Kiss the Girl

by Susan Sey

  KISS THE GIRL

  by

  Susan Sey

  Copyright 2012 Susan Seyfarth

  ISBN: 978-1-938580-01-7

  Kindle edition

  Cover art by Lyndsey Lewellen

  Other titles by Susan Sey

  MONEY, HONEY

  MONEY SHOT

  Dedication

  For Inara Scott, who's been with me every step of the way.

  For Ann and Katrina, who know how to keep calm and carry on.

  For Claudia and Greta, who do like to see their names in my books.

  And for Bryan, whose faith in me is big enough for the both of us.

  And because he has never once suggested that we eat out too much.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Nixie Leighton-Brace wasn’t afraid to die. She’d been in the humanitarian business long enough to know that death was hardly the worst thing that could happen to a girl. She just didn’t want to go before knocking Dr. James Harper--her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend--on his cheating ass.

  The hard blue sky wheeled around the bubble window of her helicopter. A yellow line of drought-stricken horizon veered crazily into view every so often while the pilot fought the controls, the wind, and the bucking helicopter. He kept up a terse commentary over his headset to whatever authority governed Kenya’s air traffic.

  Well, that caps it, Nixie thought as a bubble of hysterical laughter lodged in her throat. Every single second of her life had been documented by some form of media, and now this. Somebody was going to narrate her death via radio.

  But it wouldn’t end here. She knew that. If she died today, James would sell exclusive photo rights to the funeral to Chat Magazine for millions. He’d cry crocodile tears for the cameras then continue to fuck his way through the entire Peace Corps. She and God had had their differences over the years, but Nixie refused to believe He’d stoop so low.

  As if in direct response to this inner conviction, the shearing cross-wind died. The helicopter wobbled, spun, then steadied. The pilot’s grin broke like dawn over his dark, sweat-sheened face, and he gave Nixie the thumbs up. Nixie thought hey, both hands on the stick there, pal, but smiled back anyway. She was going to live. Long enough to deliver James’ beat-down, anyway. Nixie’s faith, such as it was, remained intact.

  The pilot lowered the chopper lightly to the ground. Nixie watched from her protective glass bubble as the rotor wash blasted the thirsty earth, stripping away yet another layer of Kenya’s precious topsoil. She unbuckled her harness and pulled the headset gingerly out of the wild bramble of her hair. The desert was not kind to the naturally curly. She muscled open the door of the chopper just as Karl Dettreich, Leighton-Brace Charitable Giving’s long time political advisor and Nixie’s de facto parental figure, rolled up in a white Land Rover.

  Nixie hopped out, and turned to catch the canvas bag the pilot tossed her. “Asante,” Nixie thanked him. “I wasn’t looking to die today.”

  “God is good,” the pilot said, grinning. He adjusted his headset and waited for Nixie to duck-walk her way out of the danger zone, then lifted off. He executed a neat little pivot and bulleted into the sharp blue dome of the cloudless sky. Nixie trotted over to the Land Rover.

  “Hey, Nixie,” Karl bellowed. He was the only person Nixie knew who habitually spoke at a roar. The top of his head rose bald and sweaty from a bushy ring of salt and pepper hair. He swabbed it with a red bandana, which he then stuffed into the drooping pocket of his cargo shorts. “How was Nairobi?”

  “Huge. Hot. Crowded.” Nixie patted the canvas duffel at her side. “Successful.”

  “You got them signed?” Karl’s eyes were black and bright behind his glasses. “All of them?”

  “Our clinic is now fully accredited by the Minister of Public Health, and our standards of care will be posted in every rural hospital in the country.”

  Karl shook his shaggy head. “How do you do that voodoo you do so well?”

  Nixie smiled. Karl liked his Frank Sinatra. “I bribe quite lavishly. It’s Leighton-Brace policy.”

  “I know. I wrote the guidelines. You must bribe exceptionally well, even by our standards.”

  “I was in a hurry to get back.” Nixie handed over the canvas bag with the documents and wrenched open the Land Rover’s passenger door. Hot air blasted out of the cab and she tossed a towel from the floorboards over the blistered vinyl seat so it wouldn’t barbecue her thighs. Karl rounded the hood, squeezed his bulk into the cab and took the wheel.

  He fired up the Land Rover and laid the accelerator on the floor. The truck leapt forward, and they both sighed in relief at the air circulation.

  “Listen, Nixie,” he said. He cut his eyes at her, but the lenses of his glasses went opaque in the sun. Nixie’s chest tightened. “There’s something we need to talk about.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re not going to like this.”

  “Okay.” She put her hands together, tucked them between her knees. “What is it?”

  “You’re really not going to like this.”

  “Karl, what?” This was the man who’d unflinchingly delivered every piece of bad news in her life, from boarding school to her father’s death. The fact that he hesitated told her it was beyond bad. “Did the clinic burn down while I was away? Did Mom drop the f-bomb on a live mic again?”

