“No shit?” Don said, his interest perking. “How many does this make?”
“Too many,” Mandy said ominously.
“Never too many for me,” Phil chuckled.
Lucy threw him another cold look. How dare he move on without addressing her comeback news. It was important to her, and he was treating her news as if it was a joke. This was unacceptable.
The rest of the dinner passed quickly, each person having their own reasons for getting out of there.
After coffee and dessert, the three women went off to the Ladies Room, and Ryan finally felt able to relax.
“Can you believe my wife?” Phil exclaimed. “She’s fucking nuts.”
“Why didn’t she tell you first?” Don asked.
“I thought she’d gotten over all that acting crap,” Phil growled.
“Apparently not,” Ryan said. “But if it’s something she wants to do—”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Phil complained. “I give her everything she wants, an’ now this outta left field. She’s lost it if she thinks I’m getting involved.”
Ryan shrugged. “They’re all difficult,” he said. “On the way here I was trying to talk to Mandy about going to couples counseling.”
“Couples counseling!” Phil roared, tugging on his beard. “You, her and Hamilton, ’cause she ain’t gonna do shit without Daddy.”
“She won’t do it period,” Ryan said glumly.
“I met someone,” Don interjected, his mind still on Cameron.
“We can see,” Phil said. “The kid’s pretty in a kind of unsexy way. Nice tits. You fucked her yet?”
“I’m not talking about Mary Ellen,” Don said irritably. “Someone else.”
“And who would the lucky lady be?” Phil asked, downing the last of his drink. “Not one of your midnight call girls, I hope.”
“Why do I have this reputation?” Don said, exasperated. “Three times I’ve had a girl come over. Three fucking times. Big fucking deal.”
“Who’s criticizing?” Phil said. “If I was single I’d be doing the same.”
“No you wouldn’t, you’re too cheap,” Ryan joked.
“Let’s get back to me,” Don said. “This girl I’ve met is a personal trainer and gorgeous.”
“Hot gorgeous?” Phil interjected. “’Cause lately your taste seems to be veering offtrack.”
“Classy gorgeous,” Don said. “I asked her to dinner tonight, she turned me down.”
“Now that is classy,” Ryan dead-panned.
“What’s wrong with you guys?” Don said, shaking his head. “You never take anything seriously.”
“I’ll tell you what I’m taking seriously,” Ryan lamented. “My birthday coming at me like a goddamn express train. I’m about to hit forty. I feel a mid-life crisis slamming me squarely in the balls.”
“He’s not getting laid,” Don offered. “Mandy’s closed shop.”
“Not getting laid!” Phil bellowed. “That’s tragic.”
“Scream a little louder,” Ryan said. “The table in the far corner didn’t quite hear.”
“Ryan Richards is not getting laid,” Phil yelled.
“Oh, Jesus!” Ryan said, quickly signaling for the check. “It’s time we got the hell out of here.”
ANYA
Sergei stole a gold watch, money and a selection of drugs from Greedy Boris’s safe. Before the old man found out, he and Anya were on their way out of the city. By this time they were lovers, the fourteen-year-old girl and the twenty-year-old petty criminal. Anya had come to realize that the only thing she had left was her sexual power, and she used it on Sergei so that he would protect and look after her.
He was very different from the men who’d raped and abused her. Living in his room, she’d grown used to sharing his meals and his bed, so when he’d first had sex with her, she’d gritted her teeth and decided that it was a lot better than being out on the violent and dangerous streets all alone in the world. Sergei wasn’t so bad. Wiry and skinny as a stick, with pointed features, two missing front teeth and a facial tic, at least he was young–like her–and after a while they began exchanging their personal horror stories and a closeness and intimacy grew between them.
Sergei realized he had scored a prize, for Anya was indeed a beauty with her porcelain skin, fair hair, and exceptionally pale blue eyes. She was becoming more of a woman as each day passed.
Their escape from Ingushetia was arduous and treacherous, involving a dangerous trek around the mountains, countless rides on dusty trucks, two days on a delapidated train, and many nights sleeping outside in the open with only one tattered blanket between them.
Sergei’s goal was to reach Poland, but getting across the border presented a challenge even he found difficult to solve. However, he was street smart and determined, plus he had drugs to sell–and he used them as currency. Eventually he bribed a farmer to hide the two of them in the back of his truck with the livestock, and that’s how they crossed the border into Poland, where Sergei had a cousin.
Sergei’s cousin, Igor, was not exactly thrilled to see them, but he took them in all the same. Family was family, and Anya was such a tasty little morsel.
Sergei soon noticed the lecherous way his cousin looked at Anya, and it worried him, so he lied and informed Igor that Anya was his wife. “Your wife?” Igor sneered. “Why would any man be foolish enough to marry?”
Like Sergei, Igor was a minor pimp. And just like Sergei he had a boss, although his boss was a lot more sophisticated than Greedy Boris. Since Sergei was in need of a job, Igor took him to meet her.
Olga Gutowska was a stony-faced, stout Polish woman known as The Empress. She lived in a house with seven bedrooms, and ruled her stable of girls with an iron fist. Nobody ever questioned Olga Gutowska. She had connections in all the right places. Instinctively Sergei knew that if she ever saw Anya, she’d immediately want her. So after Olga agreed to hire him on a trial basis, he made sure that he kept Anya well out of sight.
