Killer Summer

by Lynda Curnyn

  I put my pack down, dumbfounded, then headed back to the kitchen for some answers, but Sage had already left the kitchen and Zoe was probably still slathering on whatever remedy she could find for that burn of hers.

  The sliding glass door to the back deck opened, allowing in the only other person who could possibly get her butt into that thong—and that CD into her player, God help her. I had no idea who she was, but as I watched her yawn, then stretch that lithe, tan, bikini-clad body, I knew that, music tastes notwithstanding, I wanted to know her better. A lot better.

  “Is it time for cocktails yet?” she asked, blinking as she took in the room, her eyes falling on me with what looked like genuine interest.

  “So you must be my new roommate,” I said, raising an eyebrow. “Nick,” I said, holding out a hand to her.

  “Roommate?” she said, putting the smallest hand I had ever seen in mine, catlike blue eyes gazing up at me from beneath thick, dark bangs. God, she was young. She couldn’t be more than eighteen, if that. Mnirn, but she was nice. Maybe that’s what I needed… a nice young babe. No neuroses yet. No hassles.

  “Yeah, the purple room is where I usually sleep. Not that I mind sharing,” I said, giving her my cockiest smile. Yeah, this was shaping up to be a helluva weekend. Good food in the making. Hot chick in waiting—

  “Nick, you made it!” Tom said, stepping in behind the brunette babe, carrying a bloody, beheaded fish in his hands. Yuck.

  “So I see you’ve met my daughter, Francie,” Tom said, pausing briefly to acknowledge the girl before marching toward the kitchen.

  Daughter? Uh-oh…

  “Francesca,” she corrected, her eyes still on mine. “A pleasure to meet you, Nick,” she said, giving me the kind of smile that said she was very glad to meet me. Oh, man…Tom’s daughter. It figured. Did I have the worst luck in the world or what?

  “Daddy, you didn’t tell me I was going to have a roommate,” she said, her eyes moving over me in a way that made me feel uncomfortable with Tom standing right there.

  Not that Tom noticed, I thought, watching as he laid that fish on the counter. “Roommate?” He laughed, then looked at me. “Francie decided to come out and keep her old dad company. But I guess I hadn’t sorted out the sleeping arrangements.”

  “I can stay in Nick’s room, Daddy. We can separate the beds.” Then she smiled up at him. “I’m a big girl, after all.”

  “Oh, no, no,” Tom said. “I don’t think that would work…”

  Embarrassed, I looked at Francesca, then noticed her smile had deepened. As if she liked the way Tom was acting all overprotective and shit. Okay, let me revise my assessment. Young chicks are weird.

  “After all, what would the neighbors think?” he continued with a hearty chuckle that turned Francesca’s smile to a frown. Then he snapped his fingers. “Hey, I got it. You can sleep on the day bed in my room, Nick,“ he finished with satisfaction. ”Sound good?“

  “Uh, yeah. I’m easy,” I replied, watching as Francesca waltzed past me and out the sliding glass door once more, a pout on her pretty face. Okay, so I didn’t get to sleep with the weird hot chick, but I did just step up to an ocean-view room.

  I’d say the weekend was turning out a-okay.

  * * *

  Chapter Twelve

  Sage

  What’s the Fourth of July without a little spark?

  “ Look at this place,“ Zoe said.

  “I know,” I replied, smiling as I gazed around. We were standing on the back deck of the house, which had been decorated with great diligence by Tom. Red, white and blue lanterns lined the railings that overlooked the ocean. Matching candles flickered on the patio table. Inside the house, the living room was strewn with candles and streamers and more lights in red, white and blue.“He did a great job,” I continued, peering through the sliding glass door and spotting Tom, who was presiding over the small crowd that had begun to gather in the living room, “He always does.”

  I felt Zoe shift uneasily beside me. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know what you meant,” I said, more sharply than I’d intended. I knew Zoe wasn’t in the best of moods tonight after her run-in with Myles,but I was tired of her chronic critique of Tom’s postmortem behavior. He needed to move on. We all needed to move on. “Tom already explained to us why he’s decided to hold his annual Fourth of July bash. He didn’t want to disappoint anyone, least of all us. We’re his first shareholders.”

