I…I’m hooked on a feeling, I’m high on believing that you’re in love with me…
Yeah, right.
He finally got up and took a shower, hoping the warm water would relax him—or at least wash away the scent of Robin that still clung to his skin. It was only then, with the water pounding down on him, that he finally let himself cry. For Ben, for Robin, for himself.
Even for Peggy Ryan.
Finally, both emotionally and physically exhausted, with his hair still damp, he crawled back into bed, and sleep finally approached, washing over him in waves of…
Tap, tap, tap.
Jules opened his eyes.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
Had he put the “Do Not Disturb” sign on his door? He couldn’t remember.
Knock, knock, knock.
Crap. He rolled out of bed and staggered over to the door, not even bothering to pull on more than his boxer shorts. “Just give me some fresh towels and—”
“Hey,” Robin said. He was wearing sunglasses, no doubt to hide his bloodshot eyes, but he took them off now. “Mind if I come in?”
“Yes,” Jules said, and shut the door in his face. He crawled back into bed.
Knock, knock, knock.
Please God, please make him just go away.
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock…
“Jesus!” Jules flung open the door. “If you really want to get your ass kicked, then by all means, come on in.”
He searched for his pants and savagely yanked them on, then crossed to the windows and opened the drapes. The room was flooded with brilliant sunlight, and Jules got a perverse sense of satisfaction as Robin winced and put his sunglasses back on.
Of course, the bright light meant that his own red eyes were right there for Robin to see, too. He also obviously noticed Jules’s unmade bed, as well as the fact that he was only half dressed.
“You were sleeping,” Robin deduced.
“Not yet,” Jules snapped. “Not since—” He cut himself off. Not since he’d fallen asleep in Robin’s limousine, in Robin’s arms—not exactly something he wanted to discuss. “I had a busy night—I spent most of it cleaning your bathroom.”
“That was you?” Robin asked.
“Who’d you think it was?” Jules retorted. “Elves?”
Robin shook his head. “I wasn’t sure if it was you or, um…”
“Ashley,” Jules said. “At least that was the way she signed her note to you. And yeah, I guess if you’re drunk enough, you can’t tell us apart. Although here’s a hint. I’m the one you claim to love.”
Okay, it was time to shut up and just let Robin say what he’d come here to say, so that he could leave as quickly as possible and Jules could get to sleep.
“I’m so sorry.” Robin looked and sounded as if he meant it.
It was actually pretty impressive that he was up and about. And the fact that he’d dared to come here at all was at least noteworthy.
And yes. That was definitely his dick talking, not his brain. Jules was so freaking attracted to this son of a bitch, he could watch that YouTube footage three times—not the PG-rated but still astonishingly sexy stripping-in-the-kitchen video, although he’d watched that more than once, too—and still try to find excuses for why Robin should be forgiven.
“There’s a lot I need to say,” Robin continued. “To apologize for. Including interrupting your nap. But I’m going to take Annie back to California—as soon as I can get us a flight—and I really wanted to see you before I left. May I sit down?”
Jules gestured to the pair of chairs over by the window.
Robin lowered himself gingerly into one of them.
“Were you hurt when you fell?” Jules asked, despite his resolve to keep his mouth shut.
Robin looked at him over the top of his sunglasses. “Did I fall?” he asked. “I don’t…remember very much of it. I remember coming back to my hotel after you got the news about Ben—that was when I really started drinking.”
“That was when you started drinking?” Jules repeated. As if the copious amounts of alcohol that Robin had consumed in the limo and at Burns’s party were insignificant.
“I guess I went a little overboard,” Robin said.
He guessed. “Haven’t you watched the clip on YouTube?” Jules asked.
Robin carefully shook his head. “No.”
“You should,” Jules said. “And yeah, you fell. Fortunately not off the twelfth-story balcony.” He was going to turn away, even close his eyes so that Robin wouldn’t see the hurt, the fear, the agony he’d felt while watching that nightmare unfold on digital video. Instead he looked straight at him. “You motherfucker.”
