"Because it's not safe."
I was so tired of this routine. "Because of your friend? The one who may – or may not – be after for me, looking for Rango's book?"
"No," Jake said, "because Vince is an asshole."
"Funny," I said. "From what I hear, Trey's employer is an asshole too. You think he should quit?"
"We're not talking about Trey," Jake said.
"So you're not denying it?"
"That I'm an asshole? No. Why would I?"
I glanced toward the trailer door, still open just behind him. "Can you please shut the door?" I asked. "It's freezing in here."
In truth, it wasn't just me I was worried about. Earlier today, a cold front had swept in. And Jake was decidedly underdressed in faded jeans and a thin gray T-shirt. It occurred to me that his clothes were almost identical to what he'd worn on the night he had rescued me from Rango and his drunken friends.
At the memory of that night, I felt a pang of something that could only be regret. Was it regret that I had loved him? Or regret that we weren't together anymore? As usual, it was probably a bit of both.
Hardening my heart, I recalled the scene with Bath Girl. Whether I felt regret or not, three was definitely a crowd. Throw us together in a tub, we were one rubber ducky shy of a freak show.
Jake kicked back his foot, slamming the flimsy door with more force than required. He crossed his arms and leaned back against it. The muscles in his arms and neck were bulging as if the act of standing motionless was taking all of his strength, which let's face it, was considerable.
He gave me a hard look, and the silence between us loomed large, filling the tiny space to near suffocating levels.
"I'm not quitting my job," I said.
"That's what you think."
"What are you gonna do?" I asked. "Quit on my behalf again? Well don't. Because it won't work. You do know that, right?"
"Yeah. I know," he said. "Or I wouldn’t be asking."
"You're not asking," I said. "You're demanding."
His gaze darkened. "You want me to ask nice?"
"I don't want you to ask at all," I said. "The job is fine, and so is Vince."
Through clenched teeth, Jake said, "He's fine?"
"Yeah, in fact he is," I said. "And just so you know, I'm not talking romantically. He's been the epitome of professionalism."
The guy had even written me up. If that didn't make him a regular boss, what did?
"So far," Jake said. "But give it time."
I gave Jake a stiff smile. "Thanks. I will."
"That's not what I meant, and you damn well know it."
"Maybe," I said. "But it's what I mean. So far the job's good. I don't want to leave it. And I'm not going to."
Sure, it wasn't all sunshine and roses. And sure, I'd been in trouble more than I would like. But it was a terrific opportunity for someone like me. Even if the job didn't last forever, I needed it on my resume.
"If something goes wrong," Jake said, "he won't have your back."
"Nothing's going to go wrong."
Jake made a low scoffing sound. "You know what kind of animals he represents?"
Actually, I still didn't know nearly enough about Vince's clients. The company's main office was in New York. The Detroit office was just a satellite operation, with only a handful of people. Even Vince, from what I'd heard, wasn't local.
Why he was spending so much time here lately was anyone's guess. I mean, Detroit wasn't exactly the mecca of the sports-entertainment world, was it?
Jake's voice broke into my thoughts. "You ever meet Doc Rochester?"
"No," I said. "Not in person anyway."
"Good," Jake said. "Keep it that way. The guy's trouble."
I gave Jake a good, long look. If anyone looked like trouble, it was him.
"Oh, get real," I said.
"You think I'm kidding?"
I gave a half-hearted shrug.
"A few months ago," Jake said, "the guy was caught up in a sex scandal." His gaze darkened. "Of the unwilling kind."
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean."
"But I never heard about it," I said.
"Yeah. And you can credit Vince for that."
"For what?" I asked.
"For the fact it's not news."
"I'm still not following," I said.
"Thanks to Vince, it all went away. Charges dropped, girls won't testify, the usual bull."
"And you know this, how?"
"I just do," Jake said. "And I'm telling you, Vince represents the worst of the worst, which means that's the last place you should be."
"Oh come on," I said.
"You think I'm lying?"
