The Beav kept her eyes glued to her sketch pad.
Maybe he’d made a tactical error bringing up Monty, but he couldn’t get over somebody with the Beav’s strength of character being attracted to such a dick. He set his hands on his hips, deliberately pushing his shirt out of the way so he could display his pecs. He was starting to feel like a stripper, but she’d finally looked up. His jeans slipped another inch lower, and her sketch pad slid to the floor. She leaned over to pick it up and banged her chin on the chair arm. Clearly, she needed a little time to adjust to the idea of letting him explore her beaver parts.
“I’m going to take a quick shower,” he said. “Wash off the road dust.”
She pulled her sketch pad back into her lap with one hand and waved him away with the other.
The bathroom door shut. Blue moaned and dropped her feet to the carpet. She should have pretended she had a migraine…or leprosy—anything to get out of coming to his room tonight. Why couldn’t a nice retired couple have stopped to help her today? Or one of those sweet, artistic guys she was so comfortable with?
The water went on in the shower. She imagined it trickling over that billboard body. He used it like a weapon, and, since no one else was around, he had her in his sights. But men like him were meant to be lusted over from a safe distance.
She took a deep swallow from her beer bottle. She reminded herself that Blue Bailey didn’t run. Not ever. She looked delicate, like the faintest gust of wind would blow her over, but she was strong where it counted most. Internally. That’s how she’d survived her itinerant childhood.
What does the happiness of one little girl, no matter how beloved, mean against the lives of thousands of little girls threatened by bombs, soldiers, and land mines? It had been a miserable day, and old memories unfolded inside of her.
“Blue, Tom and I want to talk to you.”
Blue still remembered the sagging plaid couch in Olivia and Tom’s cramped San Francisco apartment and the way Olivia had patted the cushion next to her. Blue had been small for eight, but not small enough to still sit in Olivia’s lap, so she’d nestled next to her instead. Tom sat on her other side and rubbed Blue’s knee. Blue loved them more than anybody in the world, including the mother she hadn’t seen in nearly a year. Blue had lived with Olivia and Tom since she was seven, and she was going to live with them forever. They’d promised.
Olivia wore her light brown hair in a braid down her back. She smelled like curry powder and patchouli, and she always gave Blue clay to play with when she threw her pots. Tom had a big soft Afro and wrote articles for the underground newspaper. He took Blue to Golden Gate Park and let her ride on his shoulders when they went out on the street. If she had a nightmare, she’d climb in their bed and fall asleep with her cheek against Tom’s warm shoulder and her fingers twined in Olivia’s long hair.
“Do you remember, Punkin’,” Olivia said, “how we told you about the baby growing in my uterus?”
Blue remembered. They’d shown her pictures in books.
“The baby’s going to be born soon,” Olivia went on. “That means lots of things will be different now.”
Blue didn’t want them to be different. She wanted them to stay exactly the same. “Is the baby going to sleep in my room?” Blue finally had her very own room, and she didn’t want to share it.
Tom and Olivia exchanged glances before Olivia said, “No, Punkin’. Something better. You remember Norris, the lady who visited us last month, the weaver who started Artists for Peace? She told you all about her house in Albuquerque and her little boy, Kyle? We showed you where New Mexico was on the map. Do you remember how much you liked Norris?”
Blue nodded in blissful ignorance.
“Well, guess what?” Olivia said. “Your mom and Tom and I arranged for you to go live with Norris now.”
Blue didn’t understand. She gazed into their wide, fake smiles. Tom rubbed his chest through his flannel shirt and blinked his eyes like he might cry. “Olivia and I are going to miss you very much, but you’ll have a yard to play in.”
That’s when she got it. She started to gag. “No! I don’t want a yard. I want to stay here! You promised. You said I could live here forever!”
Olivia rushed her to the bathroom and steadied her head while she threw up. Tom slumped on the edge of the old, chipped bathtub. “We wanted you to stay, but…that was before we knew about the baby. Things have gotten complicated with money and everything. At Norris’s house, there’ll be another kid to play with. Won’t that be fun?”
