“Don’t be. We’ll just chalk this up to exhaustion and too much booze. Then we’ll forget we ever had this conversation, and nobody else will ever have to know.” Her eyes widened and she said, in a small, disappointed voice, “Oh.”
“Oh?”
“You’re planning to tell Casey, aren’t you?”
He scraped a hand through his hair and said, “I tell Casey everything.”
“I suppose she’ll be all smug and self-righteous, knowing that she was right all along.”
“Casey’s not like that.”
“Well, then. Aren’t you the lucky one?” She gathered up her purse and rose from her seat. “I have to leave. I’m flying to L.A. first thing in the morning. I haven’t been home in three months.”
“Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad. A little sad, maybe. But it’s not as though things weren’t over between us a long time ago. I’ve lived this long without you. I’ll keep on living without you.”
“At least let me get you a cab.”
Outside the bar, he flagged down a taxi, and they stood at the curb, neither of them knowing what to say. “I hope your wife knows what she has in you,” Kitty said.
“We have each other. It’s a two-way street.”
“And what happens if she doesn’t come out of this funk? What if she doesn’t come back to you fully?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You’re such a Galahad, it makes me a little nauseated. On anybody else, it would be ludicrous. On you, for some crazy reason, it seems to fit. I suppose you realize this means that if you go back on tour, I won’t be going with you.”
It hurt a little, deep inside his chest, to realize that this meant they’d never work together again. “I’m sorry,” he said for what felt like the twelfth time.
“Don’t be. I’m tough as nails. I’ve been in the entertainment business for the past two decades. Toughness goes with the territory. But I won’t forget you. Ever.” Kitty stood on tiptoe and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. She smelled wonderful, ripe and womanly and fragrant, and he felt the tiniest twinge of regret.
Then she gave him a cheeky grin. Said, “See you around, kid,” slid into the taxi, and was gone.
Feeling like a fool, he stood on the sidewalk and watched until the taxi was out of sight. His stomach clenched, and for a few seconds, he thought he might vomit. Somehow, he’d let them both down. Kitty and his wife. Mystified as to how he could have accomplished this without any action on his part, he shoved his hands in his pockets and began striding toward home. He shouldn’t feel this guilty, damn it. There was nothing for him to feel guilty about. He’d done nothing wrong. The only thing he could be found guilty of was stupidity, and even that wasn’t his fault. As Kitty had pointed out, that kind of stupidity was imprinted on the Y chromosome. He couldn’t be held responsible for something his dad had passed on to him.
So he would tell her. When he got home, probably still feeling as guilty as though he’d taken Kitty up on the ridiculous offer she’d blindsided him with, he would tell his wife what had gone down tonight. Casey wouldn’t say a word. She’d just give him that look, the one that had probably been perfected by Eve and passed down to every female since then, the look that said, Really? You’re really that stupid?
Maybe he should bring her flowers. Some kind of peace offering. Even though she knew him well enough to understand that he’d never, in this lifetime or the next, touch another woman, it still didn’t hurt to have insurance. Something a little extra to boost his groveling to the next level.
He’d already taken five steps past the entrance to the tattoo parlor before it clicked. Rob stopped to consider his options. A tattoo was forever. A permanent external symbol of his internal feelings for her. It would buy him brownie points. Of that much, he was certain. What woman wouldn’t be immensely flattered to have her name permanently engraved on the body of the man who’d promised to love her for eternity? Even Casey couldn’t be immune to that kind of grand gesture.
Besides, there was something appealing about the idea of marking himself as her property. Something hopelessly romantic, maybe even a little sexy. He’d never considered it before, mostly because he hadn’t thought it necessary. He wore a gold ring. That should be enough to keep predatory women at bay. Or so he’d thought. Tonight’s fiasco with Kitty had proven him wrong.
He thought about it for a full thirty seconds. And then, swallowing back the bile that was gathering somewhere in the vicinity of his tonsils, he turned, retraced those five steps, and walked through the door of the tattoo parlor.
Casey
Outside the open bedroom window, birds joyfully greeted the dawn that crept through the blinds. Half-asleep, she shifted position, plumped her pillow, rolled over, and her fist accidentally connected with her husband’s arm.
“Ow! Jesus Christ on a fucking pogo stick!” Clutching his arm, he rolled away from her and into a sitting position, uttering a string of obscenities that was shocking, even for him.
“What?” she said. “What’s wrong?”
He just shook his head and rocked back and forth. “Flash?” she said.
“Gimme a minute.”
“I’m sorry. But good God, I didn’t hit you that hard.”
“Not your fault,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Then what—” She caught sight of his upper arm, and her eyebrows rose almost to her hairline. “What the hell is that, MacKenzie?”
“What the hell does it look like, Fiore?”
“I would say it looks remarkably like a tattoo. What have you done?”
“I got a tattoo. And you just about sent me into the next millennium when you slugged it.”
“Are you crazy?”
“That’s not quite the response I was hoping for.”
“I don’t suppose you’d care to enlighten me?”
“I had this wild notion that the word ‘charming’ might come tripping from your lips.”
