“We are, darling, but we still want the feel of Rachelle. Her sophistication, her iconoclastic glamour.”
“But ‘iconoclastic glamour’ and ‘rayon blend’ don’t go together.”
Her tiny white teeth gleamed when she smiled. “They do if you’re a good enough designer.”
Medic!
“So just keep that in mind and come back next week with some fresh ideas.” She rose to her feet, dismissing me. “Leave everything with me and I’ll run it by our marketing people, but don’t get your hopes up.”
“Okay.” I hung my head.
“And show me something really spectacular next time. I hired you because I know you can do better than this.”
“Okay.”
Her smile looked positively predatory by now. “And don’t take any of this personally, darling—it’s just business.”
“So you decided to take it easy on me today?” I asked Connor the next day as we strolled toward the palm-dotted hills of the Runyon Canyon hiking trail. “No cliff scaling? No bungee jumping?”
“Not yet, but if things go well, I’m thinking street lugeing, alligator wrestling, going over Victoria Falls in a rickety barrel…the whole works.”
“Do I even want to know what ‘street lugeing’ is?”
He grabbed my hand as we navigated a tangled patch of rocks and roots. “Stick with me and you’ll find out.”
I batted my eyelashes. “Ah declare, ah may swoon.”
“Hey, who needs candy and flowers when you can have a total adrenaline rush?”
“Along with broken bones and unsightly scars?”
“All the better for bragging rights.”
“Gosh, you do know how to woo a girl.”
“It’s not for everyone,” he agreed as we headed up the winding dirt trail, leaving the stress and traffic of Hollywood behind us. “Meena, for example, couldn’t stand the outdoors. She was always nagging me to stop taking chances. But I say, life is short. You might as well get the most out of it. You can’t be afraid to push the envelope and really go for what you want.”
Except when it comes to dating, I thought, remembering the massacred half-comforter still draped across his bed.
“Well, I don’t know how I feel about street lugeing yet, but I’m willing to try anything once.”
“Then you’re already a step ahead of most people.” He recaptured my hand as we hit a smooth uphill incline. “Hell, just coming out to a new city was a gutsy move.”
I took a deep breath of what passed for fresh air in L.A. “I guess.”
“You left your family, your hometown, your fiancé…that takes courage.”
I thought about Kevin, Trish, and the gaping hole in the ground at Lilac Lakes. “Not as much as you might think. In fact, now that I’ve left, I can’t believe I lasted as long as I did with a boyfriend who was, for all intents and purposes, a Vulcan.”
We passed a lithe blonde hiker in a discreet baseball cap who I was 99 percent sure was Naomi Watts, but he didn’t seem to notice her. “A Vulcan? Really? Did he have pointy ears? Long, knobby fingers?”
“No.” How best to put this? “He was just logical. Eminently logical.”
“And you’re the creative type.”
“I know everyone says that opposites attract, but we were just plain opposite.” I stopped for a swig from the water bottle he offered. “He was a good guy, basically. Maybe a leetle controlling.” I handed the water bottle back to him. “What about you and Meena? It sounds like you guys weren’t exactly a match made in heaven.”
“Nah, we were doomed to failure. She wanted stability, I wanted adventure. And then she started in on the whole ‘I will change you into my fantasy man’ campaign…”
“And it didn’t work?” I feigned surprise. “Women all over America will be shocked to hear that.”
“I tried to tell her, but she kept hoping that I’d morph into some sensitive metrosexual who buffed his nails and couldn’t sleep at night if he wore white socks with black shoes. She wanted me to give up all my fun weekend activities—”
“Cheating death and incurring concussions?”
“Exactly. The breakup was inevitable. I went my way and she went hers…along with the TV, steak knives, and most of the good furniture.”
We hiked in companionable silence until we reached the summit, which offered sweeping views of the Hollywood Hills and the skyscrapers downtown.