"What I think is that you'd say just about anything to make me quit."
"You're right," he said. "I would. But that doesn't make it a lie."
I heard myself sigh as I shoved a tired hand through my hair. "It's been fine. Honest."
"Right. It's been 'fine' for a week." Jake's voice ground to a low menace. "You think that just because he wears a suit and acts like a nice guy that you can trust him? Well, he's not nice, any more than I am."
I'd heard this before. The last time Jake told me this, I had claimed that he and Vince were both nice. Now, I wasn't so sure about either one of them. It was making my head hurt. "I don't want to talk about it," I said.
"And," Jake said, "you wanna know why he hasn't hit on you?"
"Actually, I don't care, because he's not my type. He's my boss, not my boyfriend."
"He's not hitting on you, because Bianca's keeping him distracted."
I narrowed my gaze. "What do you mean by that?"
"I mean she's been keeping him too busy to think about anyone else."
At the implication, I felt myself grow just a little bit queasy. "What are you saying? That you've got Bianca banging Vince to keep him away from me?"
"Does it matter?" Jake said.
"Yeah. It does, in fact."
"She was gonna 'bang him' anyway," Jake said. "Let's just say I didn't discourage her."
"How nice," I said. "So you and Bianca are on speaking terms again?"
An edge crept into his voice. "Do you care?"
I did, probably too much for my own good. But I'd die before admitting it. Still, anger made me reckless. "I don't know," I said. "Does Bath Girl care?"
His jaw clenched. "There is no 'Bath Girl.'"
"Yeah, right," I said. "I saw the picture."
"What picture?"
"Of you two together."
"If you saw a picture," he said, "it sure as hell wasn't recent."
"It was too," I insisted. "It was taken just last week." At the mental image, I wanted to throw up. "At the hotel."
He gave me a hard look. "Who showed it to you?" He almost spat the word. "Vince?"
"No," I said. "Someone else. Practically a stranger, actually."
"Right." His eyes were blazing now. "Let me tell you something. My whole life? I've loved exactly one girl. Just one. And maybe that's where you and I are different, because it would take a shitload more than some photo from a stranger to make me walk out on her." He made a sound of disgust. "But hey, you think what you want."
I stared at him, stunned by the veiled accusation. "Oh, so I'm supposed to ignore a naked chick in our hotel room? And I'm supposed to ignore a photo of you two in the elevator?" My voice rose. "What next? I'm supposed to ignore you screwing her right there in front of me? I mean, come on, Jake. How naïve do you think I am?"
"Forget it," he said. "Think what you want."
"I don't want to think it," I said. "But I'd be stupid not to."
He moved toward me, almost like he couldn’t help himself. "Do you want to know what I'd be stupid to do?"
My voice was clipped. "What?"
"I'd be stupid to risk losing some important to me, someone I love, for a cheap thrill. But you know what? Maybe I am stupid, because for fuck knows why, I still care what you think of me."
My voice broke. "If you care so much, why'd you walk out on me?"
His accusing eyes met mine. "I came back. You were gone."
"But why'd you leave at all?" I asked.
"I left to cool off." He paused to give me a long, serious look. "You? You left forever."
Like a dark cloud, the words hung there, casting an eerie shadow over the small space. Forever? I had always liked that word. Now, not so much. At least, not in this context. I didn't want to be gone forever. But I didn't want to share him with anyone either, at least not in that way.
Desperately, I wanted to believe him. I gave him a pleading look. I had known Jake a long, long time. In that time, I'd seen him with tons of girls. He was a bastard. And he was cold as hell when he wanted to be. But the whole time I'd known him, he had never been a liar.
And if he was telling me the truth, he had every right to hate me.
I opened my mouth. "Jake—"
But before I could say a say anything else, someone pounded on the door so loud that I practically jumped out of my skin. Jake turned toward the sound, shielding me from whoever was out there.
"What?" Jake said.
A deep male voice called back, "Security. Open up."
Oh crap.
