Escape to Love Read online

  “Lord Jesus, help me. I don’t know if I can turn this one over to You.”

  Then Ramsey thought of how his son, Ramsey Jr. had almost lost his life because he tried to handle matters himself instead of turning them over to the Lord. But even with that knowledge fresh in his memory, Ramsey couldn’t stop himself from plotting his next move.

  3

  After three weeks on the job, Renee had finally gotten Dean’s office in order. But there were a few things that she hadn’t been able to make sense of. Two items that she found could possibly hurt the upcoming public offering so she left Dean a note, asking if he had time to discuss. So far he had not made time to discuss the matter with her.

  She spent the day working on Dean’s expense reports, hoping that he would finish his programing so they could have there meeting.

  Her cell phone rang, Renee didn’t recognize the number, curiosity got the best of her and she answered the call.

  “That restraining order isn’t worth the paper it’s written on,” Marlin yelled through the phone.

  She glanced at her caller ID again. The number that showed up was not Marlin’s. She didn’t know if he had borrowed someone else’s phone just so he could harass her or if he had gotten a new phone after she blocked his number, but she wasn’t going to entertain him for one second. She hit the end button on her cell and got back to work.

  “If Dean sees you answering your cell during work hours he’s going to have a fit. His head is in the clouds most of the time, but he seems to have a radar for cell phones,” Dawn reminded her.

  “It won’t happen again.” Renee turned her cell off.

  “You know I got your back, girl. Next time you get an important call, just head to the break room or take the call to the bathroom.”

  “Renee,” Dean hollered from his office, as he normally did when his office door was open and he needed her. But Renee wasn’t complaining. She was enjoying her job.

  “Must be his radar,” Dawn said.

  “I hope not. I actually like this job.” Renee got up and went into Dean’s office. As usual, he looked unkempt and out of sorts. “Did you sleep here again last night?”

  “Got to... we’re about to take my new program live and I have to get all the bugs out of it beforehand or the IPO that Jason is working on will blow up in all of our faces.”

  “You’re a busy man, I get it. But you still have to make time for yourself. You won’t be any good to Jay or your family,” did he have a family? “If you crash and burn.”

  He waved a hand in the air. “Yeah, yeah, I know. All work, no play and all of that. But don’t cry for me. I have plans for a weekend full of nothing but fun and sun.”

  “Good,” she said, be then became uneasy as Dean stared at her as if he wanted her to be join him on his fun/sun weekend. It was an odd look on Dean because she’d never pictured him as a Neil Patrick Harris from How I Met Your Mother type, Dean was more like Jason Segel, the stable, dependable friend. “So, what did you call me in here for?”

  “Oh yeah, back to business.” He clasped his hands and stood up. “I can’t the developer file.”

  Renee smiled and went to the file cabinet she purchased for his office. She opened the third drawer down and pulled out the file he was looking for. “Do you need anything else?”

  “You put a lot of my files on the computer, right?”

  “Yes sir, I thought you’d be able to keep up with the documents you needed if they were just a click away.”

  “That was smart thinking. But I can’t find any of the documents on my computer. Can you show me where they are?”

  Renee smiled. Dean was a computer geek. He was good at programing web pages and working with graphics on the computer, but he couldn’t find a simple Pages document. That was funny. “You didn’t have Pages installed on your computer, so I installed it so I would have a place to put your documents.” Stepping behind his desk, she pointed at his computer. “She that little blue jar with the quill across it?”

  He nodded.

  “Click on it.” When he did, Renee then showed him how to access his file. She stepped back around the desk.

  “I don’t know how I ever got along without you. Thanks for all the time and energy you expended to get me organized.”

  “You’re welcome. Did you get a chance to look at the documents I had questions on?”

  “My head is so jumbled with this new program that I can’t wrap my brain around anythin else right now.”

  “Those documents seem important. Would you rather that i discuss them with Jay?”

  “I don’t need you running to Jay behind my back. I’ll review the documents when I get a chance.”

  “O-kay.”She turned and started walking out of his office.

  Before she reached the door, Dean said, “Sorry for snapping. I’m just really busy right now.”

  She swung back around. “I understand, don’t worry about it.”

  He leaned back in his seat, stared at her a moment and then asked, “What are you doing this weekend?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The executive staff has scheduled a retreat to the Bahamas to celebrate the release of Pro-Site 2. I think you should join us.”

  She knew about the retreat, but figured that she hadn’t made enough of a contribution to be on the trip since she’d only been on the job for a few weeks. “Thanks for offering, but with such short notice, I don’t think I could swing it.”

  “Well think about. You could share a hotel room with Dawn.”

  “I don’t get it. Why are you offering this trip to me? I haven’t done anything but organize your paperwork. I haven’t contributed enough to earn a trip to the Bahamas.”

  “That’s what you think. But if you hadn’t got me organized, I wouldn’t have been able to bring the programing in on time.”

  “Thanks for noticing the work I’ve done.” She hesitated, then said, “Let me think about it. I’ll let you know.” Walking out of the room, Renee was still trying to figure out what had just happened. At first she thought Dean was coming on to her, but since he said she could share a room with Dawn, she figured that she might be wrong and this was just his way of showing appreciation for the work she’d done.

