Man Detox: A Novel Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  Man Detox

  A Novel

  K.J. Kilton

  ∫---∫

  Books by K.J. Kilton

  Man Detox

  Here Tomorrow

  Seasons of Romance

  Endless First Kisses

  Bay of Venture

  Trophy Life

  Bella’s Dilemma

  Winning Heather

  Faulty Fate

  Faulty Love

  Faulty Family

  Loving My Boss

  Chasing Alpha

  ∫---∫

  Synopsis

  From Bestselling author, K.J. Kilton, comes a standalone thrilling romantic adventure full of passion, suspense, and intrigue.

  When Irene rushes to the airport to catch a flight to Cancun, the last thing she expects is a sequence of incidents that try to derail her self-imposed exile from men. Getting away from her busy life, all she craves for is a few days of beach vacation while fulfilling her maid of honor duties.

  It turns out fate has a different plan altogether as her taxi crashes into a limo carrying a mysterious man. She finds herself in the middle of a dangerous web of conspiracies threatening her life, seeking to challenge her resolve and introduce her to a lesson or two about romance.

  ~~~

  Contents

  Books by K.J. Kilton

  Synopsis

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  Thank You!

  Further Reading

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Man Detox

  Copyright © 2017 by K.J. Kilton

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, 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 eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, please delete it from your device and purchase your own legal copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Man Detox is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either the product of author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, persons, living or dead, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ∫---∫

  Dedication

  To you.

  You know who you are.

  I can’t imagine a world without you.

  ∫---∫

  Chapter One

  The taxi cab streaked through I-70 and took a hard right exit to Pena Boulevard. There were still ten more miles to make it to Denver International Airport, per sign post on the roadside.

  “Can you go a little faster?” Irene asked, forcefully and impatiently.

  She was fiddling with the phone in her hand. She had exactly forty-seven minutes to make it to the airport. She was late, and she couldn’t afford to miss the flight.

  On my way to DIA now.

  She sent a text to her friend, Lauren. This was going to be terrible. Missing the flight would mean missing the wedding rehearsal. Missing the day’s activity would mean she will be in Mexico for only one night. And all that money she spent will be for naught. Money she didn’t have on a small salary after all the deductions to pay off student loans.

  The only objective now was to make it to the airport as quickly as possible before catching her flight to Cancun. It would be her first time outside of the country.

  “Miss, I’m doing my best. If I get a speeding ticket, it will be on you!” The middle-aged man snapped.

  He didn’t look happy to be there in the car driving this privileged young woman restless to get to the airport he had never had the opportunity to visit behind the security gate. Irene didn’t like the situation either.

  “I don’t care about tickets! Get me there as soon as possible! I can’t miss the flight,” she said.

  The driver’s anger was fully reflected in the rear view mirror before he swerved the car to change lanes. The next few seconds played out in cascades of seconds, exactly opposite to how it is routinely portrayed in movies. Each packet of time, filled with the impressionable chaos of the impending disaster, came and disappeared rapidly from her consciousness. This was happening at fast motion before settling down into doom permeating the space.

  Irene’s body bobbled from one side to the other as she took in glances of the driver desperately trying to control the chaos of the car spinning out of control. As the fragments of her belonging scattered in space, through the haze of confusion, she saw the culprit for the impending doom of her life.

  It was a black car. That was her first realization. Then the tainted windows affixed in the frame of her now glass-less door. Another rotation later, as the cap came to a faltering stop, the driver cursing in a mixture of broken English and another language she didn’t recognize, her body laid against the metal frame, looking out across the space of the backseat covered in shards of glass, she now saw the black car. It was a towncar to be exact, the sort that was shorter than a limousine, but still more dignified than the clacking yellow taxi.

  The other car was somehow oriented in the direction of traffic, unscathed and as if ready to go on with life after a minor annoyance. She saw the back door of the towncar open and a man step out of the car. Tall. Dark. Handsome. So cliché, she thought. Still irresistible. He might as well have been making an appearance at an event fully adorned in a