“I’m so sorry,” Robin said.
“You already said that,” Jules pointed out. “It wasn’t good enough the first time, either.”
“I know.” Robin looked down at the floor, contrite, ashamed. Or at least that was how he was playing it. The man was, after all, on the verge of receiving an Academy Award nomination.
His silence stretched on a little too long. “Tick tock,” Jules said, and Robin looked up, tears in his eyes.
Which was not a big surprise—not as big as what he said when he finally spoke. “I’m really sorry about Ben. I can’t imagine what you’re going through. I wanted to, um, see if you wanted to go up there,” Robin said. “To Arlington—the National Cemetery. That’s where he was buried, right? I mean, maybe you don’t want me with you, but…I just didn’t want you to…You shouldn’t have to go alone and…I’ll go with you, if you want.”
It was a generous offer—one that Jules was not sure he himself would have been able to make had their roles been reversed.
“That’s what I should have said to you last night,” Robin told him. “I should’ve grabbed you, and held you and…helped you. Instead…” He shook his head, roughly wiping his eyes with the heel of his hand so that Jules wouldn’t see him cry. “Who am I to judge you? Who am I to judge anyone?”
“It would have been nice,” Jules said carefully, in danger now of tearing up himself, “if you’d given me a chance to explain.”
But Robin shook his head. “You shouldn’t’ve had to explain anything. I let you walk out of my life years ago. I did everything but put a fucking bow on you and hand you to Ben—God, I wish I’d met him, Jules. He must’ve been…really special.”
“He was,” Jules said. “But Sam and Max got it wrong. Ben and I were just friends. I tried to love him, but…I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
Robin froze, silent. It was possible he’d even stopped breathing.
“I hoped it would happen,” Jules continued, “that one day I’d wake up and, I don’t know, maybe just…magically be in love with him. He was…He wasn’t perfect—he was in the closet, even to his parents, and that sucked. But he was funny and smart and sweet and faithful. He deserved better than me, because if I’d been man enough to let myself admit it, I would have realized that I was just using him—as a friend who I knew thought of me as more than a friend. Maybe someday I’d love him—I dangled that possibility out there in front of us both, but in truth I was just using him to mark time while I waited for the impossible.”
He looked at Robin, who was sitting in that chair on the other side of his hotel room as if every cell in his body hurt. His skin was pale, his hands were shaking, his chin was unshaved, his eyes were rimmed in red. It was crazy, but Jules still found him almost unbearably attractive.
“I was waiting for you,” Jules told him softly. “I’m still waiting. For something that’s…now even more impossible than it ever was.”
Robin sat forward. “No,” he said, coming even closer then, actually on his knees on the floor in front of Jules. “It’s not. Babe, listen, okay? Just please listen, because I’ve figured it out. I know you hate that I hide who I am, and I know how hard it’ll be for you to be in a relationship with me while I’m still not out, bu
t if you give me three pictures—just three, that’s the deal my agent’s putting together right now—then I promise I will give you the entire rest of my life.”
“Except for the parts that you can’t remember.” That kind of grand, sweeping promise would’ve gone over a little better if Jules hadn’t been able to smell the whiskey on Robin’s breath. And it wasn’t last night’s whiskey, either.
“I’ve stopped drinking,” Robin told him, his blue eyes filled with steadfast resolve. Kneeling there like that, he was a picture of sincerity.
Jules laughed in his face. “As of when?” he asked. “Ten minutes ago? What’d you do, stop in the bar downstairs before you came up here?”
“Hair of the dog?” Robin tried to make it a joke—both the fact that he’d had a drink and lied to Jules about it.
Jules stood up. “Get out of my room.”
But Robin didn’t move. “I’m sorry,” he said. “And you’re right—it was only a few minutes ago that I made that decision. But I swear that I mean it. If I have to quit drinking to keep you, then—”
“Jesus Christ, Robin,” Jules practically shouted. “You have to quit drinking to keep from dying.”
