And what was with Joe having his agent contact her to set up the dinner? He couldn’t pick up the phone and call her himself? Maybe his over-inflated ego interfered with telephone use, so he had to use his agent as though she were a total stranger. As if she didn’t know he had a birthmark shaped like an amoeba on his right ass cheek.
Unfortunately, her opinions didn’t seem to matter. Tina had made it very clear that if Joseph Kowalski held up a hoop, Keri was to jump through it, wearing a pom-pom hat and barking like a dog if that’s what it took to make the author happy.
It really burned her ass to be in this predicament, and just thinking about her boss made her temples throb. The temptation to walk out was incredibly strong but, while she knew she could walk into any magazine editor’s office and come out with a job, it would set her back years in her quest to climb to the top of the masthead.
It was only an interview, after all.
There hadn’t been a new press or book jacket photo of Joe since his sixth book. That picture had pretty much looked like him, albeit without the grin and dimples. It was one of those serious and contemplative author photos and she’d hated it. But by now, especially considering the coin he was pulling down, he was probably a self-indulgent, fat, bald man with a hunched back from too much time over the keyboard.
She, on the other hand, thought she’d aged well. Nothing about her was as firm as it had been in high school, but she was still slim enough to pull off the pricey little black dress she’d chosen for tonight. Her hair, now sleek and smooth to her shoulders, was still naturally blonde, though she would admit to some subtle highlighting.
“Hey, babe,” a voice above her said, and just like that the sophisticated woman was gone. She was eighteen again, with big dreams, bigger hair and an itch only Joe Kowalski could scratch.
She could almost taste the Boone’s Farm as she turned, braced for an old, fat Joe and finding...just Joe.
He’d aged even better than she had, the bastard. His face had matured and he had a trace of what men were allowed to call character lines, but he still had that slightly naughtier version of the boy-next-door look. Of course, he wasn’t quite as lean as he used to be, but it probably wasn’t noticeable to anybody who hadn’t spent a significant amount of senior year running her hands over his naked body.
All in all, he resembled the boy who’d charmed her out of her pants a lot more than he did the stodgy author she’d hoped to charm into an interview.
“Hi, Joe.” She’d stored up a mental cache of opening lines ranging from cute to funny to serious, and every single one seemed to have been deleted. “Thank you for coming.”
He slid onto the bench seat across the booth from her. “Time’s been pretty damn good to you, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
No, she didn’t mind at all. “You, too. Interesting choice of restaurant, by the way. An eccentricity of the rich and reclusive author?”
He flashed those dimples at her and Keri stifled a groan. Why couldn’t he have been fat and bald except for unattractive tufts of hair sprouting from his ears?
“I just like the all-you-can-eat salad bar,” he said. “So tell me, is Tina hiding under the table? Waiting to pounce on me in the men’s room?”
Keri laughed, partly because it was such a relief to have the topic out in the open. “No, she refuses to leave the city. Says her lungs can’t process unpolluted air.”
His smoky-blue eyes were serious even though his dimples were showing. “Terry’s been expecting you to sell me out for your own advantage since I first made the NYT list.”
Hearing his sister’s name made her wince, and knowing she still held such a low opinion of Keri just made her sad. During the very rare moments she allowed herself to dwell on regrets, she really only had two. And they were both named Kowalski.
“I’m being professionally blackmailed,” she admitted. “If I don’t get an exclusive interview for Spotlight from you, I’m out of a job.”
“I figured as much. Who spilled the beans?”
Keri pulled the 8x10 from her bag and handed it to him. “I don’t know. Do you remember who took that?”
“Alex did, remember? The night we...well, the caption’s pretty thorough.”
She remembered now. Alex had been a friend of Joe’s, but they’d all traveled in the same circle. “But Tina said the blogger who claimed to go to school with you was a woman.”
“His name’s Alexis now. You wouldn’t believe how much he paid for his breasts.”
Keri laughed, but Joe was still looking at the photo. Judging by the way the corners of his lips twitched into a small smile and how he tilted his head, Keri figured Tina had been right about the nostalgia angle.
The waitress approached their table, order pad in hand.
Joe still hadn’t looked up. “Remember the night you started drinking your screwdrivers without the orange juice and did a striptease on Alex’s pool table?”
“I bet the jokes about Alex’s pool table having a nice rack went on forever,” the waitress said, and then Joe looked up.
“You bet they did,” he said easily, but he was blushing.
“There must be a whole new slew of jokes about Alex’s rack now,” Keri said, making Joe laugh.
The waitress tapped her pen on the tab. “So do you guys know what you want?”
And then he did it, just as he always had whenever he’d been asked that question—he looked straight at Keri with blatant hunger in his eyes and said, “Yes, ma’am, I do.”
The shiver passed all the way from her perfectly styled hair to her Ferragamo pumps. Then she watched in silent amusement while he ordered for them both—her regular high school favorite of a medium-well bacon cheeseburger with extra pickles, fries and a side of coleslaw. There was no mention of salad, all-you-can-eat or otherwise.
When the waitress left, she gave him a scolding look. “That’s more calories than I’ve consumed in the last two years, Joe.”
