Spin

by Bella Love

  I stood there like an idiot, gazing at the shower curtain and toilet and packaged hotel accessories. All my stuff had been moved to Finn’s piece by piece, until nothing was left of me here.

  He finally stopped laughing, and I marched back out. As we left, I looked around for anything I’d left behind or might need between today and my next check-in. I scanned the immaculate, fashionable, generic hotel room. It looked a lot like home. Beautiful, glossy, barren.

  There was nothing I needed here.

  I shut the door behind us, planning to be back in a day or so.

  But of course, my life was cast in voodoo now, so nothing went as planned.

  Fifteen

  ~ Jane ~

  THE REST OF the week passed about how you’d expect a hot summer week on the eve of a major family event without access to a beach to pass—full of sweat, irritation, short-tempered people, and constant negotiations. To the good, Mr. Sandler-Ross was away for most of those hot days, back in DC, so I didn’t have to worry about Finn showing up intermittently to stare him down.

  Lovey had no problem with Finn’s presence, though, because he did done work for her every time he came, including figuring out the circuit breaker, even though he didn’t do circuit breakers, so everyone was happy. Especially me. Very, very happy.

  This was clearly a problem. I wasn’t built for happiness. I was built for chaos and tension. So I was totally off my game. My watch-out game. My self-protect game. My trouble’s-coming game. All my shitstorm radars were turned off.

  And of course, that’s when the storm hit.

  Thursday morning started out pleasant enough, arguing with Mrs. Lovey about alcoholic beverages in her kitchen.

  “No cosmos?” Mrs. Lovey said, sounding confused.

  I stood beside the huge marble island, an array of fresh fruits and syrups and mixers arrayed in front of me in a tempting manner. Mrs. Lovey stood on the other side of the island, rooting through her purse, in a rush to find her keys so she and Olivia could go pick up their dresses. Olivia leaned, pale and beautiful, against the counter, vicariously enjoying my attempt to steamroll her mother.

  “But Jane,” Lovey said, “I just assumed we’d serve cosmos. We always serve them.”

  Olivia caught my eye and nodded, then shook her head fast and silently.

  I smiled benignly. “Never assume, Mrs. Lovey. I have something better than cosmos.”

  “But everyone likes cosmos,” she complained, purse in hand.

  Olivia’s head shook again. Mrs. Lovey looked around and she stopped.

  “People like anything you put in front of them,” I told her. “Let’s wow them.”

  She examined me, half-convinced by the word alone. “How?”

  “Blueberry-pear daiquiris,” I said confidently. “And a few other of my secret recipes.”

  “You have secret recipes?”

  “Very secret.”

  She hesitated, then said, “Fine,” and buried her nose back in her purse. “If you can wow me, then you can have your drinks.”

  Easy-peasy. Mixed drinks were my specialty. Well, making them. I didn’t drink them much, except to taste. I knew a perfect everything just by thinking it through. Some people have a mind’s eye; I have a mind’s tongue. And much as I stayed away from consuming alcohol, I loved mixing drinks. I had about four different recipes I wanted served at this event. David, my flair bartender, was driving up, he knew my drinks inside and out, these were awesome flair drinks, and he was going to rock them at the huge and showy portable bar Finn had secured for me at the cost of a few…well, whatever. It cost me, on my knees, and I asked to pay again.

  Mrs. Lovey found her keys with a cry of triumph and began shooing Olivia down the marble hallway to the front door.

  Olivia gave me a significant look as she floated out, murmuring, “No cosmos, my mother gets too drunk,” as she wafted away behind her mother.

  “Oh, and Jane?” Mrs. Lovey called over her shoulder. “If Mr. Dante or either of his partners comes by, they’ll want one of the paintings. Please let them have it.”

  I followed them out to the front room. “Pardon?”

  Mrs. Lovey waved her hand at the line of paintings and sketches that marched down the back wall of their huge living room.

  “You want me to give a painting to Mr. Dante?” What sort of relationship did they have, anyway?

