Always Box Set

by Ward, Susan

  I make a face as I step out to the curb, rapidly searching for a vacant cab. I’ve never taken any form of public transportation. No one does in Southern California. If boarding a train is half as confusing here as trying to get the attention of a cabbie, then I’m a goner. And I still haven’t quite figured out the money thing.

  I vigorously shake my arm. Nothing.

  “You will never get a taxi the way you’re doing it,” says a low voice from behind me.

  Fuck. Alan.

  I turn to face him “If you were even slightly a normal guy, which you’re not, you’d be getting a car for me.”

  A small laugh. “I thought California girls preferred to do things for themselves.”

  My cheeks flush. Somehow his tone changes just enough to make that a very naughty innuendo. And how the hell did Alan know I was from California?

  I give him a pointed stare. “If you are willing to get me a cab I am willing to accept.”

  His laughter comes deeper from within his chest. “Come on. I’ll take you where you’re going.”

  His hand closes around mine in a move I didn’t see and I have no choice but to tag along unless I want to make a scene here on the sidewalk. I’m filled with nervousness as we walk toward the waiting black car. The last thing a sane girl should want is to be trapped in a car with Alan Manzone.

  The driver hops out and runs around quickly to open the door.

  “Hello, Colin,” Alan says. “Have you been waiting long?”

  “No, sir.”

  My eyes go wide since I don’t know which surprises me more: politeness from Alan; that the fancy chauffeur-driven car seems to be his; or that I’m actually going to accept a lift from him.

  “You’ve collected Miss Cray’s bags from the hotel?” Alan asks.

  “What the fuck do you mean my bags? How dare you take my things from my room?” I blurt out too loudly.

  My outburst causes Colin’s eyes to bulge, but Alan ignores me.

  “Do you have them?” he repeats to the driver.

  “Everything is as you requested, sir.”

  My unease moves into a full-blown panic attack. What is going on here? Before I can say anything else, Alan gestures with his arm for me to climb in. Jeez, he’s a strange guy. Why am I doing what he’s asking me to do?

  I drop heavily onto the plush leather seat and scoot over. He gives me an amused stare before he climbs in next to me. The door slams shut.

  I slide my body over as far from him as I can get.

  “Do you mind telling me what’s going on?”

  Alan rakes his messy black waves back from his face and then strikes a lighter, bringing it to the cigarette held in his lips.

  “You needed a ride. I’m giving you a ride. What’s the big deal?”

  My eyes widen. “The big deal is you took my bags from the hotel without asking me. How dare you assume I’d agree to go anywhere with you?”

  He gives me a look that makes my face burn. “You’re in the car, aren’t you?”

  The color moves from my cheeks down my neck. I clamp shut my mouth and decide to ignore him. I am in the car. There isn’t a thing I can do about that now. And it would not be wise, not wise at all, to let Alan see how much he unnerves me and pushes my buttons.

  Fuck, what is it about this guy that knocks me off my feet at every turn? It’s more than how good-looking Alan is. It’s him. The never-ending tidal wave of all things Alan.

  I tilt my face so I can take in details of him without looking at him directly. He definitely looks rock star chic in every second he breathes. Leather pants, open shirt, tousled black waves and all. Playing the part of a star and he isn’t even a star yet.

  I examine the beautifully appointed interior of the limo. The plush leather seats. The car phone. The pricy booze and crystal glasses. The guy definitely lives rock star chic, even though the band hasn’t earned enough to buy subway tokens.

  Peculiar. Even knowing the private details of his life doesn’t make him less confusing.

  I can feel the pressure of the car moving forward with greater speed, and I look through the darkly tinted window. We’re out of the clogged center of the city now. Jeez, where the hell are we going? Wouldn’t the train station be in the center of the city?

  Oh fuck! I forgot to tell him where I wanted to be dropped.

  A new worry crashes through the mix of my unsettled emotions. Why would Alan grab my junk from the hotel without asking me and practically force me into the car with him? And where the hell is he taking me?