He waved away her half-hearted objection. “Let’s get down to business.”
Keri didn’t want to. She was too busy enjoying that sizzle of anticipation she’d always felt when Joe looked at her. Apparently those blue eyes hadn’t lost their potency over the last two decades.
Joe leaned back against the booth and crossed his arms. It was probably supposed to look intimidating, but all the gesture really did was draw attention to how tan and incredibly well-defined his biceps were against his white T-shirt. Typing definitely wasn’t the only workout his arms got.
“Let’s see if I can synopsize our situation,” he said. “I never give interviews. You want an interview. No, strike that. You need an interview, because the rabid jackal you work for has made it clear your job is on the line. Am I close?”
The sizzle receded to a tingle. “You’re in the ballpark.”
“I’m not just in the ballpark, babe. I’m Josh Beckett on the mound at Fenway. If I don’t give you what you need, you’re hiding behind palm trees waiting for drunk pop stars to pop out of their Wonderbras.”
And that pretty much killed the last of the lingering tingle. “Payback’s a bitch and all that, right, Joe?”
The dimples flashed. “Isn’t it?”
Keri just shrugged. She wasn’t about to start putting deals on the table or making promises. After years of dealing with celebrities, she usually knew how to handle herself. But this was Joe Kowalski. He’d seen her naked and she’d broken his heart. That changed the rules.
“I’m leaving town tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll be gone two weeks.”
The tingle flared up again, but this time it was a lot more panic and a lot less anticipation. “There’s always the telephone or fax or email.”
“Not where I’m going.”
She laughed. “Would that be Antarctica or a grass hut in the Amazon Basin?”
“I’m not even
leaving the state.”
Joe had sucked at cards in high school—he had no poker face—but she couldn’t read him now. The instincts that had skyrocketed her to the top of the Spotlight food chain were giving her nothing, except the feeling he was setting her up for something she might want no part of.
The waitress brought their food, buying Keri a few more minutes to think. One thing Joe had never had was a mean streak—if there was no chance in hell of the interview happening, he wouldn’t have agreed to meet her for dinner. He’d never had it in him to humiliate somebody for the sake of his own enjoyment.
Granted, the kind of checks he had to be cashing changed a person, but she’d already seen enough of him—and heard enough from her mother—to know Joe was still Joe. Just with more expensive toys.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to have her jumping through hoops, of course. Probably an entire flaming series of them.
She bit into the bacon cheeseburger and the long-forgotten flavor exploded on her tongue. She closed her eyes and moaned, chewing slowly to fully savor the experience.
“How long has it been since you’ve had one of those?” Joe asked, and she opened her eyes to find him watching her.
Keri swallowed, already anticipating the next bite. “Years. Too many years.”
He laughed at her, and they enjoyed some idle chit-chat while they ate. She brought up the movie and he talked about it in a generic sense, but she noted how careful he was not to say anything even remotely interview worthy.
There would be no tricking the man into revealing something that would get Tina off her back.
“You know,” she said, still holding half her cheeseburger, “I really want to enjoy this meal more, and I can’t with this hanging over my head. What’s it going to take?”
“I gave it some thought before I came, and I think you should come with me.”
“Where?”
“To where I’m going.”
Keri set the cheeseburger on the plate. “For two weeks?”
The length of time hardly mattered, since she couldn’t return to California without the interview anyway. But she’d like an idea of what she was signing up for.
“Whether you’re there for two weeks or not is up to you. For each full day you stick it out with the Kowalskis, you get to ask me one question.”
Keri, unlike Joe, did have a poker face and she made sure it was in place while she turned his words over in her head. “When you say the Kowalskis, you mean...”
“The entire family.” The dimples were about as pronounced as she’d ever seen them. “Every one of them.”
Her first thought was oh shit. Her second, to wonder if People was hiring.
Joe reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a folded sheet of spiral notebook paper. “Here’s a list of things you’ll need. I jotted it down in the parking lot.”
Keri unfolded the paper and read the list twice, trying to get a sense of what she was in for.
BRING: Bug spray; jeans; T-shirts; several sweatshirts, at least one with a hood; one flannel shirt (mandatory); pajamas (optional); underwear (also optional); bathing suit (preferably skimpy); more bug spray; sneakers; waterproof boots; good socks; sunscreen; two rolls of quarters.
DO NOT BRING: cell phone; Blackberry; laptop; camera, either still or video; alarm clock; voice recorder; any other kind of electronic anything.
She had no clue what it meant, other than Joe wanting her half-naked and unable to text for help.
Chapter Two
The first day of the annual family vacation was always hell for Terry Kowalski Porter. Her twelve days of fun and relaxation were bookended by two days of wanting to throw herself under a speeding RV.
The convoy of Kowalskis usually managed to make it up the interstate and across Route 3 in a somewhat organized fashion, but as soon as they entered the campground they scattered, leaving Terry to run her ass off helping everybody get settled in.
