Crash Into Me (17 page)

He
was silent for a moment. “So where is he?”

Her
jaw dropped. “Did you hear anything I just said?”

“Yes.”

“So?”

“So,
I think it’s bullshit. I’ve known you had hang-ups from the beginning. Who
doesn’t? I still have nightmares about the Japanese girl with the Kung Fu grip.
I’ve always thought of you as a real person—you saved my daughter from
drowning, for Christ’s sake. And believe it or not, in my fantasies, you’re a
bad girl.” His eyes flicked over her. “A very,
very
bad girl,” he
emphasized. “Nothing has changed, except that now I want to kill your
stepfather.”

“My
brother beat you to it,” she said. “He’ll be paying for that mistake the rest
of his life.” Upset with herself for giving too much personal information away,
she made a nervous gesture from him to her, indicating their relationship.
“Last night you told me this was about sex. No emotional involvement.”

He
leaned back in his chair. “Sex continues to be my primary objective,” he said
with a lazy smile, looking out at the open floor. “Let’s dance.”

She
cast him a skeptical glance. The music had just started, and several other
couples were already dancing. “You cumbia?”

“Does
it involve a lot of thrusting and grinding against each other?”

She
smiled back at him, amused in spite of herself. “No.”

He
sighed in mock disappointment. “Let’s do it anyway.”

James borrowed some clothes and a duffel
bag from his brother and left. He couldn’t face the idea of fighting off Rhoda,
or anyone else, tonight. Stephen didn’t know it, because he’d been more
interested in drugs than sex for years, but James had already been with some of
the party girls who drifted in and out of his brother’s house.

On
James’ seventeenth birthday, Arlen gave him a shot of whisky and a punch in the
eye, saying that anyone who was still a virgin at his age was either queer or
retarded. James was just a teenager, all hormones and attitude, with a lot of
anxieties and even more to prove, so he set out to prove he wasn’t queer with
the first girl he laid eyes on, in an awkward but consensual grapple against
Stephen’s bathroom sink.

It
wasn’t a shining moment of his life, but it was a breakthrough.

He’d
known he wasn’t queer, but he hadn’t been sure he could have sex like a normal
person after all he’d seen and done. James discovered that not only could he do
it, he could enjoy it, with an empty heart and a blissfully blank mind.

His
performances hadn’t been memorable, but neither had the girls, and at least he
didn’t need money or violence to get off. Still, it had deepened rather than
filled the void inside him, so he’d stopped going over to Stephen’s house
looking to break up the monotony of his miserable existence by getting laid.

When
Lisette Bruebaker showed up a few weeks ago, James hadn’t approached her with
anything particular in mind. They’d laughed about playing seven minutes in
heaven at her thirteenth birthday party. She was so pretty, so full of life, so
much different than the intoxicated, hollow-eyed girls he usually saw at
Stephen’s.

And
she reminded him of Carly.

So
when Lisette took him into Stephen’s closet, he followed her, and when she
dropped to her knees to give him her own little version of heaven, he didn’t
tell her not to. He just threaded his fingers through her hair and pretended
she was Carly.

He
hadn’t lasted anywhere near seven minutes.

James
groaned aloud at the memory, feeling sick to his stomach. If Carly ever found
out about that, she’d never talk to him again. He knew very little about sex,
and even less about girls, but he knew when to keep his mouth shut. Carly
wouldn’t like to hear that he’d been in a closet with her friend.

Her
dead friend.

As
he walked by Carly’s house, he looked around, checking it out, making sure
everything was safe. If someone could brutalize Lisette and dump her in the
water, what was to stop them from doing it to Carly?

His
gut clenched at the thought.

Stashing
his bag between rocks at Windansea, he walked down to the 24-hour mini-mart to
make the call. He knew better than to dial 911. Instead he looked up a phone
number for a homicide detective.

“Staff
Sergeant Paula DeGrassi, Homicide Division,” one of the listings read. It
sounded pretty official, and for a moment, he wavered. This could get him in
some really deep shit.

Then
he thought of Carly, her pretty face. Her slim body tangled in a net.

So
he dialed, palms sweaty, heart pounding, blood pumping to his ear where it was
pressed against the receiver. Thank God for voice mail. James left a short
message, giving Lisette’s name and a pair of memorized GPS coordinates.

When
he returned to Windansea, he stayed awake for a long time, staring at black
waves crashing against a bone-white beach.

He
was dead-tired, too freaked out to sleep.

The following day, Ben rang Sonny’s
drunken song-bird doorbell several hours before the pool party was scheduled to
begin. When she opened the door, he smiled, and her heart did a funny little
flip-flop in her chest.

“I
know you work out,” he said, like that was a greeting.

“How?”

“You’re
in great shape.”

Smiling
back at him, she leaned against her door-jamb. “Is that a challenge?”

“I’m
not allowed to surf on Christmas. Family rules. Carly wants to run on the
beach, and I’m dying to get some exercise.”

So
was she. “You go stir-crazy after only one day without surfing?”

“Yeah.
I get the shakes.”

Sonny
tried to wipe the silly grin off her face, but it was Christmas, and she had
nothing pressing on her schedule. Grant wouldn’t even expect her to check in.
Her boss would be spending time with his
real
family, unavailable for
the entire day. “I’ll meet you in a few minutes,” she decided. “Prepare to get
whipped.”

Before
the run, Sonny gave Carly her first self-defense lesson as a warm-up. The girl
was lithe and limber, and would have been a good student if she’d taken the
subject seriously. But she was a typical teenager, naïve and optimistic,
confident in the assumption that she would always be safe.

Ben,
on the other hand, was a very quick study. He was able to flip her over, off
her feet, after less than five minutes of training. It unsettled her, but she
reminded herself that he was a world-class athlete, a powerful man in top
condition.

