25
No wonder Ruby hadn’t showed up. She wouldn’t dare appear, not with Leo casting a watchful eye. Her plans were shot; there
was no point denying it. Leo was staying the week and whenever she stepped out to the garden, he’d keep watch from his tower.
Before, the others were always around to distract him. She could come and go virtually unnoticed. Now it was just the two
of them in this big house, and the staff . . . and the odd guests . . . but essentially alone, cat and mouse. Well, he’d soon
learn that she was the cat.
Leo was quite the host. He drew the bath and selected a bottle of white wine from the minibar. He called the front desk to
order extra towels. The suite’s bathroom was significantly larger than hers, with black-and-white-checkered tile, gold accents,
and an inviting claw-foot tub, like the one she had in her new apartment, only hers was a modern replica. Jules undressed
and sank into the foaming hot water. She closed her eyes. Leo knocked on the door, which she’d deliberately left open.
“Come in.”
He entered and handed her a chilled glass of white. She reached out and took it from him, their fingers grazing. He was exceptionally
handsome when haggard, no denying that. His tired eyes and disheveled chestnut head of hair were a stark departure from his
classic daytime looks.
“Housekeeping is bringing up a fresh robe for you as well.”
“Thanks.” When had she ever been so pampered? “This bath smells heavenly.”
He picked up an amber glass bottle off the vanity and read the label. “Lavender and rosemary.”
Jules took a sip of wine. “There’s room enough for two. Care to join me?”
Leo set the little bottle on the marble vanity with a definitive tap. “No, thank you.”
Stung, she shot upright, exposing her breasts and her indignation. “Isn’t this what you want?”
“July,” he said in that maddening tone, “what I’ve wanted from you for a while is a straight answer to any question. Let’s
clear that hurdle first.”
Jules reclined, laughing. “Suit yourself, man!” she said, with forced ambivalence. “Don’t say I never met you halfway.”
He smiled, amused, but did not budge, keeping a safe distance. Could she blame him? She’d been particularly bitchy tonight.
“Come closer,” she said. “I don’t bite.”
“But I do.”
His answer sent goose bumps down her arms. “I’ll take the risk.”
He sat at the edge of the tub and stretched his legs.
“Good,” she said. “What should we talk about?”
“How about the night we met?”
“What’s there to talk about?”
“Why it still haunts us,” he said. “And don’t deny it.”
She caught a large soap bubble in her hand and blew gently on it until it drifted and popped. It was time to clear the air.
“Alright.”
“I thought you were the cleverest person I’d ever met.”
Jules wanted to say something punchy, anything except what slipped out of her mouth. “I wanted to impress you.”
“You didn’t have to try hard,” he said. “You were calm, confident. Meanwhile, everyone in that dining room was jockeying for attention.”
“I was on the clock,” Jules reminded him. “We weren’t paid to peacock around.”
“When I found your book all those years later, it confirmed what I suspected. You’re brilliant.”
“Thanks,” Jules said quietly. Despite herself, she still wanted to impress him. That feeling would likely never go away.
He narrowed his eyes, as if looking directly into the past. “You were on a break,” he said. “I worried I was bothering you.”
“Oh, you were,” Jules said with a laugh. “Some things don’t change.”
“I wish we had more time out there. I regret letting you walk away.”
“You had no choice,” Jules said. “I had to get back to work, and you had to get back to being honored and celebrated.”
“I thought we had something,” he confessed.
“We did,” Jules said. “Gross economic disparity.”
“Hey! I was broke, too,” he said. “Critics loved my book, but it wasn’t selling.”
“There’s broke with prospects, and there’s flat-out broke,” Jules said. “You get the difference?”
“Is that why you hated me?” he asked.
“I never hated you,” she said. “I hated how much I liked you.”
If he wanted straight answers, he’d get them tonight.
He reached into the water. The back of his hand skimmed the C curve of her waist. Jules curled her fingers around his wrist
and stopped his hand’s downward trajectory. “You can get in or stay out.”
