by Nancy Bush
As soon as he answered, she quickly explained her plight, to which he drawled out, “You’re a liar and you’re late.”
“It’s not like I missed the deadline for the second coming,” she responded evenly.
“Your column’s in syndication, babe, just in case you’ve forgotten. Don’t mess with me, or you’re out.”
Dinah rolled her eyes and glanced through the dusty glass of the store window. “I’m heading to a Kinkos. I’ll be e-mailing it to you in just a few minutes.”
His answer was a derisive snort.
“Ten minutes. Just hang in there.”
“I haven’t got all night.”
“Ten minutes.” She hung up. “Asshole,” she muttered, which earned her a snicker from the attendant. “There’s a Kinkos right down the block, right?”
The kid shrugged, then cocked his head thoughtfully. “Yeah, I guess so. Thataway.” He pointed to the south.
“Thanks.” Hurrying back out of the store, she half walked, half ran down the street. Flick, so-named for his uncanny ability to flick a half-eaten cigar into an ash can from nearly any distance—there was never a butt outside the receptacle on the balcony attached to his office—was about as understanding as her stepfather had been when she’d come home two hours late from her first date. For that infraction she’d endured a sound slap across the face, among other things. The fact that her beau of the moment’s car had been sideswiped by a drunk driver and she’d been forced to wait while the accident report was filled out hadn’t mattered in the least. Thomas Daniels had blamed her totally. So did Flick. The reasons clearly weren’t important. She’d screwed up and had to pay the price.
She shivered a little despite the warm temperature. Luckily, Flick was at least a human being, an attribute she would never have ascribed to her stepfather, but when Flick was in the right, he was so goddamned justified it made her want to scream.
Dinah was at the Kinkos in seven minutes. She quickly paid for a computer, plugged in the jump drive, and e-mailed Flick her latest discussion of how to deal with love and sex in today’s world. Ten minutes, she thought jubilantly. Well, maybe eleven, as she glanced at the clock on the wall.
Flick would probably hate her story, she thought with a faint smile as she headed back to the convenience store where the taxi would pick her up. He hated anything soupy and dopey, which was everything that didn’t have something to do with crime or money.
Of course, Flick’s negative attitude hadn’t improved when she’d explained about her trip to Los Angeles. “Let your sister handle her own problems,” he’d sniffed in disgust. “You’ve got a job to do.”
“Six weeks,” Dinah had answered. “Six weeks and I’ll be back in Santa Fe. Los Angeles is crazy. I don’t want to be here any longer than I have to. I’ll get all my work in on time. Cross my heart and hope to die. Relax, Flick, nothing will go wrong . . .”
The taxi driver took her back to her sister’s house. Soul-weary, every bone aching, she slowly climbed the front tile steps. Instead of that good “closure” feeling she normally got after each hurried, sometimes brilliant, sometimes pathetically so-so, assignment, her thoughts churned uncomfortably. A pit of bad feeling swallowed her and she realized it was those horrors from long ago, still dogging her. Best forgotten. Best never remembered. Drawing a deep, nurturing breath, she unlocked the front door.
Safely inside the cool white-walled interior of Denise’s Spanish-style home, Dinah sank backward against the walnut door and closed her eyes. She couldn’t shake the past. It was right there. Nearly tangible. No, no, no!
Her hands clenched, but it was no use. She was too uptight. Always had been. But her obsession with wanting the world to work right—to be right—was what had saved her sanity through those long, horrible days, nights, and weeks of misery when she and Denise and their younger sister, Hayley, had still lived at home with Thomas Daniels, the stepfather from hell. Two and a half years of torment. A sense of displacement when home wasn’t a safe place. She understood teenagers running away and becoming street people. She’d considered it often enough herself. But that would have meant leaving Denise and Hayley and their emotionally frail mother to face the horrors alone. So she’d stayed.
Their mother’s death had been a mixed blessing. The three sisters had mourned her passing, but had been inwardly jubilant that now, finally, they would be free of Thomas’s ironhanded discipline and torture.
