Chapter 16 Do What It Takes

The weekend before Christmas, Ian brought Jin to the nearest town for a small vacation and to run some last minute errands for the holiday.  He managed to find a local child minder who didn’t mind looking after children on off hours, so he wouldn’t have Jin in tow and things would go much smoother.

As much as he wanted to be enthusiastic about Christmas, Jin’s first Christmas, he was struggling with mixed emotions over Maya’s disappearance from their lives.  Yet he was determined to make this the best first holiday for him and his son, to make up for the loss they had endured.  He found this shiny new firetruck to give to Jin as a present and a rocking horse that he knew Jin would just love once he was more steady on his feet and walking.  He had already picked up this beautiful, yet simple necklace for Maya.

He just had the local grocer shop to pick up a few things for Christmas dinner and then he would be done done, but as grocery shopping goes, his cart was full by the time he was ready to check out.  It really was true that you never should shop on an empty stomach, but he justified it that winter was coming and a few extras in storage was not a bad thing to have just in case.  Looking down at the large turkey, boxes of dressed, cranberry sauce, apple pie and whip cream was making his mouth water something terrible and he decided he had better find a place to eat before picking Jin up from the daycare.

He was just heading up to the till when he passed by a rack featuring “mens” magazines and stopped dead in his tracks.  He took a second look, then picked up the magazine that had caught his attention, and held his breath.  Not wanting to lose his cool in the store, he casually added it to his pile of items laying it upside down and walked up to the store clerk.

“Oh man, this is a great issue!” the clerk said to Ian.  “Just wait till you see the full spread on the inside!”

“Really,” Ian said nonchalantly hoping to deter the clerk.

“Oh yeah.  Maya is hot!  Just the thought of that tight round derriere gets my juices flowing.  Man if only I could get her alone for just fifteen minutes.  Dream come true I tell ya.”

Ian was stunned into silence.  Visions of grabbing the clerk by the back of his head and slamming his face down on the counter suddenly became overwhelming and very tempting.

“Have a nice day,” Ian said to the clerk and stormed out to his car.  He placed the items on the front passenger seat and took a deep breath before opening the magazine.  He instantly became fighting angry and threw the magazine down onto the floor of his car.  Slamming his palms on the steering wheel, Ian laid his forehead on his hands breathing in and out through his nose to calm himself down.  He knew just where the idea for this magazine issue had come from.  Maya wouldn’t have thought of this, let alone set it up, and he certainly couldn’t see her agreeing to this easily.

He was also pissed at himself because apparently he wasn’t as clever as he thought.  Ian had been systematically arranging music gigs for Eddy’s band, keeping Eddy gone for six weeks, which  included the Christmas holidays.  It wasn’t hard to do.  All it took was money and connections and he had both thanks to his very wealthy clients.  Somehow Eddy had found the time to not only get together with Maya, but plan and implement this, this, piece of garbage as well.  So Ian was just going to have to double his efforts to keep them apart.

Ian was just happy that Jin wasn’t with him today.  He didn’t want his son to see him so distraught and he certainly wouldn’t have wanted him to see this magazine.  So he scooped it up off the floor of his car, walked to the nearest trash can and dropped it in.  Then he walked back into the grocer, bought every copy on the rack and the biggest slushy he could buy.  He dropped all the copies into the trash can upside down, pushed them down and dumped his blue raspberry slushy all over the top.  Tossing in the cup, he wiped his hands clean and walked away.  He couldn’t stop the issue from being shown around the world, but he could stop it from being seen in this small town.

He set his mind to work on a new plan for keeping Maya and Eddy apart.  Now that he was a bit calmer and could think more clearly, he realized that this magazine article actually worked in his favour.  Maya couldn’t be happy about this and it was his hope that it would help to drive a wedge between Eddy and Maya.  But in the meantime, he was going to do his best to keep Eddy on the other side of the world.  As much as he was tempted to try and get Maya to spend Christmas with him and Jin, he knew it was still too soon.  So he had arranged for her to be in Sunset Valley painting a mural at the local hospital.  It originally had been offered to him, but once he showed Maya’s paintings to the board, they readily agreed to make the offer to her.  So Eddy would be in Bridgeport and Maya in Sunset Valley.  A very long airplane ride away. He had one more “goodie” up his sleeve for Maya that he knew she was going to love.  Then he thought it would almost be time for Jin to see his mother. Hopefully this time everything would go according to plan.

Maya’s Swim suit photo shoot