Alisha: A dark Romance Ch. 03

Copyright Andyhm. 2018

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons. All characters engaging in sexual relationships or activities are 18 years old or older.

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Alisha: A dark Romance. Ch 3

It's a tale as old as time, of love found, lost and found again. It's the oldest plot in literature.

This is my take on this tale. It concentrates on the 'found again' part, and looks at the difficulties people have in rebuilding a relationship, and for one, regaining trust after it has been lost. Is it a loving wife's tale or a Romance? I started out writing a lost love romance but as it progressed it became darker and darker until it seems to me to have slipped into the LW category.

This is the third part (of 5). All are finished and I'll be submitting them on consecutive days. it is not a BTB tale - if that's what you are looking for then I'd suggest you stop reading now! I've left voting and comments on. I will delete any non-constructive or abusive comments.

Review and editing was by the wonderful Blackrandl1958. All of the remaining mistakes are mine as I can't resist that final tweak.

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Alisha - Chapter 3

"Hi, Dad, I'm your daughter, Julia."

I stared at her blankly for a few moments, and she gave me a cute smile. Alwyn's shout brought me back, and I could see that the lock gates were open and 'Never' was blocking the other boat's passage.

"We're loose," Alwyn called out, and I eased the boat through the gates and pulled up to the bank as soon as it was safe.

"Tie us off, Alwyn," I told him and then turned the girl.

"Who the h.. heck are you?"

"I told you, I'm your daughter, Julia. Mum's been looking for you for ages."

"And Mum is?"

She pointed back along the towpath towards the woman in the sundress and straw hat. "That's Mum, and she's missed you."

The woman took her hat off, and long black hair spilled over her shoulders.

"Ali," I whispered. I should have recognized her immediately. I turned cold; what sort of sick fantasy was this? I couldn't be Julia's father; I hadn't seen Ali for over 13 years. The girl was too young, eleven or maybe twelve at most.

She looked like her mother, and I saw no hint of my Scottish ancestry in her. What was Ali's game?

Ali started walking towards us; I asked Julie to stay on the boat with Alwyn and went to meet Ali.

She stopped in front of me and my stomach twisted. The intervening years had been very kind to her; she was older but more beautiful than I remembered.

She gave me a sad smile, "It hasn't been easy to find you, love, and anyone would think you didn't want to be found."

"I'm impressed you did! I didn't make it easy."

She nodded and then said, "What do you think about your daughter, she's beautiful isn't she!"

There was a bench a few yards away, so I went and sat down, Ali sat beside me. I said with a tinge of bitterness, "What makes you think I'm her father? She's too young to be mine."

"Oh, she's most definitely yours, Ben, and she'll be 13 in two months."

I wasn't convinced, "How? I thought you were on the pill."

Ali gave a quick laugh, "I was, and she completely ignored the fact. We must have conceived her on that last shoot."

I sat back and grunted. Images of the actor and those other two assholes coursed through my head and the bitterness I'd thought I had suppressed surged up again. Anyone of them could be Julia's father.

Ali saw me blanch and quickly said. "I made two of biggest mistakes of my life on that trip. I bought into the garbage Ryan and Tony were telling me, and then I didn't come running after you."

"Ryan, is he Julie's father?"

"No, you're her father, and I can prove it. He was that obnoxious actor at the party."

"Fuck yes, I remember him, the asshole who thought it was okay to grope your ass. The same one you went back to apologize to after I told him to get his hand off your ass."

Ali winced, "I was young and stupid. Tony thought a role on Ryan's show would help make my career and had been urging me to consider it all day. I didn't even notice you'd gone until the next morning; I'd thought you'd just gone for a walk around the garden."

"So who did you stay with and where were you that night, because you sure as fuck weren't in the hotel room with me."

"I stayed in the guest room at the villa, and I was on my own. Ryan tried it on, but my knee to his balls put a damper on that."

I smiled at that image. "But why didn't you come back to the hotel?"

"Because I was young and stupid. I wanted you to accept that I knew what I was doing and make you come back for me." She shifted on the wooden bench. "Tony said you'd be back, and the woman who owned the villa had offered you and me the use of a guest room for the night. Tony was supposed to have told you that you and I were both supposed to stay there that night."

