Player & the Game

by Shelly Ellis

  “You son of a bitch,” she muttered through clenched teeth, slowly shaking her head. “You son of a bitch!”

  “Stephanie,” he said tiredly, holding up his hands. “Look, I know you—”

  In a flash, she turned, grabbed one of the bed pillows, and threw it at his head. He ducked and shifted to the other side of the motel room. She threw a second pillow, then reached down, grabbed one of her high heels, and lobbed it at him. He ducked again, narrowly missing getting blinded by a stiletto. She opened one of the night-table drawers and grabbed a phone book. She threw it at him too. This time it caught him squarely in the chest.

  “Damn it, will you stop throwing shit at me?”

  “Why? Why should I stop?” she shouted, grabbing for a pile of travel magazines. She hurled them at him too. They landed uselessly on the floor a foot in front of him in a cloud of fluttering glossy paper. “You think you can just keep saying whatever you want to me . . . You think you can keep making me feel like shit? You think you can act like I’m some . . . some whore and I’m just supposed to accept it?”

  “I didn’t say you were a whore,” he began. “I just—”

  “Just what? You just said I had sex with you to keep you on the case! I spread my legs and sucked your dick to get you to do what I wanted! What the hell is that if it isn’t a whore?”

  Keith shook his head, frustrated and bemused. “Come on, Stephanie, stop playing games, all right?”

  “What?” she screeched.

  “I’m a detective! I do my research! What did you expect?”

  She glared at him. “What research? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I know about you. I know about you and your sisters, all right? I know what you guys do. I’m just telling you that you don’t have to do it with me. You don’t have to seduce me.” He took a deep breath. “It’s not . . . It’s not necessary. That’s all. That’s all I meant.”

  “Oh, that’s all!” she said with a cold laugh as she closed her eyes. “That’s all he meant to say!” She turned away from him.

  He watched as she sniffed, wiping at the few tears that spilled onto her cheeks.

  “She’s a helluva good actress,” a voice in his head mocked. “A regular Academy Award winner.”

  But a nagging part of Keith questioned whether she was acting. Had he really hurt her feelings?

  After a few seconds, Stephanie finally got herself under control. The tears stopped. She sniffed and opened her eyes. The room fell silent and for several minutes, time seemed to stand still.

  “If we’re . . . If we’re going to make it to Florida by this evening,” Keith began tentatively, “we better head out soon.”

  He had obviously said the wrong thing again. She gave him a look that could have frozen boiling water. He prepared for the next onslaught. What was she going to throw next? But he was surprised when she took a deep breath.

  “Give me twenty minutes,” she said brusquely.

  He watched as she stomped across the motel room and slammed the bathroom door closed behind her.

  Chapter 22

  “I returned the key and paid the bill at the front desk,” Keith called out. “Are you ready to go?”

  Stephanie didn’t answer him. Instead she concentrated on finishing the last of her packing. She opened and slammed shut dresser and night-table drawers, grabbing clothes and dropping them into her bags.

  Her body looked tense. Her face was set in a deep frown. She shoved the last of her things into her Louis Vuitton luggage bag, closing it with a loud zip and then doing the clasp. She threw the strap over her shoulder and grabbed her other suitcase while Keith waited in the motel room doorway, leaning against the doorframe, staring at her.

  He wanted to say something, anything to ease the tension in the room. But there was no going back from what he had done, and knowing that fact made him feel like absolute shit.

  And damn it, I shouldn’t, he thought with frustration. Stephanie was a woman who used men like they were disposable, who took advantage of their affections and money, who manipulated them to get what she wanted. He shouldn’t feel guilty about what he said to her. He was only telling the truth. He thought he owed her enough to be honest with her, but obviously she hadn’t felt the same way.

  Stephanie’s bag was so heavy that she had to shift her weight to stand upright. She walked across the motel room.

  “I can carry that for you,” he said, reaching for her luggage as she eased past him.

  “I can carry my own damn bag,” she snapped, still refusing to look at him.

