I looked away from the horror in the mirror and shimmied into my evening gown, then turned back to my image. Holy shit. There was a transvestite hooker in Nick’s bathroom. The walk of shame through the parking lot was going to be harrowing. The Reef wasn’t the nicest hotel on St. Marcos by any stretch, but it had done its budget-conscious best imitation of Caribbean-vacation chic. The walls were an innocent yellow, the cabinetry a crisp white. Hibiscus blossoms floated in a glass bowl on the vanity, matching the hibiscus-print shower curtain. I wrinkled my nose. Too matchy-matchy. But one look back in the mirror and I knew I was no one to judge.
I could still hear Nick talking, but I needed some toiletries, pronto. I snuck a glance out the door at him as I rummaged through his shaving kit for toothpaste with one eye on his reflection in the mirror. I finger-scrubbed the last twelve hours out of my mouth, then doused my face with cold water and got to work on it with a scratchy bath rag. Then I swiped on some Right Guard, straightened my long blue dress, shut the door, and tried to tinkle.
The sound of my pee hitting the water was only slightly quieter than the sound of Niagara Falls in the middle of a thunderstorm. No, no, no. I squeezed in vain, trying to exercise some volume control. But it was no good. I stopped altogether.
What to use as a noisemaker? There was no fan in the bathroom, no radio, no telephone upon which I could fake a loud conversation with Ava. Desperate, I stretched over to the bathtub and threw back the curtain. I couldn’t reach the faucet handles, though.
I did an audio check on Nick. Still engrossed. I lifted my left foot. Just short. I scooted my butt to the edge of the toilet seat and tried again. Toe met chrome. Hallelujah! I scrunched my toes and applied clockwise pressure, and the sound of the water pouring into that tub was sweet music to my ears.
Thank you, God, I whispered.
Nick poked his head in the door. “Are you getting in the bathtub?”
“Wait! I’m using the potty,” I said, and my voice squelched like feedback between a speaker and a microphone. I dropped my dress around me and assumed what I hoped was a dignified pose.
“But you turned on the water,” he said.
“A little privacy here, please?” I hoped I sounded airy and confident.
“You’re beet red.”
“I really don’t want to pee in front of you on our first date. Our first whatever that was.”
Nick grinned, put his hands in the air, and backed out. “I could still hear you, you know.”
“Shut uuuu-up,” I yelled as he closed the door.
When I emerged from the bathroom, Nick was leaning back in bed with his eyes closed, wearing only his silver boxer briefs. Holy crap, he was sexy. I’d known he’d look good, and he’d felt pretty damn good the night before, but seeing his dark skin and smoothly defined body in the light of day hurtled over my expectations.
I needed to show an interest in his sister and her baby.
“So, is your sister OK?”
He pursed his lips. “Not really. She’s kind of come unglued.”
“What happened?”
“She posted a picture on Facebook of her and Taylor by the pool in front of a sign that had the name of the condos on it. Derek showed up this morning, pounding on the door and screaming at her. He’s gone now.”
“Sounds awful.”
“Yeah.” He patted the bed beside him, in the middle. I looked for a graceful way to get from where I was to where he was, but there didn’t seem to be any way to accomplish that in an evening gown. I stepped around the pile of red bedspread on the floor and crawled across the bed on all fours to him, trying not to look like a really bad eighties rock video. I plopped down near him and wiggled closer. He slipped an arm around my shoulders and kissed my awful hair. “I’m sorry, I hate ignoring you, but I’ve got to help my sister right now.”
By force of will, I kept my lower lip from extending. “I understand.” I didn’t, though. Why didn’t she just call the police? What could Nick do from here? This was our first morning together, a morning for room service and nakedness.
No, that wasn’t fair. I could understand. I just didn’t like it.
I stared past my feet over the end of the bed at the tan low-nap carpet. Practical. Sensible. Like I needed to try to be.
“I’m sorry,” Nick said again. The red light on his Blackberry started blinking. New message. New message. Read me now. READ ME NOW, it screamed. Or maybe it didn’t, but it might as well have. I hated that phone.