“I’ll have a kid to play with here!” Blue had sobbed. “I’ll have the baby. Don’t make me go. Please! I’ll be good. I’ll be so good I won’t bother you ever.”
They’d all started to cry then, but in the end, Olivia and Tom had driven her to Albuquerque in their rusty blue van and sneaked away without saying good-bye.
Norris was fat and showed Blue how to weave. Nine-year-old Kyle taught her card games and played Star Wars with her. One month slipped into another. Gradually, Blue stopped thinking so much about Tom and Olivia and started to love Norris and Kyle. Kyle was her secret brother, Norris her secret mother, and she was going to stay with them forever.
Then Virginia Bailey, her real mother, came back from Central America and took her away. They went to Texas, where they stayed with a group of activist nuns and spent every spare minute together. She and her mother read books, did art projects, practiced Spanish, and had long talks about everything. A whole day would pass without Blue thinking about Norris and Kyle. Blue fell back in love with her gentle mother and was inconsolable when Virginia left.
Norris had gotten married again, so Blue couldn’t go back to Albuquerque. The nuns kept her until the school year ended, and Blue transferred her love to Sister Carolyn. Sister Carolyn drove Blue to Oregon, where Virginia had arranged for her to stay with an organic farmer named Blossom. Blue clung so desperately to Sister Carolyn when she tried to drive off that Blossom had to pull her away.
The cycle started all over again, except this time Blue held a little of herself back from Blossom, and when she had to leave, she discovered it wasn’t as painful as before. From then on, she was more careful. With each subsequent move, she distanced herself more from the people she stayed with until, finally, the leaving barely hurt at all.
Blue gazed toward the hotel room bed. Dean Robillard was horny, and he expected her to accommodate him, but he didn’t know how deep her aversion ran to casual hookups. In college, she’d watched her girlfriends, high on Sex and the City, sleep with whomever they wanted whenever they’d pleased. But instead of feeling empowered, most of them had ended up depressed. Blue had suffered from enough short-term relationships during her childhood, and she wasn’t adding to the list. If she didn’t count Monty, which she didn’t, she’d only had two lovers, both artistic, self-absorbed men happy to leave her in charge. It worked better that way.
The bathroom doorknob turned. She had to be careful how she dealt with Dean for fear he’d leave tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, tact wasn’t her forte.
He came out of the bathroom, a towel looped low around his hips. He looked like a Roman god taking a breather in the middle of an orgy while he waited for the next temple virgin to be sent his way. But as the light hit him, her fingers constricted around her sketchbook. This was no flawless, marble-carved Roman divinity. He had a warrior’s body—highly functional, powerfully built, and ready for battle.
He saw her taking in the trio of thin scars on his shoulder. “Pissedoff husband.”
She didn’t believe that for a minute. “The perils of sin.”
“Speaking of sin…” His lazy smile oozed seduction. “I’ve been thinking…Late night…two lonely strangers…a comfortable bed…I can’t come up with a better way to entertain ourselves than to make use of it.”
He’d abandoned subtlety to make a dash for the goal line. His gorgeous face and athletic fame gave him a sense of entitlement when it came to women. She understood tha
t. But not this woman. He moved closer. She smelled soap and sex. She considered bringing up the gay thing again, but, at this point, why bother? She could plead a headache and flee the room…or she could do what she always did and face up to the challenge. She uncurled from the chair. “Here’s the way it’s going to be, Boo. You don’t mind if I call you ‘Boo,’ do you?”
“As a matter of fact—”
“You’re gorgeous, sexy, and ripped. You’ve got more charm than any man should have. You have great taste in music, and you’re rich—huge bonus points there. You’re also very smart. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. But the thing is, you don’t turn me on.”
His eyebrows slammed together. “I…don’t turn you on?”
She tried to look apologetic. “It’s not you. It’s me.”