But Robin didn’t believe him. Jules could see it in his eyes.
“What do you want?” Jules asked him. “You want to sleep with me again? Is that what this is? You want it so bad you’ll say and do anything? Yeah, babe, I’ll quit drinking…Just a three-picture deal…I’m yours…” His voice broke. Yeah, Robin was his—as long as Jules didn’t mind that he sometimes got blind drunk and had sex with total strangers.
“I am,” Robin whispered, reaching for him, and Jules knew that he was doomed.
“Yeah, well, I’m not yours,” he said, but he closed his eyes when Robin kissed him. And he knew he was as much of a liar as Robin, as he gave in to the soft pleasure that was Robin’s mouth, as he sank back with him into the warm sunlight that played across his bed.
Annie came downstairs with a suitcase packed and a hooded sweatshirt on.
“How does this look?” she asked Ric, pulling the hood over her hair and putting on sunglasses.
The hood, with its slight point at the top, made her look like a little kid, bundled up for a cold day. And the sunglasses…They were slightly cat-eye-shaped and reminiscent of a 1950s-era schoolmarm, which, combined with Annie’s sun-kissed cheeks and full, soft mouth, he found…
Hot. He turned away. “Ridiculous.”
She took off both the hood and the sunglasses. “Excuse me. You’re not allowed to be mad at me because you decide never to have sex with me ever again.”
“I never said never,” Ric corrected her.
“Yeah,” she shot back. “You did. You implied it.”
Before he could argue, the doorbell rang.
Annie went to the window. “There’s a truck out front. Is this…?”
“Yeah.” Ric opened the door. It was the FBI. The agent nicknamed Yashi was standing there in a pair of coveralls, holding a computerized clipboard.
“Good morning, sir,” he said in his trademark deadpan. “We’re here to install your new weatherproof flooring.”
And sure enough, over Yashi’s shoulder, two other overall-clad agents were carrying a roll of cheap carpeting up the driveway. The body of his allegedly murderous ex-girlfriend had to be inside, in a body bag. Ric stepped back to let them in.
“Don’t worry.” Yashi patted his arm, no doubt because the look on his face warranted it. “Jason and Apolonia are forensics experts. They’ll set up the crime scene. Just tell us where you want the victim, and they’ll make it look real.”
“In my office.” Ric pointed the way as he closed the door behind the agents with the carpeting.
“Hey, Annie,” Yashi greeted her. She’d sat down at her desk, and was looking a little pale. “You squeamish, too?”
“Maybe a little,” she said. “I’m kind of freaked about…I mean, who was she?”
“We weren’t given her name,” Yashi said. “She’s former CIA counterterrorism, though, we do know that. She had an inoperable brain tumor that metastasized—making her useless as an organ donor. She died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, day after her doctor gave her four months to live.”
“Oh, God.” Annie went another shade more pale.
“Her family was adamant that she would’ve wanted to continue to help fight terror,” Yashi continued. “They signed off on all releases—they don’t expect to get her body back.”
Annie looked up as Ric touched her shoulder. “Let’s get out of their way,” he suggested, “and let them work.”
Amazingly, she didn’t argue. She let him take her hand and pull her out of her seat—and all the way up the stairs, back into his apartment.
She still looked as if she needed air, so he led her through the living room and out the doors to the screened-in porch.
“Maybe I should just go,” she said as she leaned on the railing overlooking his garden. “I can drive myself to Robin’s hotel.”
Ric looked at his watch. “Martell will be here soon.”
She nodded. “Once I’m in California, you’re not going to be able to micromanage my every move.”
“Are you sure you want to go to California?” Ric asked, and she looked up at him. “I mean, instead of Boston, or I don’t know. Savannah. You could visit your mother. Or Bruce.”
