“What do you think of this?” Danny pulled the picture of the decrepit Topanga farmhouse out of his jeans pocket.
“Looks like the house that the spooky-old-man-bad-guy from Scooby-Doo would live in,” said Jake.
“It does, doesn’t it?” Danny’s eyes lit up.
“That wasn’t a compliment,” said Jake. “What are you doing looking at houses anyway? You haven’t got any savings and you hate LA.”
Danny shrugged and put the picture away.
“I know,” he said. “I was just looking. Topanga’s cute.”
“It’s a fucking hippie commune,” said Jake, shoveling down the remains of his salad. Ever since they were boys, Jake had attacked every meal as if he might never eat again. Danny was barely halfway through his own plate. “Listen, I should get back to the store. When do you think you might close the deal with Kiki?”
“Friday, I hope,” said Danny. “She wanted a couple of days to work on her old man.”
“You should have let her work on you,” said Jake, getting to his feet and dropping his napkin on the table. “I assume she was willing?”
“Very,” said Danny. “I just wasn’t in the mood.”
Jake shook his head pityingly. “You should get yourself to a doctor, mate. Score a few little blue pills.”
“Fuck off!” said Danny. “I don’t need Viagra.” I need Diana, he thought. But he didn’t say anything.
“If you say so,” said Jake. “By the way, I’m meeting Ruth for a drink after work tonight, so I probably won’t get home until nine-ish.”
“Oh?” Danny raised an eyebrow. That was two dates in one week. “Are things getting more serious with you two?”
“Maybe.” Jake shrugged. “We’ll see.”
He liked Ruth. She was sexy, with her sleek, dark bob, tiny waist, and mischievous smile. He liked the fact that she was physically very different from Scarlett, petite and curvy versus Scarlett’s willowy and ethereal. She was smart and funny, and she had her own life—she ran a thriving veterinary practice in Hancock Park—that had nothing to do with the jaded, starry West Hollywood scene.
He knew he was still in love with Scarlett. But love hadn’t been enough to keep them together, and now she was farther away from him than ever. He wasn’t ready to throw in the towel yet, like Danny seemed to have done. Sex was not an activity that Jake had ever considered optional.
It was only after Jake had left that Danny realized he’d stuck him with the bill.
Again.
“Cheeky bastard,” he muttered under his breath.
By the time Danny pulled into the driveway of Jake’s apartment, it was almost six. After finishing his lunch at a leisurely pace, some masochistic impulse had prompted him to walk down Robertson and look in the windows of the various baby stores. Diana’s baby—his baby—was due in a matter of weeks. He wanted to start by buying the baby something practical; maybe a stroller? But he realized with a pang that he wasn’t even sure what hospital the baby would be born in and so had no idea where the gift should be shipped. Besides which, Brogan would probably already have gotten the kid a gold-plated Bugaboo.
Along with the rest of the world, he’d heard about Brogan’s arrest. After spectacularly charging him with the murder of Scarlett’s journalist friend in Russia, the FBI had dropped the charges a week later for lack of evidence, although if press reports were to be believed he was still under an injunction not to leave Manhattan. Someone, Danny suspected, had been paid off, but he went out of his way not to watch the news reports in case he accidentally caught a shot of Diana leaving Brogan’s building. He had reached the point where the only way he could function was to cut himself off from her completely. No phone calls, no pictures, no nothing. His hope was that by the time the baby arrived, he’d have pulled himself together enough to face her.
So far, it wasn’t looking good.
Depressed beyond words—the success of his morning had already faded into memory—he bought a couple of unisex onesies in Kitson Kids and two bibs, a blue one that said “Brad Spit” and a pink one with “Drool Barrymore” across the front in gold lettering, before heading back to the apartment.
Taking the stairs instead of the elevator because he missed walking, he felt tired and out of breath as he turned the corner that led to Jake’s front door.
“Hi.”
Danny’s heart stopped. Diana, red-eyed from crying and looking beyond adorable with a pair of denim overalls stretched over her enormous baby bump, was sitting cross-legged in front of the door.