This time his laugh was throaty and lustful. “I hate how much I like you, too.”
He was a good and decent guy, and she had to set him straight. “Quit looking at me like I’m the girl of your dreams,” she
said. “I’m no one’s dream. Ask anyone. I’m a nightmare.”
Leo freed his hand, and with his wet palm, cupped her face. “You forget I craft nightmares for a living, and I’m fucking good at it.”
Her ambivalence dissolved into the bathwater. She guessed at a hidden darkness under the veneer of the good and decent guy,
and it excited her more than it reasonably should. Now she wanted to kiss him more than her next breath.
A sharp knock on the door to the suite marked the end of round one.
“Housekeeping!”
“Sit tight,” Leo said, and left to get the door.
Jules sank lower into the tub. Like always, she’d punted. There was so much more to say about their first encounter, so much
she hadn’t even hinted at. Why couldn’t she get it out? If he really wanted to talk about that night, she’d tell him everything.
A moment later he returned with a stack of towels and a robe, which he hung on a hook. She sensed he was about to do the gentlemanly
thing, retreat to give her some privacy. Before he could say a word, she launched the little speech she’d been rehearsing
in her mind.
“My mother went to the emergency room that night. I was on the phone, trying to make sense of her texts when you showed up. I hate to admit it, but I was more annoyed than concerned. I thought she was overreacting. She had a simple cough, nothing major. And yes! I hated you . . . a little. I resented your success. All of you thirty-under-thirty bullshit artists! It’s petty, but you were celebrated in a field I was desperate to get into and losing hope every day.
My master’s thesis was weak. My manuscript was falling apart.
Loans were piling up. You seemed to have it all.
That night I must’ve filled your wineglass three times while you chatted with top agents and editors, people who would never reply to my emails.
And my mother kept texting from the ER, talking about a lung X-ray.
It was only a cough! After a while, I stopped replying to her messages because I had to get back to work.
Eventually, I made it to the hospital, thinking I’d get her home.
They wanted to keep her overnight, run more tests.
She never recovered. She never came home. ”
“July, I’m sorry.”
Winded, Jules sunk deeper into the bath, though the water was cooling and she was ready to get out.
Leo sat on the edge of the tub again. “Could it have been the worst night of our lives?”
“Why?” Jules asked. “Please tell me your life was ruined, too.”
“It was,” he said. “I got into a fight with my parents. We haven’t spoken since, outside the rare email from my mother to
keep me informed of major life events.”
That would mean he’d been estranged from his parents for a decade.
“I’ve been homeless ever since, not in the true meaning of the word but you get what I’m trying to say.”
“Leo,” Jules whispered. “I had no idea.”
That was the thing with Leo, you could never tell just by looking at him how deep those waters stirred.
“It’s alright. Hardly anyone knows.”
It was not alright. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Are you hungry?” he asked, artfully deflecting. “The kitchen is closed. I could order food.”
“No, thanks.”
Jules had simple needs. If he met each one, she might never leave.
Bathed and feeling better, Jules thanked Leo for his hospitality. “See you around, I guess.”
“Guess so,” he replied with a smile that made her heart lurch.
She left him, wearing his robe, smelling of his complimentary toiletries, and ready to try her luck again in the garden.
He wasn’t her priority. She was committed to connect with Ruby at least once more.
If it took all week, so be it. If she roused Leo’s suspicions, she’d chalk it up to insomnia and pray he’d let it go.
Jules took the grand stairs to the lower floor, avoided the front desk, and discreetly made her way to the rear exit. She
knew to sidestep the floorboards that creaked and how to ease open the iron door in such a way it hardly made any noise. She
took a seat on the bench and started her vigil, a little drowsy from the wine, but determined to stay awake. She sat there
for fifteen, thirty, forty-five minutes, seeing nothing, feeling nothing except the sting of mosquito bites. Her back ached.
She returned to her room before the hour was out, knowing all along that he was watching.