Breaking the Rules (28 page)

Eden nodded, clearing her throat. “Right now I think I like stripping more.”

“Maybe if you got a college degree—”

“Oh, please.” She cut him off, turning to face him. “Like that’s going to make a difference? Besides, what’s the big? Doesn’t
everybody
hate their job?”

“I don’t.”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay. Everyone who’s
not
a Navy SEAL.”

Izzy smiled at that. “Maybe, although I suspect not. You know, my oldest brother, Martin, was married to a stripper. Best wife he ever had, and he’s had a few. Of course, I was fifteen when he married her, so my judgment was … colored. She used to work her routine in the playroom—with her clothes on. Well, most of the time, anyway. There
were
a few times that …” He cleared his throat. “That’s a pretty impressionable age, and, um, Mandee? She was
freaking
hot. Almost as hot as you were up there. Almost. But my point is? She loved it. Stripping.
Loved
it. She and my aunt Carol used to argue about it endlessly. Carol was insistent that working as a stripper is bad for society. The objectification of women, yada yada.” He stopped himself. “And I don’t mean to belittle that, because it’s very real. It’s a problem. You’re selling sex, and you’re selling yourself and all women everywhere short—by making sure an entire subset of men never learns to see you or your feminist sisters as anything more than hot bodies. See, I was listening when Carol talked—almost as carefully as I watched when Mandee rehearsed. But Mandee always argued that that Neanderthal subset—the
let’s meet for drinks at the strip club
crowd—isn’t likely to ever see
any
woman as more than a nice pair of tits, so who’s to criticize her for making money off of their lame-ass ignorance?

“And really, how different is what a stripper does from all of the actresses in the movies who get naked for love scenes? And yes, one’s telling a story, I get that. Carol would point that out. But, Mandee would argue, and I absolutely agree, that there’s not a single tastefully shot art film on this planet that hasn’t had the scene with the famous naked actress used as a visual aid while some huge number of miscreants jacked off to it. Shit, I’m sure there’s been jacking off done to scenes from movies where everyone’s got their clothes on. Does that mean we should ban all movies? Or put all women, everywhere, in burkas?
That’s
definitely not the answer. I
know
we can all agree on that.”

Eden was looking at him as if she were having trouble understanding what he was saying.

So he explained. “My point,” he said, “is that if you said to me,
Izzy, I just love the power that I feel when I take my clothes off up on that stage, I love it more than words can express
, well, then I’d say that since you love doing it, and if you’re working in a place where you’re not being pressured to do more than dance, if you’re careful of your safety when you approach and leave the club …” He shrugged. “You should go for it. But if you come home from work feeling the need to scour your entire body with bleach? You might want to set a limit. Plan for an end date. Do this for a year or two or even ten, learn how to invest those wads of money that you earn, and then retire and never do it again.”

Eden was nodding, but he could tell from the way she was looking back at the Crossroads front door again that it was time for a change of subject.

But first he had to say, “Whatever you end up doing, just keep me in the loop, okay?”

She met his gaze. “And if I do … you won’t tell Danny. Or Ben?”

“I said I wouldn’t, didn’t I?”

She seemed to believe him, and she nodded. “Thank you.”

“So I was thinking you might want to give some thought to Danny
being here,” Izzy said, “and staying in your apartment, and whether you want him to find out that we, uh, reconnected, or whether you’d prefer we, you know, keep our distance from each other when he’s around …?”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh. Um …”

Dan was fond of telling Izzy that Eden was certifiably crazy, and maybe she was, because he could tell from her face that she actually thought Izzy had just said what he’d said because he
wanted
to put some physical distance between them. Like last night’s fucking-great lovemaking hadn’t made him beyond hot for more.

“No, no, nuh, no,” he said quickly. “Look at me. Sweetheart. Tonight? You and me? We’re getting it on. Even if we have to leave the apartment and, I don’t know, go pretend to run an errand so you can jump my bones again in the car. We’re gonna find some alone time. Trust me, it’s my top priority.”

She still looked so uncertain, so he brought it down to the very basics of nonverbal communication and he pulled her toward him and kissed her. It was a
fuck me
kiss, hard and hungry, and he could tell from the way she kissed him back that his message had been successfully received.

