Brad watched Nicki’s eyes, and there was that look again: the one that said she adored him. Way back in the day, when she was just a little girl, that look was puppy love, but now it looked like the real thing, and it stirred some of the same in him.
“My father had something to do with you going away, didn’t he?” Nicki asked, out of nowhere.
She’d brought it up before, during their cyber chats, but he’d always changed the subject—subtly, he’d thought, but apparently not. Despite being a creature who survived on his powers of deception, he couldn’t bring himself to lie to her face. “Tell me what you know.”
“I have.”
Brad wouldn’t let her get away with that. “If you’d told me everything you know, you wouldn’t have just asked that question. Tell me everything you know.” Before, when they were just talking on the computer and Nicki was still resisting his overtures to join him on an adventure, it had seemed cruel to turn her against her dad. That seemed less of an issue now, but he didn’t want to be the one who started it.
“I heard people talk about a burglary,” she said. “And I remember Daddy saying something about you being involved. We got in a big fight over it. Mom had to intervene. You never would have broken into a house.”
If he opened this door, there’d be no closing it. Brad spotted two overstuffed chairs in the corner behind the registration table and gestured to them. “Let’s go have a seat,” he said.
Nicki’s face fell. She understood that people only wanted you to sit down when there was bad news coming. Somehow, through some quirk of physics, the music was louder over here than closer to the dance floor. Brad moved his chair so he could sit knee to knee with Nicki.
He took her hand. “I promised you the truth,” he said. “This is your last chance to change the subject.”
Nicki refused. How could she do anything else?
“Okay,” he said. “I did break into that house.”
“Into the Premingers’ house? He was a preacher!”
“He left his front door unlocked.” Brad said that as if it explained something. “But that wasn’t why I was sent away. I felt bad about it, and when I confessed to Mr. Benson, he went and told your dad, and the four of us—Reverend Preminger included—worked out a deal where I’d give back the stuff I took and then work off my penance scraping and painting his gutters.”
“I remember that,” Nicki said. “That was your punishment? I thought you were getting paid for that.”
Brad scoffed, “There’s not enough cash in the world to pay me for that kind of work. No, that was me coming to peace with God and the law. It was a done deal. Had nothing to do with me getting shipped off.”
“What, then?”
Brad didn’t want to close the loop for her; he wanted her to do that for herself. “What would piss your dad off more than anything?”
It was Nicki’s turn to scoff. “There’s no end to the list of what pisses my dad off.”
“Think bigger,” Brad said. “What fear would piss him off so badly that he’d ruin a seventeen-year-old kid’s life?”
Nicki knew her dad was a prick sometimes, and as square as a cinder block, but he wasn’t vindictive. She couldn’t imagine why he would intentionally make someone else’s life difficult. Then she got it. Yes, she did know what would drive him to do just about anything. “Somebody told him our secret.”
Brad bounced his eyebrows. “Remember Joey Benson, the oldest of the Benson spawn? Well, the oldest until I got there. He fought me on any day with a y in it.”
“I remember you picking a few of those fights,” Nicki said, recalling the brawls that would occasionally spill out into the yard.
“Yeah, well, I had underestimated that ‘blood is thicker than water’ thing. He knew that you and I used to talk a lot, and I made the mistake of telling him about the time you were feeling sorry for boys because they had to lift the toilet seat to sit on the pot.”
Nicki blushed. “Oh, God.” Naïveté did not come a lot more pure than hers back in those days. It had never occurred to her that boys could pee while standing.
“Anyway, he told your father that we talked about ‘dirty stuff’ and just for good measure told him that I made you play with my dick.”
Nicki’s jaw dropped. “He said what?” Her volume and tone drew looks from their fellow wallflowers, and she dialed it down. “I never did that.”
“Your father didn’t want to take the chance. He drew a line connecting the burglary thing to me being some sort of pervert, and he gave the Bensons an ultimatum. They could get rid of me, or he could make their life miserable. I mean, it happened like that.” He punctuated the word with a finger snap.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t get a chance to. I’m serious about the speed. Your dad called, and I was shipped back to social services within hours. It’s not like I had a vote.”
“But you didn’t do anything.”
This time, Brad’s smile bore a patronizing edge. “You really think that matters when you’ve got no father and your mother’s in prison? Even if the pervert thing didn’t stick, he’d have had the burglary to fall back on. I was in no position to negotiate.”
It all made sense, Nicki supposed. It wasn’t entirely different than her own circumstances. She’d seen the futility of fighting her father, too. “So, why didn’t you mention this before?”
Brad tossed off a shrug. “You’d already lost your mother. I didn’t want you hating your father.”
“And now?”
He gave a rueful chuckle. “Well, now that I’m telling the story, I’m hating him myself, so I guess I don’t care.” He didn’t like the dejected look that invaded Nicki’s face. “Do you want to talk about this anymore?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“You know what I would like to do?”
Something stirred in Brad’s gut. “Tell me,” he said.
“I want to go back to the room and soak in that gorgeous bathtub.”
Brad had to be careful here.
Nicki squeezed his hand. “I had a wonderful time. But if I don’t get some rest, there’ll be hell to pay later. Really.”