dark navy blue suit and black tie. His eyes, piercing in their aqua blue luster. She was mesmerized at once.

  There was an eerie quietness to the interior of the taxi. Irene turns her attention to the taxi driver fearing the worst. At about the same moment, the taxi driver wakes from his shock and starts crying out loud. Turning her attention back to the other car, she now saw a small crowd aggregating in the vicinity.

  Where did the man go? Who was he? Has she ever seen anyone like that before in real life? Is she not paying enough attention to her body? How come she doesn’t feel any pain?

  “Are you alright?” Irene called out to her driver.

  “Stupid man killed my car! How am I going to feed my family now? Just last week took it out the garage. Just last week! Why?! Crazy man!” The driver screamed.

  “I’m so sorry this happened. I mean, it is not your fault… I will testify if you need me to...” Irene tried to console him.

  Whose fault was it then? Hers for having pushed the man to go faster, wasn’t it? Turning her attention to the other side, she saw a man peering through the window. It was the same man in the suit. A distance of the backseat away from her.

  From up close, he looked devastatingly handsome. A mixture of ruggedness, square jaw, lightly trimmed beard, narrow and focused eyes, squarer face than his chiseled jawline. More manly than any one man deserves to be. She was awestruck. So, they do make men like that, she thought, as she tried to think of something to say. Was it his fault too?

  “Hey! Are you okay?” The man asked.

  “Fine… Horrible… Terrible… Accident… I’m so late…” Irene said some random combination of words that reflected her state of anxiety and the impossibility of what the man’s presence in close proximity meant to her.

  She unlocked her seat belt and tried to move. It was a miracle she still didn’t feel any pain whatsoever. How can that be? It doesn’t make sense.

  “Don’t move. Wait… Take your time…” The man said in rapid succession as he trotted around the backside of the taxi and tried to open the door for her. It took a few tries, but it almost felt like he crashed it open by sheer dominance and power.

  Irene made a note of wonder about the man’s strength. This doesn’t bode well for the self-proclaimed man-detox she was to be on for the weekend. Has her declaration of independence from men taken into account the possibility she might run into this kind of a macho manliness on the sides of the road?

  Apparently not for as he now reached into the car and held her hand, she realized there was a stinging pain in her body after all. Dizziness, too. She hoped it was all because of the accident.

  “Are you hurt?” The man asked before standing up and shouting out, “George, where is the ambulance?”

  “No, I… am… fine… Seriously, I am okay…” Irene said as she heard the ambulance streaking in their direction.

  This is the craziest possible coincidence. The flight to Cancun is long forgotten about. There was no way she would make it now. Who knew if there was going to be another flight? Would she even be able to afford the ticket change price? This all meant a crisis of the highest possible emergency.

  Irene waited pensively as she counted the ticks of seconds toward the assured result of missing her best friend’s wedding. The one vacation she hoped would renew her spirit was now on the verge of turning into a precipitous ruin. The taxi driver’s wailing made the moment all the more ominous.

  The ambulance arrived, and E.M.T. personnel rushed to Irene, and, despite her insistence, took her through a sequence of tests. She was lucid. Everything was clear. Instead of going to Mexico to party and having fun with her girlfriends, she was now destined to spend the weekend cursing her terrible luck.

  Irene looked around searching for the man. He had disappeared in the commotion. The taxi driver was standing with a police officer and the towncar driver about twenty feet away. He didn’t look as animated as he had seemed before.

  “Who are you?” One of the E.M.T. personnel asked her. “Irene Harwin.”

  “Where are you?” Irene looked at the man in bewilderment. “In a taxi cab, crashed on the way to the airport.”

  “What time of day is it?”

  She knew the drill. The three essential questions at the scene of an accident to establish consciousness. She knew she was okay, and they were doing their job. But staying here and talking to them meant she wasn’t looking around to figure out where the man disappeared.

  “Around 10:30,” Irene said now realizing the taxi driver was back and fetching her purse from the pile of debris nearby.

  After a serious of other questions about her identity and tests to establish her wellbeing, Irene was taken out of the taxi and led to the curbside. The taxi driver now seemed calm, an eerie contrast from the chaos of his screaming earlier.

  “Thank God for the accident,” the driver said as he waved in the direction of the disappearing towncar.

  How could the man in the suit leave without at least saying goodbye?

