Would being married to Jimmy be so bad? There had to be something good about him, she thought as she pictured the man in her mind. He had….okay well, there was his….
She sighed and rolled over, her arm covering her eyes in an effort to block the man’s image from her mind. The man was a slug. He had a huge pot-belly and dark eyes that were pure evil. Whenever he looked in her direction, she got the willies. He preferred those polyester shirts that were so famous with the guys on “The Sopranos” and wore not one, but two gold chains.
He had several gold teeth, she remembered sadly. Why would anyone pull out their teeth and insert gold ones?
She stood up and paced her room, walking from the window to her desk in an effort to come up with a plan to get out of marriage to a slimy, gross, cruel individual like Jimmy Traveri. Even her father’s opinion about the man was a mark against him since anyone her father liked was a bad sign. Her father respected all the wrong personality traits in her opinion.
Zeke probably would hate the man. Zeke was honest and kind and sweet and gentle. He’d never be able to stand up to the pressure her father, and probably Jimmy, would bring to bear. Zeke would be drawn into the criminal world and would be eaten up by all the problems that kind of business would cause him.
Her phone started ringing again and she walked over to her purse, digging out her cell phone. The number was blocked so she wasn’t sure who was calling her. She pressed the button to send the call to voice mail, but realized that she had several text messages and e-mails. Not an astonishing occurrence, since she’d been out of contact with everyone for over twenty-four hours now.
She clicked on the buttons and gasped when she saw that the first four messages were from Zeke. She hadn’t known his e-mail address, nor did she know how he’d gotten hers. But there they were.
She thought about deleting them, just cutting him out of her life because being with him was too dangerous. Her finger poised over the button while her mind debated back and forth about how to handle messages from the most incredible man she’d ever met in her life. In the end, she couldn’t trash the one link she had with the man.
Clicking the most recent message, she read, “Where are you?!” The first three were milder, but the message was clear. He was looking for her? And all of them had come to her in the last hour and a half. She’d just left his place about two hours ago so why would he be concerned about where she was?
She pressed the reply button and told him that she’d come home, then waited tensely for a response.
She didn’t have long to wait. “Coming to get you. Be ready to leave immediately. I’m five minutes out.”
She relished the tingle of excitement over the idea of seeing him again, but then remembered her resolve to keep him away from the craziness of her father’s world. “Can’t. Stay away.”
She pressed send before she had a chance to reconsider or before her resolve wore down. She moved to her bathroom and looked at her appearance in the mirror. Her hair was still too frazzled so she quickly brushed it, tying it back against her head so it at least appeared somewhat neat and professional. She didn’t bother with makeup, not really caring about her appearance when her heart was actually breaking. How that man had gotten through her defenses so quickly, she couldn’t figure out. She barely knew the man.
Sitting down at her computer, she tried to concentrate on work. But her mind was more attuned to listening for a response to her last message. When the silence continued, she told herself that it was better this way. She tried to convince herself that she was glad that he would respect her wishes for him to stay away.
She swiped the tears away, refusing to give in to the sadness that was threatening to choke her. It was better. Much better now. She’d survive. She’d marry Jimmy, protect her sister and read about Zeke in the business news. Surely she didn’t have to be married to Jimmy for too long, would she?
But what if she got pregnant? She couldn’t ever leave her child. And the whole point of the marriage would be to provide her father with a grandson.
No, marriage to Jimmy would not happen. She’d figure out how to get out of this. There had to be an answer. She could….
The doorbell ringing startled her out of her plans to escape her father’s desired fate for her. She wasn’t sure what she expected, but the trembling started immediately. It was Zeke. She knew it was Zeke. There couldn’t be anyone else who would arrive this early in the morning and he’d just told her that he was five minutes away.
She ignored the singing of her heart when she realized that he’d ignored her order to stay away from him. She’d have to reject him, tell him she wasn’t interested, but it certainly was nice that he was at least coming to try and find out why she was rejecting him.
A moment later her bedroom door slammed open and Zeke stood in the center, his head almost hitting the top and his dark eyes slicing through the room until they rested on her. She stood by her desk, her body shaking with both surprise and the normal reaction whenever Zeke was near. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, her eyes glancing out her bedroom window where she could see across the courtyard to her father’s office. Had Betty already told him that a man had shown up asking to see his daughter? Would the housekeeper be nervous about someone barging into Marissa’s room? Betty had probably never met Zeke before so there was a very real possibility that she had already called her father to let him take care of this issue.
People simply didn’t barge into Joe Berutelli’s home. It had never happened so Marissa wasn’t sure how her father would react.
Zeke looked furious as he walked towards her, his eyes scanning her from head to toe, almost as if he were trying to ensure that she was okay. That silly fluttering in her stomach flared back to life with the possibility. “Pack a bag if you want to, Marissa. But you’re coming with me.” He stood in front of her, hands on his hips and glaring down at her. “I don’t want to hear any more of this crap about keeping me away either.”
Marissa tore her eyes away from his magnificent form, her body shivering with excitement just at his close proximity. She tried to hide her reaction though, knowing that she had to get him away from her for his own protection. “You can’t be in my room,” she gasped, looking behind him, then out the window again. “You have to leave. Please hurry.” She tried to push him out of her bedroom, glancing through her window to see if her father had left his office. She could just imagine him and whichever goons were with him storming across the patio to confront whoever had entered his house without permission.