Only, it hadn’t worked out quite that way.
Dinah drew another long breath, holding it until her lungs were filled with fire, burning. She exhaled on a gasp, slowly opening her eyes, seeing the entryway’s artsy floor lamp with its smiling, wrought-iron snakes coiled around it and the clean, cool expanse of russet tiles that swept to the inner hallway. Thomas was dead now, she reminded herself, and his soul was in hell. He couldn’t corrupt their lives anymore.
She just wished Denise understood that.
Heat shimmered above the pool, bright and dancing and blinding. Her arms were hot, tingling, broiling. She sank them into the water and languidly splashed water over the plastic raft, cooling off her baking limbs. The raft squeaked beneath her weight. Her mind was a blank.
A niggling thought intruded. Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think, she warned herself furiously. You’re tranquil. Serene. Nothing matters outside this moment.
Sun caressed her forehead, soaked inside her flesh. It bathed her like a seductive blanket. It seeped inside her bones. She was currently interested in self-hypnosis and was amazed to find it somewhat effective. It actually seemed to help keep a lid on those devils clamoring inside her head.
Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think. Imagine all the poisons in your body reaching your center. Your being. Now fist your hand. Feel the poisons run down your arm to your fist. You are cleansed. The poisons are inside your fist. Feel them beat, hot and terrible. Now open your fist. Outward, outward, outward. Expelled into the universe. Shot into the black void of space. Away, away. Gone and forgotten.
Something splashed loudly at the other end of the pool. Denise’s eyes flew open in alarm. Ripples cascaded outward and a dark form swam beneath the aqua surface. Denise paddled wildly for the side of the pool.
It was a man. Peter something-or-other. Heart beating heavily, she watched him swim the length of the pool underwater, surface, shake water from his black hair, then haul himself to the edge of the pool. Water ran down his hair and across his face and shoulders. Catching her eye, he stared at her across the rippled blue surface of the pool, absently running a hand over his bronzed, muscled chest, his gaze sliding thoughtfully over Denise’s bikini-clad body.
He’d been eyeing her all week. He was Carolyn’s “friend.” Denise had had her own share of friends in her eventful life and knew how complicated and disastrous those kinds of friends could be. Carolyn was married to Kevin, but then Denise had been married to John during the course of some of her own friendships. And Peter something-or-other had that predatory on-the-make look. His body was superbly muscled, his movements purposely sinuous, his attention focused so intently, she felt as if she were under a microscope.
“You’re that actress,” he’d told her last week when he’d first appeared at Carolyn’s swimming pool.
Denise had ignored him. She’d accepted Carolyn’s invitation to come to Houston and get away from her miserably ruined life in California because she’d needed to forget who she was. This whole year had been another disaster. The fights with John had turned from hot and passionate to cold and distant. He didn’t love her anymore, and hell, she didn’t love him. But she hadn’t been ready to give him up. And then he’d gone ahead and hired that young bitch for the part in Borrowed Time after explaining without much interest that he wasn’t even going to let Denise audition.
Bastard. Two-faced, smirking bastard. Let Dinah handle him. Dinah didn’t give a damn about men and John was self-infatuated enough to be really annoyed by her.
Denise chuckled to herself. Dinah had unwillin
gly agreed to pretend she was Denise, should anyone ask. It was the only way to maintain possession of the Malibu beach house, since John was bound and determined to divorce his has-been wife and claim ownership of everything they’d shared. Miserable, cheating, coldhearted bastard!
“Want some suntan oil?” Peter called from across the pool.
“No, thanks.” Her voice was barely above freezing.
What an unbelievable scuzz, she thought, her lips curling in distaste. Suntan oil. Good God. Peter was low enough to remind her of his despicable actions three days earlier. He’d been lounging on a chaise across from her in a pair of electric blue bikini trunks, rubbing his limbs with Hawaiian Tropic oil. Catching her eye, he’d pulled out his penis, squirted enough oil over the damn thing to start an energy crisis, then slicked it from tip to shaft while she’d watched in fascinated revulsion.
