by Fiona Zedde
The gaze Kendra turned on Renee wasn’t a friendly one. Mayson watched with amusement as the woman gave her what amounted to a visual strip search, the eyes tearing apart Renee’s outfit, jewelry, haircut, how close she stood to Mayson.
“A pleasure,” Renee said, although her voice said the opposite.
The women shook hands coolly before Kendra turned back to Mayson. “Call me,” she said, and walked slowly away, hips swinging under the black dress.
“That was interesting,” Mayson said. It wasn’t often that she got picked up at a straight event.
“That looked like trouble,” Renee muttered. “Did you see the way she stared me down like she was ready to wrestle me to get to you?”
“That would be fun to see.” Mayson twisted an invisible mustache and grinned.
“Pig.”
“Heartless. I thought you were ready to do anything to get me laid tonight.”
“Me, not you.” Renee sipped her champagne.
Mayson shook her head. “And selfish too.”
A chuckle spilled from Renee’s lips.
With a frown, Mayson looked down at her shirt. “Let me run to the bathroom and clean up this mess while you go mingle with your people.”
Renee sighed. “Fine. I suppose I do need to do some networking.”
“Don’t have too much fun.” Mayson laughed.
When she came back from the bathroom, instead of going to find Renee she continued out to the balcony. The Friday evening air was crisp, even in San Diego, where the rest of the world thought it stayed a balmy eighty degrees all year long. They had just left behind a particularly brisk winter and were getting back into the sweet monotony of surfing days and hammock-swinging nights.
She leaned her forearms against the steel railing and drew in a deep breath.
“I thought that was you out here, Mayson.”
Grant Chambers appeared at her side with a beer in hand. She glanced at the solidly built man in surprise.
“Hey, Grant. What are you up to?”
“Enjoying the party, what else?”
“Did you come all the way down here just for this shindig?”
“I’ve come down to San Diego for less.” He eyed her meaningfully and smiled, white teeth flashing in his brown face.
Her mouth twitched with amusement. Grant had lived next door to Renee’s parents in Dana Point for as long as she could remember.
Although he’d been the charming boy next door, he and Renee had never connected in the way Mayson knew he wanted. And when he went away to school at Berkeley, everyone thought that his earlier ambition to court and eventually marry Renee was over. But after finishing his graduate degree in criminal justice, he moved back to Dana Point as a police officer and had been there ever since.
He’d never made any secret of his intentions regarding Renee. And she just ignored him and carried on with her life.
It was too bad. Grant was a good guy; nice but not boring. Mayson liked that about him. With his endless optimism and ability to turn every setback into an opportunity, he was like a big, happy kid.
“Have you seen Renee yet?” Mayson asked.
“I’ve seen her but we haven’t talked.” He sipped his beer. “She looks good.”
“Doesn’t she always?”
“Very true.” Grant laughed but there was something less than amusement behind the sound.
Maybe the wait for Renee’s attention was getting to him. She wouldn’t have held out that long for a woman who wouldn’t give her the time of day. Was he even dating other women?
She turned to look at him and found his eyes already on her.
“Word around the neighborhood is your parents moved back to Jamaica. Is that true?”
“Yes. They went back down a couple of months ago.” The familiar sadness sank into Mayson’s belly at the thought of her absent mother and father. “It’s something they talked about doing for years. A part of me is glad.”
“But I’m sure you miss them.”
“I do, but—”
“Mayson, I’ve been looking for you.”
She swallowed the rest of her words and pushed away the sadness. This wasn’t the time or the place. Grant squeezed her shoulder.
“And you found me,” she said to Renee’s pronouncement.
She turned in time to see Renee wrinkle her nose at Grant. The source of her friend’s dislike of the muscular police officer was a mystery. Renee could do much worse than Grant. She had in the past.
“You following me, Grant?” Renee asked, her voice only slightly teasing.
“Ah, if only I had time for such pleasurable pursuits.” His gaze on her was mild, taking inventory of her. An approving light winked in his eyes. “But I’m actually here with a friend.”
“Really?” Renee gave the room behind her a cursory glance. “Where is she?”
“Networking. I’m just the arm candy.” He flashed that dazzling smile of his. “Whenever she’s ready for me, she knows where I am.”
“I’d love to meet this woman and see what your type is.”
“All you have to do is look in the mirror to see my type, Renee. But my date is nothing like you.”
Just then, a tall woman appeared on the balcony, obviously looking for someone.
Damn. If Mayson had known how to wolf whistle, she would have let one loose then. Big, thick hair like a halo framed her beautiful face. Black-coffee skin. Breasts plumped up in a pale yellow dress that rode the fine line between tasteful and tasty.
“Grant, I need you,” the woman said in a rough voice like she’d smoked too many cigarettes. Or just woken up.
He took one last drink of his beer and straightened to his full height. “I’m right here.” He aimed one of his infectious smiles at Mayson. “It was good to run into you, Mayson. Renee. See you around sometime soon.”
The two looked after him, Renee with a considering look on her face. “I didn’t think that was his type at all,” she said.
