Somewhere in His Arms (72 page)

             
“How is she?”

             
Gavin swiped his mouth with a napkin and nodded. “She’s doing okay, I guess. She’s going to school and everything.” He scooped up some bacon and scrambled eggs. “She writes a nice letter,” he said after swallowing.

             
“She does?”

             
He pinkened slightly under Lucy’s knowing gaze. “She’s just a friend!”

             
“I didn’t say anything.” She smiled and sipped her tea. “But it’s good to see you two keep in touch. She needs a friend and so do you.”

             
“I’m just fine!” He retorted and polished off his plate. “She’s lonely.”

             
“I know how that feels.”

             
“It’s a shame we couldn’t visit.”

             
“Eustacia didn’t think it was safe. They’re still looking for her.”

             
Gavin pushed his empty plate aside and sat back. “How long have you and Alec been married?” he asked, changing the subject to something more pleasant.

             
“Eight and a half months I guess. We got married in March.”

             
“So how did you manage to snare my brother?”

             
“I won him in Vegas!” she giggled and burst out laughing at Gavin’s confused look. “It’s a long story.”

             
He leaned forward, barely glancing at the waitress who came to take their plates. The poor girl took one look at Gavin’s deep aqua eyes, sensuous mouth, cleft chin, and was lost forever. “So, tell me all about it.”

             
Lucy wasn’t sure she wanted to burden him with all the sordid details, but when she started, she couldn’t stop. It was almost a purging. When she mentioned Vivian, Gavin scrunched his face up into a disgusted grimace.
“She’s
your stepmother?” When she nodded, he scowled. “My condolences.”

             
“How do you know Viv?”

             
“Don’t ask!” he pursed his mouth in disdain and gave a little shudder. “She’s the biggest whore in Hollywood.”

             
“At the Halloween party, she talked about you as if she knew you.”

             
“Yeah? Well, she shouldn’t flatter herself.”

             
“What
did
she do to you?”

             
“It’s not what she did to me, it’s what she
tried
to do to me.”

             
“Oh…?” Lucy wasn’t sure she wanted to hear this. “Go on.”

             
“She tried to rape me in the ladies’ loo at a pre-Oscar party a few years ago.” He took a swig of his coffee and winced at the stuff. “I’d just made my first movie and Harvey thought it would be great if I got out and mingled with the locals.”

             
Lucy was horrified. “How old were you?”

             
“Barely eighteen.”

             
“That bitch!” she swore, to which he chuckled. “What did you do?”

             
He shrugged and lowered his voice as several families came in, some bearing children. “I tried to explain as nicely as I could that I didn’t want any. She’s got quite the reputation and I hadn’t had my shots.”

             
“That’s true,” Lucy snickered and flushed slightly. Poor Gavin. “Then what?”

             
“Well, she practically tore me kit off and I had to kick her off and ask some lady for her mink coat. It was very embarrassing.” He sighed and shook his head at the memory of standing in the cold with nothing but a mink loincloth to protect his modesty. “I nearly caught pneumonia and had to beg some guy to drive me home.”

             
Lucy smiled sympathetically. “That’s nothing compared to finding her coiled around my father like a snake, which led to my mother’s suicide, and then finding her wrapped around my fiancé.”

             
“Your fiancé…?” His eyes were wide saucers. “But I thought Alec--”

             
“I told you,” she sighed as they got up to leave, “it’s a long story.” Lucy paid the bill and walked out with Gavin to the car. A steady drizzle was fast on its way to becoming a full-fledged downpour. They buckled themselves in, and Lucy had an idea. “Let’s go shopping!”

             
“What for?”

             
She pulled out of the parking lot and headed towards the mall. “You need some new clothes.”

             
“I have clothes,” he said as he fiddled with the radio. “I can wear Alec’s.”

             
“Don’t you want something of your own?”

             
“It doesn’t really matter,” Gavin said, shrugging. “But if it’ll make you happy, so be it.”

             
She smiled and turned on the windshield wipers. “I’ll buy you a new videogame,” she wheedled. “That one where all the dead bodies reanimate and try to kill you.”

             
“Now, you’re talking!” He grinned boyishly, revealing an adorable set of dimples, and drummed his fingers on the armrest to the rhythm of The Clash.

              Gavin perused the endless racks of novelty T-shirts with something akin to boredom. But his sister-in-law was determined to clothe him like a child, holding up various garments up to him to gage his size, and tossing the selections into a basket. While he may have been bored out of his skull, he was more concerned that someone would recognize him. He’d found a baseball cap in the backseat and put it on, hoping no one would notice an ex-porn star shopping at a discount department store. “I’m going to look at the video games,” he told Lucy and beat a hasty retreat towards the electronics section.

             
“Wait!” Lucy huffed and tossed a package of socks into her basket. “Men!” she muttered to herself and finished picking out a few changes of clothes for him. She felt like she was shopping for a child, and in a way, she was. He’d hardly glanced at the garments she’d picked out for him and seemed nervous about something. Though she and Alec had reassured Gavin that he didn’t have to worry about Harvey anymore since he’d been a minor when he signed the so-called contract, it didn’t stop him from looking over his shoulder. He’d even refused to go back to his apartment afraid that Harvey and the Tree would be waiting for him. Shaking her head, she picked out a few books for herself and went to stock up on towels and toiletries.

