“The flight, the cab ride to Fenway Park, everything was odd,” he continued, “like that sense of exigency people sometimes have just after waking. A persistent dream tells them there’s something important they have to do, something irrational like buy a pair of socks, but they can’t remember why it’s important. Then they snap out of the dream and the feeling vanishes. It was like this for me—I had to take my mother’s ashes to Fenway Park. I believed I was somehow exorcising her from my past, my head, my life. If I could get rid of her, I’d get rid of the illness and I wouldn’t hurt you anymore.”
“You said she’d leave you alone if you did it.”
“But it’s not that simple, is it?” His whole body was fatigued, as if he were a lot older than thirty. “‘God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul.’ I have cried those words many times, so much so, that gradually, my plea simply became ‘God, save my soul.’ Because when the moods take me, I can’t save myself. You are not responsible for saving me, either, Kaye. But you should know, I live for you. I’ve always lived for you.” Heavy eyes searched my face.
“Samuel—”
“Please, I need to say this.” His voice broke. “Forgive me for everything I’ve put you through. The horrible things I said, the way I left you behind in New York. I am ashamed.”
“You’ve always had my forgiveness,” I breathed into his soft T-shirt. “Forgive me, too, for avoiding our issues, all those years ago?”
He nodded sharply, and relaxed beneath me. “I hope you understand I wasn’t running away from you.”
“I know you weren’t running from me. You just want closure.”
“I want liberation.”
My fingertips flitted over his overwrought eyebrows, smoothing them. “Well, Boston’s a good place to start. We can stay here if you want.”
“Is that what you want?”
“I want to go wherever’s best for your health. New York, Baltimore, Boston—”
“Boulder?” he interrupted.
My mouth dropped open. I wasn’t expecting home.
“That’s what we agreed to, correct? I’ll move there after Thanksgiving, if you still want me.”
“But what about your therapy and doctors?”
“It’s nothing the local mental health clinic can’t handle. I’ll have Dr. Vanderbilt on call, and Denver’s not far. Most importantly, we’ll have friends and family who can help us should something like this happen again.”
“Will it happen again?”
“Most likely.” I already knew as much. “Kaye, I’m not going to take you away from Colorado unless you want to leave. You love it too much. The Front Range is home.”
“You’re home, too,” I whispered. He pried my hand from the bed rail and tangled our fingers together.
That night, just as the team packed up laptops, Jaime Guzman called.
“Hold on to your phone, sugar-bottom. I know a dude who’s now a copy editor at HollywoodDays’ parent company.”
“Really? That’s great!”
“Yeah. His mom got picked up for hooking a few years back and I took the case pro bono because he was a poor college student.”
“Prostitution in Lyons?”
“Just go with it, the real story’s boring. Anyway, it was easy to get the gossip bloggers umm…gossiping about the Cabral situation. Your man meat’s the talk around the water cooler. Some snitty little Indian girl—the ones that don’t wear eagle feathers—writes those stories—”
“Jaime,” I gasped, “you just can’t say stuff like that. How are you not held in contempt every time you open your mouth in court?”
“Anyway,” she ground out, “this girl was bragging about how an important insider approached her with information a couple of years ago. He’s fed her tidbits ever since.”
“Does the insider have a name?”
“All my source could get from the chick was a ‘Larry Rothschild.’ Sounds like a pseudonym. That, or the House of Rothschild’s redneck cousin—the guy they don’t invite to weddings.”
I clenched my teeth. “It’s Jerome.”
“How do you know?”
“He has a crush on Lafite Rothschild wines.”
Yes! I punched the air, did a shuffle-skip through the suite, amazingly, not landing on my tail, and then bounced onto the couch. I had Jerome. Had him by the cojones. Now Ace and I just needed to have a heart-to-heart with one “Larry Rothschild” about a little document he signed, called a non-disclosure agreement.