“Hi.” He barely trusted himself to breathe, let alone speak. As if the slightest movement on his part might shatter the wonderful mirage in front of him.
“I know I should have called,” said Diana. “But I didn’t know what to say. I thought, you know, when I saw you…it might come to me.”
“And has it?” Danny felt faint.
Diana shook her head and started to cry. “I expect you hate me.”
“Hate you?” Dropping his shopping bags, he got to his knees and attempted to put his arms around her, which wasn’t easy. “Jesus Christ, Di. I love you. I’m sorry for everything. I’ve missed you so fucking much.”
They clung to each other, weak with relief. It was a few minutes before Danny recovered sufficiently to help Diana to her feet and lead her inside to Jake’s tatty leather couch.
“You don’t have a bag,” he said, suddenly panicked. “Oh God. You are staying, aren’t you?”
She nodded, wiping away tears with the back of her hand.
“Forever, if you’ll have me. Have us.” Looking down at her spherical belly, she smiled shyly. “I thought about bringing some things with me when I left my parents’, but in the end I thought that, whatever happens, I need to make a fresh start. So I drove to JFK and caught the first flight out here. All I brought was a credit card.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Danny, kissing her. “I’ve already got the baby covered.” Reaching into the Kitson bags, he produced the clothes and the bibs. “Oh, and I’ve found us a house.”
He pulled out the now heavily crumpled picture of the farmhouse and showed it to her. She beamed.
“Of course, there is one teeny problem,” he said, stroking her hair.
“What?” she whispered.
“I’m flat broke.”
Reaching out her hand, Diana stroked his face, fixing him with her most earnest gaze. “I don’t care,” she said. “I never did care about the money. Please, let’s not fight about that ever again. We have each other. That’s all that matters.”
“So, you said that you came here from your parents’ place,” said Danny, once they’d finished kissing again. “I thought you and Brogan…”
“It’s a long story,” said Diana. “Why don’t we go to bed, and I’ll tell you all about it later?”
“Sure, of course, of course. You must be shattered,” said Danny, still floating on a cloud of happiness unlike anything he’d ever known.
“Actually, that wasn’t what I meant.”
Diana gave him a meaningful look. In a single, glorious instant, his libido came out of hibernation. He grinned from ear to ear.
“Really? I mean, wouldn’t that hurt the baby?”
Diana laughed. “Uh-uh. Of course, if you don’t feel like doing it with a huge great elephant like me.”
“Are you kidding me?” said Danny, who had already pulled her to her feet and was dragging her toward the bedroom. “You are the sexiest woman who ever lived.”
And he meant it.
When Jake got home a couple of hours later, he walked in to find the two of them naked and ecstatic, coiled in one another’s arms.
“Bloody hell,” he said, blushing and making a hasty retreat to the living room. “Sorry. I didn’t know you had, er…I wasn’t expecting…”
“You can come in,” yelled Danny from the bedroom. He’d pulled the covers up over both of them but had not unwound himself from Diana’s body. He couldn’t. “We
’re decent.”
“Right,” said Jake, tentatively poking his head back around the door. “So does this mean you two are back on?”
“It does,” said Diana. “I hope it won’t put you out too much if I stay here for a week or so. Just until Danny and I get organized again.”
“Put me out?” Jake laughed. “Listen, if you hadn’t come back I’d have thrown him out on his ear. You have no idea what a miserable sod he’s been since you left. Speaking of which, how is that horrible ex-husband of yours?”
“Horrible,” Diana shuddered. “You were both right. I should never have let him back into my life. But I felt so sorry for him, with the cancer and everything. And he really seemed to have changed.”
“All right, new house rule,” said Danny, placing a loving hand across Diana’s mouth. “We don’t talk about money, or the lack of it. And we don’t ever, EVER mention Brogan O’Donnell. Not ever. Deal?”
“Deal,” said Jake and Diana in unison.
“Right,” said Jake, rubbing his hands together happily. No one was more pleased to see a smile on Danny’s face than he was. “Who’d like a lovely postcoital cup o’ tea?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
SCARLETT GAZED AT the computer screen and rubbed her eyes blearily.