  Mrs. Lovey waved her hand. “Or one of his partners. Any of them might come.”

  Partners?

  “For Swampyre,” she added the vaguely ominous non sequitur.

  “Swampyre?” I didn’t like the sound of that. It made me think of swamps. “Which painting?”

  “Probably the Renoir,” she said as she clicked the keys to her car. I heard the dim sound of her car engine starting up outside as I tried to assimilate this shocking news. There was a painting by Renoir? In this house?

  We had to get it out before the party.

  “What is Swampyre?” I asked.

  She pursed her lips, perhaps wondering how her event planner could be so stupid. Oh, the things I could tell her. “I thought you and Mr. Dante knew each other.”

  “We do.” I turned and stared at the wall. The works of Old Masters and artists the Sandler-Rosses were banking on becoming new ones marched along the long back wall, showcased by spotlights that were turned off right now. It was an impressive collection of oil and water.

  “Well, Jane, he and the Murphy brothers own Swampyre,” Mrs. Lovey said.

  That didn’t sound good.

  Mrs. Lovey turned to the front door. “I don’t know when Peter has arranged for the deal to be finalized,” she said, “so it may not be done until next week or even the one after, but in case someone from the company were to show up inquiring after a painting, I wanted you to know, of course.”

  Of course.

  “So, Swampyre does paintings?” I asked skeptically.

  “They do everything.”

  In what capacity did one do a painting, I wondered.

  She sighed. “Loans, Jane. They do loans.”

  I raised my eyebrow at the paintings.

  “Short-term, security-backed loans.”

  I raised my other eyebrow. That sounded familiar.

  She opened the door with an exasperated sigh. Morning heat poured in. “Must I spell it out? Pawn, Jane. It’s high-end pawn. Do you understand?”

  I stared at the paintings, my heart beating fast as she and Olivia went out the door.

  Sure, I understood.

  I was dating a pawnshop guy.

  And Finn hadn’t thought to mention it.

  Before the door shut, I heard Olivia and Mrs. Lovey speaking to someone, and the distant hum of a lawn mower. But it was all dim beneath my racing thoughts.

  Finn owns a pawnshop.

  Sure. Why not? It’s a good thing, I told myself, and anyhow, what did I care? What did it matter what he did for a living? He wasn’t a criminal, after all.

  Anymore.

  I knew what kind of person he was inside, right? That’s all that mattered.

  Right?

  I just was numb, that was all. Stunned. Confused.

  Many reasons for the omission flitted through my mind. I didn’t like any of them. The reason I liked least was the one that ran, he doesn’t think I can handle it.

  Maybe he’d looked straight through to the center of me and thought he’d seen the truth.

  Maybe he had.

  The more I thought about it, the angrier I got.

  What a relief. It was so much easier being angry than all the other things I’d been feeling.

  The anger might have even prepared me for Mr. Peter J. to walk through the door.

  Sixteen

  I MOVED MECHANICALLY to the kitchen and my task of creating a wow daiquiri. I had no idea how much time passed between Mrs. Peter J. walking out the door and Mr. Peter J. walking in, but it passed without me noticing.

  I was bent over the blender, cocooned in the meditat
ive activity of sight-measuring ingredients and slicing fruit, entirely unprepared for the flaccid nether regions of Mr. Peter J. to slide across my bottom just as I was adding the superfine.

  I jerked around. Sugar sprayed everywhere. I stared in shocked at Mr. Peter J. standing an inch away. Less than an inch.

  He delivered the thousand-watt smile. “Hi, Jane.”

  “Oh, hi, Mr. Sandler-Ross.”

  “Peter, Jane. It’s Peter.”

  “Sure.” I sidled closer to the countertop. “Just testing out some drink recipes.”

  He barely glanced at the fruit. “You’re doing good work I hear.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How do you like it out here?”

  “It’s kind of hot,” I murmured, trying to circle the island counter to get away from him without appearing to be circling the countertop to get away from him.

  “You’re pretty far from home,” he said, following me.

  “Not too far,” I murmured vaguely.