As I arrived at the hospital Wednesday morning, Sofia was just leaving. She dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief, but she seemed peaceful, now that her son wasn’t barring us from the psych unit. For all the scraped knees she’d cleaned and baseball uniforms she’d bleached, it had taken Samuel years to accept her as his mother. For Sofia, Samuel’s rejection touched veins of fear I couldn’t comprehend.
I rapped the frame. His head snapped up and the clouds cleared his troubled face. His eyes were sharper today. Dr. Tran was weaning him off the antipsychotic medication before his hospital release tomorrow.
“You’re lovely,” he sighed. “You’ve been working hard, haven’t you?”
“Yes.” I self-consciously touched the bags under my eyes. “Do I look tired?”
He held out his hand for me. “Mamá said you’ve been fronting a publicity team nonstop since last Monday.”
“There’s a lot to clean up. But don’t worry about that right now.”
“What are they saying out there?”
“Lots of things. Drugs. Breakdown. Lovers’ spat. But my favorite is that I’m holding you hostage until you give me control of your estate.”
He chuckled. “How very gothic of you. In short, the longer I remain mum on my illness, the crazier the speculation will get. I suppose the only thing to do is go public.”
My hand froze on his chest. Was he saying what I thought he was saying? “Not necessarily. We could pass it off as exhaustion.”
“No, we can’t. Not any longer. I spoke with the hospital chaplain about this—he reminded me if I want liberation, the best way to get it is to be truthful.” He scrubbed his bearded jaw and stretched. “Funny, it’s the same thing you and Danita have been trying to hammer into my head.”
“Sometimes it takes an impartial person to say it, I guess. You’ll have plenty of options when the time comes. Several news programs are battling it out like gladiators for an exclusive first interview. And you’d have your pick of publications if you prefer to write about it. But it would be in your best interest to decide before Togsy’s book hits the stands.”
His lips softly kissed the skin beneath my ear, his scruff making me squirm. “What’s the latest?”
“Togsy toned it down, but it’s still pretty harsh. Ace has done all he can do.”
“When will it hit the shelves?”
I scoffed. “The week before Water Sirens premieres, of course. Caroline found a publisher who’d do a rush job.”
My eyes held his and I wavered. Would it be too much too soon to show him the old Moleskine notebook Caroline gave me in the coffee shop? But Samuel had thrown open the doors today, clearing the stale air between us. I dug through my messenger bag.
“Speaking of reading materials, I have something for you,” I said carefully. “I’m not sure how you’ll feel about it.” I placed the notebook in his lap.
His eyes widened as he flipped page after page. “This is mine…but…I don’t remember writing any of this.” He paused when he came to the page with the missing piece, realizing what had been clipped from the page. “Where did you get it?”
“Caroline. I think a part of you wanted me to know what was going on in your mind, even then.”
“It’s as if I was desperate to separate myself from you, and at the same time, desperate to keep you with me.” His fingers skimmed over the elastic band that was holding in his secret.
I told him how he’d asked her to give it to me that night in New York, but instead, sh
e’d only delivered a small portion of the big picture. “In the end, Caroline will get everything she wanted,” I finished sourly.
“And she’ll never be content with it, because what she wants won’t bring happiness.” He set the notebook aside and took my hands, kissing each. “Give me a year, Kaye.”
“For what?”
“This life I’ve built for myself—the wealth, the acclaim, the fame—it’s all meaningless. They’ve become my shackles. Give me a year to free myself and become a man who can stand beside you with both feet firmly planted. Then I will give myself to you, in whatever way you’ll have me. All yours. Only yours.”
Only mine…in a year. A year of relationship limbo.
So very typical of him—time to hash out, think through, and deliberate. You’d think, after what we’d just been through, I would have danced the cha-cha at Samuel’s promise to be mine with no vows and no wedding ring branding my hand. Instead, his offer left me with a pit in my stomach. I wanted him to want me beside him now, shackles and all.
Disillusionment shadowed the ray of surety I’d basked in, and once again I shivered in the cold knowledge that I was still chasing Samuel, and might always chase Samuel.
