Crash Into Me (5 page)

Sonny
would have to tread lightly. Grant wanted her to spy on Ben, not moon over him
like a silly schoolgirl. He’d also be furious if she refused to foster this
acquaintance.

“Someplace
casual?” she asked.

He
smiled, taking that as a yes. “What’s your address? I’ll pick you up.”

“No,
I’ll walk over.”

He
let her have that one. “Five-ish? We eat early.”

She
nodded, and he released her hand.

“Tomorrow
night, then.”

Sitting
down on the sand, she put on her shoes, waiting until he was out of sight to
retrieve her SIG.

It
wasn’t until she was safely ensconced in her apartment across the street that
she placed a hand over her racing heart. It was beating fast and hard beneath
her palm. Swallowing dryly, she closed her eyes and rested her back against the
door, breathless with anticipation.

Ben met John Thomas Carver at the rock
wall on the south side of Windansea Beach.

“Merry
Christmas,” he muttered, tossing him half a joint.

JT
caught it midair. He’d always had quick reflexes. “Whoa-ho,” he said, opening
his palm. “What’s this?”

“A
little holiday cheer.”

Ben’s
former drinking buddy and longtime surfing companion brought the partially
smoked joint up to his nose and inhaled. JT was Ben’s age and he looked it,
with his suntanned face and the lines bracketing his mouth. Sometime over the
past twenty years, Ben had blinked, and his skinny, sleepy-eyed friend had
grown into a man.

JT
had filled out considerably since his teens, and shorn his sun-streaked locks
to a more conservative style, but he hadn’t exactly sold out. He still cared
more for waves than work, preferred bad girls to good, and couldn’t say no to a
recreational high.

Smiling,
JT tucked the joint behind his ear. “You off the wagon?”

Ben
leaned against the side of the wall, looking out at the mash of water. Choppy
form, one-to-two-foot swells, nothing but foam soup and a crappy onshore flow.
“Nah,” he said, dragging his gaze back to land. “I took it away from Carly over
the weekend. Last night, she threw herself into the Neptune rip.”

That
wiped the grin off JT’s face. “Is she okay?”

Ben
didn’t know how to answer that. Feeling the hot press of tears behind his eyes,
he took a moment to gather his thoughts. “Physically, she seems fine,” he said,
hearing the strain in his voice. “A stranger went in after her. A woman.”

JT
just stared at him, waiting for him to finish.

“I
was inside, asleep. The cops called and woke me up, saying she’d been in an
accident.”

JT
let out a low whistle. “That girl could drive a saint to drink.”

“Yeah,
well. I never claimed to be that.”

“What
are you going to do?”

Ben
shrugged, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. JT was more of
a good-time guy than an intimate confidant, and having had few responsibilities
in his devil-may-care life, he was hardly an expert on parenting.

The
person he really needed to talk to was Olivia.

“Smoke
that, would you?” Ben said, feeling maudlin. “I want to make sure it’s just pot
she’s messing with.”

JT
plucked the joint from behind his ear and moistened his lips, glad to be of
service. “With pleasure.”

Ben
took a lighter out of his pocket, leaning forward to offer the flame while JT
cupped his hands around his face, blocking out the wind. It took him a few
tries to get the joint started. When it lit up, JT’s eyes widened and he sucked
in a lungful of smoke. “Tastes all right,” he croaked, holding his breath.

Grunting,
Ben pocketed the lighter and glanced around to make sure no one was looking,
although he’d smoked pot on this beach a thousand times and never been caught.

JT
took another few hits for good measure and doused the cherry with his wet
fingertips. Then he split open the paper and studied its contents.

“Well?”

“Give
it a few minutes to kick in, bro. Maybe it’s creeper.”

Ben
laughed a little, touching the bridge of his nose, as close to hysteria as he’d
been to tears a moment ago. If memory served, the term meant that the high
snuck up on you.

“Looks
like regular shit to me,” JT added, pocketing what was left of the joint. “No
black tar or white residue. No funny taste.”

Ben
nodded, trying to feel relieved.

“Are
you really that worried about her smoking dope, man? We did a lot worse when we
were her age.”

“Maybe
I don’t want her to end up like me.”

JT
squinted at him, shading his eyes from the sun. He opened his mouth to respond,
then got distracted by a pretty girl walking by and lost his train of thought.

Ben
watched him with growing impatience.

JT
waved a hand in the air, remembering what he was going to say. “Carly’s a great
kid. With a face like hers, you’re lucky she’s not out running wild with boys.”

It
made Ben uncomfortable that JT had noticed his daughter’s good looks, but the
truth was that everyone did. Like Olivia, Carly drew stares wherever she went,
and someday soon her beauty would surely be Ben’s agony.

It
was no less than he deserved, for all the womanizing he’d done in his youth.

JT’s
face brightened with another idea. “Your dad never stopped riding you when you
were growing up. That’s why you took off, right?”

Ben’s
mouth twisted. “Yeah.”

“So
just be cool, and she’ll turn out fine.”

Ben
thrust a hand through his hair, hoping JT was right. To say his father had
raised him with an iron hand was putting it mildly. He’d demanded nothing less
than excellence in every subject, every sport. Buckling under that constant
pressure, Ben had dropped out of school and left home. He’d traveled around the
world, in pursuit of pleasure and the perfect wave, molding himself into the
kind of man his father disapproved of.

JT’s
parents, in contrast to Ben’s, had been incredibly lax. His mother was a
B-movie actress who couldn’t be bothered with a young son on a movie set. She’d
shipped him off to live with his dad, an aging rock star who’d been resting on
his laurels since having a string of hits in the late seventies. He died of a
drug overdose when JT was eighteen.

