Chapter 1 #2
Knocking the faucet on again, she flicked water over her face and neck.
Not tonight, not tonight.
Mascara was now smeared across her cheeks.
But after a few chilly plunges, the pressure in her temples and her gut eased a little.
Dark pinpricks cleared from her vision. She was left to confront not the skull-splitting pain of a headache, but her own reflection.
Threads of pale hair had slipped loose from their knot and clung against her jaw.
Her eyebrows and eyelashes had faded back into invisibility.
Her skin and dress were stained with wet cosmetics.
Chase couldn’t see her like this.
No one could.
No one could suspect her of being anything except transcendently happy tonight with her handsome, charming neurologist fiancé. Despite blotting herself and the counter with a wad of scented paper towels, she looked as if she’d been crying.
Would anyone believe her if she quite truthfully denied it?
They all wanted her smiles. Not her tears. Or screams.
When the exterior door into the lounge swung open a minute later, she ducked into a toilet stall. She stayed there as the second door ricocheted hard off its stopper, followed by two sets of footsteps entering the bathroom.
“Is there anyone—”
“No, looks empty.”
The voices were muffled with kissing, sloppy with saliva, reeking of alcohol: a man’s deep breaths and a woman’s pitchy gasping.
A zipper slid down.
Foil crinkled.
Squatting on the lid of her toilet so that her rickety heels wouldn’t peek out under the stall door, Isabel exhaled through her nose while the couple proceeded to enjoy themselves up against the sinks (a faucet squeaked on), the walls (a paper towel dispenser excreting its goods joined the moaning), and even the doors to the row of stalls (disgusting).
“Yeah, baby—”
“Uh, uh—”
How much was the woman exaggerating her delight at being slammed up against a toilet stall?
Isabel considered this while the partitions quivered.
. . before eyeing the lock to her own stall with more concern.
The couple was now thrusting against her door.
Its lock vibrated under their rhythm, the metal slide rattling inch by inch from its catch. She angled herself to reach for it.
But not fast enough.
A vigorous onslaught jolted open the lock.
The door swung inward, revealing the coupled pair to her, and her to them: a caterer with familiar stilettos, thighs wrapped around Dr. Chase Meyer Jr.’s hips.
What?
Horror and revulsion pulsed through her.
No, no, no!
Averting her eyes from Chase’s gaping belt, she stumbled down off the toilet, out of the stall, shuddering when she couldn’t avoid brushing her body past theirs in her rush for the exit.
Chase caught at her arm. “Babe—”
Her muscles reacted instantly and instinctively, twisting to rid themselves of his touch—and then she wrenched open the lounge door. She crashed past orchids and armchairs, toward the club’s ailing aquarium and dining room.
“Bella, wait!”
Zipper down, shirt flapping, Chase staggered after her. He shouted for her to listen. “It’s not what it looks like! It didn’t mean anything, she was the one who came on to me, I didn’t—”
She opened the dining room doors to—silence.
Everyone had heard him. Everyone had just heard Chase’s incriminating confession.
Now they saw him. Karen Meyer; Chase Meyer Sr.; Ethan and Erin, emerging from the pool room; the BioPulse representatives.
Every single person saw the caterer, too, holding her stilettos behind Chase, with her panties showing under her skirt.
Everyone saw Isabel’s mascara-streaked cheeks.
Pretending that she hadn’t caught her fiancé with one of the waitstaff wasn’t an option.
Her swallow was hot and painful under the watching eyes.
Her heartbeat rolled in her ears. A glass of Bordeaux stood among crumpled napkins on a highboy table and her fingers itched toward it, but—no.
She didn’t throw the wine in Chase’s face.
She didn’t even reach for the glassware.
She dug her nails into her palms, breathed back the fire boiling in her throat. Anger was a luxury she didn’t have.
She was left with the dilemma of how a happy fiancée should react to this situation.
How should she respond to Chase screwing a caterer?
Whatever the right reaction for that woman-in-love was, it wasn’t standing mute and blank in front of the guests and cameras, under Chase’s renewed grip on her arm.
If she didn’t do something now, right now, then people would wonder why.
She couldn’t have anyone prying, not when she had to marry Chase on schedule.
Had to—
“Isabel.” Ethan Meyer’s voice reverberated through the quiet: low, firm, unexpectedly close.