Chapter 16
Sunset Load
The last skydiving run of the day
is typically veteran divers with an affinity
for the beautiful evening sky, a laidback dive,
and nudity (or not).
DAY TWELVE OF THE GREAT BOSTON BOOGIE: Jerome trumped me.
And boy, did it hurt my pride. Almost as much as the time in seventh grade, when Jennifer Ballister invited me to her slumber party. She made fun of my braces and my tomboy braid, which couldn’t really be helped at age twelve. At last, I’d had enough. My mother was AWOL. My father was in Denver visiting some bearded hippie who operated an Old West portrait studio at an amusement park. So I called Samuel to walk me home. By then, he’d grown into his big blue eyes and cemented his heart-throb reputation. So, when he showed up at Jennifer’s, collected my sleeping bag, and tucked me beneath a protective arm, it was a pretty big deal. The other girls flushed under his cold stare, and Jennifer never made fun of me (to my face) again.
But what Jerome had brewing was going to sting a lot worse than Jennifer’s mockery of my lacking décolletage if I didn’t bring his PR machine to a grinding halt. I wasn’t sure Samuel could “walk me home” from this party, this time.
I was having trouble tracking down the elusive Buitre weasel, and Jerome’s assistant was roughly as helpful as a tapeworm. He must have possessed a sixth sense that warned him a smackdown waited, because his clueless assistant returned each of my calls with a “Mr. Buitre is in meetings all day.”
The Wyndham Command Center was empty save for Samuel and me. He huffed over newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and blog print-outs that were spread across the coffee table. I’d warned him not to read that garbage, especially since he was freshly released from the hospital. Maneuvering him from the revolving door and into a cab had been like shoving through thick forest brush, only the scraping branches had flashing bulbs and a stockpile of prying questions. The minute he set foot in my executive suite, he asked me to put him to work, too.
I drummed my desk in time to the tinkling on-hold music. My brain paged through an enlightening conversation I’d had with Groovy Adventures Kevin yesterday morning. When he asked if I’d heard of Buitre PR and Media Group, Jerome’s stonewalling clicked into place.
“Please tell me he hasn’t contacted you.”
“Yeeeaaah, I wanted to send a big heads up your way. Dude’s totally high-strung. I asked him why a little caving club in Colorado would need a PR agency in New York. He told me Buitre could do the same work for half the price as TrilbyJones.”
“Holy fish buckets! How’d you respond?”
“I told him the Babes were my caving buddies, and asked him what he had against you. He just got all huffy at me so I bid him adieu. Something was off about the whole thing, ya know? I got that vibe, but I can’t speak for your other clients. If this dude’s using those smooth moves on them, too, you might be in for an über-rough ride.”
Mother cliff-hucker, Jerome was swiping my clients. Needless to say, the entire TrilbyJones team contacted our B&Bs and ski clubs all of yesterday.
“Molly,” I’d pleaded over the phone, “I am so very sorry for bringing this down on TrilbyJones. I’ll make this right, I promise you.”
“Kaye, calm down, this isn’t the apocalypse we’re dealing with. You’ve always been resourceful in a pinch. Killer instincts, remember?”
There was silence on my end.
“Should I continue with the validation?” she asked.
“Please.”
Molly chuckled. “The good news is the profit you brought in with Samuel as a client equals five of our local accounts. Yes, we’ve earned every single penny of it and we’re all taking vacations the minute you return to Boulder. But in the long run, it’s been great for business. The downside is, the interns might have a mild case of mercury poisoning from all the sushi they’ve ingested. Back-to-back business dinners isn’t a good business practice. Now go get ’em, killer, before the lackeys eat their weight in raw fish…”
“Ms. Trilby?” Jerome’s assistant yanked me back to the present. “Mr. Buitre is at an important client luncheon and can’t be bothered.”
“Aren’t you going to ask if I’d like him to return my call as soon as he’s able?”
“Ah…um…I suppose.”