Six hundred and forty-two unread messages. Good Lord. She needed a PA. That, and about a year and a half’s sleep. And possibly a monthlong trip to Thailand or somewhere similarly warm and sybaritic, ideally with Nancy. There was a time when she wouldn’t have thought it possible for her to miss LA. But a wet, gray summer day chained to her father’s desk at Drumfernly had made her long for sunshine, flip-flops, and skinny chai lattes like a bona fide Valley girl.
Cameron had finally moved back home, which was both good and bad from Scarlett’s perspective. Good because it got Caroline off her back and gave her something to focus on other than her daughter’s failings. And bad because it was immediately apparent, to everyone other than Caroline, that Cam’s life was never going to be the same again. Still on antidepressant drugs and suffering from chronic bouts of insomnia, he spoke as if he were permanently stoned. Certainly the listless, broken individual that spent his days shuffling around the castle in sweatpants bore little resemblance to his mother’s gay-son fantasies of a happy-go-lucky, Rupert Everett–esque shopping partner with whom she could while away her twilight years.
Scrolling past the latest two e-mails from the estate’s accountant—both of them marked with ominous red exclamation marks—Scarlett opened the latest missive from Jake, updating her on the most recent figures from Flawless.
The numbers weren’t bad, but the e-mail still left her depressed. She hated the way that she and Jake communicated now. The business-speak, the politeness. No one reading their correspondence would ever have guessed that they were friends, never mind that they were once lovers. Scarlett was frightened by how much she missed him.
Just as she was about to turn back to the accountant’s messages, a new mail arrived from Nancy. Smiling for the first time all afternoon, Scarlett clicked it open.
Greetings from sunny Hollywood! it began. Your damned dog has just crapped all over the floor, having gorged himself on the Pinkberry I stupidly left out on the coffee table. I’m afraid I’m going to have to have him put down.
Scarlett laughed. Nancy was so full of shit. She loved Boxie almost as much as Scarlett did.
You’ll be pleased to hear that the movie is going great. Djimon Hounsou is totally fucking awesome as Keke—I told you he’d been cast, right? He’s also hung like King Kong, but that’s beside the point. Lucky Kimora Lee Simmons is all I can say…
The note continued in this vein for quite some time, and Scarlett could feel her spirits lifting with every line. Reading Nancy’s e-mails was like getting a monthly download from Entertainment Tonight, only funnier and filthier. For a few minutes Drumfernly and her family problems seemed a million miles away.
I saw Jake Meyer the other day, she wrote, toward the end of the e-mail. He was having dinner at Asia de Cuba with his new girlfriend, and he actually said hi to me.
Despite herself, Scarlett felt her chest tightening.
Jake had a girlfriend? Obviously she knew he was dating. But the mental picture she’d created for herself involved him out on the scene like a Labrador in heat with a different chick on his arm every night. Somehow that didn’t hurt as much as the idea he might be serious with someone.
You’ll be pleased to hear the girl is a hobbit, said Nancy loyally. She must only come up to his knees, and she’s nowhere near as pretty as you are. Still, in a way I guess it’s good that he’s not shacked up with a full-on bimbo. Who knows, maybe he’s maturing at last?
The rest of the letter was filled with general news. The FBI had released Brogan O’Donnell but arrested his lawyer, Aidan Leach, for the murder of Andy Gordon, which Scarlett already knew. Apparently Brogan’s odious henchman had acted alone, on his own initiative. Scarlett wasn’t sure she bought it, but she was pleased that this time a murder prosecution would go ahead. Clearly the FBI felt they had their man. Andy had been such a good, funny, sweet person, the least he deserved was some justice. According to Nancy, the case was dropping off the radar in the States in terms of press interest. All people seemed to care about was what color wig Britney was wearing and how loopy she was on a week-to-week basis. Dull little events like murders and conspiracy in the diamond business no longer sold magazines, apparently.
She mentioned in passing that Diana O’Donnell was now back together with Danny Meyer—something else that Scarlett already knew, courtesy of Perry (Jake hadn’t bothered to mention it)—and that their baby was due any day. Overdue, in fact. Diana looks like a snake that swallowed a beach ball, as Nancy put it.