He blinked, more than a little stunned. She couldn’t blame him. He’d undoubtedly used that “It’s not you. It’s me” line a thousand times himself, and it must be disconcerting to have it thrown back in his face.
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“The unvarnished truth is that I’m more comfortable with losers like Monty, not that I intend to make that mistake again. If I went to bed with you—and I’ve thought long and hard about this—”
“We only met eight hours ago.”
“I have no boobs, and I’m not pretty. I’d know you were just using me because I’m all that’s available, which would make me feel like crap, which would be the start of another one of my downhill spirals, and frankly, I’ve spent enough time in mental institutions.”
His smile had an edge of calculation. “Anything else?”
She gathered up her sketch pad, along with the beer. “Bottom line, you’re a man who lives to be adored, and I don’t do adoration.”
“Who says you’re not pretty?”
“Oh, it doesn’t bother me. I have so much character that adding beauty to the mix would be greedy. Honestly, until tonight, it hasn’t been an issue. Well, except for Jason Stanhope, but that was seventh grade.”
“I see.” He continued to look amused.
As casually as possible, she made her way to the connecting door and opened it. “You should feel like you’ve dodged a bullet.”
“What I mainly feel is horny.”
“Which is why hotel rooms offer porn.” She quickly closed the door and drew her first clean breath. The trick to staying half a step in front of Dean Robillard was to keep him off balance, but whether she could manage that as far as Kansas City was as problematic as what she’d do once she got there.
The Beav must have stayed up late because she had the drawing ready the next morning. She waited till they’d stopped for a break at a central Kansas truck stop before she set it in front of him. Dean stared down at the finished product. No wonder she was broke.
The Beav suppressed a yawn. “If I’d had more time, I could have done it in pastels.”
Considering how much damage she’d performed with her pencil, it was probably just as well. She’d drawn his face, all right, but with the features seriously out of whack: eyes too close together, his hairline set back a good two inches, and a couple of extra pounds, giving him jowls. Most damaging, she’d reduced the size of his nose just enough to make it look squashed on his face. He was seldom at a loss for words, but the image she’d drawn left him speechless.
She took a bite of her chocolate glazed doughnut. “Fascinating, isn’t it, how easily it could all have gone wrong for you?”
That’s when he realized she’d done this deliberately. But she looked more thoughtful than smug. “I hardly ever get to experiment,” she said. “You were the perfect subject.”
“Glad to be of service,” he said dryly.
“Naturally, I did another one.” She pulled a second drawing from the folder she’d carried into the truck stop and flicked it dismissively onto the table, where it landed next to his uneaten muffin. It showed him lounging on the bed, knee cocked, shirt falling open over his chest, exactly how he’d arranged himself for her. “Predictably gorgeous,” she said, “but boring, don’t you think?”
Not just boring, but a little sleazy, too—his pose too calculated, his expression too cocky. She’d seen right through him, and he didn’t like it. He still found it hard to believe she’d walked out on him last night. Was it possible he’d lost his touch? Or maybe he’d never had one. Since women tended to drop into his lap, he didn’t have a whole lot of experience being the sexual aggressor. He needed to fix that.
Once again, he studied the first drawing, and as he took in his altered face, he began thinking about all the ways his life would have been different if he’d been born with the face the Beav had given him. No lucrative endorsement for End Zone, that was for sure. Even when he was a kid, his looks had given him a lot of free passes. He’d understood that theoretically, but her drawing made it concrete.
The Beav’s face clouded. “You hate it, don’t you? I should have known you wouldn’t get it, but I thought…Never mind.” She reached for the paper.
He snatched it back before she could touch it. “It took me unaware, that’s all. I probably won’t hang it over my fireplace, but I don’t hate it. It’s…thought provoking. As a matter of fact, I like it. I like it a lot.”
She studied him to figure out if he was sincere. The longer he was with her, the more his curiosity grew. “You haven’t told me much about yourself,” he said. “Where did you grow up?”