Chapter 42
It was the night after Jake's visit to the job-trailer, and I was sacked out in my apartment with my two new roommates – Steve and Anthony.
I looked around, taking in the pizza boxes, dirty laundry, and duffle bags filled with who-knows-what. It's not like my place was super-nice before or anything, but now, it was a cramped, cluttered pigsty.
"You guys really are slobs," I said.
"Hey," Anthony said, "did we complain when you messed up our place?"
I gave him a look. "It was messy before I got there."
"Well there you go," he said.
I rolled my eyes. "Yeah. There I go."
Steve was sprawled out across the apartment's only sofa. "Quit your griping," he said. "You were the one who got us kicked out of the trailer."
It was true. I had gotten them kicked out, at least as far as staying there overnight. Apparently, having a raging argument in a place that was supposed unoccupied tended to draw attention. Who knew?
"Stupid security guy," I muttered.
"No kidding," Anthony said. "You know, that was the first time I saw him?"
I let out a long sigh. "Lucky me."
"Yeah," Anthony said. "I know, right? I mean, we'd heard about the guy, but I thought he was like Bigfoot, something you don't actually see in person." He frowned. "Unless you're wasted."
Recalling the scene in the job-trailer, I wanted to get wasted now. And if I became so wasted that I saw Bigfoot, that was fine by me. The whole thing with the security guy had been a total nightmare.
Steve and Anthony had returned just as the guy had decided to make a stink about it. Worse, when confronted, my brothers were total smart-asses, not only to the security guy, but to Jake too, who looked like he wanted to kill all three of them with his bare hands.
The whole thing had been a giant powder keg, just waiting for a match.
In the end, I had claimed I was crashing there alone and bought off the guy with the rest of the pizza, along with Steve and Anthony's beer.
And then there had been the worst part. I never had the chance to tell Jake…well, I didn't know what, exactly. But it was pretty obvious that I needed to say something, because things between us were far from settled.
Maybe I was stupid, or maybe I was blind, because Heaven help me, I was almost starting to believe the unbelievable – that the thing with Bath Girl had been a big, stupid misunderstanding. The only question now was, what was I going to do about it?
Sometime after midnight, when my brothers were zoned out in the living room with some Kung fu movie on cable, I snuck into the bedroom and pulled out the cell phone that Jake had given me. I stared at the thing for a long time.
If I called him, I couldn’t hold back. I'd have to trust him in spite of all evidence to the contrary. I'd have to be willing to fall hard and not care where I landed.
Was I ready for that?
Images of Jake flooded my brain. For as long as I could remember, he had been everything I had ever wanted. He made my pulse race, and my heart melt. He was sweeter than chocolate, and harder than granite. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. He had rescued more times than I could count, and those were only the times I knew of.
With trembling hands, I powered up the phone and hit the call button.
He didn't answer.
But I did get his voicemail, so in a hushed tone, I left my message after the beep. "Jake, I've been thinking. You were right. I should've at least tried to believe you. And I'm sorry." I wanted to say more, but not like this, so I added, "Maybe you could call me? And we can talk?"
I sat by the phone for at least a half-hour, willing him to call me back. When he didn't, I wandered, still clutching the phone, out into the main living area, to hang out with Steve and Anthony. I didn't really want to talk or anything, but I sure didn't feel like being alone.
Ignoring their grumbling, I squeezed in between them on the sofa and watched the television screen in a mindless stupor. He would call back, right?
"Hey, be quiet, will ya?" Steve said. "We're almost to the best part."
I gave him an annoyed look. "But I didn't say anything."
"Yeah, but you're breathing heavy," he said. "It's distracting as hell."
"Oh shut up," I said. "I am not."
"What he means," Anthony said, "is that you keep looking at that phone and sighing. And yeah, it is distracting. Sorry."
Steve reached for the remote and turned up the volume. Trying to be inconspicuous, I snuck another quick glance at the phone. He still hadn't called.
And for all I knew, maybe he never would.
