Material Girl (11 page)

By the time she had finished spilling her guts, she was feeling exhausted and a little loopy from the vodka, and was actually laughing about the absurdity of her new job. “Bubble wrap, can you imagine? Me?”

“Why not?” he asked.

Robin snorted. “In case you haven't notice, I'm not exactly a Styrofoam products kind of person.”

“I don't see why not,” Jake said with a shrug. “Someone's got to make it. What, you're afraid they'll call you Bubbles?”

“Not funny.”

“Okay. How about Peanut?”

He was playing with her, Robin thought smugly. “How about boss?”

Jake chuckled, folded his arms across his chest. “How about convict?”

“How about fired?”

“Uppity?”

“Just plain stupid contractor?”

“Hmmm,” he said, nodding, his gaze drifting to her bare middle. “You have a charming way with words.”

She was only kidding around, but apparently not very well. “You're a nice guy, Jake,” she proclaimed with a crooked smile. “You didn't have to listen to my wretched life.”

“Oh, I bet you do okay most of the time, boss. Doesn't look like you're hurting.”

She was about to answer that looks weren't everything when Jake's cell phone rang. He glanced at the number display. “I'd better be going,” he said and stuffed the cell down inside his backpack without bothering to answer it.

Robin stood as he hoisted his backpack and pulled the do-rag from his pocket, blindly followed him to the back door. He paused there, smiled at her with unexpected warmth. “My advice?” he said, pushing the door open. “Don't get out of bed.”

“Better safe than sorry, right?”

“No. I just think you should leave the unsuspecting public alone for a while.”

She laughed, decided she liked Handy Andy. “Hey… sorry I called you a pervert.”

Jake shrugged. “I've been called worse. Have a good weekend,” he said, and with a wink, walked out the door, leaving her to stand behind the screen.

Robin stood there for a moment, admiring his form as he mounted the bike. But when he disappeared from her drive, she chastised herself for getting all worked up about his good looks. Okay, so he seemed to be a nice guy (in spite of her earlier, moronic assessments), but… he was the contractor renovating her house. She was only thinking of him now in a warm fuzzy way due to a general state of intoxication and hunger.

Right. Food.

Robin turned away from the door and headed for the phone book.

At the ranch in Comfort, Texas, Aaron was lying prone on the king-sized, four-poster bed in the master suite, staring up at the Star of Texas painted on the ceiling and trying to keep his dinner down. At the granite vanity near the master bath, Bonnie mixed a concoction of herbs. 'This should help your nausea."

“Nothing is going to help while they've got me on this goddam medicine,” Aaron groused and swallowed hard against another swell of nausea.

“I talked to Gordon again today,” Bonnie said, and Aaron groaned. “He is sending me a couple of books on biological therapy.”

“Gordon is a hack, Bon-bon.”

Bonnie frowned at him over her shoulder. “You have nothing to lose by trying his way! Look at him! He's been in remission for eight years now!”

“Yeah, well, not because of the crap he keeps pushing on you, I guaran-damn-tee it.”

With a snort of exasperation, Bonnie got up from the vanity and glided toward him, carrying the shit she would make him drink in a large Dixie cup. “Drink it.”

Aaron made himself sit up, felt the sickening roil in his belly. “I really don't think I can,” he started, but Bonnie thrust the cup at him.

“You have to do something, Aaron! I won't let you just lie there and wallow in self-pity and not do something, do you hear me?”

Her blue eyes were flashing, her hand trembling. Aaron gripped her wrist, stilled the trembling. “Bon-bon, sooner or later you are going to have to accept what is.”

“Shut up,” she snapped and, with a grunt of anger, thrust the cup at him. He reluctantly took it, wrinkled his nose at the pungent smell. Holding his breath, he tossed the stuff down his throat, then handed the cup to Bonnie.

She watched him closely; Aaron waited. And just when he thought the sickness had passed, it surged up on a violent wave. He bolted from the bed to the bathroom, leaning his head over the toilet just as he heard Bonnie lament, “Maybe I didn't mix it right.”

Jake almost missed the turn to Zaney's house, no t hank s to Robin Lear. His head was filled with the image of her bare belly, her slender knee peeking out of the rips in the denim, her corkscrew mess of curls and that mouth… God, that mouth was enough to make a grown man cry.