  She put on her designer sunglasses and marched across the parking lot toward his Explorer, taking long, angry strides. Her long ponytail swung wildly behind her. The hatchback was open so she threw her bags inside. He watched as Stephanie then prissily opened the passenger-side door before plopping onto the seat and slamming the door closed behind her.

  Keith sighed wearily. He shut the motel room door behind him, letting it lock automatically. He then slowly walked toward the SUV, shut the hatchback, opened his car door, and climbed behind the steering wheel. Keith inserted his car key into the ignition, but before he turned on the engine, he paused. He sat back in his seat and turned to gaze at Stephanie.

  She glared out the tinted passenger-side window, stubbornly refusing to meet his gaze.

  “Stephanie,” he began, clearing his throat. “Stephanie, look, I don’t want us to—”

  “Just drive,” she said curtly, reaching into her purse. She then took out her cell phone and ran her manicured nail over the glass screen.

  Keith gritted his teeth, feeling his frustration build as he watched her pretend to be engrossed in her text messages.

  He wasn’t going to apologize. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing to apologize about. She was just angry he had called her on her scheming ways, but he hadn’t exactly shown stellar behavior in the past twenty-four hours either. There had to be some way to make amends, but it didn’t look like she was going to give him the chance to do that. She was giving off more of a chill than an arctic blizzard.

  He took a calming, deep breath.

  “OK,” he murmured, shifting the SUV into reverse. “If that’s the way you want it.” He then backed the car out of the parking space. With one flash of his turn signal, they were on the open road.

  Keith drove for a few hours before finally hitting the Georgia border. They didn’t speak the entire way, but the silence between them felt different this time around. It weighed heavier on him.

  Keith kept glancing at her as he drove, but she continued to stubbornly glare out the window and ignore him. He couldn’t see her eyes. They were masked by her darkly tinted sunglasses. But he knew he would find anger and resentment there if he could see them.

  Keith kept an eye out for a green sign demarking an upcoming rest stop. One popped up on the highway shoulder. Five minutes later, he pulled to a stop in one of the parking spaces outside the rest stop area. A group slowly ambled out of tour buses several feet away. He turned to Stephanie.

  “You can take some time to stretch your legs for a bit,” he murmured. “Maybe use the bathroom. Get something to drink.”

  She didn’t respond. Instead, she opened the car door and slammed it closed behind her. She then strode toward the bathrooms.

  He watched her disappear behind the maroon ladies’ room door. When he did, he let out a pent-up breath. This trip was going to be painful if they continued like this. She couldn’t stay angry at him forever, could she?

  Keith unbuckled his seatbelt and pulled out his cell phone. He then dialed Mike’s number. He had called Mike yesterday to share the information that Ms. Beaumont had given him about Isaac. He asked Mike to do a detailed search of all the small towns and counties near Pensacola, Florida, that had the name “swamp” in them. He wanted to find out what Mike had discovered.

  After a few rings, the gruff detective picked up the phone.

  “Stokowski and Hendricks Investigato
rs,” Mike mumbled between munches.

  “Jesus,” Keith lamented, “could you at least finish eating first before you answered the phone?”

  “It’s one o’clock! You caught me while I was downing lunch,” Mike exclaimed. “What the hell did you expect?”

  Keith shook his head. “From you—not much. So did you find anything?”

  “Yeah,” Mike answered, munching again, “about eight cities within a hundred-mile radius.”

  Keith grimaced. “Eight, huh? Shit.”

  “Yeah, I’ll e-mail you the list. It’s a lot of ground to cover, but it could be worse. I could’ve found twenty of them.” A slurping sound suddenly filled the phone line. Keith guessed that Mike was finishing the rest of his Big Gulp. “You can winnow down eight to just one or two in the next week or so,” Mike continued after a loud burp. “I don’t doubt you can pull it off.”

  “Well, your vote of confidence is much appreciated,” Keith said as he stared at the ladies’ room door. “I could use it right now.”

  The munching continued on other end of the line. “Why? What happened?”