“That’s fine,” I said. “Really. I need to run back to Ava’s anyway. Shower. Change clothes. That kind of thing.” Immediately, I wished I hadn’t said it. What if he didn’t want me to come back? What if he got on a plane and went home and I never heard from him again?
He might tell his friends he’d always wondered what Katie would be like in bed.
“How was it?” they’d ask.
“Meh,” he’d answer.
He interrupted my nosedive. “Can’t you stay here? Hopefully this won’t take long.”
That was better.
I really did need to re-beautify, though. Nick might not be ready for too much of the real Katie. I shook my head. “Could you call me when you’re done?”
“Yes, and then will you come back? I don’t want to lose any more time with you than I have to.”
My heart danced a crazy love dance. He wanted to spend all his time with me. This was really happening. He pulled me to him and kissed my lips long and hard.
“Absolutely,” I said.
“That’s settled, then.” He held up his phone with his thumb set to press the speed dial. “She’s waiting for me to call back. So I’ll see you soon.”
“Soon.”
Chapter Ten
I stepped out into the brightness of midmorning in the Caribbean. The sun bathed the world in light not unlike but a million times better than the yellow walls in Nick’s hotel room. Along the side of the building hibiscus clamored, the source of the cuttings in the bathroom, no doubt. I shielded my eyes and tried to make my Shoeless Joe Jackson walk of shame as quickly as I could. Damn, it was a long way to my truck. I started trotting across the parking lot. Just as I reached the truck, my phone rang. It was Ava. I didn’t bother saying hello.
“Don’t start with me,” I said. I crawled in and remembered I had no keys. Shit. But I knew how to hotwire a truck now, didn’t I? I hadn’t paid close attention, but it wasn’t rocket science.
Ava’s island accent danced across the phone line. “Wah? I just checking on you, that’s all. So, talk to me. What happen?”
Nick had left the bobby pins attached to the yellow and green wires. Green for go, yellow for something else. Both of them needed to be connected to the power. Power was red. I knew that whatever yellow was, it came before go. I stuck the opposite leg of the bobby pin with the yellow wire into the red wire. The dashboard lights came on. Ah, yes. Yellow for dash lights. I connected the green to the red with the ends of the other bobby pin. The engine turned and caught. Hot damn.
“Sorry, Mom, but I couldn’t come home because I spent the night with a boy. Am I grounded?”
I maneuvered the truck out of the parking lot onto the short stretch of road that passed Columbus Cove on the way to Ava’s place. A flotilla of kayaks paddled by on my left, creating a neon rainbow across the flat water.
“It seem I a bad influence on you. Lah, he a sexy one.”
“Keep your eyes off him, woman.” Ava was supposedly dating Rashidi, but she didn’t do exclusive very well. “So, tell me, how bad is it going to be with Bart?”
“Bart? He already forget all about you. Heard he dating the recently divorced former Mrs. St. Marcos. I think you know her.” I laughed again. “Speaking of Jackie, you hear her cousin die?”
“I think it’s a stretch to call her a cousin, but she told me. I already knew, though. She was the kitchen manager at Fortuna’s.”
“Yah, bad stuff happening, mon.”
“I just pulled up in the
driveway. I’m hanging up now.”
Ava’s small house was white and boxy, without a stick or stem of landscaping to soften its edges, but it had plenty of personality inside. The front door opened onto a miniature great room whose rattan furniture and Formica-topped table overlooked Columbus Cove far below. To the right were a balcony, a cheery galley kitchen, and the bathroom, and to the left were our bedrooms.
“Honey, I’m home,” I yelled as I patted the bouncing head of Poco Oso, then made a sharp right into the tiny blue bathroom. Entering it was like diving into a tiny bay surrounded by a coral reef. The whole room was decorated with seashells. Shells in bowls, shells in box frames, even shells inset into the stucco walls, or “masonry,” as the Locals called it.
I turned on the shower and stripped down.
Ava rattled the knob, then rapped on the door. “Don’t lock me out of there. I need details, and I need ’em now.”