He’d watched that digital video of Robin on his computer, with Annie looking over his shoulder. Neither of them had said much at the time, but Annie had touched him, her hand warm on his back. “This kind of blows, huh?” was her sole comment.
It did—not just for Jules, who clearly had feelings for the movie star, but also for Ric. So much for his stupid plan. He wanted to provide security, not be a babysitter. It was obvious that Chadwick needed both—and that one would be the other.
“I thought I’d take advantage of the flight to California,” Annie said now, “and check out that company that Jules’s friend Sam works for—Troubleshooters Incorporated. I went to their website and found out that they’re not private investigators, although they do provide that service. Their big thing is personal security—which is exactly what you want to do. It seems like a really good organization, Ric. And if they’ll provide training…”
She loved him. She was standing there, planning for their future. But instead of calling her on it, Ric nodded. “Just…keep me in the loop, okay?”
“Okay.” She forced a smile. She looked tired and was still pale, her usual sparkle subdued.
He tucked a stray piece of her hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry Yashi was so insensitive.”
“He didn’t know. How could he?”
“Yeah, but…” Ric sighed. “This was the last thing you needed, huh?”
“I’m okay. I’m pretty tough, you know.”
Now she was gazing up at him, her gray eyes wide, looking anything but tough. Her mouth was tight with determination, but Ric knew how soft she really was.
Which was probably why he leaned over and kissed her.
He didn’t mean to. He’d tried not to, but damn. He could taste her surprise, and he made himself pull back. “Sorry,” he said.
She was as rattled as he was—but she managed a shrug. “It’s your stupid rule,” she told him. “If it were up to me, I’d be squeezing in one last quickie, right there on that lounge chair.”
Ric turned to look at the lounge chair in question. He couldn’t help himself, and she laughed.
“You want to.” It wasn’t quite a question, but it also wasn’t not. Annie moved closer, her hands on his belt. “It might be a long time before we see each other again…”
He caught her wrists. “You just don’t want to talk about Pam.”
“What’s to say?” But she couldn’t hold his gaze.
“I called Bruce, and he told me that she asked you to help her die.” Ric pulled Annie close, and she seemed to surrender, her head against his shoulder. “What did she ask you to do?”
he asked her quietly. “Leave her painkillers where she could reach them?”
Annie sighed. “If you already know, why ask me?”
“Because you need to talk about it. If the mere mention of someone else with terminal cancer—”
“Whoever that is downstairs,” Annie said hotly, “she was a fool. She had four months to spend with her family—probably even more—and she threw it away. Pam was only given three, and she lived more than twice that.”
“And yet, in the end, she chose to stop fighting,” Ric said quietly. “That must’ve been so hard for you. To know she’d given up all hope…?”
Annie was silent, and he knew he’d gotten it right. He’d struck a chord.
“I couldn’t do it,” Annie finally admitted. “Ric, she was in so much pain, and she begged me, but I couldn’t do it. God—and I’m still so angry with her.”
Ric nodded. “Anger and guilt. That’s got to suck.”
“Yeah,” she agreed.
“Give yourself a break,” Ric told her. “You did the best you could.”
“Did I?” She looked up at him with such sadness. “I don’t know. Because I wouldn’t help her, she somehow got out of bed. She must’ve just rolled herself out. She crawled into the kitchen, where we kept her prescriptions.” Her eyes filled with tears. “She was just having a bad day. We had this mantra—tomorrow’ll be better. And sometimes it was.”
“But sometimes it probably wasn’t,” Ric said.
“She told me she hated seeing us—her parents and me—in so much pain. She did it for us—and all we wanted was to have her around for another day.”
“Annie, she was ready to go,” Ric said quietly. “And think of it this way. You’ll never have any doubt that she loved you.”
“Yeah,” Annie said. “And I loved her so much that she died, all alone, on her kitchen floor. I was the one who found her later that night, curled up around Pierre.”
Force of Nature Page 33