  “Gee, what a guy.”

  “Zoe,” I said, turning to face her. “Tom is a nice guy.” Probably too nice, I thought, thinking about how he’d slaved all day, preparing for this party he felt we shouldn’t do without. Not that I said that to Zoe. “Why don’t you direct your anger where it belongs?”

  “What’s that’s supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’ve done nothing but whine about Tom ever since you ran into Myles this afternoon. Why not just admit to yourself that seeing Myles here was upsetting?”

  “I’m not upset!” she cried, her sunburned face going a shade darker as she did.

  “Hey,” Nick said, stepping through the sliding glass doors, beer in hand. “Simmer down. Zoe, what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing is the mat—” she began.

  “It’s a party, lighten up,” he continued, gently knocking his beer into her arm. “Let me get you a drink.”

  “I’m not thirsty,” Zoe replied.

  “As if that matters,” Nick said, with a roll of his eyes. “Let me get you a beer.”

  “I’m not in the mood—I mean…no, thank you,” Zoe said, her gaze seeking out the ocean view.

  “Suit yourself,” Nick said, taking a healthy swig out of his beer. “Sage?” he asked, looking at my half-empty tumbler of tequila on the rocks.

  “I’m good, thanks,” I replied, studying him and noticing for the first time that he’d taken the time to give his hair that gently gelled, tousled look. He’d even put on a nice shirt. A new shirt, I realized, noting that the baby blue cotton button-down he wore tonight was not the usual swag—a freebie T-shirt picked up from one of his cronies at the various record labels. Even the shorts—khaki and in the latest cargo style—seemed new.“You’re looking spiffy” I said.

  Nick raised his eyebrows, then smiled.“I’m feeling pretty spiffy.” Then he chuckled, sipping his beer as he glanced inside the sliding glass doors.

  I followed his gaze to Francesca, who was seated on the edge of the couch talking to one of Tom’s friends and wearing the shortest miniskirt I had ever seen. “You’d better steer clear, Nick.”

  “What?” he replied, his eyes wide with innocence.“You’re kidding me, right? I wouldn’t touch that. She’s practically jailbait.”

  I looked him in the eye, assessing. “She’s twenty-one. Hardly jailbait.”

  “Twenty-one? Really?” he said hopefully. “Wow. She looks much younger than that.”

  “Nick, she’s Tom’s daughter.”

  “Sage, give me a little credit, would you?” he said, shaking his head and turning to Zoe for backup.

  I could tell by the bemused frown on Zoe’s face she wasn’t going to be much help. She didn’t disappoint.

  “Nick, if something happened to Bernadine, would you be throwing a party two weeks later?”

  “It’s his annual bash,” I argued.

  Zoe held up a hand to silence me, which was really annoying.

  Nick seemed startled by the question, his dark brows furrowing as he considered it.

  Considered it a bit too long for Zoe’s liking. “Well?” she said, brown eyes bulging.

  “Okay, let me just ask, are me and Bernadine still, like, a couple?”

  Zoe’s eyes widened ever farther. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “Well, if we’ve been broken up a while—”

  “That’s it?” she said. “The relationship just ends and you forget about her as a human being? You don’t even care whether she lives or dies?”

 
“Zoe—” I began.

  “This is not about Myles,” Zoe insisted, though the tears glistening in her eyes said otherwise.

  “Zoe, listen,” I began again, softly this time.

  But Zoe was in no mood to be coddled. “You know, maybe I’ll have that drink after all,” she said, then disappeared inside the sliding glass doors.

  “Poor kid,” Nick said, watching after her.

  I sighed. “I know it was tough seeing him out here, but she needs to let it go. It’s been three months.”

  “Look at me and Bern. Six months later, and we’re still hanging on.”

  I looked at him. “I thought you said you’d broken up?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right. I wouldn’t be surprised if I heard from her this weekend. The holidays always get her all emotional and shit.“

  “It’s the Fourth of July, Nick. Not Christmas.”