“Beautiful.” I gulped some more water, huffing and puffing noticeably more than Connor was. Mr. Action-Adventure had barely broken a sweat. “I had no idea Los Angeles could look so peaceful.”
“Someday I’ll take you to Bolsa Chica in Huntington Beach,” he said. “It’s right off the ocean and the views are incredible.”
“How’d you get to be such the hiker? Did your parents used to take you backpacking up all those mountains in Colorado?”
“Nah.” He shielded his eyes against the sun and stared off at the horizon. “My mom died when I was seven—cancer—and my dad and my brothers weren’t much for hiking. Competitive skiing was more our thing.”
“Oh God, I’m sorry.” I touched his arm. “I didn’t know.”
“It was a long time ago.” He shrugged. “I had three brothers and we were all on the ski team in high school, stupid, reckless, thought we were immortal, you know the drill. One day I hit a patch of ice at top speed and cracked a few vertebrae. I could’ve been paralyzed, but I wasn’t. Then my dad got remarried to my stepmom, Brenda, and she tried to rechannel all that energy into more constructive outlets like Outward Bound.”
“Hence, the hiking.” My eyes were wide.
“Exactly. And there you have it: my life story.” He turned and headed back toward the trail. “Probably more than you wanted to hear.”
It was only the tip of the iceberg, but I knew it was time to change the subject. So I hurried to catch up. “Hey. Know where we should stop on the drive home?”
I didn’t intend to sleep with him, truly I didn’t, but we ended up in the bedding department at Bloomingdale’s and who could really be expected to think straight, surrounded by all those intoxicatingly high thread counts?
“You run these through the dryer a few times before you use them, and you’re never going to want to get out of bed again,” I marveled, examining a deep-pocketed fitted sheet. Then I turned over the shrink-wrapped package to glance at the price. “Ouch.”
Connor was studying a display bed made up in gray pillows and darker gray blankets, accented with a pearl gray chenille throw. “Hey, what do you think of this?”
“It’s a little Maoist, don’t you think?”
He stepped over to the next display, a jumble of floral sheets and Pepto Bismol-colored shams. “I suppose you’re going to try to fob this nightmare off on me?”
I flopped down on the puffy down comforter, then tossed a rose-strewn pillow his way. “I think it would be perfect for a single man living alone.”
He sat down next to me. “Tell you what, grab some scissors and you can take your half right now.”
“Sir, may I help you?” A no-nonsense blond saleswoman materialized in front of us. “Do you and your wife have any questions about our Vauxhall Garden collection here?”
I blushed and opened my mouth to correct her, but Connor said, “No, my wife and I are just fine, aren’t we, lambikins?”
I hesitated just a second, then took my cue. “We sure are. I was remarking on how this comforter reminds me of the bed-and-breakfast where we honeymooned.”
The saleswoman thawed a bit. “How sweet. Where did you honeymoon?”
I turned and passed the buck to Connor. “Where did we honeymoon, snookums? I can never remember the name of that island.”
“Australia, pookie, remember? Australia.” He broke out his most disarming grin for the clerk. “She’s so forgetful. It’s awfully cute.” He patted my head.
“Well, aren’t you two just precious?” The sale rep retreated to the cash registers, presumably
to vomit into a wastebasket under the counter.
The moment she disappeared behind the towel displays, I whipped around and jabbed my index finger into his white T-shirt. “Australia? That’s the best you could come up with?”
“Hey, if you don’t want me answering the tough questions, answer them yourself.”
“How stupid would I have to be to forget Australia? Come on.”
“Don’t worry, you’re secretly very smart,” he confided. “But you’re my arm-candy trophy wife, so you play dumb to pump up my already overinflated ego. If anyone looks like a moron here, it’s me.”
“True.” I laughed. “But I’m still kicking your ass all the way to Melbourne.”
He grinned. “You know I can’t resist you when you threaten me with bodily harm.”
