22. Salinger
22
SALINGER
A fter breakfast, I leave my shirt off.
It’s not lost on me the way Mandy keeps sneaking glances at my chest like an altar boy stealing sips of wine. Maybe it will butter her up enough that she’ll tell me who the hell is after her.
“You want to visit the stables?” I offer as Linton comes in to clear away the food.
She gives me a look of distrust. “I told you, I’m going to my parents’ for dinner.”
“Yes, and I will take you there. I promised.”
“We have to leave soon.”
“No, we don’t. It’s not even noon.”
“Dinner is at two in the afternoon.”
“That’s not dinner— that’s lunch.”
“Not according to my father, not on weekends. Excuse me, Linton?” My assistant gives my butler a bright smile, which he is all too happy to return.
“How may I be of service?”
“I just wondered, would you mind making sure the boat is ready to take us back to the city soon?”
“Of course, ma’am.”
“Please, call me Mandy.”
“Mandy.” Linton gives her a kind smile. “We are going to be very sad to see you go. We don’t get that many visitors here. It’s nice to see a new face that’s not Salinger’s.”
“Nice to know how important I am.” I grin at him.
“This is the most excitement we’ve seen since Salinger’s brothers were here a few months ago. Though I hear that you’ll be hosting Fourth of July, sir?” His dark eyes crinkle. “It’s such a joy having children around.”
I grab his arm. “The kids are not coming here. They’ll ruin the house, they’ll destroy the lawn. It will be a zoo.”
“You have children?” Mandy is horrified.
“No, I don’t have children, Mandy. Fuck.”
“You’re getting on in years, Salinger.” Linton turns to Mandy. “I tell him he needs to get on with it. At the rate he consumes alcohol and red meat, who knows how long he has?”
“You make me sound like some nineteen-sixties executive who’s one oyster happy hour away from a heart attack,” I complain.
Linton gives me a pointed look.
“I work out.”
“He does do that.” Linton’s eyes are twinkling.
Mandy blushes .
“The yacht will be ready to take you back to the mainland,” Linton assures her. “Perhaps Pepper would like to explore the grounds a bit more before you go? Your dress has been cleaned and pressed and is waiting for you in your quarters, Mandy. Will Salinger drop by your flat while you’re on the mainland, pick up a few more essentials for your return here? I do hope we’ll be seeing more of you.”
He offers her a small tangerine.
She peels it as I escort her and Pepper out the door from the sunroom that leads to the large linear porch by the pool. I drape my arm over the blanket Mandy still has wrapped round her shoulders, tucking her under my arm. She’s the perfect height.
The corgi sniffs at the grass along the edge of the pool deck.
“Not on the grass,” I tell the dog when she looks a little too interested in my lawn.
“That’s the con of a private island. You don’t have any neighbors whose yard you can have your dog ruin,” Mandy jokes.
For a second, I let myself pretend. Pretend that Mandy is who Linton thinks she is—a nice girl I’ve taken an interest in who might like me back, instead of my assistant whom I quasi-kidnapped and with whom I am currently brewing an HR nightmare.
But I have to keep her with me. I have to keep her safe.
“If you won’t tell me who he is for your sake, do it for your dog,” I tell Mandy, following Pepper toward the path down to the beach. “Think of your poor dog. She’s a basket case. Let me help her.”
“I’ve seen how you operate.” Mandy’s stubborn. “I don’t want that kind of help. You’ll just make everything worse. ”
“No, I’ll make everything go away. Think about it,” I croon in her ear. “You’ll never have to look over your shoulder again. You can buy coffee without worrying if he’s going to show up, walk your dog in peace.”
“Pepper doesn’t like to walk.”
That much is true. We’ve barely made it halfway down the path, and Pepper has already flopped down on one of the stone steps.
“Come on, Pepper,” Mandy coaxes. “You ate bacon and a waffle and all of that cold chicken mix.”
The dog lets out a sorrowful whine. Mandy reaches down to pick her up.
“Just make her walk.” I blow out a breath.
“I’m not making her walk because she won’t.”
It’s a chilly Seattle morning. The clouds are moving back in. We seemed to have used up our monthly allotment of sun.
“She’s extremely attached to you,” I argue with Mandy as she lugs the dog down the steps to the beach. “If you keep walking, she’ll run after you eventually.”
