Troubleshooters 09 Hot Target

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Something shifted across Adam’s face, and Jules made a noise that he tried to turn into a laugh.

  “Oh. Right. That was a lie, too, wasn’t it?” he continued. “That new day job that you love so much? Jesus Christ, Adam! And you wonder why I don’t even want to look at you, let alone talk to you? Fuck you and your fucking lies.” He turned to Robin. “And fuck you for using me in this stupid game you’re playing.”

  “Jules—” Robin tried to grab him, but Jules shook himself free.

  “J.!”

  Adam started to go after him, but Robin blocked his route. “Haven’t you done enough damage?”

  As he watched, Jules took the most direct path to the door—through the dance floor instead of around it.

  “Haven’t you?” Adam countered. “He’s serious, you know. He’s not going to touch you. He’s a Boy Scout.” He stepped closer, too close. “I, however, will do whatever you want, whenever you want.”

  Time seemed to hang as Robin stared into Adam’s eyes. The motherfucker was serious. It was more than a little scary. “In your dreams.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Adam murmured. “Can’t wait to shoot that love scene. When’s that scheduled for? Day after tomorrow?”

  Robin didn’t hit him. It would have taken too much time. “Follow me and I’m quitting,” he warned Adam as he scooped his backpack off the floor. “If I quit, filming grinds to a stop, the movie doesn’t get made, and you’re back to being nobody.”

  Plunging into the crowd, he followed Jules out the door.

  Cosmo had just gotten out of the shower when his cell phone rang.

  He could see from the caller’s number that it was Jane.

  He dropped his towel and fumbled his phone open, praying that something else hadn’t gone wrong. “Richter. What’s happening?”

  “You,” Jane said, “suck. That’s what’s happening.”

  What? “Are you all right?” he asked, ready to . . . what? Charge out of his motel room to come to her rescue, naked?

  “Where are you?” She spoke right over him as he dripped across the room, looking for his pants. “I was counting on you being here, and I could maybe understand if something had happened with your mother, but Murphy said he didn’t think so. Is she okay?”

  He found his pants, but he stopped before he jammed his still-wet legs into them. “What?”

  “Your Mo-Ther,” Jane enunciated. “Is she all right? Did she fall down again? Is she sick? Did she—”

  “She’s still in San Francisco. She’s fine—I just spoke to her on the phone. Jane, what—”

  “Forgive me for disturbing you.”

  “You weren’t disturbing me.”

  Silence.

  Cosmo looked at his phone. What the . . . ? She’d hung up on him.

  He called her back. “You weren’t disturbing me,” he said as soon as she picked up.

  “Look, I’m really sorry I bothered you,” she said. “I just thought . . . I was worried something bad had happened, and . . . Are you all right? Why aren’t you here?”

  Interesting question. Cos let it sit for a minute as he finished drying himself off, unsure how to answer. Physically, he was fine. Emotionally . . .

  Emotionally, he’d been steamrollered. “Today was a difficult day.”

  “No kidding,” she said. “I was counting on tonight being a little less . . .” She stopped. Cleared her throat. Started over. “Cos, what’s going on? Aren’t we friends?”

  Oh, Christ. He closed his eyes. Didn’t answer. Didn’t say, No, Jane, no, we are not friends.

  He also didn’t ask what the fuck she was doing on the phone with him. Hadn’t she brought Victor Strauss home with her? Was he already asleep, the insensitive shit?

  She kept going, even though her voice wobbled. “Because I thought we were friends, and that you might be a little interested in knowing how I’m doing. At the very least, how many stitches I needed—”

  “Six,” he said. He knew all about her stitches. He knew the size thread they’d used. Jesus, he knew the middle name of the doctor—Constanza Manuela Puente—who’d done the stitching.

  There was silence then, he couldn’t even hear her breathing, and he checked the phone to make sure she was still there.

  She was.

  And then he heard it. The slightest catch of a breath.

  Jane was crying. Softly, so he wouldn’t hear, but she was crying.

  He had to sit down.

  “I was so scared,” she said, but before he could sympathize—Yes, that must have been awful, watching those lights topple, having to run to get out of the way, please, Janey, don’t cry . . .—she added, “He was just lying there, on top of me.” She faked a laugh—it was really quite good. “I never really understood before what people meant when they said dead weight, but now I do. He was so heavy, so . . . limp. Then I saw all the blood, and, oh, Cos, I was sure he was dead—”

  She was talking about Decker.

  “. . . and I knew if he was, that it was my fault, and God, he’s such a better person than I am, and now you’re not here to tell me that it’s okay, it all worked out, because he’s not dead—”

  “He’s not dead, Jane. It is okay.”

  She laughed again, but this time she didn’t do such a good job of it. “I know. Thank God. Look, I’m sorry. I’m neurotic. You don’t need this on your night off. I’ll let you—”

  “You want me to come over?” Cosmo asked, closing his eyes and cursing himself as soon as the words had left his lips.