  Keith hesitated. He wasn’t sure if he really wanted to pour his heart out to Mike, especially knowing that Mike would be really angry that Keith had crossed a line with Stephanie that he should not have crossed. But it was eating away at him. He needed to talk to somebody and in the past Mike had always been the male figure he leaned on when he was filled with doubt.

  “I fucked up,” Keith finally said, dropping his head back against his seat. “I fucked up royally, Mike.”

  The munching on the other end of the line came to an abrupt stop. “What do you mean you ‘fucked up’?”

  Keith closed his eyes and gritted his teeth.

  “What do you mean you fucked up, Keith?” Mike asked again, louder this time.

  “I didn’t want her to come here, Mike. I told her to go home! I didn’t need the distraction. I knew if she stayed here that this would happen!”

  “You screwed her, didn’t you?” Mike breathed deeply on the other end of the line. “Ah, son,” he said softly, “tell me you didn’t.”

  “Of course, I did! If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be kicking myself right now!”

  “Shit, Keith,” Mike muttered.

  “Look, I didn’t expect it to happen. I would change what I did if I could, but I can’t. And now it’s blown up in my face and she’s pissed off at me and . . .”

  Keith stopped rambling when he heard Mike chuckling on the other end of the line.

  “Why are you laughing? What’s so goddamn funny?”

  “You! You’re so goddamn funny! You’ve been dodging this lady for more than a month and you get stuck with her for less than a week and you’ve already fallen in the sack with her!” He laughed again. “Don’t get me wrong . . . She’s a gorgeous broad, but talk about not having any willpower!”

  Keith glowered. “Thanks for rubbing it in.”

  “Oh, come on, Keith! She’s a client . . . I get that. Under normal circumstances, I would be ripping you a new one right now, but I’ll make an exception this time. You’ve been acting squirrelly about her since you met her. You two falling in bed together was bound to happen at some point or another. I just didn’t expect it to happen this soon!”

  “I haven’t been acting ‘squirrelly.’ ”

  Mike’s full throaty laughter filled the phone line again. “Keith, didn’t we already have this conversation a week ago? You can sell that load of bull to someone else, but not me. I’ve known you since you were ten years old! I know when you’re acting buggy.” He cleared his throat. “Look, why keep denying it to me and to yourself? For whatever reason, you feel something for this woman and that feeling ain’t just in your pants!”

  “No, I don’t,” Keith said firmly. “I was attracted to her. That’s it! And I knew if I followed through with that attraction, it would end up like this. And I was right! We never should have slept together!”

  “Why, because she’s pissed at you?”

  “Exactly!”

  “So is she pissed because you screwed her, or pissed over what happened after you screwed her? I know you! You felt like shit for what you did and gave her the cold shoulder, didn’t you?”

  Keith fell silent. Mike began to chuckle again on the other end.

  “Yeah, I thought so. Trust me, son, you’ll be much better off once you stop bein’ so goddamn stubborn and admit the truth to yourself.”

  “Which is?” Keith snapped.

  “. . . Which is that despite all your bobbing and weaving, you got caught. Keith Hendricks got hooked by a broad and now he’s making things ten times worse by pretending that he didn’t.”

  “So . . . So what am I supposed to do now?”

  “First of all, tell her that you were an ass for how you treated her. You can start there. Then maybe, if she forgives you, you take her out on a real date when all this is over. And that date shouldn’t involve a motel room and take-out Chinese, all right!”

  “These are your great words of wisdom?”

  “Hey, you got any better ideas?”

  Keith closed his eyes. He didn’t. He had no idea how to handle this. He just knew that somehow, some way he had screwed up and he needed to fix it.

  “OK, I’ll . . .” He took a deep breath. “I’ll apologize to her. But—”

  “No buts, Keith. Just do it, you big pussy!”

  Mike then hung up the phone.

  Chapter 23

  Stephanie took off her dark sunglasses and gazed at her reflection in the dingy rest-stop bathroom mirror. She took a paper towel and dabbed at the corners of her reddened eyes.