  As she got back to work, the phone on her desk rang. She picked it up and Marlin was screaming, “You don’t get to leave me, do you hear me... it’s never going to be over between us.”

  “How did you get this number?”

  “I know everything about you. You can’t hide from me. Do I need to move to Raleigh to prove to you that I’m serious about us getting us back together?”

  “That will never happen.” She slammed down the phone.

  Her phone started ringing again. Renee put her head in the palm of her hands. Frustration was setting in. She’d gotten the restraining order, he received it, but Marlin wouldn’t quit. He wasn’t going to leave her alone.

  “You want me to get that?” Dawn asked.

  “Please.”

  Dawn answered. She held the phone for a moment, listening and then said, “This is not Renee, but if you call here talking like that again I will call the police and report you. Got that?”

  “What did he say?” Renee asked.

  “He said that if you hang up on him again he’s going to break your neck.”

  Blowing out a frustrated sigh, Renee confessed, “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Call the police. Report him for harassment.”

  “I already have a restraining order against him. You see what he thinks of that.”

  Shaking her head, Dawn told her, “This is why the only men I date are saved for real, and they love Jesus more then me. So, if we break up, I just tell them to go pray about it, and ask the Lord to find that perfect woman he has designed for them.”

  “That’s a good way to say buzz off. But Marlin wouldn’t bite. I’m convinced he’s the devil, so he’s not hardly getting ready to pray about nothing.”

  “It sounds l
ike you really got one. I’ll be praying for you,” Dawn offered.

  With all these people praying for her, Renee wondered why her life kept going from bad to worse?

  ***

  Coming upon Renee’s desk, Jason heard the one-sided argument and knew who was on the other end of the phone. But what he couldn’t figure out was how Renee could have gotten herself involved with someone like the man he saw her with a few weeks ago. In high school Renee had always seemed so confident, so vibrant. Everyone wanted to know her and be a part of her inner circle.

  He’d once witnessed a man dragging a woman by her hair into oncoming traffic. Jason and a few other bystanders had jumped out of his cars and pulled the man off her. But even knowing that she had been rescued and could go on her merry way. The man told all of them to back off and then barked at his woman to “Come on and get in the car.”

  Jason had been amazed as he watched the woman’s shoulder go slack as she kept her head down and followed her abuser to his car. That to him had been the picture of insecurity... a woman who thought she was nothing without a man. Whether that man was a good for her or not didn’t matter, she just needed a man to help her feel worthy of the life God had given her.

  He would have never associated Renee with abuse. But as sure as he knew his name, he knew that Renee had been the victimized at the hands of the man he saw her with a few weeks ago. He saw the fear in her eyes as he tried to pull Renee to his car. But more than that, he saw the since of entitlement on Marlin’s face... like he thought he owned a piece of Renee’s soul.

  Jason was now feeling a burden for Renee, like the one he’d felt the day he got out of his car to help a woman whose name he didn’t even know. But the problem with that was, he also had a duty to the employees at his and Dean’s company. So after work he met up with Renee in the parking lot. Standing by her car, he put his hand on her arm as he said, “I was wondering if I could take you to dinner so we could discuss something.”

  Renee shook her head, “I wouldn’t want to keep you away from Tiffany?”

  “What about Tiffany?”

  Smirking, Renee said, “Tiffany called and confirmed your movie date tonight.”

  “Well yeah, there’s a movie she wants to see. But I have time for a quick dinner. Because we need to talk about some things.” Jason noticed that Renee’s eyes rolled every time she mentioned Tiffany’s name. Was she jealous?

  “I already have dinner plans for this evening, so just tell me what you want me to know now, please.”

  “You seem angry. Have I done something to you?”

  “I’m not angry.” Renee took her car keys out of her purse. “I just don’t have time for dates with men who already seem to have enough women to take on a date every day of the week.”

  Feeling as if his character was being assassinated Jason put up his own wall of defense. “I wasn’t asking you on a date. I simply wanted to talk with you about the harassing phone calls you’ve been getting at work. I have a duty to the other employees of this company, so you need to find a way to make this stop or I can’t have you working here.”

  Her mouth widened as the shock of losing her job set in. “You’re firing me?”

  “No, I’m not firing you. I”m going to hire a couple of security guards for our lobby area. My hope is that we’ll deter him from coming on our property. But you need to make this stop, okay?”

  Renee shook her head. “I promise. And I’m so sorry for bringing my problems to work. But if you’ll give me a chance I will get this resolved. I really need this job, so I can’t afford to get fired.”

  It was almost as if her shoulder’s slacked right in front of him as he caught a glimpse of the insecurity he hadn’t identified with Renee until now. Something had happened to her. He didn’t know why it mattered to him, but a strong desire to help swept over Jason. No matter what it cost him, he had to get to the bottom of the matter, and help restore Renee’s confidence.