Sicko. Goddamn revolting male.
“Carolyn says you’re taking a much-needed vacation.”
She considered refusing to answer but decided it wouldn’t help. Annoyance boiled inside her, driving out her therapeutic thoughts. “That’s right.”
“Things pretty tough out west?”
“I needed a break.”
“I always liked your pictures. Especially Willful.”
“Good for you.”
He laughed, and there was a nasty quality to it Denise recognized deep within her marrow. That “I know you” element that men used when they were sure they had you.
A sense of inevitability cloaked her, suffocating, hot, intense. The image of a glass cage enclosing her filled her mind. You couldn’t scream. You couldn’t struggle. It was your fault for being there, for enticing them. There was no escape.
Her raft had been drifting to the center of the pool. Gently, she moved her hands through the water, pulling the raft to the opposite shore. Where was Carolyn?
SPLASH!
Denise shot to attention, nearly overbalancing herself. She struggled to reach the edge of the pool, but Peter’s dark head surfaced beside her. He lunged for the raft, shaking water from his black hair, grinning like a beast.
“Get away from me,” Denise ordered.
“Come here.”
“Get away!”
He hauled himself atop her on the raft in one fluid motion, pushing them both under, nearly drowning her. She screamed and her lungs filled with water. Coughing, she gasped for air.
“Don’t move,” he commanded.
“Get off me!”
He was moving. Circling her hips with his, driving himself against her. She could feel his erection. She could see it in her mind’s eye, big and thick and covered with oil. Something hot beat inside her. She scratched his back, dragging skin beneath her nails. He laughed again. His hands slid between her legs. She squirmed and cried out, his thumb moving hard at her crotch, her legs opening of their own accord. His tongue filled her mouth. His hands ripped at the bottoms of her bikini, pulling it off her legs.
She thrashed, choked, and bit. He slapped her hard. She tasted blood. Then he shoved himself full-length inside her. She ceased to struggle, knowing what would happen if she did. Instead she endured his laughter, deep-throated and knowing. And then . . . and then . . . no, no, no! Her treacherous body began to respond!
“Carolyn told me,” he gasped, pushing himself deeper and deeper inside her. “You want it this way. You always want it this way.”
Denise didn’t have the strength to argue.
She awoke suddenly, heart pounding, tears streaming down her cheeks. Above her was a faded gray Texas sky, beneath her lounge chair, the plastic rungs soaked with her sweat. Her body was aflame.
“You okay?”
Denise started, realizing the man lounging on the chair beside her was someone she’d never seen before. Heat swarmed up her skin, staining her neck and cheeks. Had she been dreaming? Oh, no. No. Peter couldn’t have been a figment of her imagination.
Could he?
It had been a dream, she realized vaguely, miserably. A dream mixed with reality. He hadn’t raped her just now, but he had displayed his wares earlier.
She’d been the one who’d let the scenario unfold in her mind. And now her body was alive with shame and desire.
It was her fault. It was always her fault.
“You all right?” the man asked again.
“I’m sorry . . . ?” What had he heard? What had he seen? Had she been squirming away on the lounge chair? God. He would think she was some kind of pervert. “I’ve—I’ve lost track of time. Is it noon yet?” Denise asked, her voice shaking.
“Six o’clock,” he answered, staring at her.
“Tuesday?”
“Friday the thirteenth.”
“Oh, right.” She laughed uneasily, grabbing her towel. “Wow, what a dream.”
She scurried toward the poolside door, stepping through the marble bathroom and running down the hall to the back stairs of Carolyn’s fabulous home. No one knew she was here, not even Dinah. Friday the thirteenth? She’d seen Peter at the pool—literally seen Peter, as a matter of fact—on Tuesday the third. What had happened to the ten days in between? And who was that man?
She ran up the back stairs to her private room, locking the door behind her. Each bedroom had its own bath, and in the privacy of hers she washed away the sweat and memory of her nightmare. God, her imagination was vivid. She could practically feel his hands still on her. Her skin crawled. Grabbing a washcloth, she twisted it into a rope and bit down on it as hard as she could to keep from screaming.