She broke off a section of her doughnut. “Here and there.”
“Come on, Beav. You’ll never run into me after this. Spill your secrets.”
“My name is Blue. And if you want secrets, you have to go first.”
“I’ll give it to you in a nutshell. Too much money. Too much fame. Too good-looking. Life’s a bitch.”
He’d intended to make her smile. Instead, she studied him so intently he grew uncomfortable. “Your turn,” he said quickly.
She took her time polishing off her doughnut. He suspected she was trying to decide how much she wanted to tell him. “My mother is Virginia Bailey,” she said. “You’ve probably never heard of her, but she’s famous in peace circles.”
“Pee circles?”
“Peace circles. She’s an activist.”
“You don’t want to know what I was imagining.”
“She’s led demonstrations all over the world, been arrested more times than I can count, and served two stints in a federal maximum security prison for trespassing on nuclear missile sites.”
“Wow.”
“That’s not the half of it. She nearly died during the eighties when she went on a hunger strike to protest U.S. policy in Nicaragua. Later, she ignored U.N. sanctions to take medicine into Iraq.” The Beav rubbed a dab of frosting between her fingers, her expression distant. “When the American soldiers entered Baghdad in 2003, she was already there with an international peace group. In one hand, she held up a protest sign. With the other, she passed out water bottles to the soldiers. For as long as I can remember, she’s deliberately kept her income below thirty-one hundred dollars to avoid paying income tax.”
“Cutting off your nose to spite your face, isn’t it?”
“She can’t bear the idea of her money being spent on bombs. I don’t agree with her about a lot of things, but I do think the federal government should let taxpayers check off boxes stipulating where they want their tax money to go. Wouldn’t you like to make sure all those millions you give Uncle Sam went to schools and hospitals instead of nuclear warheads?”
As a matter of fact, he would. Playgrounds for big kids, preschool programs for little ones, and mandatory LASIK surgery for NFL refs. He set down his coffee mug. “She sounds like a real character.”
“Like a kook, you mean.”
He was too polite to nod.
“She’s not, though. Mom’s the real thing, for better or for worse. She’s been nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize.”
“Okay, now I’m impressed.” He leaned back
in his chair. “What about your father?”
She dipped part of her paper napkin into her water glass and wiped the doughnut icing from her fingers. “He died a month before I was born. A well he was digging in El Salvador caved in. They weren’t married.”
One more thing he and the Beav had in common.
So far, she’d given him a lot of facts without revealing much that was personal. He stretched his legs. “Who took care of you while your mother was out saving the world?”
“An assortment of well-intentioned people.”
“That can’t be good.”
“It wasn’t terrible. They were mostly hippies—artists, a college professor, some social workers. Nobody beat me or abused me. When I was thirteen, I lived with a Houston drug dealer, but in Mom’s defense, she had no idea Luisa was still in the business, and except for the occasional drive-by shooting, I liked being with her.”
He hoped Blue was kidding.
“I lived in Minnesota for six months with a Lutheran minister, but Mom’s a devout Catholic, so I spent a lot of time with various activist nuns.”
She’d had a childhood even less stable than his own. Hard to believe.
“Fortunately, Mom’s friends tend to be benevolent. I also learned a lot of skills most people don’t have.”
“Like.”
“Well…I read Latin, a little Greek. I can put up drywall, plant one hell of an organic garden, use power tools, and I’m a kickass cook. I’ll bet you can’t match that.”
He spoke damn good Spanish and liked using power tools himself, but he didn’t want to spoil her fun. “I threw four touchdown passes against Ohio State in the Rose Bowl.”
“And set those Rose Princesses’ hearts a-fluttering.”
The Beav loved taking shots at him, but she did it with such open relish that she never came across as bitchy. Odd. He drained his coffee. “With so much moving around, school must have been a challenge.”
“When you’re constantly the new kid, you develop fairly sophisticated people skills.”
Natural Born Charmer Page 5