  “Could you?” she asked so quietly he almost didn’t hear her, so much hope loaded into two little words.

  No way could he say no. “Yeah.” He stood up, pulled on his pants, slipped his feet into his boots, knowing full well that he was going to regret this. Going to? Shit, he already did. “Hang on.” He put down the phone, pulled on his T-shirt. “I’m back.”

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “I got a motel room,” he admitted as he grabbed his keys from the top of the TV and let himself out into the parking lot. “It’s not too far from you. Maybe five minutes. I’m getting into my truck right now, okay?”

  She was confused. “But all your stuff is . . . I thought . . . Aren’t you staying here?”

  “Yeah . . .” He backed out of the parking space. “Well . . .” Christ, just say it. “I needed to not be over there tonight. I, um, needed some space.”

  “Oh, God,” Jane said. “I’m sorry. I’ve been . . . I shouldn’t have asked you to read those pages of script—”

  “No,” he said. “No, that’s not . . . That’s not why.”

  He could practically hear her thinking, trying to figure out what she’d said or done or . . . She was so ready to take the blame for everything. So he told her. “I didn’t want to be there when you brought Victor home with you.”

  “Victor Strauss?” she said. “I know a lot of people think he’s a little too abrasive, but . . . I didn’t realize you knew him.”

  “I’ve never met the man,” he said. “I just . . .”

  “What?” she said, frustration in her voice after the silence had stretched on for too long.

  Apparently, he had to spell it out for her. “I didn’t want to have to sit in the kitchen while you were . . . upstairs . . .” No, be more exact. “In your bedroom. With him. With him, you know? With. Him.”

  Was that clear enough? Or did he have to be even more specific?

  Jane said it for him, wonder in her voice. Wonder that rapidly morphed into gleeful amusement. “You switched shifts with Murphy because you thought I was going to run through the second floor of the house with Victor, shrieking, ‘Do me, big daddy, ‘til the cows come home’?”

  Cosmo closed his eyes as he sat at a red light, listening to Jane laughing and laughing on the other end of the phone.

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “Oh, my God. I thought you weren’t here tonight because you didn’t like me. But . . .” The wonder was back in her voice. “Yo
u’re not here because you do. And you must’ve seen . . . You saw that picture in the Voice. Cos, you gigantic idiot, I planted that. What are you doing, believing something you saw in a tabloid? Haven’t you learned anything this past week? Victor Strauss is a friend of mine. He agreed to pose as my latest fling to take the heat off of you.”

  Well, didn’t he feel stupid. Stupid and . . .

  “Cosmo, where are you?” Jane asked.

  Relieved. He was incredibly relieved. The lead weight he’d been carrying in his stomach since this afternoon was gone, leaving behind this rapidly expanding sense of . . .

  “I’m having an emergency,” Jane said. “You have to get over here right away. Do you hear me?”

  Hope.

  “Cos, are you still there?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, signaling for the turnoff that would take him up through the winding hills to her house. “I’ll be walking in the door in about three minutes.” Fewer, if he floored it.

  “That’s good,” she said, her voice warm in his ear. “That’s really good. Because I can’t kiss you through the phone.” She laughed. “At least not the way I want to.”

  She cut the connection.

  And Cosmo floored it.

  “Jules! Wait!”

  Jules didn’t stop walking. Shit, he’d left his umbrella in the club, at the coat check. But no way was he going back for it now. The rain was lightening up anyway.

  Besides, his T-shirt couldn’t get much wetter.

  “Jules!” It was Robin who was following him, so he stopped. Turned. Waited impatiently, arranging his face into an expression he hoped was neither hostile nor disappointed. He was going for polite yet not particularly friendly, but alcohol tended to affect his ability to be subtle.

  He shouldn’t have had one martini, let alone two.

  “Sorry about your shirt.” Robin was out of breath from running after him. “And I’m so, so sorry about . . . I should have called you when I realized it was raining, because of course that meant Adam would show up.”

  “It’s not your fault.” Jules started walking again.

  “No, but I should’ve anticipated it, and it is my fault that . . . Well, you were right,” Robin admitted, trailing along beside him. “I was having a little too much fun, trying to make Adam squirm. Can we please get out of this rain? You want to maybe go get something to eat?”

  “No. I’m tired. I’m going back to my hotel.” He wanted to find a cab, but every one that went past was taken. God damn rain.

  Robin didn’t give up. “If you really want to go, you should, but if . . . Well, I was hoping we’d have a chance to . . . I really wanted to . . . See, here’s the thing. I have this scene coming up that I’m a little anxious about, and Adam’s not giving me any help at all. Or maybe he’s giving me too much help—I’m not sure—but . . . I’m just trying to get a feel for this role I’m playing—you know, Hal Lord.”