She paused, turning to watch her daughter as she scrambled over the deck of the boat. "Our shoot the next day was to be on the grounds of the same villa, around the garden and pool. I didn't get back to our hotel room until that evening. You weren't there, and that's when I found that your clothes and bags were missing, as well. The hotel manager said that you'd ordered a taxi to the airport in the morning."

Her hands were twisting the brim of her hat, and I put my hand out to stop her. The first time we'd touched in over 13 years. We both looked at our hands, a little surprised at the spark that seemed to jump between us.

"I was so pissed with you," she continued, "and when Tony said I was wanted for another assignment in Spain in a couple of days, I left you that stupid message. I'm so sorry, but everyone was telling me that you needed some time to get over your temper tantrum, when in truth it was me having one, not you."

"Ben!" Alwyn called from the boat, "We can't stay here much longer, the lock keeper is asking us to move on so the boats waiting to go through can tie up here."

"Crap," I muttered and acknowledged Alwyn with a wave.

I rose to my feet; the next decent mooring with water and power was ten kilometers and another two locks along the canal.

"Wait, where are you going," Ali said as she grasped my arm.

"You heard Alwyn," I said. "I've got to move the 'Never.' We'll need to go now if we want to find a good place to moor before the locks close for the day."

"Oh, okay," she said, and she followed me back towards the boat.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"We are coming with you, of course."

I stopped and caught her by her arms and pulled her back. "I don't think so, Ali. 13 years after you dumped me, you turn up with some cock and bull story that I'm Julia's father..." My words were stopped in midstream as I was grasped from behind and pushed violently aside.

"What the fuck..." I gasped out as a man mountain moved between Ali and me.

"Jamal, stop," Ali ordered.

"He was attacking you, Ali!" The voice was as deep as the man was large.

"No, he wasn't, and even if he was, I deserved it. Never get between my husband and me again."

"What, who..." shit, there was just too much information and too many questions, and my brain and mouth disconnected.

"Ben, this is Jamal. He's the head of my security team," Ali said as stepped back close to me and took hold of my arm. Jamal nodded in my direction.

"Don't you mean ex-husband, Alisha?" I said.

She smiled at me and said to Jamal, "When he calls me Alisha, you know he's pissed off with me, and I'm in trouble."

Jamal nodded and moved a few yards away to give us a sense of privacy while seemingly watching all directions at the same time.

"Ali?"

"No, we're not divorced. I may have been stupid once, but I wasn't going to compound my stupidity." She reached up to her neck and pulled a gold chain out from under her dress. The emerald I'd given her for her 18th birthday shone in the harsh sunlight, the wedding ring I had left behind hung beside it on the same chain.

My eyes were drawn down to her hand; she still wore the rings I'd given her all those years ago, but they were on her right hand, not her left.

"Ben," Alwyn called out urgently again. He was on the boat holding the end of the last mooring line.

Shit, "Get on," I told her.

Ali stepped onboard, and Jamal went to follow her. "Not him," I said

"Ali!" he protested.

"This is my boat, and you're not welcome onboard."

"Ali, it's not safe for you to be without any security nearby. I have to insist I travel with you," Jamal said angrily

"It's not my boat, Jamal; I can't make Ben let you onboard."

"Then you need to get off. I can't do my job if I'm not nearby, and it's not just you; there's also Julia safety to think about."

Alwyn was coiling up the mooring line, and we were beginning to drift away from the bank.

"You need to make up your mind, Ali," I said as I used the bow thruster to try and hold 'Never' in place.

Ali hesitated then called over to Jamal, "We'll be fine Jamal, get our bags from the hotel. Julia and I will be staying with Ben. I don't need any security, so please keep the team away from us."

He didn't look happy as he started to jog along the towpath to keep up with us.

"Ali, you're irresponsible," he called to her. "How the hell can we keep you and Julia safe if we're not with you?"

"We're on a boat; we'll be fine; in any case, my husband will keep us both safe."

"I'm aiming to moor in Beziers this evening," I called over to him. "You can meet up with us there. Ali won't need her bags; she's not staying. You'll be able to pick them up from there." With that, I pushed the throttle forward, and we moved away from him. Ali came and stood beside me, Julia sat on the cabin roof so she could see both of us.

