Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
Rochelle
“Give me a cigarette. In fact, give me the whole damned pack.”
“You know you’ll hate yourself later. Besides, we’re barely off the street. That girl could be following us.”
She slammed open the glove box, took out a safety kit, flipped open its tin lid. Underneath the couple of bandages, the two cigarettes lay hidden, wrapped in a piece of gauze.
She could feel his glance as, fingers shaking, she lit it.
“That’s not very healthy.”
The smoked burned its comfort into her lungs. “Healthful.” Her voice sounded like someone’s who’d taken a hit of weed and kept most of it down. “People are healthy. Things are healthful.”
“Or not.” He shot the window down a crack, which she hated. Turned on the air conditioner. Foul air crept into the refrigerated car. She sank back against the leather seat, unable to deal with one more confrontation. First, Bobbo, then Rikki Off the Record. They’d see about that one.
Beside her, Jesse navigated the freeway, coddling it as he did her. Then forgetting he was supposed to be driving, he turned as if they were in some damned coffee shop, his singsong voice touching upon the subjects of lung cancer, emphysema, secondhand smoke.
“So what’s health?” She exhaled a hearty stream out the window he’d cracked for her. “It’s just one more thing you’ll lose when you die.”
“Now, that’s a cheerful thought. I take it Bobby knows you too well to be convinced by whatever you said or did up there today.”
How could he always reach right into her head and come out with her secrets? The car bumped beneath them. Bad road or he’d drifted over a divider again. “Watch your driving,” she said. “I did my best back there. And, no, he was not thrilled that you tried to buy off Tania Marie and Princess Gabby.”
“You didn’t admit it?”
“Of course not.”
“You sure? You’re not changing sides, are you, not trying to blame the whole thing on me?”
She gulped smoke. Exhaled. “How long have we been a team?”
“Maybe you’re the one who should remember that. I stuck by you after the show folded. I’ll always stick by you.”
“As long as I keep bringing home the bacon.”
His gaze left the road once more. If he did this one more time, she’d get out and walk. Shiny gray hair made its own part as it fell across his face. Immediately, she wished she could take back her last retort. Instead, she took a defiant drag.
“I hope that’s just the Rochelle McArthur bitch role and not the real you,” Jesse said. “You couldn’t be stupid enough to believe that you’re the one supporting our lifestyle.”
“I’m not stupid, Jesse, and, yes. I’m supporting a good deal of our lifestyle. If I get the Killer Body deal, we’ll be set. Even if I don’t, I know Bobbo will give me the Ass Blaster. He said it again today. He just wants—no, he demands an untainted public image. Those are his words exactly.”
“Meaning you can’t have your husband trying to buy out the competition.”
“Exactly. That’s what I told you in the first place.”
“It was our idea, babe, and it could have worked.”
“Might have worked.” Her mouth tasted like an ashtray. She flipped the remains of the cigarette out into the air, watching it shoot past the car in tiny sparks. “Didn’t work.”
“Why?”
“Because those two teamed up. Can you believe that? Princess Gabby and Tania Marie, the honey bee? Who would have thought they’d compare notes?”
“I’m so seldom wrong, and I missed that one all the way.”
“Your turnoff,” she said as she covered her eyes. “Damn it, Jesse.”
She felt the careening motion, that threat of their tiny little world spinning out of control. She didn’t want to see.
“We’re fine.” He patted her leg. Squeezed, not a sexy squeeze, a doctor squeeze, like the little silver hammer on the knee. “You’re turning into a regular bone fuck, you know that?”
“Now, there’s a lovely term.” She forced herself to sit up, relax into the seat, no broomstick posture like a certain princess. “Would you rather I look like Tania Marie? Or Gabriella Paquette, perhaps?”
A smile crossed his lips, then disappeared faster than you could say Princess Gabby. “I like you just as you are,” he said.
How many years had he said it? Why could she still not believe it? Because he only said it; he didn’t demonstrate it, and every time he mentioned Gabby’s name, he all but salivated.