  I surreptitiously shift my gaze back to him. He’s casually arranged on his side of the car, looking tame and still smoking. The interior is so quiet I can hear his breath inhaling and exhaling, and I warn myself to hold steady, not to look at him directly, at least until I can fully take hold of my nerves, so I can ask him what’s going on here without sounding pathetically worried while doing it.

  I stare out the window. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Ah, she speaks,” is all he says in a husky voice. “I was wondering how long you were going to sit there in angry silence.”

  I turn on my seat to face him. “Any reasonable person would be angry with you. You practically shoved me into the car. And I repeat, where are you taking me?”

  Those black eyes lock on me, shimmering and amused. I begin to burn.

  “We have four days off. I thought you might enjoy a few days in the country. I think it’s time we get to know each other better.”

  My eyes fly wide, unsure I just heard him correctly. “What! I don’t want to go anywhere with you. I don’t want to spend my free time with you. I don’t want to get to know you better. I don’t even want to work with you.”

  “Probably not, but you’re going to,” he whispers, running a thumb along my cheek. I feel a jolt shoot down, all through my body. “And we need to correct a misunderstanding. You don’t work with me. You work for me. And I don’t like people near me that I don’t know well.” He turns my chin until I’m looking straight at him. “And I intend to get to know you very well.”

  What? I pull in a sharp breath. “You’re out of your mind. I work for Sandy Harris.”

  “No, you work for me, Linda Cray from Reseda.”

  My heart stills. “How do you know where I’m from?”

  His black eyes grow richly amused. “Your mother’s name is Doris. She works for Sunrise West Records in Los Angeles. Your father, Brian Cray, is a drummer, a studio musician of some demand. He abandoned your mother before you were born. You attended the University of Southern California on full scholarship. You earned a degree in English Literature.” He turns my chin until I’m looking straight at him. “And you’ve been having an affair with Jackson Parker for nearly a year.”

  Every muscle in my body tightens. “How do you know all that?”

  “I investigate everyone before I hire them,” he says matter-of-factly. “Just like I let you read my confidential file to find if I could trust you.”

  Let me read? My head spins. “I want out of this car. I want out of this car now.”

  “You can get out of the car if you want, but it won’t change anything. You’ll still be working for me tomorrow, just like you were working for me yesterday. You can’t afford to quit and I have no intention of firing you. Why not spend the break with me as I’ve asked? You don’t have to worry. I’m not interested in a sexual relationship with you.”

  I feel my anger surge. “You’re absolutely crazy. I wouldn’t fuck you if you were the last man on earth. I’m not even happy to be sitting next to you.”

  Those black eyes swivel. I shiver. “Perfect. Then we understand each other. Consider this a working holiday. Nothing more.”

  “I’ll try really hard to restrain myself,” I hiss hotly.

  Alan laughs and I slouch back into my seat.

  “So where precisely are you taking me for our let’s get to know each other extravaganza?”


  Alan smiles. “That’s what I like about you. Bitchy. Blunt. Direct. I have a country house near London. I think you’ll like it. If not, it’s a short hop into the city. Taxi fare manageable even on your budget.”

  I glare at him. “Can we rewind? I want you to explain how you think it is I work for you? Sandy Harris hired me.”

  He leans forward and grabs a bottle of scotch. He holds it up to me, and I shake my head and watch as he neatly fixes himself a drink. He takes a slow sip, staring at me, and it looks like he’s debating what he should say to me.

  “I own a majority stake in Harris Productions,” he says. “It was my idea to hire someone like you. Someone to have my back out on the road and keep things balanced with the band. A buffer, so to speak, between me and everyone. One person always with me that I can completely trust.”

  My temper flares. “So all that crap about a handler was bullshit?”

  “More or less. But I do need someone to talk to me straight and to protect my interests. No one ever talks to me straight, tells me the truth. They are all too busy wanting something from me to ever be honest.”

  I roll my eyes. “Fuck, you’ve got a lot to learn, kid. I’m poor. I’m the last person you should trust not to want something from you and to tell you the truth.”