  “Dodge Run is a couple thousand miles from here, isn’t it?”

  I stilled.

  He smiled at me. “I’ve looked into you, Jane. You didn’t think I’d just bring someone into my home, around my wife and daughter, pay her all this money, trust her recommendations, and not do my research, did you? I’ve researched you.”

  My heart went cold.

  “Your father was the mayor of Dodge Run. For a while. Then your mother went into the mental hospital and your father melted down. He trashed a few things on the way—police cars, people’s faces, the tax laws. He spent some time in a federal prison, didn’t he? Was it fraud?”

  I held perfectly still, like a deer hiding in the woods. Except for the tremors through my body, which made the blender full of daiquiri in my hand shake.

  He circled the countertop. “You’ve risen above all that, though, Jane. You came from trash, but you made something of yourself.” He slid his hand across the counter as he came closer. “I know the type. Grew up in it myself. Just lucky to be here, right? No fucking way.” He shook his head, his face flushed and angry. “You made it on guts and smarts. I admire that.”

  “You do?” The words came out low. The blender was shaking harder.

  He nodded and dropped his hand off the counter to hang beside my hip. “I know, because you’re a lot like me.”

  “I’m nothing like you,” I whispered.

  He laughed. “People like us, we push and push and we make things happen.” His hand touched my hip.

  “Y-you’re a bully.” I had to push the words out.

  He laughed again. “Sure. We get what we want.”

  I froze like I’d been filled with ice. Oh my God. He was right. I’d worked so hard not to become my mother, I’d turned into my father.

  “No,” I said. I think. I could hardly hear now. I think the word trash made me partially deaf. But I could feel his fingers on my body. I heard his words in my mind. I felt sick.

  I wasn’t a bully yet; I was a steamroller. But it was coming. I could see it like in a crystal ball. My sterile, glossy, empty life, a path of unexpected success with a line of flattened obstacles behind me. No people to bother me, nothing to slow me down.

  And Finn? I was going to leave him behind too. I saw it now. I’d visit and visit, I’d hope it was enough, pray it was enough, make it enough. I’d push and push and push and…Finn would leave me. Because it wouldn’t be enough, not for him, and whatever we were building would wither like everything else in my life had.

  And Finn knows it. I suddenly understood. That’s why he didn’t tell me. He thought I couldn’t handle it. Thought I wouldn’t. He’d thought I’d walk away.

  My mind was a confused scramble, words pushing out words, slashed images of me and Finn, where you put a pawnshop owner on a map, flashes of fear exploding like fireworks over it all.

  “—people like us…do what needs to be…seize an opportunity…untold rewards…did I mention my company’s fundraiser next year in DC—”

  And there it was, my future being handed to me, just like I’d wanted.

  His fingers slid to my back, and his erection pressed up against my stomach.

  “No,” I whispered, unable to move.

  “No? To me?” Something mean entered his voice. “You should be careful about spending too much time with men like Finn Dante, Jane. He’ll never get you where you want to go. People like that are just where we left them, behind us, in the trash.”

  My hand, almost without conscious direction from my brain, lifted, and I dumped the entire blender of blueberry daiquiri overtop his well-groomed, fat head.

  Yep, almost entirely without conscious thought.

  The blueberry-pear concoction slithered down his Brioni bespoke suit coat and onto his pants, which were now concealing a hard-on. I stared at it in horror.

  I saw my career take wing. It was still salvageable, though. All I had to do was—

  Peter J.’s gaze snapped up from his blueberry-dripping pants. “Fucking Dante.”

  “I-it wasn’t fucking D-Dante.” I swallowed. “It was fucking me.”

  Fury flushed his face. “You fucking white trash bitch,” he snarled and stepped toward me.

  I lifted the shaking blender and whacked him upside the head with it.

  Yeah, anything but that.

  He hollered in pain and staggered backward. His chin was bleeding. Assault with a Deadly Blender, I could see the résumé entry now.

  He touched his chin with his fingertips and brought them away with a splotch of blood. The weapon, the mixing jug, was still in my hand.