I haven’t heard from Che Che in months, she finished, introducing the subject of her ex apparently out of nowhere. Last I heard he was backpacking in Chile, working on some new video installation or something. But you probably know more than I do.
Scarlett could sense the pain behind that last, throwaway line. Clearly the misery of Nancy’s breakup with Che Che was still raw. She wished she had some news of him to tell her friend, but the truth was she hadn’t heard from him herself. Not since the week of Andy’s death, the same week that she’d heard about Cameron and flown back home, the same week that had seen her entire life put on hold, apparently forever…
“Scarlett, darling?”
Hugo’s kindly, vaguely anxious face appeared in the doorway.
“There’s someone here to see you.”
“Well, is it important, Daddy?” Scarlett began. “Because I’ve hardly started on the estate work and I—”
“Yes, it is important. Vitally important.” Scarlett’s face lit up. There, behind her father, stood Aunt Agnes, grinning from ear to ear. “So get your skinny little bottom up out of that chair and come and give an old woman a hug.”
Scarlett did as she was told and soon found herself encircled in her elderly aunt’s crushingly tight embrace. Grayer and perhaps slightly thinner than Scarlett remembered her, Agnes was otherwise unchanged. She had the same clear, defiant blue eyes she’d always had, the same upright, queenly bearing. Still, it felt strange seeing her here, at Drumfernly, standing next to Hugo who, in his crumpled tweeds and slippers, could hardly have looked less like this grand woman’s brother had he been as black as Denzel Washington.
“What are you doing here?” asked Scarlett. “Did Daddy know you were coming?”
“Of course not,” said Agnes brusquely. “You know as well as I do that your father can’t keep a secret. Besides”—linking arms with Scarlett, she led her through into the Great Hall, with a waddling Hugo following in their wake—“if your mother had realized I was coming she’d have started sending the cooks into Buckie for arsenic weeks ago.”
“Nonsense,” lied Hugo. “Caroline’ll be delighted you’re here, Agnes.”
“We don’t have cooks anymore, Aunt A.” Scarlett giggled. �
�I’m afraid those days are long gone. We have Mrs. Cullen.”
“Good gracious. Is she still around?” Aunt Agnes looked surprised.
“Agnes, she’s twenty years younger than I am,” said Hugo reproachfully.
“In any case, if things continue as they have been we won’t even be able to afford her for much longer,” said Scarlett, pouring her aunt a dry sherry before sitting down with her on the tatty old Knowle sofa. “Then you’ll be reduced to Mummy’s cooking. Or mine.”
“You’re an excellent cook,” said Aunt Agnes loyally, patting her niece’s knee. “I do want to talk to you, however—to both of you”—she looked at Hugo, whose worried frown was deepening by the minute—“about the estate finances.”
“Ah, darling, there you are.” Hugo made a brave attempt at a smile as his wife walked in, followed by a mutely shuffling Cameron. “Look who’s here! It’s Agnes.”
“Yes, I can see that, Hugo,” said Caroline tersely. Not a fan of unexpected guests in general, she particularly loathed her sister-in-law, who she knew looked down on her socially, not to mention bitched about her with Scarlett. The one good thing to be said about Agnes was that she’d had the good sense to move to Africa donkey’s years ago, and that she very rarely inflicted herself on them up at Drumfernly. As usual, however, her timing for this particular visit could not have been worse, what with Cameron still so unwell and relations between her and Scarlett even more strained than usual. Caroline wondered what the old bag wanted.
“What brings you over to Scotland?” she asked stiffly. “Will you be staying long?”
“Don’t worry,” said Agnes cheerfully. “I’m as anxious to fly back to sunnier climes as you are to be shot of me.”
“Agnes, honestly, do stop being difficult,” mumbled Hugo. Caroline, pointedly, didn’t bother to correct her.
“I came to talk to Hugo and Scarlett about some business matters. I’ll be here three days at most. Hello, Cameron.”
Flawless Page 45