  “Yeah, well, for girls it’s all the same.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Most girls,” he said with a wry smile. Then he looked at my glass, still half-empty. “C’mon, looks like you could use a refill. Or better yet, a shot.”

  I could use something, I thought, my eye falling over the small crowd as I followed him inside. But as I looked around at the mostly middle-aged and predominantly married crowd, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t find it here.

  Still, I accepted the shot Nick poured me once we got to the bar in the far corner of the living room.

  “To a killer summer,” Nick said, clinking his beer bottle into my shot glass.

  “Yeah, killer,” I said, looking around at the scattered crowd, hoping my prospects might get better.

  My prospects didn’t get better, but they did get more familiar. Some of the garmento crowd that flocked to Fire Island showed up. There weren’t many of us out here, but we stuck together, and I was glad, too. At least I had some people I could relate to at this party. I was getting bored watching the marrieds flirt with spouses other than their own—inevitable, considering the amount of alcohol that was being consumed. It wasn’t like I had my friends to talk to. Nick dove right in, chatting away with anyone who would listen to his schemes, male or female, and Zoe had virtually disappeared. I decided not to resort to my habitual worrying about her. She was a big girl.

  As was I, I thought, indulging myself in another shot at the behest of Stan Sackowitz, one of Tom’s big customers, who believed he might bring me back over to the retail side if he plied me with enough alcohol. “We could make beautiful music together, Sage,” Stan was saying as he clinked his glass into mine. “And a lot of money, too!”

  I smiled, downed my shot obediently.“You know I’m very loyal to Tom, Stan.”

  “Loyalty will get you nowhere!” he insisted, downing his own shot.“Think where you would have been had you stayed with The Bomb Boutique.”

  “That’s right, Stan. That’s why I’m never going back to retail,” I said with a smile that I hoped ended this seemingly endless conversation. Not that I really minded. I had become a hot property in the leather business in a relatively short time. Mostly due to Tom’s faith in me. But also because I was damn good at what I did. Zoe always said I could sell indulgences to monks. And though I was never sure if she meant that in a good way, I knew that she was right.

  So I talked the talk with Stan, and later with Viv, a buyer from Bloomingdale’s. The conversation inevitably turned to Maggie at some point, some whispered declaration about “the tragedy” and “poor Tom.” I suppose that’s what people say when deaths occur, but it all seemed so ridiculous somehow. As if their sympathetic murmurs tied them to the situation in some intimate way. Everyone wanted a piece of Maggie, it seemed, now that she was dead. “I worked with her to set up the billing for Bloomingdale’s,” said Viv. “Nice woman.”

  I practically snorted. The only reason Edge would be hanging in Bloomingdale’s this fall was because I had convinced Viv that they needed a younger leather line on their racks. Maggie’s chief talent was handling the books. She was more a numbers cruncher than the creative talent she imagined herself to be. Not that anyone else realized that, seeing as she was at the helm of Edge. I just hoped Tom remembered who the real head of Edge was, when it came time to choose a new one.

  I wasn’t sure what disturbed me more, those who gushed on about the tragedy, or those who openly speculated about the circumstances.

  “They say she was drinking a lot that night,” said Jenny Lewis, who I had shared a house with last summer over on Pine Walk. “She must have been. I mean, who would go in the ocean in June? And naked!”

  I didn’t even grace that one with a reply.

  The worst of the bunch was Donnie Havens, the head of shipping for Edge, who owned a house with his wife, Amanda, a few doors down on West Lighthouse. Latching on to my arm and reeking of one too many beers, he nearly bawled when I asked him if he had any idea when our first shipments would be coming in for the fall collection.

  “Oh, God, Sage, those were the jackets that Maggie was waiting on. What will we do without her?” he asked, his eyes practically tearing up in his tanned face.

  I could think of a few things. What I said was, “We’ll survive it, Donnie.”

  “Of course we’ll survive it, Sage. But it won’t be the same. Not without Maggie. God, I loved that woman.” Then he did sob.

  Oh, brother. This was the man we entrusted to get our livelihood to our retailers?