  “No, nothing like that.” Karl patted Nixie’s knee with one of those big, avuncular paws. He put his hand back on the wheel and stared straight out the windshield while they rocketed past a collection of slip-shod huts and plywood buildings on the outskirts of town. “It’s about James,” he finally said.

  Nixie sighed, both relieved and resigned. “You know already?” she asked.

  “You know?”

  “That my boyfriend is a faithless bastard? Yeah, I know.” Nixie’s hands fisted between her knees and she stared out the window at the tents and shacks zipping by, built closer and closer together as they approached city center. “Don’t worry about it, okay? I’ll take care of it. I have a plan.”

  Karl slowed in deference to foot traffic and the occasional chicken but his volume went the other direction. “Don’t worry about it? Don’t worry about it? How can I not worry about it? It’s my job to worry about this shit, Nixie.” He shifted his bulk, rolling up onto one cheek so he could fish out his bandana again. He mopped his crown and said, “Jesus. What a day. And what’s this about a plan?”

  Nixie smiled. She felt evil, and she kind of liked it. She never got to be evil. “I found a pair of panties--not mine--in my pocket this morning,” she said. “In James’s pocket, really. I must’ve accidentally packed his shorts instead of mine. Anyway, you can imagine my surprise.”

  “Nice.” Karl threaded the Land Rover through what passed for rush h
our traffic in rural Kenya. Mostly goats and kids. He shot her a look, then boomed, “Jesus, you fit into your boyfriend’s shorts?”

  “I’m tall.” Nixie shrugged. “Still, I probably should’ve listened to Mom. She always says, if he fits in your pants, he shouldn’t get in your pants. Who would have thought I’d ever look back on my dating life and wish I’d paid more attention to Sloan Leighton?”

  Karl’s mouth was a grim line inside his silver-streaked beard as he parked outside the abandoned Red Cross building Nixie had co-opted as project HQ.

  “Ironic,” he said. “Now about this plan?”

  “The press is going to eat this up, you know. They love messy break ups. People will be wearing t-shirts taking sides. I’m going to have to turn the other cheek in public. A lot.”

  Karl nodded tersely. “I know, Nixie. I’m sorry.”

  He cut the engine and Nixie leapt onto the hard-baked earth, slamming the door behind her like a rifle-shot. She stalked through the corrugated tin doors of the white stucco building, Karl huffing at her heels.

  A handful of journalists were gathered in the foyer, leaning on the front desk, telling each other lies and smoking. It was a nice assortment, Nixie noted with satisfaction as she mowed a path through them without so much as a greeting.

  They lifted their heads, sniffed the air, and came to attention with the collective intelligence of their species. Nixie had been raised in front of a camera lens. She knew these men and women by name, asked after their kids, their spouses, their pets. She respected their work, and understood that without them she didn’t have a job. She never failed to greet them, or stop for a picture or a quote. Her failure to do so now was tantamount to running a red flag up the pole and announcing, “I am bent on homicide. Be ready with the cameras.”

  Nixie knew exactly what she was doing.

  “Don’t be sorry for me, Karl,” she said. She didn’t have to look behind her to know she was now leading a small parade. “Before I start turning the other cheek, I’m going to make sure Team Nixie has adequate ammo.”

  “Oh God.” Karl broke into a trot as Nixie took the stairs two at a time toward the living quarters on the second floor. The journalists fumbled for notebooks, cell phones, cameras, anything that would record the delicious disaster Nixie was about to serve up.

  As she barreled down the narrow, dimly lit hall, a savage joy welled up in Nixie. She was too honest with herself to believe she was heart broken. She hadn’t loved James, but she had expected him to be faithful. If she had to live through the public humiliation of his infidelity--and she would; some secrets never kept--at least she could strike the first blow. In the endless retellings of the Nixie-James break-up the press was sure to provide in the coming months, there would be irrefutable proof that she’d been the one to end the relationship. She’d make sure of it. She was about to toss his cheating ass out in front of a dozen witnesses with cameras and a direct line to public opinion.

  She paused outside the room she’d shared with James these past months and Karl caught her elbow. “Nixie, Jesus, slow down and think! James is a shit, I know, but he’s a well-connected shit. His father’s about to run for president, for Christ’s sake. You do this, and Team James is going to come back at you with some serious firepower. Are you sure you want to do this?”

  She just smiled at the journalists hovering behind him like vultures waiting for the lions to clear out. “Get ready with those cameras, kids.”

  “James!” she shouted through the door. “Get out here! I want to talk to you, you lying sack of...”

  She threw the door open, and the words died in her throat. She stared in paralyzed horror at the bed. At James’s naked ass, specifically, as it diligently humped some faceless woman in a similar state of undress. The woman’s moans crescendoed toward triumph, but Nixie was stuck on her legs. Long, toned and golden, they poked out of the tangled sheets on either side of James’ busy butt, feet to the ceiling, bouncing to the beat of the bedsprings.

  Nixie’s vision wavered and grayed, and she sucked at the thin air. She knew those legs. Everybody knew those legs. They were famous. Legendary. Insured in the mid-seven figures each.