Brad stood and offered his arm, hoping that his erection didn’t show. “Shall we?”
He escorted her out of the ballroom, overdoing it a bit with standing straight and tall. “Ever feel like you’re about to turn into a pumpkin?” he asked under his breath.
Nicki thrust the point of her hip into him playfully. “As long as I’m with my Prince Charming, it doesn’t matter.”
* * *
Nicki had never seen so much polished marble. It was a deep rose color, with swirling veins of white and black.
She ran the water warm—just the other side of cool—and dumped in the contents of the tiny plastic bottle of bubble bath. She pressed the button that launched the Jacuzzi jets and thirty seconds later, the lather of thick bubbles was dense enough to walk on.
Nicki slipped out of her ball gown, draping it on the hook on the back of the door, and eased herself into the water. The hiss of the bubbles filled the room with white noise. One of the most disappointing complications of her disease was the need to avoid super-hot baths to keep her heart from racing too fast as it tried to slough off the heat. Keeping the heart rhythm normal was the rule of the day, every day. Don’t get too excited, try not to exert too much, and the ever-thickening blood vessels in her lungs would be able to handle the load. For now, anyway.
The foam expanded all the way to her chin before she realized that she’d forgotten to take her rat poison. The thought made her groan aloud. The pills were all the way across the room, standing sentry next to the other prolonger-of-life, her Digoxin, a water pill that kept her tissues from absorbing the liquid from her blood and turning her into the Pillsbury Dough Boy.
The pills can wait, she thought, and she closed her eyes. If there really was a just God, then heaven would have lots of really big bathtubs.
/> You’ve got to take your meds. This was the part of her that bothered her the most: the part that wouldn’t just let her relax. Ever.
There was no sense fighting it. Gathering herself, she rose out of the tub, quick-walking carefully on the marble floor over to the sink, where she snagged the two bottles and quick-walked back to the tub. The round-trip couldn’t have taken more than ten seconds. She’d forgotten to grab a drinking glass, of course, but that wasn’t such a big deal. She took her meds dry all the time. With her hands covered in white bubbly mittens, she expertly popped the caps off the pill bottles, dropped those little babies into her palm and tossed them back. They tasted a little like soap this time, but they went down. She laid the bottles on the wide edge of the tub, behind the Jacuzzi controls, so they couldn’t fall into the bath, and she lay back and closed her eyes. She tried to imagine that the water was the way she used to like it, hot enough to make a good cup of tea.
The bubbles consumed her, concealed her, leaving her totally at ease. The day had been pure magic. To hell with the doctors. To hell with pagers and phone calls and disappointments. No schoolwork, no shrinks, no phone calls from supposed friends, no arguments with her dad. She’d just lived. Sure, the prom thing was hokey, and the room was over the top, and Brad was working too hard to impress her, but at least he was trying. And it all seemed so important to him. That she was happy was important to him. How could you not love someone who put you on such a pedestal?
She had to be careful, though, lest she think too much and start wondering why he was doing all of this for her. He said it was because he cared about her, and wanted her to be happy in her last months, and with all her heart, she wanted to believe that it really was that simple; but it was hard. Could it really be that he’d thought of her over the years as much as she’d thought of him? Was that even possible?
A brisk knock startled her off Memory Lane and back into the present. Before she could say anything, the bathroom door opened—first a crack and then all the way as Brad stepped inside, wearing only a pair of green paisley boxers.
Nicki made a squeaking sound and slipped farther under the bubbles. “What are you doing?” she demanded.
“I need a shower,” Brad said as he walked to the glassed-in shower stall and pulled on the knob.
Nicki protested, “But I’m in here.”
Brad’s eyebrows did their dance. “I know. But I don’t like baths.” As the glass on the shower fogged from the heat, he turned his back to Nicki, then scooped his hands into the waistband of his shorts, which he let drop to the floor. “I’m a shower guy.”
He stepped into the stall and closed the door, transforming himself into an apparition behind the glass. Nicki watched, mesmerized, as he turned this way and that to get his whole body wet, and she continued to watch as he lathered himself with soap, and she felt her pulse quickening.
Jesus, he was naked. Despite the fog and the water droplets clinging to the glass, she could see his whole body. His whole body. Everything. And while she knew what all the parts were, there was one in particular that she’d seen only in pictures.
* * *
Warren and Monique Michaels could not have been more gracious, serving up an impromptu snack of cheese and crackers. While Warren worked the phone from the family room, making call after call, Carter stayed in the kitchen and met the family. Kathleen and her younger sister, Shannon, were both stars in their local soccer league. They showed him their trophies. His interest was not entirely feigned, but as he listened to them prattle on about school and sports, it took real effort not to let their words worsen his melancholy over Nicki. It was a terrible thing to envy little girls for their carefree lives.
And, of course, there was Nathan, a taller, darker, yet still-slight version of the boy Carter remembered from four years ago. Unlike his sisters, the sixteen-year-old never grew comfortable around Carter—a living remnant of the boy’s pitch-black past. Monique sensed it early on, and gave Nathan an excuse to make his leave. He disappeared upstairs, and she followed a moment later, returning to the kitchen after ten or fifteen minutes.