  I wrenched my fingers open. It dropped like a rock, smashing onto their Macassar ebony floor and shattering into a thousand glittering bits.

  We stared down at the glassy, fruited carnage. Silence fell. From outside, a lawn mower could be clearly heard.

  Then we heard high heels come rat-a-tat-tatting down the marble hallway that led from the front door.

  “Jane?” Mrs. Lovey’s voice called out. “Jane, what was that?”

  My whole body shook.

  Mr. Peter J. and I stared at each other for a frozen second.

  “Clean it up,” he hissed and turned for the door.

  Too late. Lovey walked in.

  She stared at her event planner, covered in powdered sugar, and her husband, his fifteen-thousand-dollar suit weeping blueberry juice and rum, with a deflating hard-on in his pants and a shattered blender at his feet.

  Mr. Peter J. pointed at me.

  “You’re fired.”

  Seventeen

  ~ Finn ~

  I PULLED UP in front of my place. A rumble of unease rolled through me. Jane’s car was parked at a strange angle, the door swung wide, but no one was inside or anywhere around.

  All senses alert, I got down from my truck and eyed her car as I passed it to go inside.

  My immediate concern, pretty unnecessary here in Destiny Falls, was that there’d been a home invasion. My fears were allayed when I stepped inside and saw Jane.

  Well, not allayed. Redirected. Because something was definitely wrong.

  She was sitting in one of the kitchen chairs, her legs spread, elbows on her knees. She wore a strappy yellow sundress and her tanned arms and brown hair glowed in the evening light. But she was shoeless, with her hair falling down beside her face and…a beer in her hand. Another sat on the table beside her. Tipped over. A puddle of beer dribbled out, like an estuary toward the salt-and-pepper shakers.

  “Janey?” I said quietly, standing in the doorway.

  She burped.

  I dropped my bag and started toward her. “Are you okay?”

  She swung her bleary eyes up. “Did you know eagles are scavengers?”

  I stopped my forward progress. She looked like a woman on the edge. I glanced at the beer in her hand. “How many have you had?”

  “I’ve been doing research.” It sounded vaguely threatening. She waved her phone in the air. “Did you know about the sc
avenger-ness?”

  “Is that going to be a problem?”

  “Eagles,” she pronounced darkly, “look good.” She traced the air in front of her face. “But in here?” She poked her chest and shook her head.

  “Bad?”

  She nodded. “They clean up real good, that’s all.”

  “Bald eagles clean up real good,” I repeated.

  She nodded, then hiccupped. “Do you still like them?”

  “Are we doing something here, Jane, or are you just drunk?

  “You don’t appear to be doing anything, and I’m definitely drunk.” She leaned forward in her seat and pulled the refrigerator open awkwardly. Her hand disappeared behind it, then she came out with another beer. “Want one?” she asked in a sing-song voice.

  I shook my head slowly.

  “I’ve never been drunk before,” she announced.

  “No.”

  She shook her head back and forth. Her hair spilled every which way, which I liked very much. She would not. How did it get down, loose and tangled?

  “Nope, never. Not even once.” She sat back in the chair. “How’m I doing?”

  “It depends what you’re going for.”

  “That is a good question, Finn.” She sat back in the chair. Her skirt pulled up over one tanned knee. It was scraped.

  “Did someone hurt you, Janey?” I asked quietly. Inside, I felt a fist begin to form in my gut.

  She popped the lid off and, squeezing the cap between her thumb and middle finger, she bent her arm, elbow to chin height, and gave her fingers a hard snap. The bottle cap shot like a missile across the kitchen into the living room, where it pinged off something hard.

  We watched it go. “Good shot,” I said carefully.

  “Oh, I’m a great shot. Anything backwoods and dumb fuck, I’m your girl.”

  Uh-oh.

  Warily, I circled her, heading into the living room to protect my valuables. Mostly the guitar. I sat on the couch, grabbed the Gibson, and strummed a few chords.

  I felt her watching me from the other room. “Why didn’t you tell me, Finn?”