Pearl in deep, p.1
Pearl in Deep, page 1
part #1 of The Jolvix Episodes Series
PEARL IN DEEP
THE JOLVIX EPISODES
FAITH GARDNER
Copyright © 2023 by Faith Gardner
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover by Dissect Designs
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For Jamie, my soulmate.
CONTENTS
Prologue
Five Years Ago
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
One More Thing…
A note from the author
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Faith Gardner
PROLOGUE
The pounding on my door is as heart-stopping as gunshots.
I add a tiny folded shirt to the laundry pile on my bed and wait a second. Maybe it will pass—a delivery person, a solicitor.
But no, the violent knocking starts up again.
My skin crawls as I make my way to the front living room window to peek out the paisley curtains. I’m scared I’ll see men in pink, but instead, it’s men in blue. Outside, next to my rusty wind spinner and crooked mailbox, two police officers wait with hands on hips. I flick the curtain shut and a one-second horror movie filled with infinite possibilities flashes through my mind.
“Mommy?” a little voice calls out. “Who is it?”
“Nobody, noodle, please stay in your room,” I tell her.
An invisible brick crushes my chest. Hand on the knob, I collect myself with a moment of stillness, then open the door.
“Yes?” I ask them.
“You Pearl Blackwood?” the taller one asks, his voice a baritone.
“I am.” Calm. Staying in the moment. Inhale and exhale. “What’s this about?”
The shorter cop has a jagged scar on his face that looks like it has a story, one I probably don’t want to know. “It’s about Christopher McKinney.”
I widen my eyes. “What about him?”
“We’d like to ask you some questions. Mind if we come in?”
“Sure, sure.” I beckon them inside and gesture to the embarrassment of paper and crayons on the shag carpet. “Sorry about the mess.”
“It’s no problem,” one of them assures me.
We take our seats around the kitchen table. As nice as they’re trying to be, clamped-mouthed smiles, I can’t forget the guns at their hips. I always feel that way around police, even if they’re pretending to be ordinary people. Here to ask questions about Christopher—I could vomit. This man-shaped nightmare’s going to follow me to my grave.
“What’d he do now?” I ask.
“Nothing,” Baritone says, taking out his black book and pen. “He’s missing.”
I wait a beat, giving myself a hand massage under the table to ease the tension, not sure what this means.
“Missing,” I repeat.
The word echoes through me and though I know it’s not what they mean at all, I miss him badly in a toxic spill of emotion. I breathe out slowly, as slowly as I can, until I’m so emptied of air that even my stomach deflates. The cop’s mouth is moving and sound is flowing out of him but all I can process is that word missing, missing, missing, which becomes more than a word, an ache deep in my bones.
And is it wrong that what washes over me next, as the meaning sinks in, is relief?
FIVE YEARS AGO
CHAPTER ONE
I’m crying in an elevator full of mirrors, surrounded by sad Pearls.
Not ten minutes ago, I was publicly chewed out by my boss—chewed up and spit out, more like. I work at Sky, the rooftop restaurant perched atop the thirtieth floor of a skyscraper in downtown San Francisco. Four-letter words weren’t hurled against me, but four-syllable words were, and that might hurt worse. Wiping my leaking eyes with my apron, the elevator doors open. A man waits. He stares back unblinkingly with what I assume is concern.
“All right if I join you?” he asks.
“It’s fine,” I say, swallowing.
He hesitates and then steps in. We both face the silver doors as they shut and we stand side by side. The elevator gently plummets. In the reflection, I watch him turn to me to study my face.
“Want to talk about it?” he asks.
“That’s okay,” I say.
He turns to face forward again, eyeing me there in the mirrored doors.
“Let me guess,” he says. “You work at that restaurant on the top floor?”
“What gave it away?” I ask. “The apron or the despair?”
“The unmistakable mix of both,” he says, turning to look at the side of my face again. “Did you get fired?”
“No,” I say. “Just yelled at in front of the entire restaurant.”