You got that right, Mayson thought. The woman looked hot and fast. As if she’d try anything to get off. Not at all like a side of homegrown sexy like Renee. “I guess you don’t know him as well as you thought,” Mayson said.
“Believe me, I know everything there is to know about Grant Chambers and that’s why that tricked-out little sports car can have him.”
Mayson stared after the girl who had already disappeared into the crowd with Grant on her arm. Or that tricked-out ride can have me, if she ever gets tired of driving stick.
They left the party a few hours later after Renee, tired of mincing around on her high heels, suggested they go for a drive to La Jolla. In Mayson’s drop-top Toyota Solara, they sped away from the Hillcrest party, heading up the 5 under the bright moon.
“Why don’t you give the guy a chance?” Mayson raised her voice to be heard above the wind.
“Don’t start. You sound like Mama.”
“Your mama has been known to be right about a thing or two.”
“The last thing I want is the boy next door. I know him. He’s boring. If you like Grant so much, why don’t you take him home to your parents?”
“Fucking men is something I’ll leave to you. If he had a cute sister, we could talk, but as things stand…” Mayson shrugged.
Grant had two brothers, both older than him, already married and gone off to New York to raise families of their own.
“All this isn’t even about Grant. It’s about most men that I meet. They all want to cling like parasites after the first time you sleep with them. That’s not what I want.” Renee dropped her head back against the seat to look at the stars.
“What do you want, then?”
“I want sex,” Renee said. “With no complications.”
Mayson raised an eyebrow at her friend. “Really?”
“Yes. Why are you so surprised? I hope you don’t think you’re the only one entitled to a little pleasure on the side.”
Mayson nearly stuttered. “No. But I just th
ought you wanted—you know, a guy you could see occasionally, go out on dates with, eventually take home to your parents.”
“That sounds nice, but I really just want the sex.” Renee laughed at whatever she saw in Mayson’s face. “You can be such a prude.” Then she sobered.
“All the years we’ve been friends, that’s what you had. Sex. The only long-term relationship you ever had was with Nuria and even that one was based on sex.” Renee tilted her head, frowning in the sudden halo of light from a street-lamp. “You’ve been so happy. No one has broken you. That’s what I want.”
“You make my life sound so meaningless and empty,” Mayson said, allowing the sadness to leak into her voice.
“No! It’s just the opposite. You’re the most fulfilled person I know.” Her hand landed on her friend’s arm.
Really? Mayson shook her head. “Don’t use me as an example, Renee. Just because I haven’t been able to commit to anyone doesn’t mean I never wanted to.”
“Was there someone?” Renee lifted her head.
Heat crept under Mayson’s cheeks, unexpected. Unwelcome. “Yes. But it was a long time ago and things didn’t work out.”
Passing headlights illuminated the curiosity in Renee’s face. Mayson shook her head in response to the unasked question. Renee pressed her lips together, then lay back against the headrest. Quiet.
The car sped toward La Jolla, wind dancing over their skin, other vehicles racing past. Their headlights blazed a path through the darkness ahead of them, illuminating the serpentine road. Around them, the hills of San Diego rose up silent and dark.
The leather squeaked as Renee rolled her head to look at Mayson. “Have you ever wanted to be free from yourself?”
Mayson nodded, releasing the threads of memory unraveled by Renee’s earlier questions.
“Linc never knew me. Or I hope he didn’t, because the person he saw was cold and unlovable and she complicated things. I don’t want to be that person.” Renee’s voice was soft, lost.
Her dangling pearl and platinum earrings batted against her cheek as she raised her head to look at Mayson. “I want to be uncomplicated. I want to be in an uncomplicated situation.”
“Isn’t that what we all want?” Mayson looked briefly at Renee before giving her attention back to the road. “But as for your man problem, it’s too bad you just can’t get what you need—no names, no numbers—then leave. That way the guy can’t complain that you’re not there for him or whatever it is that men complain about.”
Renee smiled faintly. “That’s a damn fine idea but how do I even go about that?”
“Do what everybody else does,” Mayson said, shifting into third and passing a black Bentley. She narrowed her eyes against the car’s high beams before reaching up to tilt the rearview mirror. “Put an ad in the paper. Or online, since that’s much quicker.”
“You have a solution to everything, don’t you?”
“Not really, but when life drops shit bombs, it doesn’t make sense to lie there and wallow in the mess. Get up and clean yourself off.”
The car sang with Renee’s soft laughter. “Well, since you put it that way, wise one.” She laughed again.
“Every problem can be solved, honey.” Mayson grinned. “Never forget that.”
Chapter 4
Renee let herself into her house with a sigh of exhaustion. When she and Mayson got to La Jolla, her friend exhumed a bottle of red wine from her trunk. Between them, they finished the bottle, talking loudly, laughing, their shoulders pressed together as they sat side by side on the hard cement steps facing the splash and release of the sea.
Now, slightly drunk and more tired than she’d been in a long time, Renee could barely navigate the dark interior of her condo without bumping into something.
“Ouch!” She bounced off the door handle, rubbing her hip through the dress.
With an aggrieved sigh, she kicked off her shoes, stumbling in the straps of the high heels as she made her way across the bedroom. Exhaustion tugged her toward the bed, but habit found her in the bathroom, stripping off her dress and stepping under the shower’s scalding heat.
