Natural Born Charmer (31 page)

He set a mug on her bedside table. “I know you’re pissed.”

Pissed was only one part of it, the part that wasn’t hiding secrets. “Later, Deanna. Real men avoid these kinds of discussions.”

“Cut the crap.” His field commander’s voice always took her aback. “Yesterday wasn’t personal. Not in the way you think.”

“It sure felt personal.”

“You think I was embarrassed to introduce you to my friends because of your crappy clothes and generally shitty disposition, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.”

She shot up from the side of the bed. “Don’t waste your breath. I’m not the kind of woman your friends expect Malibu Dean to hang with, and you didn’t want to field all the questions.”

“Do you really think I’m that small-minded?”

“No. I think you’re basically a gentleman, so you didn’t want to spell out that I’m only a buddy with sleeping privileges.”

“You’re more than a buddy, Blue. You’re one of the best friends I have.”

“Which makes me what? How about…a
buddy
!”

He shoved a hand through his hair. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just want what’s between us to stay private.”

“Like all the other things in your life you want to stay private. Aren’t you starting to lose track?”

“You don’t have a clue what it’s like being a public person,” he shot back. “I have to be careful.”

She grabbed the coffee mug and snatched up her purse from the foot of her bed. “Translated, that means I’ve become another one of your dirty little secrets.”

“That’s a rotten thing to say.”

She couldn’t handle this now, not with a secret of her own. “I’m
going to make this easy. Today’s Friday. Nita’s party is tomorrow. I have some loose ends to tie up around here on Sunday, but first thing Monday morning I’m taking off permanently for parts unknown.”

His expression grew thunderous. “This had better be more of your bullshit.”

“Why? Because I’m ending it instead of you?” All the emotions she didn’t want him to see—sadness, fear, pain—tried to break through her tough girl swagger, but she beat them back. “Life is good, Boo. I got a great deal on a rental car, and I bought a brand-new road atlas. You’ve been an amusing diversion, but it’s time for me to move on.”

She’d called a play he wasn’t expecting and his hands curled at his sides. “Apparently you need some time to grow up.” His words were so cold she half-expected a vapor cloud to form around his mouth. “We’ll settle this at Nita’s party tomorrow. Maybe by then you’ll be able to think like a rational human being.” He strode out of the room.

She sat back on the bed, foolishly wishing he’d taken her in his arms and begged forgiveness. Wished at the very least that he’d said something about the murals before he stormed off. He’d seen them by now. Yesterday, she’d found a hand-delivered envelope in Nita’s mailbox with a check that April had made out. That was it. No personal note. April and Dean had flawless taste. They hated them. She’d known they would. But somehow she’d hoped they wouldn’t.

Dean marched down the pink-carpeted hallway. As long as he concentrated on wringing Blue’s neck, he wouldn’t have to think about what a jerk he was being. He hated knowing he’d hurt her. She truly believed he’d been embarrassed to introduce her to his friends, but it wasn’t embarrassment. If the guys had taken the time to talk to her yesterday instead of treating her like a maid, they’d have fallen in love with her. But Dean didn’t want anyone—especially not his
teammates—picking over something as personal as his affair with Blue when it was still so new. Hell, he hadn’t even known her for two months.

And now she was planning to leave him. He’d realized all along that he couldn’t count on her. But after the way he’d treated her yesterday, it wasn’t so simple to shift the blame.

He’d reached the landing when he remembered what Nita had said. The old woman loved to make trouble, but she also cared about Blue in her own twisted way. He turned around and went back upstairs.

Blue’s bathroom had pink walls, pink tile, and a shower curtain printed with dancing champagne bottles. A towel, still damp from her shower, hung crookedly on the towel bar. He knelt in front of the sink, opened the cupboard door, and stared at the cellophane-wrapped box sitting right in front.

He heard quick footsteps behind him. “What are you doing?” she said in a rush.

As his brain registered what he saw, the blood rushed from his head. He picked up the box and somehow made it to his feet.

“Leave that alone!” she cried.

“You said you were on the pill.”

“I am.”

They’d been using condoms, too. Except a couple of times…He looked at her. She stared back, all big eyes and pale white skin. He held up the pregnancy test kit. “I’m guessing this doesn’t belong to Nita.”