It was worse this time, much worse. Ten years of steady regression had taken its toll; her last therapist had told her that sterling bit of information. Denise gazed dully at her reflection. Reality. That was her problem. Difficulty distinguishing dreams from reality.
No kidding, Doc. Tell me something I don’t know.
“You suffered great trauma as a child,” one of the therapists had intoned gravely.
Big fucking surprise.
“Your dreams are of a sexual nature because you’re reacting to some base, primal inner torment.”
No shit.
“You have yet to come to terms with the problem.”
That’s why I’m here, you ignorant ass.
“This may take some time.”
Read that to mean, break out the checkbook and credit cards. This is going to be expensive.
Removing the washcloth, Denise dared to really look at herself in the bathroom mirror. She was still naked from the shower, sleek as satin, firm, youthful, and seductive. Her hair was blond. Her eyes were such an unusual shade of aquamarine, she’d been accused of wearing tinted lenses. She was—in truth—staggeringly, remarkably, unforgettably, drop-dead gorgeous. Even more so than her twin because Dinah refused to wear the least bit of makeup, refused to do a damn thing with her hair other than twang it back in a rubber band, refused to wear anything but the most ill-fitting sweats in the hopes of hiding her to-die-for figure, refused to be anything like her hopeless, helpless, loony, ridiculous twin.
Denise had tried it Dinah’s way, but she hated being overlooked. There was the problem. She wanted male attention in the worst way. Craved it. Lived for it. Especially the wrong kind of attention. She wanted it even if it meant sleeping with her best friend’s husband. She wanted it even if it meant cuckolding her husband, whom she’d once loved with every ounce of her being.
But the bastard had slept around on her, too, hadn’t he? She still wanted to rip out the throat of that whiny redhead who’d written him all those love notes. And what about that new starlet who was spending all that time with him on location for Borrowed Time?
Dinah. Dinah would take care of everything. Dinah was good and smart. Dinah would make John pay for all the pain he’d inflicted on her bat-shit crazy twin sister.
“Denise?” A knock sounded on her bedroom door.
It was Carolyn, her host. Wrapping a towel around her torso, Denise cracked open the door.
Carolyn Lento
n was into helping others. At least into helping the privileged. The sick, twisted privileged who possessed oodles of money to spend on their recovery. Denise had originally wanted to consider her a friend, but had learned Carolyn was too whacked out to trust. Almost as whacked out as she herself was. Carolyn had invited Denise to recuperate at her Houston home, then had offered everything from cocaine to Dom Pérignon to Peter’s everready wanger as a cure.
“Larry said you ran away from the pool as if you were spooked or something.”
“Larry?”
“Larry Cummings. I introduced him to you yesterday.”
“What happened to Peter?”
Carolyn’s penciled brows lifted and a smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Shame on you,” she said in a singsong voice. “I knew you’d like him. He’s still around. I could have him back here by eight o’clock, if you like. He’s a real fan of yours, you know.”
“He doesn’t have a Texas accent.”
“Well, of course not. He’s from L.A. Of all the things you could say about him, that’s it?”
Denise felt herself tighten up inside. “Did Stone call?”
“Uh-uh. Should he have?”
“I had an appointment I missed. Last Wednesday.”
“You didn’t miss it. You went.” Carolyn looked puzzled.
A terrible sensation engulfed Denise. An anxiety attack. She couldn’t breathe. Then memory returned in a wash of regret and annoyance as she realized the last ten days were there, a haze of sunshine, Perrier, and wasted hours, with maybe a few recreational drugs thrown in.
“Stone was preoccupied,” she remembered.
“You said you asked him for a date.” Carolyn laughed.
“I’m sicker than I thought.”
Patting her shoulder, Carolyn started for the door, then stopped, examining Denise with eyes that saw far too much. “Maybe you should call him.”
Dr. Hayden Stone. Her shrink of the hour. The man would listen for weeks on end as long as the meter was running.
But he was good-looking.
“Maybe I will,” Denise choked out.