I turned the knob to unlock the door and ducked inside the shower stall as my friend threw the door open.
“That why they call it mooning. You need sun on that bana. I take you to Old Man’s Bay soon and we tan you up.”
“My tush is going to stay as white as God made it, thank you very much.”
“Enough about your flat ole white-girl ass. Spill it,” she said, and planted herself on the toilet seat. “And don’t leave out the good parts.”
I squirted Pantene conditioner into my hand and rubbed it into my hair, only noticing my mistake when it didn’t lather. I stuck my head under the water. “Oh my God, Ava, he came to see me and he’s really sorry and the only reason it took so long is because of the baby, but maybe it will be different whenever he can get rid of it—”
“Baby? Somebody getting rid of his baby?” Ava shrieked.
“No, not getting rid of like getting rid of. I meant when the baby leaves, because right now the baby is living with him.” I rubbed shampoo into my brillo-pad hair and started scrubbing.
Ava ripped the shower curtain open. She was still in the hot pink silk teddy that she wore like a housedress. Her voice shot up an octave. “You pining over this man who make a brand new baby with another woman and that OK with you? What wrong with you, Katie?” She planted her small hands on her hips and cocked her head.
I snapped the shower curtain shut. “No, you’ve got it all wrong.”
“I only got what you tell me.”
“Let me try again.”
“I listening.”
“Nick’s little sister and her baby moved in with him last year to get away from the baby’s dad, because he had just gotten out of jail. So Nick’s life was really complicated, and it still is, but he said his heart stops when I walk in a room, so he had to come.”
Silence from outside the shower. I took advantage of the break in Ava’s inquisition to rinse out the shampoo and try the conditioner again.
Finally, Ava spoke, her voice lower. “You believe him?”
“Yes, of course. What, you think he’s lying to me?”
“I don’t know the man. That’s why I asking you.” She opened the shower curtain again and I realized I was not going to win a battle over my modesty with Ava. She leaned so close the water beaded on her face. “You got it bad for him. He hurt you once. What make you think he won’t again, and here you go throwing a perfectly good fish back in the sea only to end up with one that rotten in the head.”
“Nick is not a rotten-headed fish, Ava.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do. And he’s not. And, besides,” I said as I turned my face away and squirted shaving cream on my leg, “I have had six orgasms since I saw you last night, and that has to count for something.”
I’d just thought Ava was shrieking before.
“Six? Six? That man give you six orgasms? Where he staying? What his room number?”
I threw a handful of shaving cream at her, then switched legs. “I’m considering never letting the two of you meet again.”
“What you doing here, then? Hurry, hurry.”
“So, now that you know what the emergency is, could you please help me pack a just-in-case overnight bag and quit badgering me?”
“I got just the thing for you to wear,” she said, and sprinted out of the room, muttering, “I never had six. Six? Six?”
I finished my shower and threw on a robe, then packed overnight essentials and padded wet-footed into my bedroom. Ava had already thrown every garment I owned onto my bed, and most of her stuff, too. Poco Oso was running in and out of the closet, feeding off the excitement in the air. Ava rattled off outfit advice that was nearly as worthless as Oso’s help.
“This one work real well for me,” she said, holding up a black mesh body stocking. I shook my head violently. She shrugged, wadded it in a ball, and tossed it toward her room. It landed ten feet short of her door.
I held up a zebra tube top and shirred black satin miniskirt accusingly. “I couldn’t pull this off in a million years. On you, it shoots sparks. On me, it’s just awkward.”
She harrumphed and threw it on the floor. By the time we’d agreed on my clothes and sleepwear, my canvas overnight bag was bulging. I’d have to hide it in the toolbox, as it screamed “desperate woman making premature assumptions.”
I slipped on my favorite pair of tan linen shorts and a lime-green tank and looked around my room. I felt like I was forgetting something. I patted my pockets. No keys. I went to my bedside table and grabbed the spares.