She tried to give him her mulish look but couldn’t carry it off. Her eyelashes swept her cheeks as she looked down. “A few weeks ago when I had food poisoning from Josie’s shrimp…I threw up my pill. I didn’t think anything about it.”

A freight train roared straight toward him. “Are you saying throwing up one pill could get you pregnant?”

“It’s possible, I guess. My period was due last week, and I couldn’t
figure out why I wasn’t getting it. Then I remembered what had happened with the pill.”

He twisted the box in his hands. The train screamed through the bones of his skull. “You haven’t opened it.”

“Tomorrow. I need to get through Nita’s party first.”

“No. No you don’t.” He pulled her the rest of the way into the bathroom and shut the door with the flat of his hand. His fingers felt numb. “Today. Right now.” He tore open the box.

Blue knew him well, and it didn’t take her long to see this was one fight she couldn’t win. “Wait in the hall,” she said.

“Not on your life.” He ripped open the box.

“I just went.”

“Go again.” His hands, usually so nimble, fumbled with the directions as he tried to unfold them.

“Turn around,” she said.

“Stop it, Blue. We’re getting this over with right now.”

Wordlessly, she took the box. He stood there watching her. Waiting. Finally, she got the job done.

The directions said to wait three minutes. He marked the time off with his Rolex. It had three dials, one of them a tachometer, but all he cared about was the slow sweep of the second hand. As it inched its way around, a dozen thoughts he couldn’t sort out—didn’t want to sort out—tumbled through his head.

“Isn’t the time up yet?” she finally said.

He was sweating. He blinked and nodded.

“You look,” she whispered.

He picked up the stick with clammy hands and studied it. Finally he raised his eyes and met hers. “You’re not pregnant.”

She nodded, expressionless. “Good. Now go away.”

Dean drove around for a couple of hours and ended up on a back road. He pulled the truck off to the side of the crumbling asphalt and
got out. It wasn’t even ten o’clock. Today would be a scorcher. He heard the sound of moving water and followed it into the woods where he came to a creek. A rusted oil drum lay on its side in the water along with some old tires, bed springs, a smashed highway pylon, and some other junk. It didn’t seem right, people dumping their shit like this.

He waded in and began dragging it out. Before long, his sneakers were waterlogged, and he was covered in mud and grease. He slipped on some mossy rocks and got his shorts wet, but the cold water felt good. He wished mountains of litter clogged the creek so he could spend all day here, but before long, the water ran free again.

His world had caved in. As he climbed back in his truck, he couldn’t get a deep breath. He’d take a long walk when he reached the farm and straighten out his head. But he didn’t make it that far. Instead, he found himself turning into the narrow lane that led to the cottage.

The sound of the guitar drifted toward him as he got out of the truck. Jack sat in a kitchen chair on the porch, his bare ankles crossed on the railing, and the guitar cradled to his chest. He wore three-day stubble, a Virgin Records T-shirt, and black athletic shorts. Dean’s muddy socks had collapsed around his ankles, and his feet squished in their sneakers as he approached the porch. The familiar wariness shaded Jack’s eyes, but he kept playing. “You look like you lost a pig-wrestling contest.”

“Anybody else here?”

Jack strummed a couple of minor chords. “Riley’s riding her bike, and April’s gone for a run. They should be back soon.”

Dean hadn’t come to see them. He stopped at the bottom of the steps. “Blue and I aren’t engaged. I picked her up outside Denver two months ago.”

“April told me. Too bad. I like her a lot. She makes me laugh.”

Dean rubbed some caked mud from between his knuckles. “I saw Blue this morning. A couple of hours ago.” Now his stomach was giv
ing him trouble, and he tried to suck in some more air. “She thought she might be pregnant.”

Jack stopped playing. “Is she?”

A bird called out from the tin roof. Dean shook his head. “No.”

“Congratulations.”

He stuck his hands in his clammy pockets then pulled them out again. “These pregnancy tests people buy…You have to—Maybe you already know this. You have to wait three minutes to get the results.”

“Okay.”

“The thing is…That three minutes while I was waiting…I had—I had all these thoughts running through my head.”