Igor thought he was crazy and urged him to put Anya to work. “She make you plenty money,” he said slyly, reminding Sergei of Greedy Boris. “She make us both money if we work her on the side and no tell Olga. She be our whore.”
Sergei said an emphatic no. In his mind Anya was his wife, she did his washing and ironing, she cooked for him, and she was always available for him sexually. She didn’t speak much, but that was understandable.
Then one day while Sergei was out, Igor began pawing Anya. She backed away from him, terrified. But her fear only seemed to excite him more, and when she resisted, he brutally raped her, then later he forcibly dragged her out of the house.
Sergei returned home at dusk to find both Anya and Igor were gone. So were all of Igor’s possessions.
Suspecting what had taken place, Sergei flew into a crazed fury and raced over to Olga’s house, where he was denied entry. “You no longer work here,” the bodyguard at the door informed him. “Go away. Don’t come back.”
They’d stolen his Anya, and Sergei was beside himself with grief and anger. But he wasn’t about to accept what they’d done to him. Oh no. Sergei was not going quietly.
He purchased a gun on the black market, and later that night he returned to Olga’s house. When the guard at the door attempted to prevent him from entering, he shot the man in the shoulder, and forced his way inside. Sergei had one goal and one goal only, and that was to get Anya back.
When Olga heard the gunshot, she picked up the shotgun she kept handy at all times and marched into the front hall where she confronted a wild-eyed Sergei.
“Where’s my Anya?” he screamed. “Give her back to me, or so help me I will kill all of you.”
“You’re too late, she’s gone,” Olga said flatly.
“Don’t lie to me!” Sergei yelled, waving his gun at her. “I will not be lied to.”
Olga lifted her shotgun and pointed it straight at him. “Go,” she commanded. “Before I shoot your sorry ass. It’s not worth
dying for a dirty little whore.”
With an agonized cry of frustration, Sergei lunged at her. True to her word Olga shot him in the stomach, blowing him almost in two.
Leaning over the banisters with the other girls, Anya gasped in horror.
Once more she realized she was all alone.
Chapter Eight
Cameron’s realtor acquaintance, Iris Smith, had two properties to show her. The first one was useless. Depressed, Cameron called Cole and asked him to meet her at the next one. She valued his opinion and she also thought it might be the perfect opportunity to talk to him about partnering up.
Cole arrived on time.
“What do you think?” she asked, standing back and surveying the rather cramped dark basement space on Melrose.
“Way too gloomy,” he responded, wandering around the empty space. “And too damn small. No windows, no sunlight. Doesn’t do it for me.”
“You could lighten it up with the right decoration,” Iris offered, trying to be helpful. “A coat of white paint, perhaps some flowers.”
“Are you kiddin’ me?” Cole said, kicking at a loose floorboard. “No amount of paint’s gonna liven this place up.”
Cameron agreed. Cole had excellent instincts and he was right.
“Well,” Iris said hesitantly, “there is one more situation I could show you. But I should warn you that the rent is higher.”
“How much higher?” Cameron asked, thinking that there was no way she could pull off a higher rent.
“A substantial jump.”
“Okay…” Cameron said unsurely. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to see it.”
The location Iris had mentioned was on Wilshire, and it turned out to be perfect. It was an enormous open space penthouse, with high ceilings and a large surrounding outdoor terrace.
“This is totally it!” Cameron exclaimed.
“It sure is,” Cole agreed.
“Give me the bad news,” she said to Iris. “How much more is it?”
“I hate to tell you, but it’s a lot more than the other two locations,” Iris said apologetically.
After hearing all the figures, Cameron turned to Cole. “It’s way out of my range,” she said ruefully.
“I might have an idea,” he said. “We gotta talk.”
“What’s to talk about?” she said, shrugging. “I can’t venture out on my own only to immediately go broke ’cause I fail to make the rent each month. Plus they require two months’ security deposit, and then there’s all the other expenses–phones, electricity, a ton of stuff.”
“You gotta factor in that wherever you go, right?” he pointed out.
“I guess so,” she said hesitantly. “It’s just such a downer. What I need is a Sugar-Daddy, some old dude with big bucks to throw around.”
“Maybe I should go get me a Sugar-Mama,” Cole suggested, laughing. “Between us we’ll make it work.”
“You’d do that for me?” she said wistfully. “You’d really change tracks?”
“For you,” he said gallantly. “Anything.”
“Y’know, Cole, you’re such a good friend,” she said warmly, grabbing his arm and squeezing.
“I try.”
“And you succeed.”
It was true. He did succeed. Along with Katie in San Francisco, Cole was the best friend she had. But even though they were close, she’d never told him about Gregg. Somehow she couldn’t bring herself to do so. In a way she was ashamed that she’d allowed the situation with Gregg to happen to her. When things started to escalate, why hadn’t she walked out on him? Was she an accomplice in the abuse she’d endured? Or even worse–was she an enabler?