She
cut the lesson short before he got too cocky.

Carly
was a better runner than a grappler, having natural grace, legs like a gazelle,
and energy to burn. She lacked drive and endurance, however, so she tired more
quickly than Sonny or Ben. After a couple of miles, she let them go on ahead,
taking a break to sit on the sand.

Sonny
gave it her all, but Ben beat her easily. In a contest of self-defense, he was
no match for her. In one of raw athleticism, she was the loser.

Gasping
for breath, she collapsed on the sand, totally spent, conceding her defeat. She
hadn’t pushed herself so hard in a while, and it felt good, although winning
would have felt better. Gloating, he sat down beside her, pulling his T-shirt
over his head and using it to wipe his face.

“Oh
my God,” she said, when she saw his chest.

He
looked down, running the T-shirt over himself absently, mopping his sweaty abs.
“What?”

“Your
body,” was all she could manage.

“What
about it?”

In a
wetsuit, he was spectacular. In jeans and a T-shirt, a suit, or a sweater, he
was gorgeous. But bare-chested, he was…wow.

“It’s
hideous,” she said, smiling.

He
smiled back at her. The sexy, off-center smile, the well-toned body…it was like
a double whammy. “I’ve been told that before.”

“I’m
sure you have. Put your shirt back on. You’re scaring little children.”

He
laughed.

She
rested on her side, facing him, one hand against her cheek, bent elbow
supporting the weight of her head. The other arm, draped across her stomach,
made slow, lazy circles in the sand. “How often do you jog?” she asked.

“I
don’t.”

She
sat up in disbelief, no longer relaxed. “How could you beat me, then?”

“Surfing,
swimming, paddling out. It keeps you in shape.”

Her
eyes wandered over his chest. “I can see that. You must lift weights.”

“Nah.”

“Sit-ups?”

He
clenched his stomach muscles self-consciously. “Never.”

“You
are such a liar,” she accused, insanely jealous.

“What
do you do?” he asked, giving her body a similar examination.

“Me?
I do everything.”

His
eyes darkened.

“I
mean, I do cardio and strength training. I have to work so hard to maintain
what little muscle tone I have.” She flexed her own bicep, feeling it,
comparing it to his. He didn’t have that overworked, over-stylized look some
men spend hours every day in the gym to achieve. He was just tight and hard and
perfectly toned.

Her
hands itched to test every inch of him for firmness. “I can’t believe you get
all that from surfing.”

He
shrugged, making those gorgeous muscles dance in the morning light. “I have to
work to keep my muscle mass lower, actually. It’s better to be quick and light
on the water.”

“Is
that why you’re so health-conscious? To keep from bulking up?”

“Yes.
Nobody thinks it’s strange when an Olympian has a strict diet regimen, but
because I’m a surfer, I’m supposed to live on burgers and French fries. It’s a
stereotype.”

“You
make a pretty good-looking poster boy for clean living,” she decided, letting
her eyes fall over his flat stomach, down to the silky line of hair that dipped
into the waistband of his shorts.

“You’re
embarrassing me.”

Her gaze
returned to his face. “Am I?” She grinned, enjoying his discomfort. “Sorry, I
forgot. Being worshipped by women is tiresome. You’re so over it.”

“I’m
going to throw you in the ocean,” he growled.

“Go
ahead and try,” she said, delighted with the suggestion.

And
he did. Or she let him. By the time they came out of the icy surf, laughing,
dripping, soaked to the skin, and covered with sand, neither was sure who had
gotten the better of whom.

When
Carly caught up with them, she was horrified by their childish behavior. “I am
not walking down Windansea with a couple of wet dorks,” she said. True to her
word, she kept her distance, trailing a hundred feet behind them the entire way
back to the house.

In contrast to the playful, easy ambience
of the morning jog, Christmas with the Fortunes was a tense, quietly
antagonistic celebration.

Ben’s
father was a physically imposing man, tall and distinguished-looking, decades
older than his wife. A retired criminal court judge, he was also loud,
supercilious, and critical.

Ben’s
brother, Nathan, brought a vintage bottle of burgundy, a friendly smile, and
his boyfriend, Peter. Judge, as everyone called him, drank the wine, ignored
his younger son, and flat-out refused to acknowledge Peter’s existence.

Ben,
on the other hand, was treated as though everything he touched turned to gold.
It was strange, as he’d done nothing to earn his father’s approval, from what
Sonny could ascertain. He’d chosen surfing over football, crushing his father’s
greatest vicarious dream. He also dropped out of school to follow the endless
summer, a move that had been even less popular with his folks. And when he
finally went to college, he majored in Philosophy instead of Prelaw.

Despite
these disappointments, Judge gave Ben his deference, and his respect.

Nathan
was the one who’d followed in his father’s footsteps at Harvard Law. Having
done a background check on him already, Sonny knew Nathan was a public
defender, and he’d also played college ball. Lacking Ben’s size and natural
athleticism, he’d gone far on guts, pride, and the steely determination of a
second son desperate to prove he was good enough.

He
wasn’t, and he never would be.

In
the courtroom, Judge wouldn’t have discriminated against a person based on
race, religion, or sexual orientation. It was a shame he couldn’t allow his son
the same courtesy.

The
Fortunes had their differences, but one thing was clear: they all adored Carly.
When she wanted to be, the girl was like a ray of light.

Sonny
figured they would use the holiday as an excuse to spoil her rotten. She was
wrong. For a family of considerable wealth, the gift exchange was completed
with very little fanfare, the items more thoughtful than lavish. Carly, for
instance, gave Ben a philosophy book, and he presented her with a set of
crescent wrenches that sent her into raptures.