  Then, as if he realized he might be going on too much to a woman who could have a say over whether or not he keeps his job, he said, “So, Sage, does this mean you’ll be taking over the Sales Manager job in Maggie’s stead?”

  I stiffened, probably because Donnie was the first person to say out loud the ambition that had been thrumming through me from day one. “That’s up to Tom, Donnie,” I said coolly.

  He smiled at me, even looked a little handsome despite that bad toupee he was sporting.“I’m sure that’s what Maggie would have wanted. Besides,” he said, his gaze roaming over me in a way I found vaguely discomforting,“I can’t think of a better person for that job now. You’re smart. Beautiful. Just like Maggie.”

  I looked at him, not sure what was bothering me more—the comparison to Maggie or the fact that Donnie seemed to be staring at my breasts. Fucking lech. “Listen, Donnie,” I said, gesturing to his wife, who I noticed was watching us from her post on the couch in the living room. “Why don’t you go and show your wife some appreciation while she’s still alive and well?”

  Donnie’s eyes widened, but he got the hint, marching off in the direction of his wife, then detouring around her and heading for the back deck.

  One shot later, I was able to shrug off Donnie’s creepy perusal. I was even starting to enjoy myself. As was Tom, I noticed, eyeing him as he sucked down another in what ■was starting to seem like an endless line of martinis. I knew Tom wasn’t a big drinker—typically no more than a martini or two when the occasion called for it. So the fact that he had clearly put down more than his usual quota had me wondering if perhaps he was taking things harder than he made it seem. And who could blame him, really? I couldn’t even fathom losing someone after spending a decade with them.

  Which was probably why I didn’t spend too much time with any one person, outside of Zoe and Nick. I shivered, realizing the three of us were well into our second decade ourselves. Fifteen years we’d been friends. And though most of the time I wanted to shoot both of them, I didn’t know what I’d do without them. I felt a little bit like I was losing Zoe during the whole Myles phase. Not that I didn’t love Myles, but Zoe got so sucked into that relationship, I barely saw her. Though it was nice having her back in my life more regularly, this Myles thing had hit her hard. Too hard. I guess that’s what happens when you start thinking about forever. You’re bound to get hurt. People change. And, I thought, watching as Tom laughed a bit too merrily at something one of his friends said, people die…

  It just wasn’t worth the risk.


  For my part, I wasn’t so sure marriage was everything it was cracked up to be. Being with someone for a lifetime—caring for someone for a lifetime—was a lot of work.

  I ought to know, I thought, my gaze falling on Nick, “who was now deep in conversation with none other than Francesca, despite my admonitions. I could tell by Nick’s body language that he was flirting big-time. Probably bragging about his new label. I think he scored more booty than anything else out of the two labels he had started. Bernadine fell for him when he was starting up the last one. Even saw him through its demise. Now it looked like Nick was hoping Francesca might fall for the hype, too—and keep his ego and his bed warm.

  Not if I had anything to do with it. This wasn’t just any girl. This was Tom’s daughter, and I didn’t want Nick fouling the nest. Especially since it was the nest I hoped to rule some day.

  I stepped into the living room, hoping to lure Nick away on some pretext, when the sight of a man stepping through the sliding glass door at the front of the house stopped me dead in my tracks.

  Vince Trifelli. Looking like an angel of mercy in a white polo shirt that showed off his tan, and a pair of jeans that hugged his lean hips.

  I glanced over at Nick. I’d deal with him later. There was still time yet. Yes, Nick was a fast worker, but Francesca, who stood with her arms folded, didn’t seem like she was exactly falling all over him just yet.

  I watched as Vince greeted Tom, pulling him into a hug, his hand moving soothingly over his back, and felt a curl of warmth inside. Affectionate, caring. What more could a girl want?

  I decided that this girl was going to go and get it.

  I wound my way over, stepping up to Tom and touching his arm. “Hey, good-looking. Can I get you anything?”

  Tom, as expected, swung his arm around me, pulling me up beside him and practically leaning on me for support. If I got him anything, it would be a glass of water, that was for sure.