And what happened next was completely his fault. He’d loved that sundress she was wearing from the moment she’d put it on that morning, and even though his hand seemingly found its way up under her skirt on its own initiative, the brilliant idea to do so was all his. Although, true, she quickly convinced him the idea wasn’t just brilliant but in fact sheer genius by shifting and slightly opening her legs for him to explore even further. So as he kissed her, he kept his hand traveling north against the mind-blowing smoothness of her thigh, on the verge of reaching paradise and …

“Oh, for the love of Christ!”

It was Danny, of course, standing outside the car and knocking impatiently on the window—
bang bang bang
.

They sprang apart, but it was even more awkward than it might’ve been because Izzy’s dive watch got snagged on the seam of her skirt.
And so much for Izzy telling Eden,
I just wanted to remind you that Dan never really liked it when we were together, and since you’re the one who’s going to have to live with him for the next three years, you might want to withhold the fact that we’re banging like bunnies every chance we get. Just on the off chance that it might piss him off
.

“Ben could use some help,” Dan said, in that same beleaguered tone, as Eden lowered her window, even as Izzy struggled to get his watch free. “And I thought you might want to know, but obviously I was wrong.”

Crap, it was stuck and it was definitely easier to simply unfasten the band and let it remain swallowed up by Eden’s dress, than to continue seeming to paw at her the way he was doing.

“What’s going on?” Eden asked. “Where is he?”

“He’s still inside,” Dan said tightly, tersely. “Jenn’s with him, because I can’t fricking get down on the ground. And I’ll be useless in the ambulance, plus I have no idea what his current deal is with the diabetes, so if you’re done messing around with Zanella here, you might want to get your ass in there and—”

Eden was already out of the car. She’d started running for the building back when Dan had said
ambulance
.

Izzy turned off the engine and got out, too, trying to be surreptitious about the fact that he needed to adjust his shorts.

Danny, of course, didn’t miss a thing.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Zanella?” he asked, but it was clearly a rhetorical question. He didn’t wait for an answer as he limped back toward the building.

Which was when the ambulance arrived—holy shit—sirens wailing.

And Izzy took after Eden, passing Danny at a run.

Ben was going to be all right, but the doctor wanted to keep him in the hospital a little bit longer for observation.

Dan looked up as Jenn sat down next to him in the hospital waiting
room. “You sure we shouldn’t ask for a double room—get you a bed, too?” She wasn’t completely kidding. He could see her concern for him in her eyes.

“I’m tired,” he admitted, “but I’m okay.”

“That could have been bad,” she said quietly. “They claim—the administrators at that place—that they had no clue Ben was diabetic. None, whatsoever. Apparently, their standard operating procedure is to lock up their new campers—that’s what they call them. Campers. But they lock them up at night. Not just in a cell. Ben just told Eden that he was handcuffed to a bed, with his hands up over his head. All night long.”

Dan wasn’t surprised. He’d done research on the types of “therapy” used in places like Crossroads.

Jenn was as livid as he’d ever seen her. “I think we should call Linda Thomas,” she told him. “That lawyer Maria recommended? I know you’re not big on litigation, but … Ben could have died. And with a lawsuit of this magnitude? It’s like that case against the KKK. We could force the place to shut down, just to pay damages. Ben could use the money for college tuition … It’s not all bad, you know—taking the legal route. And if it’s Greg and your mother who were ultimately responsible …? That would give you leverage, if you ever needed it.”

But he
didn’t
need it. “I just want this to be over for Ben,” Dan said. “I don’t want to drag it out. I want …” He exhaled his despair. It sounded like a laugh, but it wasn’t. There was nothing funny about this. Not at all. “I want one of your massages, and a ten-hour nap,” he told her. And this time, when he met her eyes and laughed, it felt more real.

Jenn smiled back at him, her hand warm atop his thigh. “I think we could arrange that,” she said. “I’ve already asked Izzy to drive us back to Eden’s. She’s going to stay with Ben until he’s released, which means when he goes out to pick them up, we’ll have some privacy.”

