Have to Have It (17 page)

Tom cracked up. “This gives a whole new meaning to exercise.”

“Shhh!” she warned. “They'll hear us.” That was all Kiley could manage. Her gaze was fixed on her employers, unable to believe both what they were doing and how well they were doing it. Not that Kiley had ever seen
anybody
do it before. Just at that moment, Beth's eyes sprang open … and looked right at her and Tom. Kiley felt like a deer caught in someone's headlights. She just stood there in utter shock and embarrassment.

What happened next was even more shocking. Beth smiled at Kiley. Then she made the same crooking gesture with her finger that she'd made that afternoon in the country club's breeze-way: the one that meant “Come over here.”

Come over here?
As in: Join the party? Was the woman demented? Most likely so. She had to realize that Kiley would hear her sexcapades. Was that part of the fun? How many nannies had she done this with? How many had taken her up on the offer?

Kiley turned to Tom. “Can we get out of here? Please?”

“Absolutely” He took her hand and led the way back to her brand-new-about-to-be-former guesthouse. “No need for a formal resignation. Consider yourself gone.”

“Shhh,” Luis cautioned. “Keep it down. People are sleeping.”

“But we're not!” Lydia chortled exuberantly. “And if they wake up, they can come out here with us. You know what I want? Champagne! I need some champagne! Some fizzy lifting drinks!”

“Well then, I'd say you're in luck.” Luis reached down and lifted the bottle of five-buck champagne he'd bought at the Ralph's supermarket at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and the Pacific Coast Highway, on their way back from Malibu. “Cook's. The beer of bubbly.”

Lydia laughed so hard at this that tears leaked out the corners of her eyes. It was after midnight; they'd just returned from their drive up the coast. But Lydia wasn't ready to go home. What she wanted to do was go swimming the way she always swam in Amazonia. That is, sans swimsuit. Luis said he had just
the thing: his next-door neighbors' pool. They were out of town, so there'd be no Peeping Toms—or Samanthas, Stevens, Debbies, or Moniques.

Luis twisted the cork out of the bottle—no satisfying pop, but what could you expect for five bucks?—took a serious swig, and handed the bottle to Lydia. She was standing at the edge of the pool in her underwear, barely illuminated by the underwater red and white lights.

“A toast to the Amazonian gods of water,” she pronounced, upending the bottle and letting a steady stream flow into the pool. Then she lifted the bottle high and poured the same stream into her mouth.

“To the gods,” Luis pronounced.

“Okay I'm ready. If you are.”

Luis quickly stripped off his clothes until he too was at the edge of the pool, wearing nothing but boxers.

“Good enough for me!” Lydia pulled her bra over her head and stepped out of her panties, then made a clumsy dive into the water. She came up grinning, to watch Luis jump in near her.

“Jeez, that's cold!” he exclaimed.

“You haven't had enough to drink,” she scolded.

The pool felt great. She splashed around in it for a while, dunking herself down to the bottom and trying to hold herself there. That thought made her think of the sea, which made her think of Kiley which made her think of what Kiley was doing right that instant. Probably having wild sex with Tom. She popped up to the surface, looked around for Luis, and saw him treading water by the diving board.

“I've got another great idea,” she declared. “Let's go to your place.”

“I thought you had a boyfriend,” Luis said.

“I do. I think.” Lydia giggled drunkenly as she sat up on Luis's bed and took another big swallow of the champagne, the bath towel that he'd given her wrapped around her body. He was next to her, back in his blue boxers, having switched from Cook's to Coors.

Her boyfriend. Billy. Right. She really, really, really liked Billy. But they had never said anything to each other about an “exclusive” relationship. In fact, they couldn't even see each other all that often due to their schedules. Oh sure, Billy said he wanted them to get to know each other before they
… got to know each other
, but in the back of Lydia's mind there was always a nagging voice asking how he could resist her. The maddening thing was, there was no good reason
to
resist her. She was hot, and Luis knew it even if Billy didn't.

The room was very dark; Luis had switched on just a dim night-light when they'd come in. She vaguely remembered him carrying her inside from the pool while she sang a song her mom used to sing to her when she was still the little rich southern princess back in Houston:
“I see the moon and the moon sees me and the moon sees somebody I want to see!”

He'd shushed her, laughing as he did it. That was so cute.

She threw her arms over her head, not noticing that one of her breasts was very close to popping out of her bra.