"He's going to give me so much grief when he catches up with us," Ali said as she settled in by my side.

"So I gather we are still married."

She nodded, "We are unless there's something you haven't told me. There was no way I was going to divorce you, not when everything was my fault. I lived in our flat and brought up Julia there for a little while until we had to move. I had some problems with stalkers, and the security firm couldn't make the place safe. I bought the old Anderson place near your parents."

I remembered the building; it was a rambling old house set in a couple of acres of land with a tall wall all around the grounds. As a boy, I'd climbed that wall to scrump apples from the orchard. "Nice place for the pair of you," I said.

She looked at me coyly, "I bought it in both our names, so you own it as well."

I called Alwyn over and asked him to take over the wheel. There was a good half an hour before we reached the next lock, and I wanted to talk while not being distracted by steering the boat.

Julia was sitting on a cushion on the roof at the front of the boat, so I took Ali to the sun deck at the rear. We settled down on a couple of easy chairs

"Ali, what do you want, why are you here?" I asked.

"I want you to be my husband again, for us to be a family, and you to be a father to our daughter."

She still hadn't convinced me I was Julia's father. Given what I'd seen on the island, there had to be several other men in the frame.

"I loved you, Ali, and yet you threw me away for your career. The slap that evening told me exactly how you felt about me. Just how long did it take you to forget me that evening?"

A thought crossed my mind. Ali was 35 and probably approaching the twilight of her career, was that why she'd come looking for me now?

"I didn't mean to; I regretted my stupidity almost immediately. You weren't at the hotel and by the time I got back to the flat you'd packed and were gone. I hadn't understood how much I'd hurt you until I saw that photograph. Was I that stupid?"

As much as I wanted to say yes, I couldn't, so I waffled. "I guess you were getting a lot of bad advice from people who had their agenda.

"You were right when you warned me. Tony was the worst of them; I dropped the agency because of him."

Tears were running down her face, and she sobbed, "I lost the only person I've ever loved because I was stupid and big-headed enough to believe the garbage they told me. Nobody knew where you were, or how to get in touch."

"Ali, you keep saying Julia's my daughter, but where's the proof?"

Ali swallowed to try and get her emotions under control. "Ben, you only have to look at her, everyone says that they can see you in her."

No, I couldn't, and that was half the problem. Julia was a young version of her mother, olive skin, and dark almost black hair. I was fair skinned with bleached red hair. The other half of the problem was that I seemed to recall the actor who was all over Ali at the party was an Italian stallion.

I shook my head, "She's beautiful, just like her mother. But..." and I gestured at myself.

She shook her head violently. "Ben I was a virgin when I met you, and you are the only man I'd ever made love to while we were together. You are her father, and I have the proof back at the hotel."

"Daddy, there's a lock coming up," Julia called from her place at the bow.

I stepped down from the sun deck and stood by the door into the wheelhouse. Alwyn was peering through the binoculars and muttered, "There's got to be at least ten Noddy boats waiting to go through from this side, Ben!"

"Slow down and sound the horn to get the keeper's attention when we reach the end of the queue," I said.

Alwyn did as I suggested and we paused alongside the last boat. As I suspected, the lock-keeper waved and a moment later I heard his voice over the radio telling us to come forward. The 'Never' was a well-known boat on this stretch of the canal, and I had been fairly sure we would get priority.

"Move her up, Alwyn; he'll be opening the gates in a moment."

The gates slowly opened inwards, and two Noddy boats eased their way out. I took over the controls and kept out of their way as 'Never' eased her way to the front of the line of moored boats.

There was a shout, "Hey, we're first!"

Alwyn who had moved to his position at the bow shook his head and pointed at the lock-keeper who was waving us into the lock. "No, we go first, you come in after us."

Julia was standing beside Alwyn, and he was showing her how to coil the mooring line.

The lock was a deep one, with a three-and-a-half meter rise. The curved wet stone walls rose far above our heads. Alwyn was showing Julia how to throw a line around a bollard to hold the bow steady. I threw up a stern line, the lock keeper passed it around a bollard for me and tossed the end back down onto the deck. Ali took hold of the line and held onto it with a pleased smile.