  “Mom?”

  James’s butt lunged heroically once more, shuddered, then went still. He groaned and dropped his head to the pillow, giving the room a clear view of her mother’s equally famous face--her head thrown back on a cloud of amber curls, her full lips parted in ecstasy, her eyes squeezed shut as she milked the moment for every ounce of pleasure. The cameras clicked and whirred like a plague of locusts at Nixie’s back, the strobing flashes burning into Nixie’s brain forever the image of her mother’s airborne feet, flexed and striving, as she finished up what must have been one humdinger of an orgasm.

  “Well, Nixie?” Karl said, resigned. “I assume you wanted to say something?”

  Nixie’s throat worked, her mouth opened, but no words presented themselves. She thought about the past twenty-eight years, the entirety of her life, spent trailing after her gorgeous, needy mother. Her childhood washed pale with the explosion of flashbulbs, overlaid with shouting paparazzi. Boarding schools interspliced with refugee camps, Red Cross outposts, and war zone after war zone. Her mother always holding an orphan, a victim, a widow while her father, then later Karl, held her. Then nobody holding her. Just her holding a clipboard while she slowly learned to run the show that revolved around Sloan Leighton and her fame.

  “Nixie?” Karl’s hand touched her shoulder. “Honey?”

  Nixie walked into the room, pulled the panties from her pocket and hooked them over her mother’s toes. Sloan’s knees slowly folded, and the panties descended like the flag of a defeated army. Her eyes stayed closed, though, as if not acknowledging the situation would somehow erase it.

  Nixie finally found her voice.

  “Hey, Mom. I quit.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Six weeks later

  Nixie stood in the echoing kitchen of Leighton-Brace Charitable Giving’s DC apartment and eyed the stove. It was a hulking beast, a couple cubic yards of gleaming chrome, cast iron and bad attitude. Nixie was almost sure it was French. She’d already assigned it a snooty Parisian accent in her head. Ouf! Always wit zee tiresome attempts at zee cookeeng, zees woman. I must put her in her proper place, non? Last night’s attempt at dinner had actually caught fire before Nixie admitted defeat.

  So her stove hated her. Big deal. She was no stranger to being disliked for arbitrary reasons. Nixie currently occupied the moral high ground in the battle for public sympathy but Sloan was way hotter and had mastered the art of indulging her self-destructive streak for the greater good. With six lavish weddings, one harrowing widowhood, five bitter divorces, and countless well-documented scenes under her belt, Nixie’s mom was a perennial tabloid favorite. But she’d also spent the past twenty-odd years pitching her fits in corners of the world most people wanted to forget, sharing the spotlight with the kind of unspeakable suffering people couldn’t forget once they’d seen it. And that made her an American institution. The kind of bad girl her country loved. So no matter what she did to her only daughter, Sloan’s fame was at this point a self-propelled mower.

  Which was exactly why Nixie needed to figure out this damned stove.

  She cooked competently over a campfire, and she knew how to handle herself with grace at a state dinner. The gray area--admittedly large--between those two extremes had been handled by chefs in her mother’s homes and take out in all other circumstances. But since her bitter break up with Leighton-Brace Charitable Giving, even the take-out guys had sold her out. Every time she ordered in, they showed up at the door with the paparazzi in tow. Photos of Nixie with startled eyes, bad hair and a steaming bag of Chinese food appeared in the tabloids with dismaying regularity.

  She poured herself a large glass of wine for courage. There was a great deal in her life she couldn’t fix. Not knowing how to feed herself in plugged-in, urban America wasn’t one of them. Nixie cracked open The P
assionate Vegetarian--all thousand plus pages of it--and applied herself to the business of producing a pumpkin and bean lasagna.

  The phone rang just as she slid the diced onions into a pan of sizzling canola oil.

  “Hello?” She had to shout a bit, as the onions were cooking with enthusiasm. So far, so good.

  “Nixie, it’s Karl.”

  She gave the onions a good sharp poke with the wooden spoon and turned away from the stove. She was a little lonely, sure. But not lonely enough to welcome another stop-being-ridiculous phone call from Karl.

  “What do you want, Karl?”

  “I want you to come home. We have work to do.”

  She stepped out of the kitchen and sighed. “I am home.”

  “You’re not home. You’re camping out in the corporation’s DC apartment, hiding from the world and eating a lot of take out, if the tabloids have it right. Come on, Nixie. Sloan dumped James weeks ago. That big scene in Prague? You must’ve read about it. Why don’t you come home now?”

  She realized she was trying to choke the spoon to death and consciously relaxed her grip. “Because I quit, remember?”

  “I can’t believe you’re this upset about an asshole like James Harper.” He sighed. “Didn’t I tell you he was a dirt bag? Didn’t I say he wasn’t good enough for you?”

  “This isn’t about James. This is about Sloan.”

  “Oh, please.” Karl snorted. “Sloan’s no different than usual.”