  Jules stopped dead and turned to look at Robin. Unbelievable. “You want me to give you insight into playing a man who was so deeply in the closet, he even lied about who he was to himself? I can’t help you there. I was out at seventeen. I was the president of my high school gay-straight alliance. Try looking into your bathroom mirror, Robbie. You might find something mighty interesting there.”

  Someday he’d have a good laugh about this. He just knew it.

  “I know you think that I’m . . . And I know I’ve been adding to the whole charade by . . . But it’s all just an act, Jules.”

  “Yeah, lots of straight guys lick my ear. It happens to me all the time. Men falling at my feet . . . Yeah, right.” He rolled his eyes.

  Robin met his gaze and held it. “I was paying attention in there. I don’t think you realize this, but you could have anyone in that club. Anyone. So what are you doing, carrying a torch for that asshole?”

  Jules started walking again. “You haven’t exactly seen him at his best.”

  “On the contrary. I’ve seen him act. He’s amazing,” Robin said. “But he really seems to get off on hurting you, which makes him an asshole in my book.”

  “Yeah,” Jules said. “In mine, too. And yet . . .” He sighed. “There’s a side to him you haven’t seen. And when he’s there, in that place, when he’s the closest to at peace that he can manage, you can’t help but fall in love with him.”

  They walked for a while in silence.

  “I could. I could help it,” Robin finally said. “I’m never going to fall in love with him. That’s a given.”

  Jules laughed. “That’s the kind of line where, if we were characters in a movie, we’d cut to a scene of you and Adam getting married.”

  Robin didn’t find that very funny. “Thank God we’re not in a movie. Look, this walking in the rain is certainly a novelty, but isn’t there maybe someplace we could go to just sit and talk? Maybe get something to eat? Your choice completely. My treat.”

  Jules looked into Robin Chadwick’s very blue eyes. He was tall and handsome and still young enough to have to stagger into the gym only a few times a week to keep in shape. He was kind and funny and sincere. He was also an alcoholic and an actor and a known player who probably lied his ass off without blinking when it suited him. Oh, yeah, and the big bonus—he insisted he was straight.

  “Did you know that Jack wasn’t Hal’s first gay relationship?” Robin asked him.

  Really?

  “Ah, see—now I’ve caught your interest,” Robin continued. “Yeah, there was more to ol’ Hal than meets the eye. Look, let’s just get out of the rain—”

  “Are you offering me a bribe?” Jules asked. “Come out with me—not in a gay way, because we both know you’re not gay”—right—“and I’ll tell you this story?”

  “No,” Robin said. “I didn’t mean . . . The story’s not that long or exciting, anyway. Hal went to Europe the summer after high school and while he was in Berlin, he met this boy, Miguel—the son of one of his father’s business associates. It was a textbook ‘blame it on the alcohol’ incident. Hal got tanked and ‘accidentally’ had sex with Miguel. He had the whole litany of excuses at his fingertips. It was just that once. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know what he was doing. Of course it got a little harder to convince himself of all that after he met Miguel again. They got together two more times before Hal boarded the steamship home.

  “Hal told Jack that, at that point, he alternated between I was drunk and No one ever has to know.”

  “From what I’ve read about Hal Lord’s father,” Jules said, “it was probably more along the lines of I better never let anyone know.”

  “Yeah.” Robin smiled ruefully. “I’ll just go home and spend the rest of my life hiding who I really am. That’s the way I’m playing the character. He knows exactly who and what he is, but he’s chosen to lie about it. Deceit, denial . . . and terror. He’s lived every day of his life in fear that someone will discover his secret. And then he meets Jack and he can’t stay away. He tries, but he just . . . can’t.”

  Jules looked at Robin, walking beside him with the misty rain glistening in his hair. God, what was he doing? How much of a masochist was he, anyway? A huge one, apparently, because the truth was, he would have been happy to walk all night, gazing at those perfect cheekbones and those blue-blue eyes, just letting Robin’s beautifully modulated voice wrap around him.

  He should run. He should shout, “Gotta go,” and dash off down the street. After a block or two, Robin would fall back, unable to keep up. The man looked good, but it was only skin-deep. His wind was for shit.

  And yet Jules didn’t run. He just kept walking.

  “So no bribe, see?” Robin told him. “And no pressure, either. No pressure, no bullshit, no ulterior motives. And no hard feelings. If it’s still no, you don’t want to, you want to go back to your hotel, that’s okay with me, too.”

  Jules looked up and saw that they were approaching a Mexican restaurant. He didn’t recognize it from the last time he was in town—it was prob
ably that new place Adam had tried to bully him into going to.

  And, ah, the irony of his going here with Robin was just too good to pass up. “I’ve heard this place has great guacamole,” Jules said.

  Robin’s smile was dazzling. “Well, good,” he said, and held open the door, letting Jules go in first.

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  CHAPTER