And then he shoved aside all the ruffles and chintz and kissed me. Right there in the middle of the bedding department. And good news: the raging chemistry we’d experienced last time our lips locked had been no fluke. I kissed him back, shocked and excited at my own daring. The old Becca Davis didn’t believe in public displays of affection. The old Becca Davis couldn’t understand why the tonsil hockey couldn’t wait until the amorous couple got home.
But to hell with her.
The new Becca—the one into fun, casual dating—understood completely. Call her exhibitionist, call her immature and sex-crazed—she couldn’t hear you anyway, because she was too busy smooching under the blinding department store lights. She had, in fact, lost her dignity to the point where she referred to herself in the third person.
And then my cell phone rang and yanked us back to Bloomingdale’s.
We struggled to our feet, panting rather indelicately, and while Connor attempted to restore the Vauxhall bedding to some semblance of its former hospital-cornered order, I rummaged through my bag for my phone to see whose call I’d missed while attacking the new man in my life like a rabid wolverine.
Kevin Bradley.
It’s always fucking something.
“Becca?” My dismay must have shown on my face, because Connor stopped fluffing pillows and stared at me. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” I shook my head, wishing that the human memory worked along the same lines as an Etch A Sketch and that by doing this, I could expunge all traces of my former fiancé. “Everything’s great. Really. So…want to go someplace a little more private?”
18
We made it all the way back to his house in Venice Beach—demonstrating incredible restraint on both our parts, thank you very much—before we recommenced pawing each other like freshmen under the gym bleachers.
“You sure you’re ready for this?” he murmured, pressing me up against the front door while he fumbled for his house keys.
“Mm-hmm.” I slipped both hands under his shirt. “Are you?”
The lock gave way and we tumbled through the door in a clumsy, fevered tangle of limbs and hormones. He slammed the door shut with his foot and peeled his shirt off. I yanked my sweater up over my head.
We left a trail of pants, socks, shoes, and underwear in our wake as we headed for the bedroom.
I didn’t know what had gotten into me, but whatever it was, I wanted more. Rushing into, well, anything was so unlike me, but with Connor, I felt bold and playful and free. Just last week I’d barely been able to work up the nerve to do the Kathleen Turner imitation via phone, but today I shed most of my inhibitions along with my clothes. So this was what it was like to know what I wanted and just go for it. I was starting to appreciate the aphrodisiac of taking chances.
We laughed as we fell onto the half-comforter. No hesitation, no analytical discussion. Just skin on skin and his eyes meeting mine.
I shivered as he kissed my neck and by the time the afternoon sun set over the Pacific, I had discovered some unprecedented new pleasures along with my devil-may-care vixen alter ego.
I let him talk me into staying the night because I wanted to prolong the afterglow aura of intimacy. On some level, I realized that physical compatibility did not equal love, commitment, or emotional attachment, but I didn’t want to ruin a perfect day by dwelling on all the things that could go wrong. Connor was right: life was short. So I took a quick shower, wriggled back into my clothes, and called Aimee to let her know I wouldn’t be returning to her apartment until tomorrow.
“Oh my God, you did it,” she crowed. “See, didn’t I tell you? I told you—you looove him!”
“I barely know him,” I corrected.
“Oh, I’d say you know him pretty well.” She giggled. “So how was he? Was he great?”
Heat flooded my cheeks. “I’m not discussing this with you.”
“Who initiated? You or him?”
“It was sort of mutual,” I lied. “Listen, do me a favor and don’t tell anyone at Rhapsody about this.”
“Why not? It’s not like you still work there.”
“I know, but…just do me a favor and keep it to yourself.”
“You are no fun. At all.”
“That’s not what he said,” I retorted saucily, then hung up.
When I emerged from the bathroom, Connor was waiting to give me a kiss and a freshly washed strawberry. We couldn’t stop grinning at each other.
“That was…” He gave me an exaggerated eye roll.
“I know.” I tried to look all worldly and nonchalant, like I slept with men on the first date all the time.