“I want to feel… everything!” she told Luis, loose-limbed and woozy.

“With your boyfriend?” Luis asked, his lips nuzzling into her neck. “Or if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with?”

Lydia found this comment hilarious. She threw her head back and laughed, which made Luis laugh too. Soon, the two of them were rolling around on his bed, peals of laughter booming around his room.

What did she want? Her mind didn't want to focus. But she knew this much, even in her very inebriated state: she was sick to death of being a virgin. Back in the land of the Amas, where teens got sexually active very early without the taboos and guilt that existed in America, her mom had given Lydia “the talk” when she was twelve years old. Lydia should not succumb to the sexual freedom of the Amas. Though she lived among them, it wasn't her culture. This seemed patently unfair to Lydia. It wasn't as if she could go to dances or movies or date the guy who lived down the block.

Lydia decided not to listen to her mother. The problem was, Ama guys didn't appeal to her. They were short, they had sticks through their cheeks, and no one had found a profitable way to sell them Rembrandt tooth polish. So Lydia had to be content with the photographs of Tom Welling, Jared Leto, and Orlando Bloom she stuck to the walls of her hut with mud, dreaming about the day a gorgeous boy would introduce her to the wonderful world of lust.

Luis kissed down her neck, then brought his lips to hers. He tasted like beer, but it felt wonderful. She kissed him back.

“So … can we forget the boyfriend?” Luis whispered in her ear.

“Kinda.” Lydia didn't know what “kinda” meant, but she felt much too good to stop and analyze it. All she wanted was to live in the moment; was that too much to ask? Did everything have to be so damn complicated?

No, she decided. It did not. Everything Luis was doing felt fantastic. He was here and she was here and there was no reason for her to tell him to stop.

So she didn't.

The next morning, Esme awoke in her own bed at the Gold-hagens' guesthouse, and looked around her room uncertainly. It had been a very long night; the Goldhagens' private jet had landed at the Van Nuys airport well after midnight, even with the three-hour time difference between Jamaica and Los Angeles. She glanced at her clock—9:30 a.m. Thank God the Goldhagens had told her she didn't have to be up at the main house until eleven, because they wanted the twins to sleep as long as they could.

The decision to come back to L.A. had been sudden, even before their van had arrived late the previous afternoon at the Northern Look resort after the outing to the sugarcane-cutting competition. As soon as they got in range of a cell phone tower, Steven had checked his messages. There'd been one from his office, announcing that an important pitch meeting with ABC had had to be moved up. Steven had been approached to try to
create a new half-hour soap that would air nightly—the programming chief at ABC was so anxious to hear the pitch that it had been set for the next day, Steven's vacation be damned. It had surprised Esme that a man as powerful and famous as Steven Goldhagen didn't call the shots on when the meeting would take place.

Diane had been understanding; in fact, she had taken charge of making the last-minute travel arrangements and getting Steven's office to send over all the preliminary work that had been done on the soap, which Steven was tentatively calling
Generations
, after the three generations of a Norweigan family who settle in a fictitious town in Minnesota. Steven had told Esme all about the pitch a few days earlier, even asking her opinions about some of the characters. Odd, how sometimes the Goldhagens would converse with her as if she was a close friend, and other times she was an employee to be ordered around. Nicely ordered around, of course.

The helicopter had arrived at Northern Look three hours later; an hour after that, they were back on the private jet to Los Angeles. The Silversteins had elected to stay in Jamaica for a few more days, a decision that Esme had privately applauded. Enduring them for a long plane ride—in other words, close quarters in a confined space—would have been torture.

Esme got up, took a quick shower, and made herself some coffee, happy to have a morning to herself. She had come to love living in this little house, so lovely and calm, so unlike her old life. She remembered how hard it had been for her to fall asleep those first few nights. She was used to the noise and music and smells of the barrio. But here it was so quiet. She
curled up on the couch in her living room, enjoying the scent from the orange blossoms that wafted through the open window. Now she was used to it. Now she loved it.

Love. Was part of loving this place her feelings for Jonathan? She took another sip of her coffee. She'd deliberately tried not to think of him when she was in Jamaica; in that way the Silver-stein boys from hell were a fortunate distraction. Yet she couldn't put off making a decision about him much longer. It wasn't fair to anyone. A person could not have one foot on either side of a fault line. But how could she possibly hurt Junior, dis him, by telling him that she'd chosen the rich gringo over him? She felt ashamed just thinking about the conversation.