“I guess that’s understandable.”

The steps creaked as Dean came up onto the edge of the porch. “Things like how I’d go about setting up medical care for Blue. Whether I trusted my attorney to handle child support or if I should have my agent do it. How to keep it out of the papers. You know the drill.”

Jack rose and leaned the guitar against the chair. “A panic reaction. I remember the symptoms.”

“Yeah, well, when you had your panic reaction, you were—what?—twenty-four? I’m thirty-one.”

“I was twenty-three, but the bottom line’s the same. If you weren’t planning to marry Blue, you had to come up with a plan.”

“It’s not the same thing. April was crazy. Blue’s not. She’s one of the sanest people I know.” He meant to stop there but couldn’t. “She said I’ve turned her into another one of my dirty little secrets.”

“People who haven’t lived in the spotlight don’t understand.”

“That’s what I told her.” He rubbed his stomach where it was burning. “But those three minutes…Everything I was thinking. The plan I was coming up with…The lawyer, the child support—”

“All kinds of shit runs through your head at a time like that. Forget about it.”

“How am I supposed to do that? Like father, like son, right?”

Dean felt as though he’d ripped himself open, but Jack sneered. “Don’t bring yourself down to my level. I’ve seen you with Riley. If Blue had been pregnant, there’s no way you’d have turned your back on your kid. You’d have been right there for him while he was growing up.”

Dean should have let it go, but his knees bent, and he found himself sitting on the step. “Why did you do it, Jack?”

“Why the hell do you think?” Jack bristled with derision. “I could candy coat it for you, but the bottom line is that I didn’t know how to deal with April, and I didn’t want to be bothered with you. I was a rock star, baby. An American icon. Too busy giving interviews and letting everybody kiss my ass. I’d have had to grow up to be a father, and where was the fun in that?”

Dean dropped his hands between his knees and picked at the paint flaking on the step. “But it changed, didn’t it?”

“Never.”

He came to his feet. “Don’t bullshit me. I remember those father-and-son get-togethers when I was fourteen, fifteen. You trying to figure out how to make up for all those lost years and me spitting in your eye.”

Jack grabbed the guitar. “Look, I’m working on a song here. Just because you finally decided you want to dig up old garbage doesn’t mean I have to grab a shovel, too.”

“Just tell me this. If you had to do it all over again…”

“I can’t do it over, so let it go.”

“But if you could…”

“If I had to do it again, I’d have taken you away from her!” he said fiercely. “How’s that? And once I had you, I’d have figured out how to be a father. Fortunately for you, that didn’t happen because, from
where I stand, you turned out just fine on your own. Any man would be proud to have you for a son. Now, are you satisfied or do we have to fucking hug?”

The knots in Dean’s stomach finally eased. He could breathe again.

Jack dropped the guitar to his side. “You can’t make peace with me until you make peace with your mother. She deserves it.”

Dean stubbed the muddy toe of his sneaker against the stair tread. “It’s not that easy.”

“It’s easier than holding on to so much pain.”

Dean turned away and headed back to his truck.

He left his muddy sneakers and socks on the porch. As usual, no one had remembered to lock the front door. Inside, the house was cool and quiet. A basket in the foyer held his shoes. His caps hung on the coatrack. Next to the brass tray where he tossed his keys and spare change was a photograph of him when he’d been eight or nine. A bony, bare chest; knobby knees sticking out below his shorts; a football helmet engulfing his small head. April had taken it one summer when they’d lived in Venice Beach. His childhood photographs had popped up all over the house, pictures he didn’t even remember.

Last night, Riley had tried to drag him in to see Blue’s murals, but he’d wanted to see them for the first time with Blue, and he’d refused. Now, he turned away from the dining room without looking in and wandered into the living room. The deep-seated couches were a perfect fit for his long frame, and the television had been positioned so he could watch game film without light reflecting on the screen. The sheets of precisely cut glass protecting the wooden coffee table made drink coasters unnecessary. Drawers held whatever he might need: books, remote controls, nail clippers. Upstairs, none of the beds had footboards, and the bathroom counters were higher than normal.
The showers were spacious, and extra-long towel racks held the oversize bath sheets he preferred. April had done it all.