First, her parents, because their forty-foot luxury liner on wheels brought all campground activity to a screeching halt until it was docked. Leo Kowalski refused to let anybody else drive the baby his son had bought him, so Terry’s main purpose was keeping her impatient brothers on a tight leash while Dad executed a precision eighty-point turn to back it in to their site.
Then came landing pads, leveling and sewer pipes. Water hoses and electrical connections. They had the routine pretty much down by this point, but heaven forbid Leo and Mary Kowalski not have drama.
“That seem level to you, Mary?” One thing about their parents, they were loud.
“I’m inside, Leo! How would I know?”
“Are you listing to the left?”
Next came her middle brother Mike and his family, who needed three adjoining sites for their sprawl. The first site held their RV—a much smaller one than their parents’—in which Mike, Lisa and their two youngest boys slept. The site also held a multi-burnered barbecue grill-slash-cooking center so massive it took all three brothers plus the oldest of Mike’s sons to lift it out of the trailer.
The second site held the pop-up camper they pulled behind the RV and in which their two older boys slept. It was also here Lisa erected the complex and extensive network of clothesline strung from tree to tree until it was large enough to contain their family’s wet clothes.
The third site would contain a large screenhouse and a series of tarps which served to guarantee that, no matter how hard it rained, Lisa would not be confined in her RV with her four rambunctious boys.
The youngest of the Kowalski siblings, Kevin, was the easiest to get set up. Since his divorce, he required only a small tent, a hibachi and the largest cooler money could buy. He claimed to be a camping purist, but Terry knew he didn’t see any point in going whole-hog when his parents were four sites over in a half-million-dollar home away from home.
Joe always rented one of the campground’s cabins so he could bring his laptop and have relative comfort and privacy to write, and normally Terry would help him unload his SUV. But she didn’t happen to be speaking to her twin brother just now, so she sent her nephews in her place.
The havoc the four boys would wreak on his cabin would be just the beginning of the payback Joe Kowalski would suffer.
The minute she’d heard her brother’s voice on the other end of the line telling her they might need another jar of peanut butter after all, Terry knew what the dumb son of a bitch had gone and done.
As if the Kowalski family vacation wasn’t hectic enough, he’d thrown Keri Daniels into the mix. Even worse, the rest of the family threw in behind Joe. Their parents were thrilled. Mike and Lisa couldn’t spare the energy to care one way or the other, and Kevin? Terry knew Kevin well enough to know he was going to weasel his way into Keri’s pants if he could, or at least use her to needle his big brother if he couldn’t.
Of course, none of them had a twelve-year-old daughter who hated camping, hated being disconnected from IM for more than a single hour and—most of all—hated the fact her parents were separated. And of course she couldn’t understand why her Uncle Joe’s ex-girlfriend was invited, but not her dad, who technically wasn’t even an ex yet.
The same twelve-year-old daughter who was at that very moment sitting in a lounge chair, sipping Coke in front of their still closed RV. Terry’s brothers had helped her get it backed in and they’d leveled it and done the sewer and water hook-ups before she shooed them away. She and Steph had to get used to doing things for themselves now that there was no man around the house.
Unfortunately, getting her daughter to do anything at all was a challenge in itself. “Stephanie, I asked you to at least get it plugged in and open the windows.”
“Dad always does that part.”
“Dad’s not here. And you always helped him, so I know you know how to do it.”
Eye roll. “Why couldn
’t I stay with him?”
Terry took a deep breath, reminding herself for the umpteenth time it was about who had Internet access for the next two weeks and not which parent Stephanie loved most. “Because his apartment isn’t big enough and you’re too old to share his damn futon with him.”
“When is Uncle Joe’s old girlfriend supposed to get here?”
“I don’t know, Steph. Let’s just get set up so we can—”
“I think that’s her.”
Terry turned, then muttered a word she tried, as a rule, not to say in front of her daughter.
Of course that was her. God forbid Keri Daniels should ever gain a pound or twenty or have visible roots, dammit. No, she was still thin, still gorgeous, and—unlike Terry’s—none of her body parts appeared to be migrating south.
Keri was staring in horror at the trailers littering the common area, waiting for the campers and trucks that had hauled them to be situated before they were unloaded. On the trailers sat twelve four-wheelers of various sizes and colors, one of them brand-spanking-new.
Keri turned, making eye contact with Terry for the first time in decades. “What the hell are those?”
“They’re four-wheelers. My dad took us riding when we were ten, or did you forget that, too?”
Keri’s crimson lips pursed in disgust. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Joe must have more money than God. You people couldn’t take a cruise or something?”
“Us people like four-wheeling. Besides, nothing brings a family together like a post-ride tick check.”
“Tick check?” Terry had the satisfaction of seeing her best friend-turned-nemesis turn pale under her expertly applied blush. “Tick check? I can’t do this.”
“Steph, let your uncle know Keri Daniels has arrived.”
“Uncle Joe, you’re girlfriend’s here!” the girl bellowed in the direction of the cabins.
“If I wanted it screamed across the campground, Stephanie Porter, I could have done it myself.”
But in reality, she didn’t feel like yelling. She felt a lot more like rolling on the grass laughing her ass off.
Flare Up Page 25
