In the last entry of Rebecca’s Forgotten Journals, Rebecca issued the the Master an ultimatum and walked away. Will he figure out a way to be in Rebecca’s life on her terms?

Read the first, second, third, fourth and fifth, sixth entries from Rebecca’s Forgotten Journals to catch up with her romance.

Don’t forget to check back in next week, as Hypable will be running weekly entries from Rebecca’s Forgotten Journals, which are featured in her Inside Out series, until Valentine’s Day.

Rebecca’s Forgotten Journals: Dream Man
Part Seven

Thursday 11 p.m.

It’s been a week and one day since that encounter in the alcove. He hasn’t called me. He hasn’t sent me a note. I haven’t contacted him either. But I’ve seen him several times. We’ve made eye contact. And I’ve felt him. Not literally, but in those looks, I’ve felt his torment, his desire, his need for me. But I’ve also felt his resistance to what I need from him. I think this means we’re over.

That Dream Man I wrote about stopped by the Gallery today, and bought a very expensive Chris Merit painting from me. It was a big commission, and I should be pleased, but he asked me out right after, and it made me feel as if he were buying me. I just…I don’t want to be owned in any way ever again. I declined the date, and when I left work tonight, he was waiting for me, leaning on a fancy sports car that I’m pretty sure cost more than that painting which was a cool hundred thousand dollars. His suit, a black pin striped number, had been thousands too I assume. I still felt the same. Like he was trying to buy me. And so I decided to just be clear and direct. I marched right up to him.

He’d pushed off his car, and we’d stood toe to toe, closer than I’d meant to stand. “Rebecca,” he’d said, giving my velvet coat, a gift from my mother, I’d paired with an emerald green scarf, a once over, his brown eyes both warm with a gentleness and hot with attraction, when they’d met mine. “You look beautiful,” he’d added.

I’d gotten pretty warm then, too, which had stunned me. I’d really started to believe no one else but my former Master, could make me anything but cold. It had kind of scared me. It made me feel like I was losing the man I love. But then, I’d suddenly remembered a saying my grandmother used to tell, when she was alive: If you have a bird and it flies away, if it comes back, it was yours. If it does not, it never was.

“Thank you,” I’d told him, in response to the compliment. “Is there a problem with the painting?”
“Yes,” he’d said. “There is. It made you uncomfortable.”

I was blown away that he was in tune enough with me to know this. “It didn’t make me uncomfortable,” I’d said, daring to say exactly what I’d felt. “You asking me out after buying it did.”

He’d arched a dark brown. “Because you don’t want to go out with me?”

“Because if felt like you bought the painting to buy me.”

“It’s my second Chris Merit painting,” he’d said. “The first I picked up in Paris. And at the risk of sounding arrogant, I don’t buy women. I don’t have to.”

“Oh. No. I mean–your–of course you don’t. I’m sorry. It’s just…I’m coming off a strange relationship.”
“And you felt like property?”

“Something like that. And at the risk of sounding like a jerk, you do flash your money around. How do you even know if you’re buying a woman or not?”

“You can tell a lot about a person when you flash your money around. It certainly has told me a lot about you.”
“What has it told you about me?”

“That you don’t care about my money. Go to dinner with me.”
“No.”

“Go to dinner with me,” he’d repeated.

“I don’t even know you. I know nothing about you.”

“That’s what you learn over dinner. But if it makes you feel better, let’s make it coffee. Now. Next door.”
I’d found myself wanting to say yes, but still I said, “No.”

He’d given me one of his warm brown stares, seconds ticking by before he’d said, “I’ll walk you to your car. Where are you parked?”

“At a meter around the corner but you don’t have to do that.”
“If I had to do it, I wouldn’t want to do it.”

I have no idea why but that comment charmed me. Really. He’d charmed me from the moment I met him. “All right. Thank you.”

We’d started walking and I remember thinking that he was so very big and powerful, beside me. By big, I mean, his presence. I felt him there. I think everyone and anyone would. And really, it’s perhaps because he has that force about him, that he could even get my attention right now. I mean, my Master–ugh–no, no, no–former Master–consumed me.

“How long have you been interested in art?” he’d asked.

“Since I was a teenager,” I confess. “I wanted to be an artist, but I wasn’t gifted enough.”
“Perhaps you’re hard on yourself. Do you have any of your own work?”

“Oh no. I’m not hard on myself, just realistic, but that’s okay. I appreciate art. I love it. I get to work around it every single day.” We round the corner. “When did you decide you loved art?”

“My father’s an art collector and has been since I was a small child. Museums and art exhibits have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.”

I’d stopped walking and pointed to my car. “This is me,” and then feeling curious about him and his family, I don’t know what really happened then but I’d blurted out, “How do you, and your father, make all this money you make?”
He’d laughed, this low, sexy laugh. “My family is in real estate, and I write novels, for a living.”

Enthralled, at this creative side of him, that is in itself, a form of art, I’d quickly asked, “Novels? What kind of novels?”

“Thrillers.”

“Do you have pen name?”

“I do and you’ll have to go to dinner with me to find out what it is.”

“No,” I’d said again, when I really wanted to say “yes,” but a date with this would-be, could-be, dream man, means deciding the man I love is not my dream man. And I just couldn’t do that.

He hadn’t looked surprised. Instead, he’d reached in his pocket, then taken my hand, to press a card into my palm, and his touch–it had been surprisingly electric. “Change your mind and call me.” It had been an order, but then, he’d shocked me with this low, raspy. “Please.”

It’s the “please” that had gotten to me. The way he’d managed to command me but still ask me. It was sexy and right, in ways that I needed it to be right. But he hadn’t pushed. He’d turned and walked away. And now I sit here, staring at the card, that simply reads, “Alex Marque” and wondering if I should call. Of course, I googled him, and there is no writer, that has this name. There is a mega real estate empire though. I find myself wanting to know his pen name. I find myself wanting to call. But even more so, I want my former Master to call.

I’m very confused.

Maybe I should go to dinner. Maybe that will help me know if the past is the past or the present. I’m going to do, it. I’m going to call Alex, and just say “yes.”