  She had been crying off and on since this morning, since Keith told her that he had “done his research” about her. He said he knew her secrets. He knew what she really was.

  She had never felt so much shame in her life, or so insulted. She felt like he had physically stabbed her in the chest. Yes, she had dated men for their money. She may have even done things for them sexually with the expectation of what she would get in return. But when she had sex with Keith last night, she hadn’t expected anything out of him. She had sex with him because she wanted him, because she was falling in love with him. But he didn’t believe someone like her was capable of falling in love.

  Just thinking about it was making her emotional all over again. She sniffed as the tears welled in her eyes.

  Her phone started tinkling. She opened her purse and pulled out her cell phone. She looked down at the number on the screen. It was Lauren’s phone number.

  Oh, God, not now, she thought with desperation.

  She didn’t want to talk to Lauren, especially in the state that she was in, but she knew she couldn’t ignore this call. She hadn’t spoken to Lauren in a couple of days and her overprotective little sister was bound to get worried if she didn’t talk to her soon.

  Stephanie took a deep breath and cleared her throat. She pasted on a smile before clicking the button on her screen to answer the call.

  “Hey!” she cried, trying to sound as light as possible.

  “Hey, Steph,” Lauren answered chirpily. “How’s it going?”

  “Oh, good. Pretty good,” Stephanie lied, blinking back tears. She sniffed.

  “Wait, don’t share any details yet! Let me put you on speakerphone first. Dawn and Cynthia are here. They want to hear everything too.”

  Stephanie took another deep breath. She didn’t know if she had the strength to lie to all of her sisters at the same time.

  “OK,” Lauren said a few seconds later, “you can tell us everything now. So how’s South Carolina?”

  “Sorry, I couldn’t talk last night, Steph. It was just some work-related drama I’d rather not get into now,” Dawn shouted in the background. “Anyway . . . Did you find Isaac yet?”

  Stephanie’s bottom lip started to quiver. She sniffed again.

  “I . . .” she said. “I . . . We haven’t . . .”

  “We can’t hear
you, Steph,” Cynthia shouted. “Speak louder!”

  Suddenly, Stephanie broke down into tears. Her sobs echoed off the bathroom’s tiled ceiling and walls. A plump, white-haired woman wearing a matching peach tank top and shorts who was washing her hands at the sink next to Stephanie now gazed at the younger woman cagily.

  “Good Lord, is it going that bad?” Cynthia asked drolly on the other end of the line.

  “Steph, what’s wrong?” Lauren called. “Honey, stop crying and tell us what’s wrong!”

  “I feel so stupid,” Stephanie wept into the phone, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “So stupid! I put myself out there and he doesn’t even care! Does he realize that I’ve never done anything like this before? This is the first time I’ve had feelings like this!”

  “What the heck is she talking about?” Dawn murmured.

  “I have no idea,” Lauren said in response.

  The woman beside Stephanie began to dry her hands with a paper towel, but still stared at Stephanie warily.

  “I have never, never felt this way about a man before. I’ve never been this vulnerable and he thought I was pretending. He thinks I’m trying to manipulate him! Why does he think the worst about me? What the hell did I do to him?”

  “Are we still talking about Isaac?” Cynthia asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Dawn said.

  “Steph, honey, who are you talking about?” Lauren inquired, hoping to bring the confusion to an end. “We’re not following you.”

  “I’m talking about Keith! I slept with Keith!” Stephanie shouted. She dropped her face into her hand. “And now I feel so stupid . . . and . . . and cheap. He made me feel cheap!”

  The woman beside her tossed her paper towel into a nearby trash can. She opened the bathroom door and let it fall closed behind her, slowly shaking her head.

  “You slept with Keith? Oh, Steph . . . I thought we talked about this before you left, honey,” Lauren said. “I knew you were falling for him! Didn’t I tell you this would happen?”

  “I guess the toys didn’t work,” Dawn muttered.

  “Who the hell is Keith?” Cynthia inquired.