  4

  Renee was meeting her father for dinner. He’d called and said he needed to talk to her. Right after hanging up with him, she’d called Carmella and asked, “Did you tell Dad anything?”

  “About what you and I talked about?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No, I’ve been praying about it, and waiting on you to tell him yourself.”

  Sighing with relief, Renee said, “Thanks. He invited me to dinner tonight and I got a little scared.”

  Now on her way to meet with her dad, Renee was reeling from the confrontation with Jason. She actually thought he was asking her out. Why on earth would a man like Jason want anything to do with someone like her? She was all messed up as if she’d come from a dysfunctional Kardashian like family.

  She got out of her car and began walking towards her dad’s favorite Mexican restaurant as she hummed the tune to Kirk Franklin’s Brighter Day. Her step-mother loved that song, but right now, Renee was only singing it in hopes of grabbing hold of the lyrics and making them reality in her life.

  But then she heard Marlin’s voice as he came up behind her. “Who are you meeting here, that lover boy at work?”

  Renee swung around and face her enemy. “Leave me alone. Do you hear me. I don’t owe you any explanations.”

  “Why did you let him touch you?”

  “Who? What are you talking about?”

  “I saw him touch your arm in the parking lot. That does not happen unless I give permission.”

  Her lip curled as she looked at the monster standing before her. He had left her with this unclean feeling and no matter how many times she tried to scrub it off, it remained. She opened her purse and started searching through it.

  “What are you looking for. That little piece of paper the courts gave you.” He laughed in her face.

  Renee felt powerless, and she was tired of feeling this way. She put her hands on the pepper spray she purchased a few days ago.

  Marlin said, “What are you going to do... throw the paper at me?”

  She was just about to blast him when she heard her father yelling, “Get away from my daughter.” Ramsey rushed over to them, grabbed Marlin by the collar and pushed him against the building. “Stay away from her. Do you hear me? Or I swear before God that I will kill you the next time I catch you within fifty feet of her.”

  “Let him go, Dad. He’s not worth it.”

  Ramsey jabbed his elbow up against Marlin’s throat. “You like to harass women... like to treat them as if they’re nothing but a pet to be ordered about in anyway you she fit?”

  Renee pulled at her father’s arm. “Please Dad. Don’t do this.”

  Ramsey released the pressure of his elbow against Marlin’s neck as he backed away and said, “It ends today. Right here and now, or I will deal with you.”

  Rubbing his neck, Marlin coughed a few times, trying to regain his voice and then said, “Are you threatening me?”

  “No, I’m stating a fact and making you a promise.” Ramsey took hold of Renee’s arm. “Don’t you ever come near my family again.” With that, they walked into the restaurant, leaving Marlin on the outside looking in.

  “Carmella told you, didn’t she?” Renee asked as she and her father were seated.

  “No, Carmella kept her promise to you. Which is something I intend to speak with her about.”

  “How did you find out then?”

  “I was on my way into her office when I heard the two of you talking about what Marlin did to you. I knew that if I opened that door, you would clam up and I’d never get the full story out of you. So I just stood there and listened. But I never imagined that Carmella would be able to hold something like this from me for all these weeks.”

  “Don’t be mad at her Daddy. She knew that I couldn’t bare it if you knew what had happened to me. I’ve been so ashamed of what I did.”

  Ramsey put a hand over his daughter’s hand. “There’s nothing for you to be ashamed of. That snake slipped something in your drink. You had no idea what you were doing.”<
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  “Yes, but Ram tried to warn me about Marlin. I wouldn’t listen because I was intrigued by his money and power.”

  “Do you remember what I used to tell all of you kids when you were teenagers?”

  Renee shook her head. “You’ve told us so much, I doubt I’d know what you’re referring to.”

  “Sometimes, you just weren’t listening.” He patted her hand, gently admonishing her. “I told you that sin is never polite. It won’t just take you so far and then ask, pretty please, can I take you a little further. Once you open the door to sin it will drag you as far away from God as it can take you.”

  Nodding Renee added, “And once sin has had it’s way, I’ll be left to bare the guilt and shame of everything I did,” she finished up one of the infamous lectures he’d passed out to each of them. “You were right dad. I’ve been so ashamed and filled with guilt that I let myself become a victim rather than reach out to anyone in my family for help.”

  “Well, you’re home now. And you’re family is here for you.”

  Before Renee could respond, two police officers rushed over to their table. “Ramsey Thomas,” the taller one asked.

  “That’s me,” Ramsey said. “Can I help you?”

  “Can you stand up, sir?”

  Ramsey did what he was told. The other officer said, “Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

  “What’s going on?” Renee stood as if she could protect her father from the big bad policemen.

  “Step back ma’am. He’s being arrested for battery.”

  “I didn’t batter that little twerp. I should have, but I didn’t”

  “I have a restraining order against Marlin. He wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near me. Why aren’t you arresting him instead of my father?”

  “We saw the marks on his neck so we have to take you in.”

  “He is stalking me. Don’t you care about that?” Renee was screaming. The injustice of it all was making her want to tell these cops off and then hold out her wrist so they could cuff her too.