Her eyes were so beautiful behind the smudgy lenses of her glasses. Dan leaned forward and kissed her because he couldn’t sit here and not kiss her when she was looking at him like that—as if she knew
exactly what he was thinking and feeling. But she didn’t know all of it, though. Not the stuff that was making him feel so damn defeated.

“Jenni,” he said as he took her hand and looked down at her long, elegant fingers. They were almost as long as his, but his hands were far broader and still dwarfed hers.

She leaned in and kissed him again, which was nice, but it was over too soon.

“I got a problem,” he admitted. He knew he just had to say it, but it was so goddamned hard.

She saw that he was struggling to find the words, but she didn’t do anything more than lace their fingers together and patiently wait for him to get to it. Which he did after inhaling and exhaling hard a few times.

“I didn’t count on this,” Dan tried to explain. “I didn’t factor this in when I did the math. This.” He gestured to the hospital around them. “The medical care. The hospital stays.” Ben had been in this ER before. A lot. The doctors and nurses all knew him by name, which was great, but also terrifying. Thankfully, they’d had a letter on record, granting parental permission for Ben to receive the treatment he needed, should he be brought in. Which was an additional complication Dan hadn’t considered. He was not only going to have to go pick up Ben’s school and medical records tomorrow, but he was also going to have to schedule a time to connect with Ivette and get her to sign a whole stack of similar letters for him to take to San Diego.

“His doctor actually told me he’s doing really well for a kid with his type of diabetes,” he continued, telling Jenn. “Apparently, doing really well means he’s only in and out of the hospital a couple of times a year.” He shook his head. “I don’t know where I’m going to get the money for that. And since he’s not my kid—”

“Dan—”

But he wasn’t done. “The reason my mother agreed to let me have him,” he told her, “is because I promised I’d keep sending her money.” He closed his eyes. “I bought Ben from her, Jenni, for a monthly sum. That I now have to deliver. And that, plus the rent on an apartment in
San Diego, plus medical bills of an undetermined amount …? I’m never going to see you. I’m not going to be able to come to New York to visit. I won’t be able to swing it.”

“So, I’ll visit you,” Jenni said.

“It’s not fair to ask you to do that,” he countered.

“You’re not asking,” she pointed out. “I’m volunteering.”

What could he say to that? He just shook his head. No.

“So if that doesn’t work for you, are you … breaking up with me?” she asked quietly.

“No! Jesus! God!” He put his arms around her. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he admitted. “I just … God, when Ben didn’t open his eyes …”

When Ben had fallen in that lobby, when his legs had just—
boom
—given out from beneath him … That had been bad. But when Dan had realized that his brother had lost control of at least some of his bodily functions … He’d nearly killed the sanctimoniously smug woman behind the front desk.

His wounded right leg had kept him from getting down on the floor next to Ben, but that was okay, because Jenn was there.

And there it was. The bottom line. Whatever happened was going to be okay, because Jenn was there.

Except she wasn’t going to be there. Not for very much longer. She was leaving in a week.

And Danny desperately didn’t want her to go.

Break up with him? Hell, he wanted her to move in and never leave his side again.

But if she didn’t want to marry him, she sure as hell wouldn’t move to San Diego to live with him and his dysfunctional family. Which, God help him, appeared to include Irving Zanella.

Whose dive watch Dan had in his pocket. He’d picked it up after it had finally disengaged itself from where it had been caught, up Eden’s dress.

Jesus Christ.

“He’s okay,” Jenn reassured him, talking about Ben.

“I know,” Dan said. “I’m just …” He shook his head. “Tired.” Yeah, maybe this would all seem less overwhelming when he wasn’t exhausted.

Jenn gently pulled her hand free and stood up. “I’ll see if I can find Izzy. Then we’ll go in and say good-bye to Ben, okay? I’ll be right back.” She kissed the top of his head.

He was busy watching her walk away, and he didn’t see Izzy approach—not until the SEAL sat down next to him and said, “Bro, we need to talk.”

Dan briefly closed his eyes. “Yeah, let’s not do this right now, Zanella,” he said on an exhale. “Jenn went to look for you and—”

“I thought sooner would be better than later,” Izzy said.