“Gosh, I’d hate to see you with kids,” Mandy snaps at me.
“Me? I’d hate to see you with kids. You’d spoil them rotten. Stop coddling your dog. Have a little faith in Pepper.” I grab the corgi from Mandy then take off at a run.
“Hey!” Mandy yells.
Down on the beach, the wind buffets me as I race away from Mandy. Farther away, I set Pepper down. She squints against the wind toward Mandy, who has the blanket clutched around her shoulders.
“Okay, Pepper, you’ve got this. Show Mandy you have what it takes.” I take off at a slow jog.
The dog ignores me .
“Dammit, Pepper.”
“Told you so!” Mandy yells as Pepper pants a few yards away from me. “If this is your big push to convince me to give up the name, it’s failing miserably.”
As soon as she hears Mandy’s voice, the dog takes off at a sprint. I race the corgi down the beach back to Mandy. When I reach her, I wrap my arms around Mandy, briefly spinning her around to stop myself.
“I told you so.” I huff out a laugh. “Pepper just needs the proper motivation. That’s everything in life—everyone has a weak point. You just have to know the right screws to turn.”
Mandy shivers next to me. “Not exactly the type of speech you ought to give a girl after you’ve just threatened to hold her prisoner.”
I cup her face. “I’ll never hurt you, Mandy, I swear. I’m trying to protect you. Let me keep you safe.”
Pepper, the bacon kicking in, trots next to us, barking at the waves.
Motion catches my eye. “Whoa, whoa.” I snatch up the dog.
“You’re seriously not going to pick her up after all that.”
I jerk my chin to the south. “Look. Orcas. They’ll beach themselves to get a meal.”
Mandy huddles closer to me.
“This is one of the reasons I paid out the nose for this island. It has some of the best orca watching.”
“They’re huge. I don’t think I’ve ever been this close to one before,” she whispers, leaning back against me.
“They don’t eat people,” I remind her as we watch the massive predators a few yards out in the deep water, swimming, lurking .
“They’re beautiful and dangerous and mesmerizing,” Mandy says softly.
“They’re also kind of ditzy. That one”—I point to an orca with a notch on its dorsal fin—“is a juvenile. He was born on the other side of the island. His mom likes the seal hunting here, but he couldn’t quite get the hang of it when she was trying to teach him to hunt. She would smack fish out of the water, but they’d just kind of fall on his head and he’d look really confused about the fish falling out of the sky.” I smile. “I could spend hours watching them.”
I glance down at her.
Mandy’s staring up at me with this soft expression on her face. “You’re such a marshmallow.” She grabs my arm. “I’m going to find you an orca charity to donate to.”
“I already give money to several,” I admit.
“And you gave me so much shit about Forever Furry.”
“First off, it sounds like some sort of bestiality-porn site. Also, five hundred thousand dollars? That’s obscene.” I smirk. “Orcas are cool. The parade of abandoned hamsters they have over at Forever Furry is not. You still haven’t unsubscribed me from that mailing list, by the way.”
My car is waiting for us when we disembark the yacht. It’s been detailed since yesterday evening—no evidence remaining of the grime and dirt from Mandy’s run through the alley.
I’m furious all over again.
“Stop being stubborn,” I tell her as we drive out of the dense downtown traffic. “You need to tell me who he is.”
“It’s not that bad. You’re blowing things out of proportion.” She crosses her arms. She’s back in that black dress .
Mandy reaches for the radio as I drive us out of the city to the suburbs dotting the hills. She turns it on as if to cut off the rest of my argument about why she needs to stop protecting the monster who’s after her.
Pepper has been relegated to the back seat so she can’t get fur all over everything. She’s hanging over the back of my seat, panting against the back of my neck.
I sigh heavily.
“I was perfectly fine with you dropping me off at my car,” she says in response.
“I’m not.”
We pull up in front of a low-slung ranch house, the type built all over Seattle in the eighties. Outside is a beige lawn, the color perfectly even.
“Damn.” I whistle. “That is a perfect kill. Mandy, do you see this? They even edged it.”
I slam on the brakes as Mandy lets out a cry of anguish.
“What is it? Is it him?”
“No, my dad!” she cries. “Something happened to my dad!”