“Hola, niña.”

“Mama!” She saw her mom outside her guesthouse, heading toward her front door. Esme met her at the doorstep and embraced her. They held the hug for a long time.

“Welcome home,” her mother said in Spanish. “I understand you had quite a trip. Diane has been raving about you all morning, about how wonderful you were with all the children.”

Well. That was unexpected news. Evidently the little detail about Esme having actually
lost the girls
was not foremost on Diane's mind.

“Come in for a minute,” Esme urged. She adored her mother, and since she'd started to work at the Goldhagens' she felt as though she never got to spend enough time with her, even though they were both working for the same employer. “I've made coffee.”

“I can stay for a little while,” Estella Castaneda agreed. “Your father and I started very early this morning. I could use a break.”

Mrs. Castaneda followed her daughter through the guesthouse into the kitchen, where Esme poured her a mug of steaming Colombian coffee, black with one sugar, just the way she liked it. When her mom sat, put her feet up at Esme's urging, and then sighed with contentment at the first sip, Esme felt great. Back in her parents' small bungalow in Echo Park, she'd always been the first one to wake up and make the coffee. Watching her mom, with both hands around her mug, steam rising gently to her chin, made Esme a little bit homesick.

“What are you thinking, my daughter?” Estella asked. “You look so serious.”

“I miss you and Papa,” Esme confessed. “I never get to see you.”

“We miss you, too,
niña.
But we are so happy that you are going to have a wonderful future.”

Esme sighed. The Goldhagens had promised that if things worked out, Esme could go to Beverly Hills High for her senior year and nanny only part-time. They'd even talked about paying for her to go to UCLA. It was a fantastic, amazing, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but it all seemed so abstract. In the present, all she knew was that she missed her family.

“I'm not so sure I like it,” Esme confessed.

“This is why back in Mexico, so many people never leave their village. Or they go to Mexico City or Guadalajara to look for work, but still come home. They would rather be poor and have their family than earn money and be all alone. But you, my daughter …” She leaned forward and gently took Esme's chin in her hand. “You are so smart, Esme. You will be the first person in our family to attend college. That is a blessing.”

Something in her mother's voice made her think of Tarshea, the young artist she'd met in Jamaica. Tarshea came from a poor place, but wanted nothing more than to follow her dream of studying art in a real art school. She'd have to leave her family behind to do it too.

“Maybe,” Esme allowed. “But I still would like it if we spent more time together as a family. You and me and Papa. I never see him, either.”

Estella smiled. “He's repairing the water fountain out by the tennis court. If you want to say hello.”

Esme shook her head. “I didn't mean like that. Not here, where we're the workers.”

“Well, maybe you could come home on the weekend instead of going out with your friends here,” Estella said pointedly.

Her mother was right. Echo Park might have been in another economic universe, but it was only ten miles from Bel Air. The truth was, Esme had been wanting to spend her weekends with Jonathan, or hang out with Lydia and Kiley If only she could clone herself.

She resolved to go home that weekend—to make
carne mexicana y arroz con rajitas y elote
with her father, drink
horchata
with Jorge, maybe even go dancing with some of her old girlfriends.

Then she realized that she had left Junior out of this plan. It made her feel so conflicted that she wanted to change the subject. “So, did you just stop by to say hello?”

“Yes and no.”

“What's the no?”

“Junior stopped over when you were in Jamaica. He's doing a lot better.”

Esme's stomach clenched, all the more so considering what she'd just been thinking about. “That's good.” She tried to sound upbeat.

“Perhaps. I don't know. He told me that he wants to see you. And he wants to see Jonathan. At the same time.”

“Well, there goes my dream job,” Kiley told Tom. They were eating breakfast at the outdoor portion of Cafe Med, a small restaurant on the north side of Sunset Boulevard just west of Tower Records. Tom had told her that Cafe Med was well known as a Eurotrash hangout—Eurotrash being rich young Europeans who had enough money to come to America and do nothing for long stretches of time. From the different languages being spoken by the good-looking couples and trios at the tables around them, Kiley decided that the reputation was well deserved. “It's beneath my minimum moral standards.”

“Oh, I don't know,” Tom teased, “you could have just waltzed in there last night and grabbed yourself a partner—”

“Very funny.” Kiley swallowed a mouthful of her avocado-and-sweet-onion omelet. “I still can't believe that happened. Maybe everyone in this town really
is
insane.”

