Kiss the Girl

by Susan Sey

  “Dr. Larsen, is there anything in your Personnel and Policy Handbook that would preclude a relationship between a board member and a benefactor of Nixie’s stature?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Erik said, still frowning at Nixie.

  “We’re not having a relationship,” Nixie put in. “It was just a kiss. Now about this asthma project--”

  “Because if there were some kind of regulation against such a relationship, it would be easy enough to spin the photos into a severance of the clinic project.”

  “There aren’t any photos,” Nixie said.

  “There are always photos,” Karl said without glancing her way. He stroked his beard and gazed into the middle distance. Sloan curled her legs into the chair and smiled at Erik, who cleared his throat and glanced warily at Nixie, one hand going to the back of his head.

  “I don’t want to sever the clinic project. Besides, there are no photos,” Nixie said. Nobody responded, and a familiar sense of futility descended on her. “Hello? No photos. No relationship. No rule against one even if there were.”

  Nothing. Nixie looked at Erik. “Will you please tell them?”

  He lifted his shoulders. “I can try.” He leaned against the arm of the couch, made a face and straightened up again.

  “Listen, Karl,” he said. “There’s nothing on the books that would preclude me from kissing Nixie into next week if I wanted to.” Nixie closed her eyes. This was not going well. “But you can rest assured that I’m not going to do that. It was just lunch. A couple burgers and an impulsive kiss.”

  The silence that followed was long and grim.

  “I don’t believe this,” Sloan said, a slow smile curving her lips.

  Karl just stared. “Nixie, have you been eating meat?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Erik blinked at Karl in fascination. “You say meat exactly like somebody else might say toxic waste,” he said.

  Nixie’s advisor raked a paw through that wiry halo of hair and looked grim. Sloan smiled her sly, cat-like smile. Nixie looked like she was praying for deliverance.

  “Oh, come on,” Erik said, glancing from face to face. “It was just a burger.”

  “Did anybody see you?” Karl asked. Nixie sank into the couch and Karl turned accusing eyes on Erik.

  “Everybody in Steve-O’s, I imagine,” Erik told him.

  “Nixie, we’re still under contract to PETA,” Karl said. “Do you have any idea what kind of damage this could do your credibility? The credibility of your brand?”

  “I know,” she moaned, flopping back against the couch. She winced and sat up again. Erik sympathized. That couch was like a mirage. It only looked like a comfortable place to sit down. “I can’t explain it. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry.” Karl shook his head. “I’m ashamed of you, Phoenix.”

  Nixie flinched and bowed her head. She looked small, defeated, and it was...wrong somehow. Nixie was never defeated. She was bold and charming and outrageous. She talked her way into unsuitable outings and mopped up puke and beat down teenaged punks who tried to snatch her off the street. Was she really going to let this self-satisfied talking head shame her?

  “It was a burger,” Erik said to Karl. “Not Armageddon.”

  “Have you ever pissed off the PETA people, Dr. Larsen?” Sloan asked. “It’s a lot more like Armageddon than you’d imagine.”

  Erik turned back to Nixie. “And you. Where’s your spine, huh? Where’s the woman who sweet talked a Senator into a little breaking and entering, then spent the rest of the morning dodging killer dogs and El Caminos without turning a hair?”

  Sloan’s smile grew. “Yeah, she sounds like fun. Where are you keeping her, Nixie?”

  “Breaking and entering?” Karl finally looked alarmed. “Which Senator?”

  “Oh, calm down,” Nixie said. “All of you.” She stood up, clapped her hands together decisively and said, “Okay, here’s the deal. Erik, you’re right. I’m being a wimp. Thanks for the reminder.” She smiled at him and Erik’s stomach did a weird little flip. She turned to her advisor. “However, Karl’s also right to be ashamed of me right now. But not for eating a stupid burger. He ought to be ashamed of me for letting other people--PETA included--tell me what I believe. What I want. What I am.”

  Sloan looped thin arms around her knees and said, “Hallelujah. There’s some of me in the old girl after all. How did you like that burger, Nixie?”