“By the manager?”
“The owner.” I turn to look him in the face, finally. “Why do you care?”
He shrugs, offering me a half-smile. Upon closer investigation, I notice the cleft in his chin. The intensity of his hazel eyes, framed by long lashes. The cinnamon brown hair just a little in need of a trim, falling across his forehead and curling up around his ears.
“Just like to know who to complain about for making his staff cry.”
“Oh, I hardly think he’d give a shit if anyone complained,” I laugh. “But thanks.”
I sniff, appreciative of this stranger in an elevator who’s turned my mood around by the time we hit the ground floor. The doors ding, open to the lobby, and we scurry our separate ways.
CHAPTER TWO
The next day I come in for my lunch shift. Not eleven yet, tables still being set with white tablecloths, the wall-sized windows wiped down. The unoccupied carpet spills out like a wine-colored velvet sea and the robo-vacuums glide across it, leaving tracks. Before I can scan my phone to signal the start of my shift, Vanessa immediately pulls me into the coat room. Vanessa wears her hair in a tight, gelled bun on top of her head, ridiculous false eyelashes, and tiny stars that twinkle from her earlobes. She also has a low, sexy voice that must be the reason she makes twice the tips I do.
“Did you hear?” she asks excitedly.
“Hear what?” My stomach pitfalls. Layoffs? Firings? But Vanessa’s beaming, so it can’t be bad news. “What is it?”
“Barron got destroyed by a customer after you left yesterday. In front of everyone. This guy drinking a martini at the bar asked to speak with the owner and then tore Barron a new asshole for treating his staff like shit.”
“Really?” A smil
“Because of you, dummy. Because of how Barron shouted at you like a maniac right before you left your shift.”
My mouth drops.
“Apparently the guy who saw it is some big shot—heads one of the investment firms in the building. He promised to tell his entire staff and roster of clients not to come to Sky unless Barron offered you a public apology today. He said he’d be back to ask you and make sure that Barron did.”
I gasp, hand covering my mouth. “He didn’t!”
“Yes, bitch, he did!”
We explode into a quiet fit of laughter.
“Ugh, don’t make me redo my makeup,” she says, straightening up. “I’m going to see if I can secretly film this, because I have never seen Barron apologize about anything and I probably never will again.”
“Who was this guy?” I ask. “The one drinking the martini, the one who tore Barron a new one?”
“Never seen him before, but he was a snack.”
The man in the elevator crosses my mind in a flicker, but I dismiss the thought. Ridiculous.
We hear the rise and fall of Barron’s voice down the hall—guess he’s just coming out of his office. Barron is a control freak, here before Sky opens and here after it closes, here weekends and holidays. Vanessa gives me a look and zips out of the coat room and I follow soon after.
“Good morning, Ms. Valencia,” he says to Vanessa as she rounds the corner near his office. Then, in a more subdued tone, “Ms. Blackwood.”
He stands in the hallway, straightening his tie, a steely blue that matches his eyes, his starched button-up shirt the same silver as his ponytail. The last words he spoke to me yesterday were when he shouted that I’m an “incompetent embarrassment” for accidentally crossing my arms in front of my chest while describing the specials to someone—a no-no when it comes to fine dining. I slow my pace to see if he says anything, but he remains mum.
When we open at eleven for our first lunch reservations, Barron comes out after my first table’s orders. He stands near the kitchen doors, clears his throat and, with the seriousness and pretentious articulation of a Shakespearean actor, loudly apologizes to me for his “reprehensible behavior” and promises he will “strive to learn from the experience.” Then he turns and disappears through the kitchen doors.
I look at Vanessa, who stomps her foot and mouths “damn” because she didn’t get her phone out in time. It was two scant sentences and Barron squeezed his apology in when there were only about ten people seated who hardly seemed to notice or care about the performance. Still, it feels like a victory.
I wish I knew who to thank.