“Let’s go get coffee,” Cole said, glancing at his watch. “My first client’s not until twelve.”
“Exactly what I need, a heavy jolt of caffeine.” Iris was hovering. “We’ll have to let you know,” Cameron said. “Can you hold it for us?”
“Only for a few hours, so you’ll have to let me know soon,” Iris replied, gathering up her papers. “This is a prime location–I can assure you it’ll move fast.”
Cameron nodded. “I understand.”
She and Cole made their way outside, strolled down the street, and settled in a nearby Coffee Bean.
“Here’s what I’ve been meaning to talk to you about,” she said earnestly, brushing a lock of blonde hair out of her eyes.
“Go ahead.”
“The thing is, I was kind of wondering if you might be interested in coming in as a partner?”
“I got a few bucks stashed away,” he said thoughtfully. “But here’s what I was thinkin’. Maybe I’ll speak to my sister. Natalie’s always carryin’ on about investing her money–she could be interested.”
“Really?”
“Why not? Big sis is scorin’ plenty of bucks on her TV show, this could be her thing. I’m gonna set somethin’ up.”
“Wow!” Cameron exclaimed excitedly. “Make it fast, you heard what Iris said–that space won’t stay available for long, and it’s just so right.”
“Believe me–I’m onto it.”
“Once we get off the ground I know we’ll be successful,” Cameron said, nodding her head as if to reassure herself. “We both have great client lists.”
“We sure do.”
“And I was thinking that we should make it membership only. Very exclusive.”
“Yeah, but how about the whole stealing clients deal?” Cole ventured. “You thought about that?”
“I never signed anything with Bounce, did you?”
“Not a thing.”
“Anyway, why would we need to steal? If our clients want to follow us, they’re free to do so. I dunno know about you–but I have more recommendations than I can handle.”
“Lynda’s coming, right?”
“She can’t wait.”
“An’ Dorian won’t wanna be left behind.”
“Does this mean you’re my partner?” she asked hopefully.
“You got it, babe,” he said, breaking out a big grin.
“This could be so amazing!” she exclaimed. “I love you!”
“Yeah, but right now I’m outta here,” he said, jumping up. “Client waitin’. I’ll speak to Natalie right away.”
Cameron watched him leave. Tall handsome Cole was absolutely her best friend. How stupid was she? She’d been so busy saving money when she should’ve been making him part of her plan way earlier. Now she had someone to help make it happen, and whether Natalie invested or not, it was a major plus.
Later, on her way back to Bounce her cell buzzed. “Yes?” she said, hoping it might be Cole with some news.
“Remember me?” said a smooth voice. “Don Verona, your client from Saturday, the one you turned down for a date.”
“It wasn’t a date,” she said, wondering what he wanted.
“It could’ve been,” he answered, sounding slightly amused. “I invited you to dinner, and you informed me that you never mix business with pleasure.”
“I did say that, didn’t I?” she said, surprisingly pleased to hear from him.
“Look–here’s what I’ve decided,” he said. “I want to hire you on a regular basis.”
“You do?”
“Yes, so can you fit me into what I’m sure is your busy schedule?”
“Well…” she said, hesitating for only a moment. “I suppose if we can work out a time that suits us both.”
“You know what I like about you?” he said, sounding even more amused.
“Do tell.”
“Your manic enthusiasm.”
“I save my enthusiasm for my work,” she responded, suppressing a smile.
“Glad to hear it.”
“I’m sure you work hard too.”
“That I do.” A beat. “I was thinking, mornings are good for me, and since I’m an early riser, how about seven a.m. five days a week?”
“You’re willing to work out five consecutive days?” she said, surprised, because big stars usually
weren’t so into it, not unless they were preparing for a movie role, and then it was all systems go.
“I’m hosting an awards show and it’s coming up fast. I plan on getting into really good shape.”
“You are in good shape,” she said, flashing on the memory of his well-defined abs.
“Thanks,” he said modestly. “Didn’t think you noticed.”
“Seven is okay, although I’ll have to charge you a higher rate because of the time.”
“You trying to gauge me?” he teased.
“No, I’m merely telling you the way it is,” she said, all business. “When would you like to start?”
“Tomorrow. Does that suit you?”
“Seven a.m. at your house. I’ll be there.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
She clicked off her phone, excited in spite of herself.
No involvements, her inner voice warned.
Why not? she reasoned. He’s a very attractive guy.
Yes, with charm to spare and an enormous ego. Besides, an involvement will get you offtrack. Right now all your energy has to go toward creating your future.
Yes. Her future. Building the dream.
And if Cole’s sister came through, things were looking promising.
Putting it all together was going to be a big challenge, but she could do it, especially with Cole’s help.
Instinctively she knew that her inner voice was right. No involvements. No distractions. No more time-consuming relationships period.
Gregg was enough bad memories to last a lifetime.
Chapter Nine
Lunching at The Grill was a weekly ritual. Ryan and Don were there, but Phil couldn’t make it, he was too busy with his own problems trying to talk his movie-star wife out of resuming her “dead-on-arrival” career.
“How’d it go on your way home last night?” Don asked, ordering a bottle of flat water. “Things didn’t seem so smooth at dinner.”
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