Spin (9 page)

~ Jane ~

I RACED BACK to my hotel, locked in battle against my
mind’s prurient desire to relive each scene from last night in
slow, vivid Technicolor.

I blew by the front-desk people with an airy
wave and urged the elevator up seven floors by cursing at it. I
yanked my heels off for a quicker escape, and before the doors were
fully opened, I leapt out and started jogging down the hall.

I stopped short when I saw Mr. Peter J.
standing outside my door.

We stared at each other. Then I took a
breath and continued down the hall, big smile on, key out.

“Good morning, Mr. Sandler-Ross,” I said as
if I wasn’t marching down a hotel hallway at six-something in the
morning wearing the same rumpled clothes as yesterday.

“Where were you?” he asked, sounding truly
curious. He glanced over my shoulder.

“Exercising,” I replied brightly. “Tae kwon
do class.”

He eyed my silk shirt and pencil skirt and
high heels. “Oh.”

We both knew I hadn’t been working out, but
it was none of his damned business, right? I felt a little excited
at the unfamiliar, possibly illegal, thought. He was paying me a
lot of money and that made a whole lot of things his business.

I had no choice but to step nearer so I
could enter the room, and he had no choice but to step backward,
unless he wanted to be a total intrusive ass.

“My wife sent me to get you,” he explained,
taking a half step back, because he was a partial intrusive ass.
“She’s been trying to reach you all night. You didn’t answer your
phone. Or email. Or texts.”

Coldness zigzagged down my stomach. I
touched my pocket. I’d forgotten to plug it in in the car. Damned
Technicolor. “My battery died.”

He came up close behind me. I shoved the key
into the slot. The little green button beamed a cheerful green
light at me.

“I’m very sorry, sir. I’ll plug in and call
her right now.”

“There’s been a problem,” he said.

I paused, door half open. “What kind of
problem?”

“The caterer is concerned about having the
party at our home. And the extra guests.”

“Join the club,” I said. It popped out
without thinking.

He stared at me, then went on. “She said
doesn’t think she can do it.”

“She has to do it.” I turned and gazed into
the distance over his shoulder, where solutions often hovered.
“Maybe rental ovens,” I murmured after a minute. “And another
generator.” I glanced at Mr. Peter J. “How old is your circuit
breaker?”

“My what?”

“Never mind.” I put my shoulder to the door
and pushed. “I’ll call the caterer and—”

“Olivia fired the DJ.”

I closed my eyes briefly, slumping against
the door. “Olivia.”

“Our daughter.”

I opened my eyes. “I know who Olivia is.
Why?”

“She said she doesn’t want the DJ.”

I felt a spurt of anger. “Then why did I
hire one?”

“Because we told you to,” he said, a warning
tone in his voice. “And now we’re telling you to hire another
one.”

“Why would I hire another one if she doesn’t
want the first one?”

“Because my wife does.”

“That’s a bit risky.”

“We invest. We’re prepared for risk.”

We were almost toe to toe. “Your daughter
will just fire the next one.”

He shook his classically constructed, fat
head. “She’s very agreeable.”

“Apparently not.”

His eyes bored into mine. “Then, you’ll just
have to stop her.”

“How, Mr. Sandler-Ross?” I snapped. “How do
you want me to stop your daughter from firing DJs? Shall I use my
tae kwon do?”

We stared each other down. It was sort of
exhilarating. In a stupid, self-destructive way.

Then he said, “Do you know how much I’m
paying you, Jane?” and I felt like I’d been pulled over for
speeding
. Do you know how fast you were going?
All the puffy
exhilaration wheezed out of me.

“A lot,” I said quietly. And not just in
money but referrals. References. Names.

Maps.

“Then you’ll handle this,” he said. His
square-jawed face, his dark hair gone fashionably gray, the dimple
cut into his cheek—it was all so polished, so tailored for maximum
effect. It was making me angry. I didn’t like men like this. I
liked men like…Finn.

I nodded. “I will handle this, sir.”

He looked at my shirt, then down the hallway
again, as if trying to see where I’d
really
been until six
in the morning.

I had a feeling he didn’t believe me about
the tae kwon do.

The last thing I needed was my boss thinking
his highly paid event planner not only had loose morals but was an
unstable liar into the bargain.

I recovered my sanity and beamed a calm
smile his way. “Nothing to worry about, Mr. Sandler-Ross. I’ll take
care of everything.”

His brow unwrinkled, and he let out a breath
he’d apparently been holding. I felt a small twinge of sympathy.
Very small. Much as the guy pissed me off, he wasn’t all bad. He
wanted this to go well for his daughter and needed my help.

That’s why I was in this business, right? To
help others? My civic duty, to rein in chaos. I was kind of like a
super-heroine. Thus the underwear.

“I’ll talk to your wife and your daughter,”
I said. “We’ll figure it out. Just let me change out of my
dobok
,” I added, because you had to play the part all the
way, or what was the point, “and I’ll be right over. Tell your wife
I’ll be there in half an hour, forty-five tops.”

“I’ll wait.”

“No need,” I chirped and pushed the door
wide.

He started to step in behind me.

I felt his big body push into my space, into
my
room, I smelled his punky cologne coming for me, and all
of a sudden I wished Finn was there
really
bad. Finn would
not like this. I did not like this. Finn wouldn’t let him in. I
didn’t have to let him in.

Finn would punch him in the face.

I…would not.

But I did let the door go. Hard. I might
have given it a little push. With my foot. It swung shut with a
heavy thud. I think it missed his face. Pretty sure.

Then I turned and stared at it, feeling
oddly, crazily shaky.