“Char—oh, for the love of God. Let me see.”
“You can see. You can’t touch.”
“Babe?”
“Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. If you touch it, I refuse to be held responsible for my actions.” He let go of his arm, turned gingerly so she could see. Looking red and inflamed, possibly infected, undoubtedly painful, was her name, spelled out in fancy Celtic lettering.
He’d had her name tattooed on his arm? “I guess this explains why you came in so late last night.”
“I didn’t think you knew what time I got home.”
“Clearly. Why is it so red and puffy? It’s not infected, is it? Do I need to take you to the hospital for an antibiotic? And possibly a lobotomy while we’re there?”
“It’s normal. The guy said it’ll look like this for a few days before it settles down. It should take a couple of weeks to fully heal.”
“It must’ve hurt like crazy.”
“It did. Bled like a son of a bitch.”
“What were you thinking? What on earth would make you do something like this?”
“I thought you’d be impressed.”
“You do realize that this is permanent?”
“No kidding.”
“I suppose this means I have to keep you.”
“Hah.”
“I don’t understand why you’d do something like this, out of the blue, without even discussing it with me ahead of time. You’ve lived almost forty years without any body art whatsoever. Why now? Unless—” The wheels started turning inside her head. She narrowed her eyes. “What did you do?”
“What do you mean, what did I do? I got a tattoo.”
“Before the tattoo. What did you do that was so awful you felt it necessary to disfigure your body to take the attention away from the real issue?”
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph.”
“Answer the damn question, MacKenzie.”
“What is it with women? What is this psychic ability you al
l have? I was working my way around to telling you anyway. You can retire the interrogation lamp and the nightstick. I had a few drinks with Kitty.”
“So you were drinking when you got this thing.”
“Not that much. Just a couple of beers. Maybe three.”
“With Kitty.”
“She wasn’t with me when I got the tattoo. I did that after I put her in the cab to her hotel. She’s flying to L.A. this morning.”
“How nice. What happened with Kitty?”
“Nothing happened. Not a damn thing.”
“You are the worst liar I’ve ever known. You get all shifty-eyed and you start sweating. What went on between you and Kitty?”
He let out a massive sigh. “We went for a drink. She asked me the customary, ‘So how have you been?’ and I made the mistake of telling her.”
“About?”
“About you. About us. About our current state of—” He glanced up, saw the look in her eyes. Closed his eyes, cleared his throat, and said, “Sexlessness.”
“You discussed our sex life with an old girlfriend.”
“Right now,” he said, “we don’t exactly have a sex life.”
“And you just had to let her know that, didn’t you? Keep it up, and you won’t have one ever again. Let me guess. She offered to comfort you in your time of need.”
“Better than that. She suggested that I might want to dump you. For her.”
Around the buzzing in her head, she wet her lips and smiled. “And your response was?”
“You’re looking at it, babydoll.”
“Let me make sure I have this right. You broke her poor, black little heart by declaring your undying love for me. You then walked into a tattoo parlor and got my name engraved on your upper arm to reinforce that declaration. Then you came home and climbed into bed with me.”
“That pretty much covers it.”
“You’re an idiot. You do realize that?”
“I’ve been told that a time or two.”
“But you’re my idiot.” Softening, she checked out the tattoo a second time. The lettering was elegant, the work top-notch. “So,” she said, “I guess this means that the next time some woman has the audacity to make such an impertinent suggestion, you’ll have a ready-made answer for her.”
He reached out a finger, touched her shoulder, trailed it down to the swell of her breast. “If it would make you feel any better,” he said, “I could have a heart drawn around it.”
She removed his hand from her breast. “That would be extremely tacky, MacKenzie. I think my name should be sufficient to keep the predators at bay.”
“If not, that little derringer you carry should do the trick.”
“Funny. There’s always a joker in every crowd.”
“And lucky you. You married him. Are you mad?”
“Because I married The Joker?”
“Because of the tattoo. And everything that preceded it.”
“As much as I’d like to be, as you so clearly pointed out, it’s my bed you slept in last night.”
“It’s your bed I intend to sleep in every night for the next fifty-seven years.”
“And after that?”
“After that, we renegotiate. I might be ready for a new wife by then.”
“Brat.” But he’d made her laugh, for the first time in ages. She studied the tattoo a final time. “I suppose,” she said softly, “I should be flattered that you think enough of me to deface your body in my honor.”
“Stop fishing for compliments, Fiore. You know damn well I think enough of you to take a bullet for you if I had to.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Only if you had to?”
“Well, I’m not going out looking for one, just to prove it to you, if that’s what you mean. But if I should happen across one, by accident…”
“That’s sweet. I think I’ll keep you. Tattoo and all.”
“Good to know.”
“Don’t look so relieved. Did you really think I was going to toss you out on your incredibly sexy little tush?”
“Not really.” His expression, and his voice, grew suddenly serious. “But you’ve been a little unpredictable lately.”