Wondering if by some miracle, he might have tried me on my other cell phone, I stood and retrieved it from the bedroom. Scrolling through it, I found zero phone calls and one text – from Rango.
Just great.
Without much enthusiasm, I pulled it up. The way it looked, he had texted me a photo. I opened the image and felt my eye grow wide.
The photo was of a personal check, made out from Rango to me. I sucked in a breath. The amount was for twenty thousand dollars. With the photo, was a short message. For you. Once you give me the book.
In a fit of irritation, I tossed the phone aside. Obviously, he thought I was an idiot. Even if the check were real, he'd probably refuse to turn it over. Or he'd void it. Or he'd simply call the bank to put a stop-payment on the thing.
By now, I knew how Rango worked. Given half a chance, he'd cheat me, and then, afterwards, he'd make it look like my fault.
Screw that.
Besides, he wasn't the guy I wanted to hear from. And he wasn't even supposed to have that number. Probably, I could thank Bianca for that too.
In a fit of irritation, I blocked Rango from calling again, at least from that number, and tossed the phone aside. I decided to forget Rango. And his stupid book.
Now, if I could only forget another guy.
There was only one problem.
I didn't want to.
Chapter 43
"Good news," Vince said.
Sitting at my desk, I looked up. I'd been so lost in my own thoughts that I hadn't realized he was standing in my doorway until he'd actually spoken.
I summoned up a smile. "What kind of good news?"
"Training period's over," he said. "Time for you to hit the field."
I froze, trying hard to keep my smile in place. Field? What field?
He leaned sideways against the door jamb and continued. "I'm thinking Saturday night. One of our clients is hitting some clubs. You'll be on deck with Bianca." He gave me an easy smile. "Sound good?"
With Bianca? Good wasn't exactly the word I'd use. My smile was still there, right? I nodded and managed to say, "Sure. Sounds great."
With
something like a laugh, he ducked into my office and shut the door behind him. "I know what you're thinking."
"Really?" I said. "What?"
"You're thinking she won't do a good job and that you'll end up in hot water. Am I right?"
Hot? More like boiling. "Maybe a little," I admitted.
"Don't worry," he said. "She knows what she's doing. And she'll make sure that you do, too."
Well, it was good to hear that somebody knew what they were doing, because honestly, I had no clue what Vince was talking about.
At something in my expression, he paused. "You do know what I'm referring to, right?
Oh screw it. "Actually," I said, "I have no idea."
At this, Vince laughed. In the quiet office, the sound was surprisingly pleasant, and missing the contempt I might have expected. "I like your honesty," he said. "In this business, it's something you don't see often."
What did someone say to that? "Oh?"
He sank down into my visitor's chair. "Trust me, if you do this long enough, you'll see all kinds." He gave me a smile that somehow managed to look boyish. "Listen, I know I've been riding you hard lately…"
Technically, Bianca was the one he'd been riding, at least in the naked sense – assuming Jake had been telling the truth. But that kind of honesty was definitely off limits. "It's been fine," I told Vince, "really."
"The thing is," he said, "your boyfriend—"
"He's not my boyfriend." Even as I said it, something inside me twisted. Jake never did call me back, and now, in the light of day, I tried to tell myself it was for the best. After all, his claims about Bath Girl still defied any reasonable explanation.
Was it the light of day that had me seeing things differently? Or the fact that Jake was giving me the silent treatment? Still, I so wanted to believe him.
"Well, your 'friend' then," Vince continued, "he's got me chasing my tail." His tone grew serious. "You know we've had to hire extra staff, right?"
I winced. "Actually, I didn't know that. I mean, I haven't seen them around or anything."
"Yeah. You haven't," Vince said. "Because I've got half of them out on damage-control, and the other half providing extra security. You add that to the money that Jake's already cost me, and you can see where I'd be on edge."
In truth, I could see. Whatever had happened between Vince and Jake, it was pretty obvious that Jake's activities were wreaking havoc on Vince and his clients. Loyalty to Jake aside, it was hard not to feel at least a little sympathy.
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