Kiley couldn't help thinking it had barely been a week since she'd sat with Jorge at the restaurant in the Echo after having lost her job at Platinum's. Since then, she'd been through two more nanny gigs, each more disastrous than the one before. She was beginning to lose hope.

Last night, after Tom had helped her pack her things, they'd come back to his hotel suite. He'd understood that Kiley wasn't in the mood to continue what they'd started. After a sweet kiss goodnight, she'd slept alone in the second bedroom.

She put her fork down. “What am I going to do?”

Tom sipped his fresh-squeezed orange juice. “Damned if I know,” he admitted. “Maybe you can go back to the country club and wait for someone else to poach you.”

“Yeah, great, the next couple will probably sell me into slavery. That place is
dangerous.
”

“I'm not sure you have much of a choice.” Tom edged forward to let a tall, gorgeous girl get past him. Her straight blond hair fell nearly to her butt, a silvery contrast to her black Versace tank top emblazoned with the designer's Medusa logo—clearly she had on nothing underneath—a black pleated miniskirt studded with grommets, and silver and black Puma sneakers. It was a sleek combination of casual and couture that oozed cool. Instead of going by, she stopped and put both her hands seductively on Tom's shoulders.

“Tom Chappelle?” she asked in a thick Italian accent.

Tom twisted around, his face lighting up.

“Veronica!” Tom exclaimed. “I haven't seen you since—”

“Milan. In April,” she reminded him.

“That was a great time,” Tom recalled, then looked at Kiley “Kiley, I want you to meet the one and only Veronica. Veronica, my friend Kiley.”

“My pleasure.” Veronica extended a perfect hand—long, thin fingers with long, thin nails.

“Good to meet you, Veronica,” Kiley said, trying to sound chipper. What was up with Tom? Did he know every gorgeous model in the civilized world or did it only seem that way?

Veronica leaned over. Her blond hair brushed Tom's face as she kissed his cheek. “Call me, okay?
Ciao.”
She disappeared down Sunset Boulevard, blond hair swinging.

How did models do that walk, Kiley wondered, where they put one foot directly in front of the other on each step, so that their butt shifted sexily from side to side? She'd once tried to copy it in the privacy of her bedroom back in La Crosse after watching
America's Next Top Model
with Nina. The experiment was hopeless. A) She had nearly tripped over her own feet, and B) she felt like a total ass.

She was about to take an actual bite of her omelet when Tom's words of introduction rang again in her ears.

My friend Kiley.
That was what he'd said. Not
my girlfriend, Kiley.
Just
my friend Kiley.

Wow, that made her feel like shit.

“What?” Tom asked.

“I didn't say anything.”

“You just sighed like the weight of the world is on your shoulders.”

“How about the weight of no job, no place to live, et cetera, et cetera.”

Tom took a sip of his coffee. “You can live with me.”

As what? Bestest friends? There was no point in having that conversation, because it wasn't an option, no matter what. Her mom still didn't know that she wasn't working for Evelyn Bowers. She had to find another nanny gig. But how?

“Okay, so say I do go back to the country club and stand in the breezeway” Kiley mused. “I must already be known as the girl who has lost three nanny gigs in about as many days. No one is going to want to—”

Her cell rang. She plucked it from her faux-leather purse from Target, praying it wasn't her mother. “Hello?”

“Is this Kiley McCann?” The voice was familiar; she'd heard it before. An adult woman. But she couldn't place it.

“That's me,” Kiley told her.

“This is Tonika Johnson, City Department of Social Services,” the voice told her. “We met a few nights ago at Platinum's home.”

Tonika Johnson. Now Kiley remembered. She was the intense and businesslike social worker who had been at Platinum's mansion the night Platinum had been arrested and the children taken away by the department. Where they'd ended up when they were removed from the home, Kiley didn't know.

Why was this woman calling her now?

“Yes, of course I remember you,” Kiley told Ms. Johnson. Tom was looking at her quizzically, but Kiley turned away so that he couldn't observe her face.

“I have some good news. Platinum's children are back in the house.”

What?

“Oh my God, that's fantastic!” Kiley exclaimed. “Platinum's out of jail?”

“No, she's still in custody,” the social worker reported. “And will be, for the foreseeable future. However, the children are back at home. We were able to locate Platinum's sister in San Diego. She and her husband were willing to come to Los Angeles and serve as guardians. Whenever possible, we prefer that solution to placing the children in shelters or with strangers.”