It was true, and she deeply regretted that this darkness hanging over her had wrought such havoc in his life. It shouldn’t have affected him this way, but they’d always been so connected that everything she did, everything she said, everything she felt, affected him. Sometimes to the point where she wondered if they were too dependent on each other. If, God forbid, anything should happen to either of them, how would the other carry on? She’d survived Danny’s death because she had Rob. If anything ever happened to Rob, she couldn’t imagine surviving. He was her life, her breath. How would she ever breathe again without him?
“I love you,” she said.
“I know you do.”
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”
He waggled his eyebrows and said, “I love you, too.”
“Much better. And I wasn’t planning to say this, MacKenzie, but since you’re being such a twit, I’ll say it anyway: I was right.”
“When have you ever not been right?”
“There was that one time, around 1982.”
“I must’ve missed the occasion.”
“Maybe we could reenact it. I so hate it when you miss something important.”
“Shut up and come over here. Maybe we can grab a couple more hours of sleep before Emma wakes up. But first, we need to swap sides until this thing stops hurting. Unless you like hearing a grown man cry.”
Rob
Ariel Records held Phoenix Hightower’s eighteenth birthday bash in the ballroom at an upscale Midtown hotel. A high-level private security firm guarded the door, and nobody got in unless they were on the invite list. It didn’t matter if your name was Ringo Starr; if you weren’t on the list, you didn’t get into the party.
Hand in hand, Rob and Casey stood just inside the doorway to the ballroom, taking it all in. At one end of the room, a live band played bouncy pop music. Overhead, hundreds of black balloons with purple strings hugged the ceiling. A broad, sparkly HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner hung from the ceiling above the band. The place was crawling with celebrities, all of them invited because the record company wanted Phoenix to rub elbows with the entertainment industry’s elite. Sequined dresses and plastic smiles ran rampant. Most of them were here not because they gave a tinker’s damn about Phoenix Hightower, but because it was one more opportunity for a photo op or a little networking.
“I hate this shit,” he muttered.
“Just smile and nod a lot,” she said. “That’s how you get through these things. You’ll come home at the end of the evening with a sore face from smiling too hard and vertigo from nodding too much, but any photos that show up in the tabloids tomorrow will make it look as though you had a wonderful time.”
His wife should know. She was a veteran of these idiotic see-and-be-seen events. As one of the entertainment industry’s elite, Danny Fiore had been obligated to attend. As his wife, Casey had been expected to be by his side, smiling right along with him. Rob, who’d spent most of his career flying under the radar, had managed to avoid all but the most crucial of these celebrity shindigs.
“I don’t know why they wanted me here tonight,” he said.
“It’s all politics. You know that. You’re in the middle of making an album together. How would it look to the rest of the world if you skipped out on the kid’s birthday party?”
“I don’t give a damn how it looks to anyone.”
“But the record company does. They’ve invested big bucks in both of you, so whether you like it or not, you dance to their tune. Play the game, make everyone happy, then go home, take off the suit coat, and forget the whole thing ever happened.”
“I’d like to forget the whole thing ever happened.” He wasn’t good at playing games. Or at wearing formal attire. He’d refused to wear a tie, or to waste money on a pair of dress shoes that woul
d sit in his closet for the next ten years. With the dress shirt and the linen jacket, he wore jeans and Adidas. That was as formal as he intended to get tonight.
“Stop sulking. And I meant the event, not the album.”
A waiter in a white shirt and black vest, bearing a tray of glass flutes filled with bubbly liquid, stopped before them. “Champagne?” he said.
Casey took a flute from him and said, “Thank you.”
Rob shrugged. Whatever it took to get him through the night. The waiter handed him a slender, stemmed glass. He tilted his head in acknowledgment and took a sip. It was good champagne; no twelve-dollar-a-bottle supermarket crap for Ariel Records. They clearly intended to go all the way with this ridiculous celebration of a spoiled kid’s eighteenth birthday.
He surveyed the crowd, glanced over at his wife. “You okay with this?” he said.
“So far, so good.”
Her eyes were clear tonight, her face relaxed. She’d seemed more like herself the last couple of days. Was it possible that the worst of the dark days had passed, and she was on the way to recovery? She flashed him a cheeky smile, and he returned it. “We march forward?” he said.
“We march forward.”
Champagne in hand, his fingers resting on the small of her back, they wound their way through the crowd, exchanging nods and greetings as they went, while the band played a surprisingly decent rendition of Bon Jovi’s Bed of Roses.
“There you are!” A cheerful Drew Lawrence, president of Ariel Records, greeted Casey with a kiss. “Casey, you look more beautiful than ever.” He shook Rob’s hand and said, “Glad you two could make it.”
“We wouldn’t miss it,” Casey said. “Where’s the birthday boy?”
“Somewhere over there,” Drew said, waving vaguely. “Taking photos by the cake. You should see it. Really retro. It brings back memories. There’s this little bakery out in Queens…” He paused, apparently realized he was rambling. “So.” He cleared his throat and said to Rob, “You and Phoenix have worked out your differences?”
“There was really nothing to work out. He called in sick, I got the day off. Win-win.”
The Miles Between Us Page 16