But it wasn't her near-perfect body that got to him. It was the uncomfortable notion that he was, inexplicably, kind of attracted to a snobby woman with a fat mouth who most definitely had a screw loose, if not a whole series of parts missing. She was nuts! Certifiable! Probably one of those good-looking chicks who thought she was God's gift to mankind. But she also had a smile that could light up all of Houston , a laugh that went all over him like warm spring rain, a definite sense of self, and a refrigerator full of AA batteries.

A man couldn't help but wonder about those batteries.

Attractive or not (definitely attractive), Robin Lear was trouble, the kind of trouble that ought to be broadcast with big neon lights and orange cones so men could steer clear. The only problem was, he couldn't figure out exactly how

he was going to steer clear of her, given that the rocket scientist had burned down her office.

He'd think about that later. At the moment, he had arrived at the house of his most immediate problem, Chuck Zaney. Sometimes it seemed like he had two teenage headaches, as if he didn't already have enough trouble with Cole, the son of his brother Ross, who died two years ago. Then again, Cole was so plainly rudderless that your heart ached for the kid. At twelve, he had lost his father to drunk driving. The very next year, he lost his mother to God knew where-—she couldn't handle it, she said, and took off with some guy.

Now Cole was living with Jake's mom, which wasn't exactly a cakewalk, either. Mom was worn out from having raised three boys almost single-handedly, and she did the best she could for Cole, but Cole was just too much for her. When had she called mis afternoon to tell Jake that Cole was AWOL, she had sounded exhausted.

Frankly, Cole exhausted him, but he was determined to give the boy a sense of direction, a purpose. No one had done that for Ross, himself included—and he didn't want to make the same mistake again. But more times than not, he felt like he was banging his head against a wall. Cole could go along, doing okay, then one of those thugs he called friend would appear, and the kid was lost, running with a crowd that had, somehow, become more familiar to him than his own family.

Tonight he'd run off with Frankie Capellini again, a loser if Jake had ever laid eyes on one. But he had an idea of where they might have gone, and just as soon as he was through with Zaney, he was heading up Old Galveston Road .

Speaking of which, lights were on in every room of Za-ney's house; hard rock was blaring out the open door onto the street and Jake could just make out the off-key strains of Zaney's guitar. Inside, the place looked like a gulf storm had hit it—pizza cartons covered the coffee table, empty beer cans were stacked precariously on one end table. The wide-screen TV was tuned into a Rockets' game. Jake

stepped around an empty McDonald's bag on the floor, headed for the dining room.

Shirtless and bent over his guitar, Zaney grinned the moment he saw Jake. “Dude!” he shouted over the blare of the stereo, grinning wildly as he put his guitar aside.

“Turn it down!” Jake shouted back.

With a startled look, Zaney glanced at the stereo as if he had just realized it was on. He hopped up, ran over to the stereo, and punched a button. The noise was suddenly reduced to the sound of a basketball game on the TV. “Hey! The Rockets are playing!” he happily observed.

Jake grabbed the remote and turned off the TV. “I just stopped by to see how you were doing.” He motioned toward Zaney's arm. “So, what's the story? Broken?”

Zaney glanced down at his arm. “It's probably all right.”

“Probably? What did the doctor say?”

“Ah man, I got tired of waiting for him,” Zaney said with a laugh. 'There was this screaming baby—I mean, something fierce had hold of that little dude."

Jake was momentarily speechless. “You're kidding, right?”

“Nah… he was really wailing.”

Great, just great. Jake impatiently thrust a hand through his hair; Zaney smiled sheepishly. Jake clamped his jaw shut before he said something hurtful—Zaney tended to wear his feelings on his sleeve.

“Hey, it's all right!” Zaney insisted, and to prove it, moved his arm from left to right, unabashedly wincing at the pain it caused him.

“Zaney, it's bad enough you got arrested, man. You cost me the whole morning bailing you out and driving you to the clinic. And you skipped out? How in the hell are we supposed to finish all the jobs we've got lined up if you don't go to a doctor?” Jake demanded.

Zaney dropped his gaze to the table and shrugged halfheartedly like a chastised child.

“Shit, I've got more work lined up than we can handle. I need you, man!”