             
Gavin hitched up Alec’s jeans for the hundredth time that day and scanned the aisles for the newest and bloodiest games. Harvey hadn’t allowed him to indulge in his favorite pastime, deeming it a waste of time and money, so Gavin was trying to play catch-up. He’d found a few he thought were promising and was about to leave, when he spotted them. Two teenage girls were giving him the eye. They couldn’t be more than fifteen-years-old. One was a plump little blonde and her friend, a freckled-faced brunette. For a moment he wasn’t quite sure that they were looking at him. He glanced behind him and around and finally pointed at himself with increasing dread. They nodded and giggled. Neither one had the decency to blush in embarrassment. To his everlasting horror, they were actually
leering
at him! Gavin felt sick. When he’d gone into porn, he hadn’t thought much about whom, what, or how. He’d only thought about putting a roof over his head and having enough money to feed himself. So now it had come to this…

             
Such shame and remorse flooded his soul at that moment that he dropped the video game cases he was carrying and ran out of the store. He didn’t look back.

             
Lucy was approaching the electronics section when she saw Gavin hurrying out of the store with a stricken look on his face. There’d been such a look of pained anguish on his handsome features that she left the basket in an aisle and hurried after him. She found him in the parking lot, hunched over with his hands on his thighs, retching. “Gavin!” she cried out and went to him. She rubbed his back as he discarded his breakfast next to a beat-up Mustang. “What happened?” she asked once his stomach was empty.

             
He held up a hand and then to add insult to injury, it began to rain. “They were… looking at…me,” he gasped, grabbing the handkerchief she held out. He wiped his face and stood upright, leaning against the car as Lucy unlocked the doors. She hustled him into his seat and went to her side and slid in. “I need to lie down,” he muttered. He glanced at her and to her credit she didn’t press him for more information.

             
Gavin was grateful for her silence while she drove them home. Once there, he headed for his room and collapsed into bed, pulling the quilt over his head. Lucy let him rest for a bit and then she came to give him a glass of water and something to calm his stomach. She placed a cool cloth on his forehead and flitted out as softly as she came. He sighed, feeling as if he were five again with his mum coming to comfort him after he’d been sick at school. He closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep.

              Lucy woke him up later for a light supper of chicken soup and sandwiches. Then she let him play his video games while she packed. He still hadn’t lost that green about the gills pallor, and she figured he’d tell her when he was ready. She could only imagine what had upset him so horribly. Alone in her room, she never felt the absence of her husband more acutely than she did now. Without Alec and Pat’s witty banter to fill up the small house, the silence was both eerie and deafening. She kept checking her phone, but Alec hadn’t sent her any messages. But she figured it was time to see what sort of present he’d left for her under their bed.

             
She bent down and lifted the bed skirt. There was a large package wrapped neatly in newspaper. Sitting down on the bed, Lucy untied the string and found Alec had left her quite the going-away present. In the bundle were several hundred dollars, credit cards, and for the piece de resistance, Alec’s pistol and several clips of ammunition. She stared at it in shock and quickly put it away. Now, what on earth had her dear husband been thinking?
A gun?
He knew how she felt about the things. It was her turn to get sick, so she had to lie down and think about the ramifications of being armed and dangerous.

             
She didn’t like where this was heading. Lucy heard Gavin calling her and she told him she was lying down. “In here,” she called.

             
“What happened, sis?” He glanced around at the clothes strewn about on the floor. “A tornado hit?”

             
“Very funny,” Lucy said dryly and sat up. “Alec left me a little present for our trip.”

             
“Oh?”

             
“Yeah,” she said glumly, pointing to where she’d stowed the weapon. “He left me a gun.”

             
The smile slid off Gavin’s face. “You’re joking!”

             
“I wish I were,” she sighed and got up to finish packing her suitcase. “Better pack what you can, we have to leave at 8 a.m. sharp.”

             
“Will do,” he said as he made to leave and paused at the door. “Are you all right?”

             
“Me?”
Lucy folded some jeans and tucked them under a sweater. “I’m just peachy!”

             
He didn’t particularly care for the ghostly shade of pale her face was becoming. Though Alec had told him Lucy was more than capable of defending herself, he’d made it quite clear he’d have no qualms about wearing Gavin’s intestines as a charm bracelet should anything happen to his wife. “You don’t have to pack all that stuff, we can buy what we need, no?” She nodded and pushed the suitcase aside. “Go to sleep, sis,” he said and watched as she turned off all the lights save one. She left the bedside lamp on.

             
He didn’t close the door all the way and decided to stay up a little longer; Gavin had the feeling that Alec would have wanted him to.

             
They woke the next morning and drove to the airport; both of them the worse for wear as neither had gotten a good night’s sleep. Both he and Lucy were numb to the pat downs they received through security and gladly boarded the plane for the short trip to San Francisco.

              Pat let out a startled snort as the camper rattled with the violent aftershocks of a passing
artic.
He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and stretched, wincing as he tried to straighten out his long legs and bumped up against the floorboard instead. They were driving along a desolate stretch of desert between Tucson and Las Cruces.

             
They’d arrived shortly before sunset in a city that looked like something out of an episode of
Gunsmoke.
Well, at least to his eyes anyway. The only trace of Rudy they could find was at some decrepit petrol station off the main highway. And the only employee in attendance---a short little man with a bad combover---only mentioned Rudy after they pulled out a couple of twenties. After that, Pat had turned the reins over to Alec and tried to grab a much-needed nap. Suddenly he was nearly thrown to the floor by a horrendous vibration followed by a loud explosion. Alec swore and whipped the wheel around violently as the vehicle swerved off the road. They came to an abrupt stop and Pat was flung forward in his seat; if it hadn’t been for his seatbelt he might have gone through the windshield. “What the hell…?”