She hadn’t seen his approach. Ignoring his brother’s glower, he extracted her from Chase’s hold.
He pressed a set of keys, a valet ticket, and a business card into her hand.
“Welcome to the family. We can talk logistics tomorrow.”
“I—”
The card’s address was in Monterey.
She couldn’t waste time on a beach vacation.
But if she could only be alone for a while, somewhere dark and still and cold, she could collect herself, couldn’t she? Could think. Could fix this. Fix herself.
And running off was definitely a viable reaction to these circumstances.
September first.
September thirtieth.
Twenty-nine days. Could she spare one night?
She gripped the keys, crumpling the ticket and the card.
“—thank you.” Then she was running again, back down the hall, past the anemones, through the yacht club’s exterior doors, into the parking lot.
She startled a valet into retrieving her overnight bag from a BMW at the curb (Chase had booked them into the St. Regis for two nights, before his flight to Las Vegas) and into bringing Ethan’s hatchback around.
Isabel accelerated out of the marina, onto the freeway.
Wes Monaghan heaved his duffel bags from the trunk of an airport taxi and circled around to lean through the sedan’s passenger window. He shook the driver’s hand, then passed off a cash tip for the late ride south from San Francisco International Airport to Palo Alto.
“Thanks, man. Have a good night.”
“You too, sir.”
The “sir” was generous. He hadn’t showered in forty-eight hours, his stubble was approaching a full beard, and he’d scarfed down a veggie New York hot dog with onions and too much pickle relish during a layover in JFK Airport.
Scrubbing a hand over his jaw, grimacing at his own breath, he waved as the cab flashed its taillights and peeled away, leaving him on a dark sidewalk near his sister’s house.
Also dark. No golden retrievers barked behind its juniper hedge.
No one was home.
Erin hadn’t known that he was arriving in the United States tonight.
He’d texted her from the location of his latest photography assignment in Costa Rica and explained his plans to land in California on Monday for his next shoot.
However, a last-minute deal for an earlier flight out from Central America’s biodiverse hydrothermal springs had been too good for his bank account to turn down, despite the hellish series of layovers and the fact that his hostel room in Moss Landing wouldn’t be available for another few days.
He’d touched down hoping to crash on his sister’s couch for the night.
But: dark house, no dog.
. . . had Erin mentioned something about renting out a beach house in September?
Shit.
He fished through a few crumpled colones, his passport, and Baby’s keys until he located his phone in the rear pocket of his jeans. While the device fired up its connection after coming off airplane mode, he tapped into his stored texts with his sister.
Erin Monaghan
You’re photographing kelp with the Monterey Oceanic Research Institute in California for a few weeks?
Wes Monaghan (voice-to-text)
Yeah, until early October.
Erin
Ethan and I rented a beach house in Monterey for most of September!
We’ll be working remotely for the month between the wedding shower for his brother and the actual ceremony.
Plus, Adrian’s coming to San Francisco for an investor meeting soon.
Maybe we can have lunch at some point. If you ever come up for air.
Wes
Sure.
Erin
And—I really thought this bungalow was a good idea, except the booking’s nonrefundable, and Ethan was just invited to a satellite launch at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
It’s using the quantum technologies that he’s developed at NASA.
Neil deGrasse Tyson’s going to be onsite.
But the launch is also in September. . .
Wes
While Cape Canaveral’s in Florida.
Erin
I don’t want Ethan to miss it.
Wes
You want to see Tyson.
Erin
I’m subtle.
Erin
But we’ll figure something out. In the meantime, why don’t you stop by the bungalow when you arrive in Monterey? If your hostel’s got cockroaches, we can probably even loan out our couch for a night. There should be a key available for everyone to use.
Yes, he’d remembered correctly about the beach house.
Just too late.
Cursing his airplane brain fog, Wes opened his phone’s voice-to-text module to alert his sister that he was already here in California on Friday night, when:
Searching for Service
“Christ on a bike!”
In the rush to chuck his clothes into his bag, pack up his lens ports, strobes, and camera housings, then hitchhike to Liberia Guanacaste Airport, he’d forgotten to change his phone off its Costa Rican plan. The screen chirped at him now:
International roaming charges may apply.
Swearing again, he flipped the device back into flight mode.
He considered his options.