“Better yet, maybe I’ll just phone the restaurant and have a word with him at his client luncheon. Where are they dining again?”
Samuel’s eyes darted up, took in my rigid back and fisted hands, and quickly returned to the article he was scanning.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Trilby, I can’t…”
There was a time in my life when the idea of flying to New York City to confront a conference room full of PR executives about their lack of professionalism would have reduced me to one of those squishy invertebrates chilling in their reception room aquariums. But now, I was one spine away from booking a flight. Stupid Buitre.
“Forget it. Tell Mr. Buitre if I don’t hear from him by tomorrow, I’ll have to return to New York to meet with him in person. And Mr. Cabral will not be happy about it.”
“I’ll do that.”
I collapsed into the desk chair and swiveled, watching Samuel. Grinding jaw, squinting eyes…I waited for his outburst as he twitched over some tabloid clipping. Finally, he wadded it up and furiously chucked it across the room near the wastebasket.
“Kaye, hear me out before you say no.”
This didn’t sound good. He shoved two hands through his hair.
“I want you to resign as my publicist.”
I bolted up from the desk. “What? Why?”
“Firecracker, you have been amazing,” he said hurriedly. “You’ve worked so hard for me, and I love you for it. I couldn’t have a better publicist. But it wasn’t fair to ask you to take on this burden.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me! After all the sweat I’ve…um…sweat.” I narrowed my eyes. “Is this because you don’t want me to go back to New York?”
“In part.” He crossed the room and pulled out the chair next to mine. “This industry warps people, makes them do things they normally wouldn’t do. I will never hear from Caroline Ortega again, and I’ll live with that. But I’d be a wreck if that happened with us.”
“Hate to break it to you, but Caroline was warped before you became famous.”
“Nevertheless, I hate how it sucks you in.”
“It won’t, if you plan to cut down on your public appearances like you said you would.”
“Well, I don’t want to put you in the tough position of having to be my publicist instead of my significant other. I’d rather you were by my side as the woman I completely and openly adore. Let me take this off your shoulders.” He dragged his fingers along my jaw, his eyes s
oftening. “This is, naturally, your decision.”
Yeah right, it was my decision.
The man was silky smooth, I’d give him that. Even so, I couldn’t help but feel sacked, and like the PR brew would go to muck if my hand wasn’t stirring it. “Who’ll take my place?”
“I think you can answer that yourself, little conspirator.”
“Nat and Patrick,” I conceded. “You’ll need a new agent, too.”
“Yes. Buitre has proven themselves to be untrustworthy.” That was an understatement.
“And if I want to remain your publicist?”
“Then we’ll find a way to make it work.”
He would, too. He wanted to make me happy. But I think he was beginning to understand what made me happiest. It was him. Not success, or adventures, or even a life free of burden. I remembered that having Samuel, even on his worst days, was better than not having him at all.
I knew when to bow out gracefully. Well, maybe not gracefully—two could play the smooth game. With a sultry smile, I found my way to Samuel’s lap and breathed slow air across his neck. His meds were wreaking havoc on his sex drive, but dang if I didn’t feel a stirring there.
“Fine. Mr. Cabral, I quit this lousy, stinking job. What do you think? Dramatic enough?”
His mouth dragged over my temple. “Very dramatic. I hope this isn’t how you quit your job at Paddlers after high school.”
I smiled against his lips. “Señor Valdez would have dropped a paddle. Samuel?” I trailed a finger over his bobbing Adam’s apple. “There’s one thing I want to do before I hand over the reins. Let me be the one to fire Jerome.”
“No.”
I rushed on before he could protest further. “Ever since I was a little girl, you’ve tried to keep me safe. Let me do the same for you.”
“Do you ever stop plotting and planning?”
“Nope.”
I could see the things he wanted to say: That’s too risky. What about TrilbyJones? He’ll come after you. Let me do it for you. But he simply shook his head, a corner of his mouth turning up. “How can I possibly stop you?”
Skygods (Hydraulic #2) Page 37