“I'll go. Tomorrow, I'll go, I promise,” Zaney said ear-

nestly, and at Jake's dubious look, insisted, “Dude! I promise!”

“You better. I gotta go,” Jake said irritably and pivoted on his heel, stalking out of the dining room. “Take care of that arm!” he called over his shoulder, but his words were drowned by the sudden blast of hard rock at his back.

So now he could t hank Robin and Zaney for his rotten, rotten mood as he roared up Old Galveston Road in search of Cole. He wondered what Robin Lear would do with someone like Zaney. Cut him up and serve him to some garden party. The probability of truth in that only made his mood blacker.

The ride out wasn't helping, either—this stretch of road was littered with graffiti-scarred buildings, pawn shops, thrift stores, and used car lots. He was rarely out here anymore, but was nonetheless desperately familiar with it—he and his brothers had run these same streets as kids, like loose mavericks down this road, into its trashed alleys and beyond to the levees, where they would fish for crawdads, make forts out of old tires and build race cars with boxes. Ross and Todd never left this part of town.

Jake might have ended up here permanently, too, had it not been for his talent to play baseball. By the grace of heaven, a junior high coach had taken a keen interest in him and his abilities. But the coach didn't have to work too hard to convince Jake to turn from the streets—he loved baseball. He was never without his cleats or glove, and in high school, when his father said he'd never amount to anything, and tried to take the glove and make him work, Jake had stood up to the old man for the first time in his life. He had worked hard, spending endless hours throwing the ball against the side of the garage to field grounders. In his senior year, he was scouted by the Astros, then made the roster of their farm team. The day after graduation, he left home to play ball and never looked back.

That had been a magical time. He had seen beautiful, exclusive parts of Houston, awash in palm trees and big white houses behind wrought-iron fences. He had seen the Texas coastal plains and the ranch land that stretched green

and lush all the way to the piney woods. He had seen New Orleans and its voodoo magic, then Dallas, where tall glass buildings stretched right up to the relentless sun. He met people far more educated and sophisticated than anyone he had ever known, had sampled exotic food, strong drink, and pretty women.

The more of that world he tasted, the greater his hunger for it grew. And he might have made it, might have gone all the way to the Bigs had he not slid into home plate one sultry Sunday afternoon and torn his right Achilles tendon.

That was a career-ending, dream-obliterating injury that in the space of a few days, if not hours, had left him drifting. By the time he healed and could walk again, his money was gone. He took the first job he could find, drifted from one construction job to another while he desperately tried to find his bearings and avoid a return to the life he had left behind—to this life, on Old Galveston Road.

Jake slowed at a familiar intersection, turned next to a topless dancer joint, where four young thugs stood huddled outside, sharing a smoke. About a mile down, he found the old road he was looking for and turned left again, onto a dirt road that ran out to the levee that wended deep into the bayou. He rode slowly, coming to a stop more than once to peer into the thick foliage for any sign of kids.

Strange how time could fray memories. Sometimes it felt like he had dreamed his years here. His desire to escape the poverty and misery he had known as a child had allowed him to turn his back on this place. When Dad ran off with Mom's friend, he had been absent, just as he was when Todd knocked off a liquor store and ended up in the pen for it. He missed Cole's birth, and it really wasn't until Ross was forced into rehab that Jake began to notice his family again. And remember.

By then, Jake was working for A. J. Ackerman. A. J. owned a small construction firm, and took a liking to Jake, showed him the tricks of the trade and the business side of things. It was A. J. who told him he had a natural talent for design and had urged him to take a drafting class.

Jake had scoffed at the idea, but A. J. was relentless about

it. The upshot of all that badgering was that now, at thirty-eight, Jake was only fifteen hours away from a degree in architecture.

A flicker of light through a stand of brush caught his eye, and he downshifted, brought the bike to a stop. A path cut through the brush, leading down to the levee, where there was, on any given night, a dozen or more teenagers. This Jake knew from personal experience.

Yep, Jake thought as he kicked his way through the brush, had it not been for Ross's death, he might never have come back. But his brother's death had awakened something sharp and unexpected in him, an instinct that had sliced through his conscience when he had seen Cole at the funeral. It shocked him to see then how much the boy looked like Ross had when Jake had left home eighteen years before. It was like being transported back in time.