This was the worst part of going home—not the back-to-back traffic, not the lost hours—but all of the doubts that manifest themselves when two people who should love and care for each other find themselves together, in a car, on a freeway that may never end.
This is the place you remain silent or you attack.
She decided to remain silent. She had plenty to think about, anyway, especially if cute little Rikki decided to forget that what they discussed was off the record.
Then she’d have big-time problems. And if Gabby were remotely interested in Jesse, she might have even bigger ones.
“Is Bobby on our side?” he asked.
“I think so, although no one really knows for sure with him.”
“You should.”
“Why? Because of something that happened years ago? I was a kid, and he was gorgeous. What did I know? I cared about him for a long, long time.”
“I know.”
“Then, what’s your point?”
No answer. She hated it when he did that, as if someone had just pulled the cord out of the stereo.
“He’s not what you think,” she said finally. “Under all of that body-builder stuff, he’s a good guy.”
“He’s a drunken tyrant.”
“Sometimes. He’s the last person I’d choose for a boss, but I’m not in a choosing position. I just hope this mess with Tania Marie and your friend the princess doesn’t hurt my chances.”
“So do I.”
“It was an idiotic idea, anyway, thinking you could buy them off.”
“It’s never idiotic to appeal to someone’s greatest need.”
The way he said it chilled her, made her study his face, the angular thrust of his jaw. For that moment, the sunlight washing over his features, he looked like a stranger.
He slowed for the turnoff.
“I don’t suppose you’d like to stop for lunch?”
She’d like to slap that knowing smile from his face. But they were a team; they’d been a team a long time. And he looked like himself again.
“No. I think I’d like to get home. We can grab a bite later.”
With that they moved from one stretch of freeway to another, on their way to home and a world where “later” never came.
Rochelle opened the glove compartment again, reached for the first aid kit.
Lucas
He had vices, but vanity wasn’t one of them. He’d seen too much of it when he was competing. His pride in his home bordered on vanity, however. Now, for the first time since his divorce, he viewed this haven he had created for himself with critical eyes.
Would Rikki think it overdone? Would she scoff silently at a thirty-two-year-old man living in a town house big enough for a family? He’d opened the curtains, and the views of the city, the ocean and the islands looked like a living photograph on a wall of glass.
Although he’d considered safe music, he decided to go balls out, as Bobby W would say, and play the CDs he loved.
Instead of soft jazz or elevator music, Lyle Lovett, the poet laureate of root music put to a big band beat, sang “If I Had a Boat.” After that one, he had Iris DeMent, and then, if Rikki survived those two, it would be Rod Stewart singing love standards, and then another sweet Lyle.
Doorbell, damn. Too late to worry about the room or the music. He had to just let her in and hope for the best.
He studied Rikki’s face as she stepped inside, but he couldn’t evaluate her impression of his home.
She must have run up the four flights of stairs.
Her short reddish-blond hair had been ruffled like little feathers by the breeze, and her chest rose and fell slightly.
The large blue eyes reflected no emotion whatsoever.
Up close, her similarity to Julie Larimore and even Lisa ended.
There was an arrogance to her that they lacked.
But it wasn’t arrogance she was trying to conceal right now.
No. Then he knew what it was. She’d been crying, and not long before.
Let her know he’d figured that one out and he’d be finished before he started.
“You could have taken the elevator.”
“How do you know I didn’t?”
“That flush of health, as Bobby would say. You work out?” He could tell by her body, the way she moved, that she did. He just wanted to see how she would answer.
“Sometimes.” She crossed her arms across her chest as if trying to conceal as much of herself as possible from him. “We have a gym at the newspaper.”
She wore jeans, low cut, with a white shirt where most women would show skin beneath the long-sleeved black sweater she’d layered over it.
Was she dressing modestly in response to her cousin’s death and the whole Killer Body image?
As they stood, looking at, no, evaluating each other, he wondered how she really dressed when she wasn’t making a statement.
“Come on in, have a seat. Bobby will be right down. He’s making a phone call.” He didn’t add that Bobby W was responding to an emergency message from Rochelle McArthur, who would not leave him alone.