  Nixie shot her mother a poisonous look, and Erik suddenly realized that Nixie wasn’t a vegetarian because of Sloan. Sloan probably ingested anything that landed in front of her, from a handful of rice to a couple lines of coke. No, Karl was the evangelical vegetarian.

  “Nixie, come on.” Karl stood up, put a hand on Nixie’s arm. “I would never be so hard on you if I wasn’t absolutely sure that we believed the same things. The same things we’ve been working and fighting for all your life.”

  “I know that, Karl,” she said, and patted his hand. Erik sat on the arm of the couch and shook his head. He was losing track of the score. Was Karl winning? Was Nixie? Sloan seemed wearily amused by the whole thing, as if she’d been hearing the same argument for years. She probably had. He wondered who usually won.

  Not that it mattered to him. The bottom line was that Nixie had baggage--big, heaping piles of it, excellent for squashing any lingering traces of an inconvenient lust. His stomach settled nicely at the thought.

  “We do believe the same things,” Nixie told Karl. “Fate smiled on me in a big way, in terms of wealth and fame. And that means I’ve got an enormous responsibility toward people who haven’t been so lucky. But it’s dishonest and patronizing to pretend I know what people need to rebuild their homes, their lives, when I’ve never had either one.”

  Karl took up her hands. “You’re a good kid, Nixie. Truly.”

  “But?”

  “But we don’t have time for an existential crisis right now.”

  “I should have known.” Nixie frowned at him. “You wouldn’t show up a month early for nothing. What’s happened?”

  He squeezed her hands, a smile cracking the habitual soberness of his round face. “Aribi finally died.”

  “What?”

  He spun her around in an impulsive little two-step. “We got word this morning. Aribi’s dead, Nixie!”

  Erik figured he spoke for ninety-eight percent of his countrymen when he said, “Who?”

  But Nixie knew. One look at her face told him that. She was like a wooden doll in Karl’s big hands. He stopped dancing, took her by the shoulders and said, “We need to be in Bumani by morning if we’re going to catch the best action. We’re in talks with HBO to send a documentary film crew with us, and I’ve already sold the initial photography rights to Chat Magazine. Women and children are dancing in the streets, Nixie, and Sloan’s going to lead the party. And then it’ll be your turn. You can build a few schools, educate some little girls. You can have all the clinics you want after we bury this bastard.”

  He swung her back into that manic two-step, but Nixie jerked out of his arms.

  “No,” she said.

  Sloan sighed. “Here we go again. Back on the pedestal.”

  Karl frowned. “What do you mean, no?”

  “I mean no.” Nixie’s eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed. “I’m building something here.”

  “Nixie.” Karl dipped his chin and watched her over the top of his glasses. “I appreciate your wanting to finish this clinic thing out, but be reasonable.”

  “I am being reasonable.”

  “You really think putting a bunch of fat American kids on TV and boo-hooing over their asthma is more important than helping build an infrastructure that will support the intellectual and economic development of an entire nation of disadvantaged women?”

  Erik watched Nixie bear up under that one. Damn, this man was a master. Erik would bet good money at least one of his many degrees was in psychology.


  “That’s not the point,” Nixie finally said.

  “Then, please, Nixie. Enlighten us. What exactly is your point?”

  She swallowed visibly, and Erik could see her hands trembling. She twisted them together and said, “I can’t live that life anymore. It was bad for me.”

  Karl frowned at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about this!” Nixie’s arms wheeled around, taking in her mother, her advisor, the entire apartment. “What we do together. We’re dysfunctional and sick, and I don’t want to do it anymore.”

  Sloan propped her chin on one lacquered fingernail. “Don’t you think you’re being the teensiest bit dramatic, Nixie?”

  “No, that’s your job.” Nixie turned to Erik. “How many times has my mom been married since my dad died?”

  He blinked. “Um, six?” He turned to Sloan. “Did you ever marry that Italian guy?”

  “Which one?”

  “The one whose ring you tossed off a yacht into the Mediterranean?”

  “No. His mother didn’t care for me.”

  “Five, then,” he said to Nixie.