“You want to go grab some dinner and…?”
“And what?”
He offered up another strawberry. “You’ll see.”
The next morning I woke up to the smell of fresh coffee and the sound of Connor singing Queen’s “I Want to Break Free,” making up in volume what he lacked in pitch.
I clutched the jagged edges of the quilt around me in a sort of makeshift cape and padded down the hall to face the music. “Hey.” I peeked into the kitchen. “Thanks for letting me hog the covers last night.”
He broke off mid-chorus to kiss me. “No problem. I guess that comforter is too small for two people. I should probably buy a new one.”
“Hey, now, let’s not get crazy.”
He looked relaxed and refreshed in his boxer shorts and stubble. “Cancel all your plans for today. I made a few calls this morning and I have a special surprise for you.”
“Ooh, do tell.” I was thinking roses, champagne, beachside picnics…
“My buddy Snake runs a skydiving school out by Riverside. We’re going skydiving.”
“We’re what?”
He laughed at my expression, patted my rear, and turned back to the coffee grinder. “Hit the showers, señorita, this is your lucky day.”
I had misgivings from the start. Maybe it was the six-hour class I had to sit through to prepare for my first jump. Maybe it was practicing the “drop and roll” maneuver I was supposed to execute upon landing (assuming, of course, that I didn’t get my parachute tangled up in a sparking set of power lines and/or my foot didn’t shatter in five places the second I hit the ground). Maybe it was the series of videos we had to view, illustrating the endless variety of ways one could die both in and out of the drop plane. Connor held my hand and threw back a few cups of lukewarm coffee while the voice-overs described, in chilling detail, the potential for equipment failures and human errors and the ways in which one was supposed to correct these while hurtling toward certain death at heart-stopping speeds.
It did not help that Connor spent all the breaks introducing me to his skydiving buddies—including “Snake” Sampson, a former Army Ranger who owned the skydiving school and would be supervising my first jump—and engaging in a competitive discussion of who had had the worst sports-related injury.
“I once broke my collarbone mountain biking,” Connor volunteered. “Busted the hell out of my bike, too. I had to carry that damn thing five miles back to the main road.”
I gaped at him. “With a broken collarbone?”
“Uphill both ways,” he assured me.
The breaking point came when I signed the company’s release form. Having learned my lesson about the importance of reading all fine print before signing any legal document, I went over each and every clause with a fine-tooth comb. And the news was not good: If I happened to end up maimed, dismembered, or dead as a result of this “adventure”…oh well.
“But none of that’s going to happen,” Connor assured me when I pointed to the sentence stating that they’d be happy to scrape up and return my flattened corpse to my family, assuming they could find it.
“Then why is it in the contract?”
“They have to cover their ass, just in case. We’re living in the land of the lawsuit.”
“Yes, but look at all the things that can go wrong!” I jabbed my index finger at the two-page encyclopedia of Horrible Ways to Die.
“Again, none of that’s going to happen to you.” He leaned over to kiss my cheek. “Don’t you trust me?”
I did a spit take into my coffee. “This has nothing to do with trusting you. This has to do with trusting my life to a man named Snake and a parachute, and I don’t!”
“Well, that’s why you have the emergency chute.”
“And what if that fails, too?” I demanded, sounding eerily like Kevin Bradley.
“The odds of that happening are roughly the same as you scratching off the winning lottery ticket during your free fall and simultaneously getting hit by lightning.”
“You say that now that we’re on solid ground, but it could happen! What if some new guy was in charge of my gear? What if he was hungover while he was packing my chutes? What if the back of the plane hits me in the head as soon as I jump out? What if, I don’t know, some kid’s kite takes out an eye on my way down?”
“Becca.” He smoothed a lock of hair back from my face. “You don’t have to jump if you don’t want to. But I promise, you’ll be fine. In fact, you’ll feel better than you ever have. All the adrenaline, all the endorphins…it’s such a high.”
Fashionably Late Page 14