I’d been hit on before, by clients and
clients’ husbands and once by a client’s wife. I’d dealt with
last-minute firings and flaky vendors and hurricanes blowing
through town. I’d repaired gowns and egos and weak drink recipes.
I’d located missing fiancés fifteen minutes before they were due at
the altar and retrieved lost buttons out of gutter grates. I’d
blazed trails through hundreds of events, turning guaranteed
disasters into amusing anecdotes, or, best of all, the near-misses
went entirely unnoticed. People laughed and drank and celebrated,
while party shrapnel fell down all around my head. I can handle
anything
.

So why was I shaking?

Because I slammed the door in my boss’s
face.

Because I had a dead, dark phone in my
pocket.

Because I felt my iron ball of self-control
unraveling.

Because in the heat of the moment, I’d
thought of Finn. Then I’d done what I thought he would do.

What the hell was happening to me?

You did not get on maps by doing what a
pawnshop dealer’s son would do.

I plugged in my phone and went stiffly into
the bathroom and turned the shower on. Steam puffed out all around
me, whitish and wet, filling the room. I’ll be safe at work, I
thought dully, feeling cold in the hot steam. Where there were
things to control and appearances mattered.

It’s what I was built to do. It’s where I
belonged.

~ Jane ~

“YOUR PHONE DIED?”

Lovey stared at me. She couldn’t believe it.
Neither could I. Doubt was setting in, I saw it in her eyes, a
subtle, guilt-inducing mix of sadness, suspicion, and betrayal.

I had to fix this.

Lovey sank down onto the couch, her
manicured fingers out to soften the fall. “Peter said there might
be a problem.”

Uh-oh. A problem? Like slamming the door in
his face?

Luckily, I had some cache here. A favorable
past I could fall back on. I’d first met Mrs. Lovey last year, when
she and fifteen of her friends wanted an historic city tour
including transportation, private guide, lunch, and admission fees.
She didn’t believe in iPads as tour guides.

I found her a tour guide and a luxury SUV
that could fit all her friends, after which I saved them when the
Navigator’s undercarriage caught fire midway through the tour. I
secured another form of transportation and had it at the tips of
their pointed heels within twenty minutes. It didn’t damage my
reputation any that although they weren’t all in one vehicle
anymore, the chauffeurs were handsome men driving very big cars.
(I’d told my assistant Savannah to call the Chippendales we’d used
at a couple previous events. Chippendales with Hummers.)

Lovey saw me as a miracle worker after that,
and to be honest, I kind of was that day. If I had a wall of fame,
I’d put that picture in, of fifteen high-class, slightly tipsy
middle-aged women from DC, standing beside buff Chippendales and a
burned-out Navigator.

“There are no problems,” I told her
brightly.

Her powdered face looked up at me, willing
to be calmed.

I spent the next half hour doing so. It
wasn’t so difficult. I had the box of tissues and a relentless
attitude; few could stand against me.

I spent the next hour tracking down her
daughter Olivia, and the third hour initiating and fielding calls
from an array of vendors who were not happy about the changes.

It was all quite chaotic and highly
satisfying. The world was slowly bending to my will.

I didn’t have time to think about
Finn—pretty much—or the way my heart got a little cold whenever I
did
think about him—which I didn’t—and also, my phone was
charged. The strange, floaty-cold panic of earlier subsided under
the heat of a growing to-do list.

Olivia showed up. I whisked her away from
her mother’s aggressive disappointment and sat her down inside the
house to figure out what the hell her problem was with the DJ.

Turned out it was a DJ, period. Any DJ.

I paused. “So, you want a…?”

“Band.”

“Ah. A band.” I nodded as if this was a
perfectly reasonable request. “Do you know any?”

“None that wouldn’t give my parents a heart
attack.” She eyed me with a knowing look. “I agreed to everything
else they wanted. I said the only thing that mattered was having
live music. That’s the only thing I wanted.” Her chin jutted out a
little.

Uh-oh. She’d decided to take a stand. At my
event.

I nodded again. It was a tool, a delaying
tactic. It made people think I was considering options, when
really, inside, I was screaming,
Are you insane?

Olivia sat on her mother’s expensive divan
in front of a window that overlooked the green lawn. Midmorning
light glowed into the room and made her, with her cut-glass
features and sleek black hair, look like some kind of centerpiece
to the room. Which she was. She was heiress to ten to fifteen
million dollars. No one quite knew how much, exactly; a lot of
things about Mr. Peter J. were hard to pin down. But while Olivia
might be a week shy of twenty-one, she looked about fifteen,
ethereal and willowy and utterly not up to the challenge of her
mother’s bulldozing certainty.

There were two small touches of rebellion—a
pair of earrings studded a single earlobe, and the rounded tip of a
tattooed butterfly’s wing peeked out just above her shirt on her
left shoulder. Otherwise, she was so pale she was almost
translucent, as if a fire burned inside her, but it was banked real
low.

I knew about banked fires. My mother had had
one.

Olivia would be easy to steamroll.

I didn’t want to steamroll her.

I wiped my hands down the front of my skirt,
then looked at them, surprise to find them doing such a thing. All
we had to do was find a way. I’d talk to Mrs. Lovey. Explain… And
if that didn’t work… Well, then….

I glanced at Olivia’s beautiful, translucent
face and clapped my sweaty palms together. “Okay, then! I’ll see
what I can do.” I smiled brightly, as if I had a plan.

She eyed me cautiously, as if she knew I
didn’t.

“I don’t know why my mother totally ignored
everything I said,” she said.

“Yeah, that’s weird.”

We looked at each other, this smart,
observant, pretty, streamrollable daughter of a madwoman and
myself. We had a lot in common.

Except no one would ever steamroll me.

I felt a little better.

My phone rang and I grabbed it. God, I loved
my phone. “Hello?” I said as I waved good-bye to Olivia, who was
wafting out of the room.