  He looks amused, but he ignores my comment. “I’m in the process of acquiring a majority stake in the label. I don’t have control yet, but I own enough that they are worried about me. The one thing I learned from the film industry was to own yourself. I am in the process of doing that.”

  Well, that’s a lot of mysteries solved in one sitting. Why everyone tolerates him. They’re not greedy. They’re afraid of him, and the way he’s waylaid me warns that I should be to.

  I recall the tidbit in his file about his trust fund, how his mother is battling not to release it to him. He has no control over his own funds; how is he buying the label?

  “You have that much money?” I ask. “Enough to buy the label? Sandy Harris’s company? Anything you want?”

  He nods. “My father passed last year. I inherited a sizeable estate from him.”

  Strange that that wasn’t in the report. There was no mention of a father.

  I frown. “So why are you recording and touring with those jerkoffs? Why do this? Why not just live and play with all your money?”

  “I’m a musician. What else should I do with my life? It’s what I want to do,” he responds, not bothering to hide he’s amused by me. “I just prefer to do it my way.”

  “By buying your way to success?”

  He shakes his head at me. “You can’t buy success in this. You’ve got to earn it. The fans won’t buy the music if they aren’t into the music, and you won’t go anywhere. Supply and demand. Perhaps the only sincere relationship that exists anymore. They won’t buy a ticket or an album unless they like you. People don’t part with cash easily.”

  I study him. Why is it that each new thing I learn about him only makes him more confusing?

  “Can you answer me another question?” I ask.

  The smile that surfaces on his face makes my breath catch. “Sure. Ask me anything, Linda.”

  “Why do you have a putz like Arnie Arnowitz managing you?”

  His laughter flows richer, more full now, and for some reason it makes me nearly smile.

  “Arnie isn’t our manager. He’s my accountant. A very good one, at that. Brilliant investor. I keep my accountant close because he takes care of the money. I keep the manager as far away as I can. He takes my money. I prefer the accountant.”

  When he talks like this he doesn’t sound like any nineteen-year-old guy I’ve ever known. Snippets from the file tick off in my head. Genius. Child musical prodigy. Child star. Oh, and Lillian the not mother of the year. A recipe for a fucked-up young man in every way.

  The crashing and burning with his family. The heroin addiction. Suddenly the pieces make sense and I can see how he got to be this weird guy sitting here with me. Regrettably, understanding him makes me feel a smidge of pity for the kid.

  I missed this when I read his file. The answer to Alan Manzone. He trusts no one—and I amend in my head—he has every reason not to.

  Five

  An hour later the car pulls into a long driveway and rolls to a stop.

  I stare out the window. Jeez, not what I expected. I assumed Alan’s house would be something modern, something dramatic. But this is quaint. An enormous brick cottage covered in vines, surrounded by a lush velvety lawn with trees and flower beds. It looks like something from a Jane Austen novel.

  I climb out of the car. Next to the front walkway is a small iron sign: Winderly House.

  I arrange my features into something purposely amused and mildly mocking. “This is where you live? You named your house?”

  Alan laughs. “No, this is where I go to get away from everything. When I don’t want to be bothered by anyone. It was my grandfather’s house. It was the first thing my mother sold after my grandfather died, and it was the first thing I bought after my father’s death.”

  The way he says that causes my heart to clench. I add another insight of him to today’s list. Underneath it all, his beauty and his many gifts, Alan is a very sad young man.

  He turns to the driver. “Can you please bring in our bags, and put Miss Cray’s in the guest room next to mine?”

  He gives me a friendly, sort of nothing smile, but its affect is the opposite. Why does he want me in the bedroom next to his?

  “Come.” He has my hand and starts leading me toward the house.

  I go through the front door and my eyes widen. The entry is a giant open space, by the looks of it double the size of Doris’s condo. Pristine white marble floors, a stunning expanse full of art and dark wood, and what looks to be early nineteenth century antique furnishings. On the walls there are paintings everywhere. Jesus Christ, this is the kind of shit I’ve only ever seen in a museum…Monet, Rembrandt, Rubens. It goes on and on.