  “What are you talking about? Your car is destroyed, and I am going to miss my flight!” Irene screamed at the man.

  “Full insurance covered! Rich man. Didn’t want trouble,” he said, wobbling his head.

  Irene had no time to indulge in the bizarre celebration. She tucked her purse under her arm and grabbed her phone to discover the screen had been shattered. There couldn’t have been a better emblem of how screwed up everything was, including her life and the chance encounter that wasn’t to be.

  In the next thirty minutes, Irene watched as the tow truck arrived and picked the taxi. She could see the airport less than two miles away and decided to take the policeman’s offer of driving her there. She might as well do it. Her phone was borderline unusable as she tried to type a message to Lauren telling her she wouldn’t make her flight.

  At the ticketing desk, Irene went through a recounting of what had happened before she opened her purse and picked out her wallet searching for her ID card. Distracted by the impatience of the agent, she hadn’t noticed a little card that flew out the purse and landed on the floor next to her foot.

  “There is nothing I can do, miss,” the agent said. “If you missed your flight, nothing I can do about it… You have to check in an hour and a half before your departure time. That is the rule for all international flights. And we are sold out on all other flights…” There was no sympathy in the agent’s voice.

  This was the worst day of Irene’s life. It might have been a better idea to go directly to her apartment and not bother with any of this humiliation. The agent received her ID card and started typing furiously. It was loud and ultimately futile.

  Irene was sure the woman would say it was going to cost her hundreds of dollars to change her booking. She was fully prepared to walk away in shame when she felt a tap on her shoulder. It was the elderly man that had been standing behind her in the long line.

  “Dropped something!” the man said pointing to the piece of paper on the floor.

  Irene was tempted to say it wasn’t hers. She doesn’t carry around her business card. She has never had to produce one. She was useful to others in the hospital and nothing else. She was a nurse who is told what to do and do them as instructed to the best of her ability.

  She picked up the card. There were three words. ‘See you soon.’ She was prepared to say it was a mistake, but the agent interrupted her with a surprising announcement.

  “I see you were on the flight you missed, but it looks like you have been rebooked on another flight out of here. It’s not direct. The one you missed was the last direct flight out of here. This connects through Houston…”

  The tapping on the keyboard was continuing fast and furious. The agent appeared to be unsure of something. It was as if she kept checking something between reminding Irene about her missed flight and informing her about the updated reservation.

  “You are now booked on a flight leaving here in… about four hours. Through Houston as I mentioned, destinatio
n Cancun. Also upgraded, now a first class seat on both flights…”

  The shock had exceeded Irene’s ability to process the new information. This couldn’t be. It must be a mistake, “Are you sure?” She asked.

  How does one respond to this kind of news? Irene had thought the taxi driver telling her he had waived the fee for her adventuresome ride was the most generous thing she had seen recently. And now this...

  “Can you tell me who? I mean, who made the rebooking reservation?” She asked.

  “I don’t have that information, miss. If there is nothing else, you are now checked in and ready to go.” The agent was impatient to move on to the next customer on the line.

  Irene stepped to the side avoiding the curious gaze of those behind her. As she bent down to pick her carryon bag, she realized she was still holding the card in her hand.

  Could it be the man? How else could anyone know about her missed flight and do this? Who would want to see her soon? Has she ever flown first class before?

  Irene walked to the security checkpoint deciding to sit quietly at the gate and think through what had just happened.

  ∫---∫

  Chapter Two

  The security check, escalator ride down to the train, a ride to Terminal A, up the escalator, walking to the gate had all happened in a blur. Part excitement, part curiosity about the mystery man, Irene was going through the motion until first class passengers were called to board the plane.

  The more than three hours spent at the gate staring out the window didn’t help illuminate how insanely improbable everything had been. It was most fortunate to come out of the accident alive. Then, it was also most unexpected to run into someone she might never get to see again while benefiting from an unexplained good gesture.

  Instead of stressing out about the whole situation, and taking a break from staring at the little card with three words, Irene was busy trying to eke out a message one letter at a time on the broken screen when a woman sitting next to her nudged her.