Ben
wanted better for his daughter than what he and JT’d had. Every day he
struggled to achieve a middle ground with her, but he never knew when to lay
into her and when to lay off. Carly was a master manipulator, playing on his
insecurities, and she’d had him wrapped around her little finger since birth.

Olivia
had always hated him for making her be the only disciplinarian.

Ben
pushed that thought aside and looked out at the cold blue Pacific, wishing it
was pounding out something worthier, something more punishing.

Sonny didn’t know why she was so nervous
about her date. Her instincts told her that Ben Fortune as a murder suspect was
just another dead end.

As a
hot boyfriend, if she were free to treat him as such, he was a good start.

She
spent too long getting ready, trying on and discarding several outfits.
Although she’d bought a few new items with Grant’s highly exaggerated wardrobe budget,
she knew the last thing Ben would be interested in was another cookie-cutter
beach bimbo.

She
finally decided on the jeans, half boots, and sweater she’d worn to Grant’s
office. It was casual, unpretentious, and demure enough to keep him guessing.

To
impress Carly, she added a Kate Spade clutch, a flashy little bronze number
only large enough to hold her cell phone and a few essentials.

She
left her SIG at home.

Sonny
knocked on Ben’s door, his borrowed sweatshirt in hand, noting the perfectly
manicured landscaping around the front entrance. Juniper trees were
interspersed with beach pebbles and colorful, decorative shells. Judging by
their massive size, the shells were treasures from foreign shores.

When
he opened the door, she shoved the sweatshirt into his arms in a lame attempt
to deflect his attention from her appearance.

It
worked, at first. “Cool,” he said, as if he’d been looking around for a jacket
or something similar to wear in deference to the winter chill.

As
he raised his arms to pull the garment over his head, his T-shirt rode up above
the low waistband of his jeans, exposing a few inches of flat stomach,
outrageously sexy hip bones, and an intriguing line of silky dark hair leading
down from his navel.

A
sensual image came to mind, one of her falling to her knees and rubbing her
cheek across that smooth expanse.

Her
heart began to beat a pagan rhythm. Oh man, oh baby, oh…
yes.

Oblivious
to her lustful paralysis, he ran a hand over his hair, straightening the
sweater’s hem and cuffs. “How do I look?”

She
had to laugh. “Good.”

His
eyes roamed over her, and he wasn’t shy about zeroing in on her breasts. “So do
you. Better than good. Delicious.”

Her
stomach muscles clenched. “I look…delicious?”

“Yeah.
Buttery and syrupy, like waffles. Or maybe I’m just hungry.” He looked up the
stairs. “Carly!”

Carly
Fortune swept down the stairs, throwing her long hair over one shoulder,
outdoing them both with a spectacular, slinky black dress. It was long-sleeved
and high-necked, with a short skirt that showed off legs most women would kill
for.

“I
said casual,” he complained.

“Daddy,
you’re wearing
shoes.
That’s formal.” She kissed his dark cheek in a
Lolita-like greeting, solely for Sonny’s benefit. Judging by the hard set of
his jaw, he was not amused.

Carly
summed her up coolly. “Are you a lesbian?”

Sonny
almost choked. “Uh…”

“Carly!”

“What,
Dad? Look at her hair.”

“I’m
sorry.” He clamped his hand around Carly’s forearm, applying enough pressure to
silence her. “My daughter is obsessed with sexuality.”

Carly’s
jaw dropped. “I am not.”

“Then
don’t ask rude questions.”

In a
midnight blue Lincoln Navigator worth more than Sonny’s annual salary, there
was an argument over where they would eat. Ben still had a hankering for
pancakes.

“I
am not going to IHOP in this dress,” Carly wailed. “How about Veracruz?”

Ben
looked to Sonny for confirmation. “Sounds lovely,” she said, hoping she would
live through the meal.

Veracruz
was an upscale steak and seafood house where no one blinked an eye at their
mixed attire. The maître d’ called Ben by name, told Carly she looked
stunning, and seated them at the best table in the house.

Sonny
ordered a steak, hoping she wasn’t showing her trailer park heritage by having
it cooked thoroughly. Most snobs turned their noses up at anything but medium
rare. As it turned out, the faux pas was much worse. Just when Sonny was
cutting into her steak, thinking she’d dodged a bullet, Carly announced, “Dad’s
a vegetarian.”

Her
knife clattered against the plate.

“Don’t
you think that’s wimpy?”

Sonny
looked carefully, but she couldn’t find anything unmanly about him. “No.”

“Carly’s
exaggerating,” Ben said, giving his daughter a quelling stare. “Enjoy your
meal. Please.”

“I’m
not exaggerating,” Carly insisted. “You don’t eat red meat. It’s totally gay.”

His
mouth tightened at the slur, but he let it slide. Sonny supposed he had to pick
his battles. When Carly turned to her for a reaction, Sonny lifted her fork and
took a big bite, wanting no part of the conversation.

Ben
also polished off a good amount of his meal, not letting his daughter’s surly
mood bother him. For a gay man, he was giving off some pretty strong hetero
vibes, and Sonny had to admit that under his gaze she’d never felt less like a
lesbian. Every time their eyes met the air between them crackled with
electricity.

“I
have better things to do than watch you two stare at each other,” Carly said
acidly.

“Like
what?” Ben asked, his patience worn thin. “Smoke weed in your room?”

Carly
narrowed her catlike eyes at him. “When are you going to get over that?”

“It
was five days ago.”

“Oh,
please. You’ve smoked a mountain of pot in your lifetime.”

“That
doesn’t mean you can.”

“You
don’t let me do anything!”

Ben
nodded, agreeing that this was the best course of action.

“He
doesn’t even let me drive,” she complained to Sonny. “I’ve had my learner’s
permit for six months.”

Sonny
tried not to shudder at the idea of Carly Fortune behind the wheel of an
automobile.