  “Which means five messy divorces and countless ugly public break ups. I used to think she was an incurable romantic, but now I know better. It’s just business, isn’t it, Mom? Karl IDs the world’s next fashionable disaster, you self-destruct en route, I prop you up, the cameras eat it all up, and we sell a million magazines. Am I the only one who thinks this is unhealthy?”

  Karl looked at Nixie, his face round and stern. “We reach an incredibly wide audience because of the particular dynamic between you and Sloan. Compared to most humanitarian organizations, our donor base is huge. We raise money they only dream of, and we use it to build orphanages, hospitals, and schools. We immunize children, we dig clean wells, we provide money for books, computers, medicines, farms and food. More importantly, we bring our issues to more people than the Red Cross, Amnesty International and The AIDS Project combined. So it costs us a little personal discomfort. What we buy with it is priceless.”

  “Easy for you to say. It doesn’t cost you a thing.” Nixie turned to her mother. “Mom. You don’t have to do this anymore.”

  “Do what?” Sloan gave her a lazy smile.

  “That,” Nixie said flatly. “The whole sex-drenched, red-hot siren thing you do. It still works, don’t get me wrong. But how long before it starts to get pathetic? You’re not getting any younger, you know.”

  Sloan’s smile froze. “I was young enough for your boyfriend, wasn’t I?”

  Nixie made a rude noise. “You didn’t even like James. You were just ramping up the publicity for the Kenyan clinic’s grand opening.”

  Sloan sat up like she’d been slapped. “I’m no angel, Nixie, but I am not a whore.”

  “Oh, God. I didn’t mean that.” Nixie’s hands went to her mouth, her eyes giant and green above her fingertips. She reached for her mother, but Sloan turned away, her hands gripping her elbows until the knuckles showed through her skin. “I...” She broke off helplessly, turning to Karl in mute appeal.

  “Okay, Nixie,” he said gently. “That’s enough. You’ve made your point.”

  He went to Sloan, patted her arm. “We’ll take this one step at a time. Let’s get Nixie’s asthma project wrapped up, then we’ll talk about Bumani.” Sloan let him take her hand, and she nodded silently.

  Karl turned to Nixie, who was still frozen with horror at her own ugly words. He dropped a paternal kiss on her forehead and Nixie leaned into him like she’d received a benediction.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I never meant...”

  “I know, honey. Don’t worry. We’ll work it out. We always do. Isn’t that right, Sloan?”

  “Yeah. Sure.” Erik watched with interest as Sloan obeyed Karl with the reluctant faith of a cynic in the presence of her own personal messiah. Erik wondered if she knew that Karl watched Nixie the same way.

  And this, Erik thought, was why he didn’t date women like Nixie. All women were complicated, but women like Nixie were complicated in ways he’d never figure out. She was trouble. And while he shouldn’t want any part of it, he was afraid there were a few parts he wanted quite a lot.

  He needed to get his head on straight. Right now.

  Mary Jane watched the Home and Garden channel half-heartedly from the depths of a curvy Victorian sofa. She’d found it at a yard sale last summer and reupholstered it herself in a luxe cranberry microfiber. It was her favorite place in the world to lie down and take refuge from a crappy day, but it wasn’t doing the trick this afternoon. She still had a stuffy, low-grade headache, courtesy of her all day crying jag.

  She sat up and flipped over to the Food Network. Jamie Oliver was flirting his way through a Nicoise Salad. She tried to pay attention, but somewhere between the olives and the eggs her mind wandered back to Anacostia. To Ty.

  She punched the power button on the remote with a frustrated little moan. She wanted to go to work. She needed the edgy rush of non-stop decisions and overpowering stress. She didn’t want to think about why a clean, quiet apartment full of her favorite things felt so empty and sterile.

  But she couldn’t go back to Anacostia. Not today. It was too full of Ty and the way he’d had her body purring like a high-performance engine all night. It had stomped the living hell out of her heart when sun came up and she realized that she’d been a fool. Again.

  Tears rushed into her eyes with a stinging vengeance and she blinked them back. God, how could she have any tears left? She’d cried a lifetime’s worth when Ty had first walked out on her.