Rikki sat on the edge of the black leather chair. He took the sofa, across from the view, and watched her look around the room, the bookcases behind him, the layered ebony coffee table that his housekeeper had spread out into five tiers and topped with an oblong pewter dish.
“Very nice.” She glanced over at the view, then back to him. “Killer Body must have been good to you.”
“Bobby has. He’s a generous man. I was doing an internship at the Times when I met him on an interview. I guess the timing was right.” He glanced up the sweep of stairs, wondering what was keeping him. “We shared the same values.”
“Was that before or after his son died?”
She spoke quickly, attacking with her question, then searching his face as he answered.
“You did your homework.”
“Part of it.”
“I never met Greg. Bobby has a strong nepotism policy. He figures anything that applies to his staff members applies to him.”
“And his son died in ninety-nine?”
“In an automobile accident, as you obviously know. I’m happy to discuss it with you, but I’d rather not do it now. It’s really hard on Bobby W.”
She watched his face, frankly examining him. “You’re very loyal.”
“Bobby W says your greatest strength is your greatest liability.”
“In weightlifting? Business?”
“In anything. What’s yours?”
She looked as surprised by the question as he was. “My greatest strength?”
“Bobby W also says when a person repeats a question, it’s a good indicator she’s lying.”
That got an embarrassed laugh out of her. “I have nothing to hide.”
“So what’s your greatest strength?”
“According to my boss, Dennis Hamilton,” she said, “tenaciousness.”
“Like a dog with a bone?”
She nodded. “Perhaps.”
“And that’s not always pretty.”
“Not to the bone, at least.”
It was as if someone had lifted a screen from her face, and the sadness, the arrogance disappeared.
Lucas knew without trying that he didn’t have a line in his entire repertoire that would work on her.
And he didn’t care. He on the sofa, she on the chair, they sat locked in a perfect moment of Lyle’s voice and eye contact, and, yes, a smile.
Rikki was smiling, and she probably didn’t even know it.
“When this is over,” he said, “do you suppose we could spend some time together?”
“What kind of time?” She’d shut him out again, and he realized how he must sound to her.
“I’m sorry. You’re probably seeing someone. It was a rude question.”
“Not that rude.” She met his gaze and leaned forward. “I was seeing someone, sort of.” She flushed. “I’m not anymore.”
“Why not?”
“It’s complicated. Something out of our control.”
“Do you still care about each other?”
She shrugged. “As I said, it’s complicated. What about you?”
“Just your basic workaholic without a life.” That should have been enough, but something in him drove the rest of the truth—the truth he hadn’t even shared with friends like Ellen—through his lips. “Before I went to work for Killer Body, I was married to my high school sweetheart.”
“Married?” She hadn’t expected that one, he could tell. What would Bobby W say in a situation like this?
“For five minutes. It was the biggest mistake I ever made.”
She frowned. “How nice for your former wife to be described in such terms.”
Why couldn’t he do anything right with this woman? He leaned forward on the sofa, trying to regain the previous magic. “She’d probably say the same thing about me and be right.”
“Okay, if you say so.” But she had withdrawn. Her posture was straighter, her expression more guarded. “Speaking of Mr. Warren,” she said, “how much longer before I can talk to him?”
The same question had been buzzing in his head. “Let me check on him.”
He took the stairs two at a time, remembering a night when his instincts had saved the old man’s life. That had required a trip to the emergency room.
Maybe he’d gotten sidetracked on the phone. He seemed to be doing more and more of that, calling his old friends and lovers at all times of the day and night.
Bobby W sat in the upstairs office, his back to the door, facing the window.
“Hey.” Lucas knocked softly on the open door. “You okay?” Then he saw the bourbon bottle sitting on the glass desk, catching the light.
Bobby W turned, his eyes blurred with alcohol and tears. He held out his phone, fingers trembling. “She called me.”
“Who called you? Rochelle?”
He shook his head and stared down at the phone as if it were a person, or the ghost of one. “Jules.”