Afterward, she sat on the edge of the bed, naked, smoothing lotion into her skin. Tiredness still nipped at the edges of her awareness but it was something she could easily ignore. Now that the shower had cleared away the last of the fog, the haunting remnants of her morning conversation with her ex-husband came back to her.
Over the phone, his voice had been that same deep seduction she always had a weakness for. During their marriage, his voice was a comfort she relied on. She asked him to tell stories, to read to her, to talk about his day just so she could lose herself in the dips and heights of his profound voice. But what he’d said in the morning hadn’t been comforting.
“I wish things could have worked out with us, Renee,” he had said. “But you weren’t willing to change for the relationship. You’re as much a stranger to me now as when we first met. I need someone who can open up to me and who will trust me.”
Renee hadn’t fought the divorce. She couldn’t say that she would have filed if he hadn’t done it, but the marriage had been spiraling down the drain almost from the start. Linc had wanted too much emotional intimacy from her too soon. And later he became intent on devouring her personality and converting it into something more suited to his life. He wanted her to be someone more attached to him, someone more stylish whom he could show off at work functions. The relationship had been destined to fail. Still, she missed him. At times, familiar intimacy was better than none at all.
“I can’t do anybody any good right now,” she’d confessed to Mayson, sitting on the cool steps overlooking the ocean on one side and the seal refuge on the other. Even though she knew Linc had been an emotional leech, that didn’t stop her from feeling worthless as a partner and unable to provide the most basic of emotional reassurances.
“If what you need is a good fuck, go out and get it,” her best friend said as the surf pounded against the hard packed sand, misting their faces with sea spray. “Forget any so-called emotional inadequacy. You’ve done okay with me for the past twenty years.” But even Mayson’s words couldn’t make her feel better.
Renee ached for a solution to the chaos swirling inside her.
“Do what you do best, honey.” She heard Mayson’s voice as if she lay in the bed next to her. “Take care of yourself. There’s no one else to consider in this. Take what you need and move on with your life.”
And what I want is sex. That would help her to forget about her insecurities, about Linc and his damn voice pouring poisonous doubt into her ear.
Renee pulled her laptop from the drawer in her nightstand and booted up the machine. It flickered on from hibernation mode and immediately found her wireless connection. Within a few keystrokes she found a familiar Web site, one that she and Mayson had often browsed out of boredom, laughing at the desperation of some of the ads from people “looking for companionship.” Tonight she wasn’t looking for companionship. She wanted even less than that.
The words came to her and she drafted her ad. As she wrote what she wanted and what she didn’t want, the lyrics of Rupert Holmes’s Piña Colada song ran through her mind. Her fingers slowed on the keyboard. And sadness caught the edges of her mouth and turned them down.
Unlike in the song, there was no chance that she and Linc would end up together after discovering new and appealing things about each other that four years of marriage had never revealed. Even when they’d first gotten together, she and Linc never seemed to fit. They never liked the same things. Their friends never got along.
And it wasn’t until they separated that Renee realized that she’d become estranged from her own friends during the course of their marriage. His friends had become hers and after the divorce she was left alone.
Renee shook herself out of the stupor, quickly finished the ad, and uploaded it to the Web site. Nothing is going to come of this, she thought, turning the computer off and get
ting ready for bed. This would be yet another of her failed attempts to reach out to another human being.
But just before she fell asleep, she remembered her question from earlier.
Was there someone?
Then Mayson’s disquieting answer. “Yes.”
“Who?” she’d wanted to ask. “Who had it been?”
Chapter 5
Life in a corporate office was slow death, Renee decided. She picked up the proofs from her desk and left her cubicle, heading to her boss’s office, which was one of only six offices along the outer walls of their eighteenth-floor suite. The company had recently moved from a cozy two-story Victorian in Hillcrest, where most of the designers had private offices. In this cold building in the heart of downtown, she had been relegated to a “cubicle farm,” losing her privacy and what she now realized was the luxury of being able to think in peace and quiet. Alonzo, of course, kept his office.
At his door, she knocked once before walking in.
“Here’s what I have for Skarsgard,” she said, dropping the proofs on the corner of his immaculate desk. Did he ever do anything besides surf the Net for porn and call his assistant to arrange expensive lunches the company had to swallow?
Alonzo looked away from his computer screen and leaned back in his chair. “Thanks.” He smoothed his gray silk tie. “I’ll take a look at these and get back to you by the end of the week.”
“Thank you.” She turned to go.
“You look a little out of sorts and frustrated, Renee.” Alonzo stroked his tie again. “Like you need a good…date.”
She continued out of the office. “That’s sexual harassment, Alonzo. And I’m not afraid to press charges.”
His secretary looked up as Renee passed but the older woman said nothing. She’d been working with Alonzo long enough to know his pattern and how Renee responded to it. Renee didn’t know how much longer she could deal with her situation at Banes Unlimited. It had gotten old long ago. Even now she remembered the feel of Alonzo’s eyes on her, following the way the black pinstriped slacks clung to her backside and thighs.