'Never' rocked slightly as one of the Noddy boats pushed against her hull as it maneuvered into the lock. A second boat came in behind the first, and the gates began to close, sealing us in.

"Hey, why were you allowed to go first?" a red-faced Australian called from the first of the boats. There was a woman his age and a younger couple on the boat as well

"There's a simple rule mate," I replied. "Commercial boats have priority, followed by the larger steel hulled boats like mine. 'Never' weighs over 40 tons, if I come in after you, there's a good chance I could crush your plastic hull like an eggshell. You wouldn't be getting your no damage deposit back!"

His wife, and I guess his daughter as there was a family resemblance, were staring at Ali and whispering together. Finally, the daughter called over to Alisha, "Excuse me, but are you Ali Mac?"

"Sorry, no," Ali said shaking her head. "I know I look a bit like her; I just wish I was that pretty."

"Oh," the woman replied. "Sorry, but you look just like her."

Ali smiled, "It's alright, you're not the first person that's mistaken me for her, but she's a lot prettier than me."

I bent close to Ali and whispered, "Liar, liar, pants on fire." I'd used to say that to her when she'd told a fib.

She smiled at the memory and whispered back, "Who said I was wearing any!"

I snorted and then put a hand on the mooring line she was holding, helping her control the boat while she rocked and jostled as the water flowed into the lock. 'Never' steadily rose, the wet green slime encrusted walls, slowly slipping down, until the lip of the lock came into view.

"Ben, comment vas-tu?" the lock-keeper asked.

"Je vais bien, Anton," I replied, "et vous?"

"Bon, bon, je serais mieux si il n'y avait pas ces touristes sanglantes."

I laughed at his description of the 'bloody tourists.' I gave the line a casual flick, it came off the bollard, and I coiled the rope and stepped back into the wheelhouse. Alwyn waved to tell me the bowline was free and the gates were opening. Pushing the throttle forward, we left the lock and cruised past the boats that were waiting for their turn to go through the lock on their way to the Mediterranean.

"Does that often happen, people, recognizing you?" I asked.

"All the time, I'm supposedly one of the ten most recognizable faces in the world," Ali said resignedly. "Why do you think I have bodyguards? Usually, people are far more insistent when they recognize me. Those women probably accepted my story because they'd expect to see me on a superyacht, not messing about on a canal."

She looked around with a smile, "This is the first time in months there hasn't been security in shouting distance, and it's nice to be able to relax without one of them checking up on me all the time."

"I'm not so sure," I said and pointed back along the canal at the towpath. A man and a woman were cycling along the towpath in the same direction we were traveling in. They stood out because they were keeping station about a hundred meters behind us, and most cyclists were a lot faster than the eight kilometers an hour speed limit the boats are required to keep.

Ali moved to the door of the wheelhouse and stared back at them. She sighed and said, "Can you pull over to the side and stop."

"Sure, but you know they'll just stop as well."

"Like fuck they will," Ali snapped.

I put the boat into reverse for a couple of moments to kill our forward motion, the water boiling at our stern. I eased the boat over towards the towpath.

Ali shouted to the confused bodyguards, who hadn't anticipated Never's sudden stop. "Don't you dare stop; you two get your asses over here!"

Alwyn and Julia appeared looking a little confused. Julia asked, "Why are you shouting at Steve and Janice, Mummy?"

"Because Mummy is just a bit pis..; upset with them and Jamal, Honey."

I stifled a laugh and Ali glared at me.

"You better tie us off, Alwyn; we may be here a while," I said, and he jumped down to the towpath and tied us up to a pair of convenient trees. Christ, at this rate I was beginning to doubt if we'd reach the port at Beziers before the locks closed for the day, then we wouldn't be able to get into the harbor basin.

Ali verbally launched into the two bodyguards, and I saw a side of her I'd never seen before, strong, confident and ruthless.

"I take it Jamal told you to follow me? Even though I gave him explicit instructions that there was to be no security following me?" Ali's voice was icy

Two heads nodded, both wisely deciding not to speak.

"I don't want to see any of you until this evening. Jamal knows where we will be mooring. What we do after that will depend on what Ben agrees to."