My phone dinged with a text. Nick. “Ready when you are. Hurry back.” My heart fluttered like a new butterfly with wings heavy and wet, hopeful, vulnerable. I prayed we were done with the sister-mama drama as I stuffed my bathroom case in the top of my bag and slung the straps over my shoulder.
Ava stood in the doorway and studied her long French-manicured nails. “Try not to run into Bart. He may be more upset than I tell you earlier.”
I stood at the door with my suitcase and my dog. “Be a pal. Let me live in denial.”
“All right. Hey, before you go, I met a man last night. He a big-shot music producer, new on island. I invite him to our gig this weekend. So don’t bail on me.”
“We be gigging. I be seeing you later.”
She narrowed her eyes and jutted her chin. “Be careful, now.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I gave her a smacky kiss on the cheek and headed out the door. I stuffed my bag into the toolbox then got inside to un-hotwire the truck.
After I reconnected the wires and steering column cover and turned the spare key, the truck started with a powerful roar. I kind of hated using keys anymore. It felt so safe and boring, although it occurred to me that Ava and I really should change our locks if my house keys didn’t show up soon. I’d have to call Rashidi later and ask him to keep an eye out for them. I hit speed dial for Emily, and drove as fast as I dared.
“Hello?” A three-syllable word, ending in oh-oh. So Emily.
“He’s here.”
“You’re gonna have to do better than that.” Emily’s voice was so loud that I moved the phone an inch away from my ear.
“He’s here and it’s awesome.”
“Thank GAWD,” she said. “I was having second thoughts, but the horse was already out of the barn.”
“It’s going to be OK. Bart is pissed, though.”
“I expect he is. But I wouldn’t have told Nick where you were if I didn’t think he was for real. Still, you be careful.”
Ava first, and now Emily? I needed a sign around my neck that said, “I have it together, really.”
“Love you, Emily. Gotta go.”
“Love you, too.”
We hung up. I really missed that woman. Ava was my best on-island friend, but Emily was my bestest best friend in the world.
I pulled into the Reef’s parking lot and found a spot outside Nick’s oceanside room, right up next to the hibiscus and under one of the coconut palms that ringed the pink stucco hotel. Pink stucco against blue ocean always work
s.
I strolled toward Nick’s room, trying for nonchalance, but my heart was jackhammering. Less than twenty-four hours ago I had thought I’d never see this man again, and that he liked it that way. Was I supposed to play it cool now, or give in to my urge to leap into his arms and wrap my legs around his waist?
Nick opened the door. I smiled, but it felt stiff on my face. I tried again.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hey, beautiful,” he replied. He leaned toward me and kissed my cheek. “And you smell good.”
“You do, too.” I huffed his scent. Heady stuff. “You really, really do.”
I’m not sure how it started, but at some point I realized that I was totally making out with Nick in broad daylight, and that my hands were desperately seeking skin. My God, I was a cat in heat.
Suddenly my peripheral vision caught unexpected movement in the parking lot and prickles raced up my neck. I peeled myself off of Nick over his mumbled protests and searched out the source. Nick followed my gaze and our eyes settled on a black Pathfinder.
“Looks like your boyfriend’s car,” he said.
It was definitely Bart’s car. He wasn’t in it, but the movement I’d seen had come from that direction.
“Ex-sort-of-boyfriend,” I said. I tried not to move my head as I cast panicked glances far and wide. I didn’t see him. Maybe he was here on restaurant business. A girl could hope.
And then I realized I had forgotten to ask about Nick’s sister and nephew. He was going to think I was completely self-absorbed. Make that still completely self-absorbed. I hoped I’d come a long way since the days of shopping Neiman Marcus at lunch and drinking my free time away, but even the thought of that old Katie brought back feelings of deep humiliation. I would not be her.
I put my hand on his chest. “How’s your sister?” I asked. “Are she and the baby OK?”
He put his hand over mine and curled his fingers around it. “She’s at the police department and a buddy of mine is helping her with a protective order.”
“Did they get Derek?”
“No, he was gone by the time the cops arrived. My friend is taking her to stay in a hotel until I get home.”
Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Book 2) Page 5
