in one of the booths and Patience glanced around the place. It really hadn’t changed in the fifteen years since she graduated from high school. It still had the same dark wood paneling engulfing the restaurant walls where different sports memorabilia hung. On days when the Cowboys played, this placed almost exceeded their occupancy limit, but tonight there were only a handful of customers left at this hour.
“I didn’t realize you’d gone to Coppell,” Soul commented, after returning from the soda fountain that sat against the opposite wall from their table.
“Yeah.”
“And let me guess, you were the smart girl.”
“One of them. I was the salutatorian of my class.”
“How old are you?”
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that it’s rude to ask a woman her age?” Patience snapped. She didn’t feel like playing nice with him.
Soul continued as if she hadn’t just tried to bite his head off. “I’m 34 and I’ll be 35 in three weeks on August 31st. You have that long to plan my birthday surprise. I didn’t go to public school, I went to a private high school. I think my dad was worried that something would happen. He was a bit overprotective of me. Still is in some ways, but since he remarried, he’s mellowed a lot. I don’t like nor dislike my step-mother, but yesterday she decided that they haven’t been spending any time together and arranged a couples retreat that my dad couldn’t turn down without Bubbles throwing a fit.”
Head jerking up, Patience gaped at him. Bubbles? Had he really said her name was Bubbles? “Bu—”
“And now that I’m sure you’re paying attention, no, her name isn’t Bubbles. I do tease her and call her that sometimes though. Her name is Sonya and she’s nice, however, she’s can be a bit ditzy. That said, she makes my dad happy and that’s what matters.”
“How long have they been together? What about your mom?” Why was she asking questions? She didn’t care…even if something about him still intrigued her after all this time.
“Sonya and my dad met ten years ago and they’ve been married for five. Dad practically gave himself an ulcer worrying about how I would take it since it’s just been the two of us for the longest time and he had a hard time getting over my mom. I was okay with it all though.”
“She left?” Patience inquired when he fell silent.
Shaking his head slowly, his smile dropped and his expression turned sad. He couldn’t meet her gaze and stared at the table where his hands busied themselves tearing apart the paper from his straw. “She died giving birth to me. For a couple of days I went without a name because my dad didn’t want to have anything to do with me, but eventually, he came back up to the hospital smelling like alcohol. Apparently, they weren’t going to let him into the NICU, but some nurse told them to let him in and he sat by my incubator and called me Soul because he said I carried the soul of my mother.”
Hearing his tale tore at her, but it didn’t change anything…no matter what her heart wanted. She was in charge of her own destiny, which did not include love. “How do you know all that?”
“My dad told me the story about my name, but the rest…his best friend stayed with him throughout it all. One night when I was a senior in high school, I got mad at my dad and accused him of not loving my mom enough. I think I even told him he’d killed her on purpose. I was young and stupid, and hated the fact that after 18 years, he’d finally gone out on his first date. He didn’t date again until I was 23 and only after I pulled him to the side and told him to get on with his life. The night I threw my teenage tantrum, my dad left and his buddy showed up. Uncle Rex has always been there and that night he slapped me on the back of the head—hard. I think I can still feel a handprint.” He lifted his hand and felt the back of his head before returning to ripping apart the white paper. “After he attempted to knock some sense into me, he told me everything. My parents had been high school sweethearts and my dad pinned her when they were in college. Typical love story, but different. Whenever my mom would go visit her folks or something, dad could never sleep in their bed. He always crashed at Uncle Rex’s or sleep on the couch. After mom died, he was a complete wreck. I think my mom is still the love of my dad’s life, but I also believe he’s made room for new love and Sonya understands.”
“You’re serious?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Her reaction confused him.
Rolling her eyes, she snorted and shook her head. “Love is nothing but a pipe dream. Nothing like that exists.”
“Excuse me?”
Patience leaned over the table, moving closer to him with a disgusted expression marring her beautiful face as she spat, “Love doesn’t exist in the real world. When I was seven, my dad decided he didn’t love my mother any longer and left her for some tramp who used him up and took all of his money. He was found dead under a pile of garbage a couple years later. My mother never forgave him because not only did he turn his back on her, he abandoned me as well. And when I was in college, I found a great guy who proposed on the day I graduated with my Master’s. I thought it was true love. Bleh. He ran off with one of my childhood friends and left me standing at the altar. That was five years of my life wasted. I quickly learned that men only wanted one thing and that was all they were good for anyway. So excuse me if I think your story is a little hard to swallow. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve lost my appetite.” She threw her napkin on the table and ran out of the restaurant without looking back.
Soul sat there without moving. He hadn’t known.
“Her story is a sad one.” Mrs. Vitya sat across from the man who’d just been left behind.
Blinking, he stared at her in surprise unsure of when she’d joined him. “I’m sorry?”
“Patience. What she didn’t tell you was that her mom also brought home man after man, trying to replace the love she lost and never found it. The police had to be called when Patience was 15 because one of them attacked her. After that, her mom swore off men. The man who left her at the altar, he was no good for her. We all tried to tell her, but Patience never listen. Even her mom tried tell her. And her childhood friend, never a good friend. She always tried to take Patience’s boyfriends and friends. That girl was poison. Patience, she used to see good in people, but now she been tainted. You could show her the good again.”
Soul couldn’t believe his ears. Seriously? No wonder she acted the way she did, but if that was the case, how exactly could he “show her the good again?” Not only that, after he threatened her tonight, he had a feeling she wouldn’t give him the time of day any longer.
“She want to believe. She strong, determined, and self-sufficient because she had to be. She need to know she can still be, and that love makes stronger.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?”
She smiled, the wrinkles that made her look old disappeared slightly, giving her a younger appearance. “You figure it out.”
“You’re assuming I want to be with her for any length of time.”
“You do. My old eyes can still see.” She cackled.
“Maybe.” Even if Soul decided to prove Patience wrong and that real love existed, he didn’t even know where to begin. He wasn’t some female heroine in a romance novel that smiled prettily, spoke of feelings, and could change the heart of the unfeeling hero. Their roles were reversed. He was a guy who stuck his foot in his mouth more times than he cared to count, and who’d never really thought he would find love until he’d been reluctantly dragged to a club in Deep Ellum and heard a siren sing. Most importantly, he didn’t have a lifetime of bad experiences to overcome.
Reaching over the table, Mrs. Vitya patted Soul’s hand. “You figure out.”
Soul wasn’t so sure. That said, he wanted to at least give it a shot.