  Fuck. It’s one thing to know people have money, it’s another thing when you see it. And you definitely don’t see anything like this in California. Well, not in my neighborhood. Christ, I doubt it even exists in Jack’s neighborhood.

  I shift my eyes from a Rubens and look at him. My anxiousness over being here intensifies. It feels like I’ve just been transported into a chapter of Mansfield Park.

  “Would you like to go your room and freshen up?” Alan asks.

  I shake my head, not trusting my voice. This is too weird—the house, him—to compose myself quickly. He’s behaving almost like a gentleman, out of nowhere, pretty posh manners and no vulgarity.

  He gracefully gestures me forward into a room across the foyer. I hang back in the doorway as Alan sinks down on a sofa. This room is more modern, less formal, but no less opulently decorated or intimating.

  “I take it you don’t bring the band here to chill out,” I tease.

  Alan looks amused. He lights a cigarette. “Why would you say that?”

  I make a face. “I can tell the guys have never been here. Heck, if they had, one of them would have stolen the paintings.”

  Alan laughs. “You don’t read people very well do you, Linda? I’d trust them with anything I have.”

  I arch a brow. “I read people extremely well. You guys, no. Normal people, yes.” I stare at him. “Is that what you’ve been doing these past two weeks? Giving me crap, trying to shock me, so you can read me?”

  He takes a puff and stares at me through the smoke. Those black eyes darken in a way that makes everything inside me unsteady.

  “I’ve been trying to read you. It’s difficult.” Another long puff. “You’re fascinating. But you are not easy to read.”

  I roll my eyes and drop down on the couch a comfortable distance from him. “I’m pretty basic. What you see is what you get.”

  “You’re anything but basic, Linda. Your affair with Jackson Parker, for instance.
That surprised me with your party girl reputation. I wouldn’t have expected him to be your type.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Aha.” I pretend to be amused. “What did you think my type would be? Someone like Kenny?” I crinkle my nose. “Please don’t tell me Len?”

  I expect him to laugh, but he doesn’t. Instead, Alan eases over on the couch until he is very, very close. Too close. His eyes are stunningly bright. “Me.”

  A single word, me, and the earth falls away beneath me. Oh shit.

  “From what I’ve read about you, I’m you’re type,” he adds in an odd conversational way.

  I stare at him, my heart thudding frantically in my chest. What the fuck is going on in that kid’s head?

  “Why am I here?” I ask suspiciously.

  “I want you here.”

  My eyes begin to flash. “That’s not an answer. Well, not a complete answer. What do you think is going to happen with me by bringing me here?”

  “I already explained in the car. I want to spend time with you. Get to know you. It’s that simple.”

  He brushes my lower lip with a thumb, and the touch of him shoots through my veins like a ruthless intoxicant. Every part of me is instantly on full alert, tuned into him, bringing me sharply aware that it’s been a very long time since I’ve been touched by a man.

  Shame and panic shoots through my limbs. How can Alan get my body fired up so effortlessly? I don’t even like him as a person, not really. Crap, maybe it’s because I haven’t had sex in months. A physical response. Nothing more.

  He moves his finger feather-light against the edge of my mouth and I pulse there. I jerk back from him, putting space between us again.

  “I think I should leave. Can you have Colin drive me into the city?” I announce firmly. “I think you’ve gotten the wrong idea about me from whatever it is—and I definitely don’t want to know—that Sandy told you about me. My partying days are a thing of the past. I’m a one man kind of woman. I am in a relationship with Jack. I love him.”

  My words only seem to heighten Alan’s amusement over me. He kisses me lightly on the nose, the gesture silly, deliberately so, I think. But the feel of him against my skin makes it nearly impossible to pull in oxygen. A kiss on my nose, and I tense tighter from head to toe and my heart beat soars even more. What a stupid reaction to such a lame gesture from a thoroughly infuriating guy.