“He doesn’t mean to be rude,” she said. “He’s just not completely over it all.”
“I understand,” Carter assured.
“Nathan says you wanted to throw him in jail,” Shannon added. She drew sharp and simultaneous rebukes from her mother and sister. “Well, that’s what he said!”
Carter held up a hand and tried his best to smile. “No, Monique, that’s all right. I did try to put him in jail. That was my job.”
“But you’re also the one who got all the charges dropped,” Monique said. “And that was far more important.”
Carter appreciated the spin. “True enough,” he said. Then, to the girls: “But only after your father worked very, very hard to change my mind.”
Warren appeared in the kitchen doorway. “So, have they talked your ear off yet?”
The girls groaned together, “Dad-dy!”
The burst of indignation made Carter laugh. He pulled on his ears just to make sure. “No, I think they’re still attached.”
Warren’s entrance marked the end of the small talk. He announced that it was bedtime for the girls. They protested, but to no avail. Monique led the parade upstairs, leaving Warren and Carter alone in the kitchen.
“Here’s where we stand,” Warren said. “I’ve put word on the wire up and down the East Coast to keep an eye out for both Nicolette and her friend. Locally, we’re sending patrol units to every hotel, motel, and flophouse to make sure that they have pictures available. Ditto the bus stations, train stations, and airports. One of my sergeants—you may remember him, Jed Hackner?”
Carter shrugged. Anymore, it seemed that every name rang a bell somewhere, but that particular one didn’t clang very loudly.
“Anyway, at the suggestion of Sergeant Hackner, we’re alerting the National Park Service, too, so that they can get word to their parks and campgrounds.”
Carter had to chuckle. In New York, it would take hours to coordinate that many agencies.
“One last note,” Warren went on. “The public information officer at our department has arranged for you to get some face time on the news tonight. Gather your thoughts, because they’re coming here in about twenty minutes.”
“God, you’re good,” Carter said.
“Just be thankful it’s a slow news night,” Warren replied.
Chapter Twelve
“Ihad a nice time tonight,” Brad called over the rush of the water. “Better than I thought I would.”
What was she supposed to say now? You can’t just have a conversation with a naked person—a naked man. She sank lower into the tub, trying to disappear below the bubbles. She silently cursed herself for not having thought to lock the door.
“Are you still there?” Brad asked.
“Yes.” But she wouldn’t be for long. She had to get out of the tub and back into her bathrobe. She had to cover up before he had a chance to see what she really looked like.
Her father’s dark stories invaded her thoughts. She knew where this was going, but Brad could have any girl he wanted—girls who at least would know what they were doing.
Nicki felt her chest thickening as the wild thoughts screamed though her brain.
She had to get out of here. Out of the bathroom, out of the hotel, out of this mess. She had to go somewhere. Anywhere. And this was the time.
Moving as quietly as she knew how, Nicki eased herself out of the tub, her body covered with a thick pelt of bubbles, and padded across the expanse of marble tile to lift the expensive terry cloth bathrobe off its hook and pull it on. If she hurried, she could get dressed and be out before Brad even knew that she was gone. She didn’t know where she’d go, but that was a problem for later.
As she opened the bathroom door, Brad slapped the shower off. “Hey, where are you going?” he asked.
She moved faster, leaving a trail of wet footprints on the lush carpet as she hurried acros
s the master bedroom toward the bed, where she’d left her travel clothes from earlier today, the clothes that were really her. The ones that had nothing to do with anybody’s fantasies.
“What are you doing?”
She jumped at the sound of Brad’s voice and whirled to see him standing in the open doorway to the bathroom, soaking wet, with a towel wrapped around his waist.
Keeping one hand on the waistband of the towel, he moved toward her, the other arm outstretched. “Jesus, are you okay?” He was at her side in two seconds, and she jumped back, as if shot with electricity.
“No, please don’t,” she said.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really so sorry.”
“For what? What’s wrong?”
“I can’t,” Nicki said.
“What happened?” Was she having some kind of an attack? Had he said something or done something—
He saw it in her eyes, and then he understood. He became aware of his near-nakedness. He eased away from her. “Oh. I invaded your space, didn’t I? I’m sorry.”
The look on Brad’s face was one that Nicki had never seen before. The confident, strutting raconteur now seemed like a little boy caught doing something bad in school. He hurried into the bathroom and reappeared a moment later wrapped in a robe identical to Nicki’s. His blond hair was still matted and dripping and Nicki noticed that he still had soapsuds clustered behind one ear. He still looked uneasy and apologetic, and this time when he approached, he kept his distance.
“Are you feeling okay?” he asked.
Nicki nodded, despite the tightening in her chest and the light-headedness. That would all pass. It always did.
“I’m really sorry,” Brad repeated.
She appreciated his words, but could see the confusion in his eyes still. He was sorry, but he had no idea what for. He thought it was for invading her space. How could she possibly make him understand? It was awkward. Neither of them knew where to look or what to say. Finally, she settled on his beautiful eyes. “Tell me why you’re doing this,” she said. “All of this. I mean, really. What’s in this for you?”
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