  It was just sex, she reminded herself. Purely physical, purely over.

  But when the doorbell rang, her heart leapt into her mouth and her pulse launched itself right into orbit. Oh God, she thought, looking down at herself. Did anything scream broken-hearted quite like a bathrobe and puffy eyes at four p.m.? Wads of Kleenex littered the carpet around the couch like new fallen snow. She scooped them up and stuffed them into her pockets. Great. Now she looked like her ass had finally conquered the thigh-territory it had been eying since high school.

  The doorbell rang again, this time accompanied by a voice calling, “Mary Jane? Are you in there?”

  Erik. Not Ty. Her heartbeat stuttered back to normal. “Idiot,” she muttered to herself. Ty wasn’t going to suddenly change his mind about his life’s work. Why couldn’t she wrap her stupid brain around the fact that he was never going to turn up on her doorstep with a dozen roses, a ring, and a more appropriate outlet for his business acumen? Particularly not if she kept fucking his brains out every six months or so. At least this time it hadn’t been on her desk at the clinic. That was something.

  “Mary Jane?” The bell rang again. “It’s Erik.”

  “Just a sec,” she called. She detoured into the kitchen, emptied the Kleenex into the trash can. She checked her reflection in the stainless steel toaster and sighed. Maybe she could claim allergies.

  She snapped a few fresh tissues from the box on the counter and opened the door. Erik was there, square and solid and concerned. She tried a smile.

  “Have you been crying?” he asked. He didn’t wait for an invitation, just stepped into her apartment and took her hands in his. She faked a sneeze so she could turn away and have her hands back.

  “Hay fever,” she said.

  He nodded slowly. “Okay.”

  Mary Jane fought the urge to roll her shoulders. She was a terrible liar, and they both knew it.

  “What are you doing here, Erik?” she asked. “I thought I was pretty clear about not wanting company this afternoon.”

  He smiled. “You were. I’m persistent.” He shut the door behind him and wandered farther into her apartment.

  “Yeah, well, I’m rude. Go home.”

  “No.” He helped himself to a seat on her girlie, curvy couch with a maddening self-assurance. “You have every right to kick me out. But I hope you’ll hear me out first. I want to talk to you.”


  “You can have five minutes,” she said. “Talk fast.”

  “I talked with Tyrese today.”

  She stared at him. “You what?”

  “You were kidnapped last night, Mary Jane. I needed to make sure you were safe.”

  “I wasn’t kidnapped. I told Nixie I was going, and that I’d be fine. She watched me get in the car and buckle myself in. Didn’t she give you the message?”

  “Well, of course, but I didn’t think--”

  “Didn’t think what? That I knew what I was talking about? That I was fine? That anybody besides you could possibly be right?” Her hands were shaking with rage and humiliation. “How could you have done that?”

  “Those kids had guns,” he said calmly. “People say lots of things at gunpoint. How was I supposed to know you weren’t just trying to protect Nixie?”

  “Because Nixie would have said gosh, Erik, Mary Jane just sacrificed herself to some gun-toting thugs so I could get away and bring help. But I’m betting that’s not what she said. I’m betting she said something more like Mary Jane went with those kids. She said she was fine and would be back later.” She glared at him. “She’s not an idiot, you know. No matter what you seem to think of her.”

  He stood and pushed both hands through thick, wheat-colored hair. “This isn’t about Nixie.”

  “No? Then what is it about?”

  He studied her for a beat, just long enough for her nerves to start twitching, then he said, “You don’t have hay fever, Mary Jane. You’ve been crying. All day, from the looks of it. Now I don’t know what’s going on between you and this Ty person, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that it’s not making you happy. I can’t say I know what you’re feeling, but I do know what it is to want somebody wrong for you.”

  “You have a thing for criminals, too? Now there’s a coincidence.”

  Erik ignored her with his usual ease and went on. “For a long time, I kept thinking that life or the universe or something was going to put the right woman in my path eventually.” He gave her a smile, a full on charmer. “Turns out that my mom is the only one interested in throwing women into my path.”