CHAPTER THREE
I forget all about the apology over the next month, though it does scare something into Barron—he’s careful to berate his employees in private now. And then one late afternoon, that sweet lull between the lunch and dinner rush, I walk by the bar with its mirrored backdrop and shiny rows of liquor bottles and a hand reaches out to pull my sleeve. It’s him—the man from the elevator.
Drinking a martini.
“There you are,” he says, as if he’s been waiting for me.
“Hi,” I say with surprise.
“Remember me? The elevator?”
“Oh—right.”
“I came back to check and make sure that your boss apologized to you.” He sips his drink. “I told him I’d be back to find out.”
I look over my shoulder, to make sure Barron isn’t there.
“So that was you!” I say.
He shrugs like it’s no big deal, but he instantly becomes a hero in my eyes.
“What time are you off?” he asks.
“In an hour.”
He nods and says, softly, “I’ll wait for you.”
He doesn’t say it flirtatiously at all, more like there’s no conceivable way I’ll say no. He has an easy confidence and I giggle, even though I probably seem juvenile for doing so. But I can’t help it. The surprise of him, the fact he stood up for me, this mysterious stranger who is apparently very important—I feel special in a way I never have before.
“I’m Christopher,” he says, taking my hand in his.
“Pearl,” I say.
“Pearl,” he says, drawing the word out like he relishes the sound of it. “What a beautiful name. The only gemstone formed by a living creature.”
He smiles, his mesmerizing eyes locking with mine. And just like that—a snap of invisible fingers, a skipped heartbeat—I know I will follow him anywhere.
CHAPTER FOUR
As promised, Christopher waits for me to get off my shift. When I do, he takes my arm and informs me he’s taking me to dinner.
“Have you eaten at Paradis?” he asks as we get into the elevator.
I raise my eyebrows. Paradis is a hard place to land a reservation, with a chef’s tasting menu that probably costs as much as I make in a week.
“I haven’t,” I say.
Christopher pushes the button for the ground floor. He’s dressed in an ink-blue suit with a white button-up shirt, no tie, collar unbuttoned sexily. I remember what Vanessa called him—a snack. He certainly is. The doors close and he takes my hand. The weirdest part is me letting him, but it feels so natural. It’s as if he’s cast a spell over me.
“You sure?” I ask him. “About Paradis? That place is pretty upscale.”
“You don’t like upscale?”
I laugh, pointing to my work outfit. “I mean, sure, but I’d have to go home and change.”
“Don’t worry.” He squeezes my hand. “I’ve got you.”
My heart races as we exit the building, my mind unable to comprehend the breakneck speed at which this night is moving. It’s as if I’m two people. One is me, being led into the department store across the street, holding the hand of a perfect stranger. The other is watching this all happening. What are you doing, Pearl? What on fucking earth are you doing? But I’ve always had this way about me—wave a red flag and I’ll charge toward it like a bull.
He picks out a dress. Black satin, V-neck, and he guesses my size correctly. It costs more than I make in an entire paycheck.
“I can’t let you pay for this,” I say, putting it back.
“No, it’s on me.”
“I can’t let you—”
“The reservation’s in a half hour,” he says, pulling the tag off. “How about I go pay for this and you get changed in the dressing room?”
“Seriously, I can’t—”
“I insist,” he says, softly but firmly.
I shiver at his command, deliciously. I like men who insist. Yes, I have issues.
In the dressing room, I hesitate, exchanging a look with myself in the mirror as I hastily brush my hair and put on some red lipstick. This is crazy. Weird. Suspicious. I don’t even know this guy’s last name and he’s buying me dresses and taking me to dinner. Somewhere deep inside, I know this is wrong, but it’s like he’s deactivated my emotional alarm system. I just need a fucking fairy tale. I’m willing to ignore my better instincts if it means I get to play Cinderella at the ball for one night. I’m deep in student debt for a useless Social Work degree, working a job I hate, living in a studio the size of a cardboard box.
