The Promise of Paradise (8 page)

She crossed the floor
and snuck up beside him. “Hi there.”

Eddie smiled and gave
her a soft punch on the arm. “Hi, yourself. Done for the night?”

“Yeah. Finally.”

“You getting used to
it?”

“I guess. Honestly,
it’s harder than I thought.” That, at least, was true. Ash had no
idea her feet could ache so, or that her legs could turn wobbly after
a night of running trays back and forth. In just a couple of weeks,
she’d discovered a newfound appreciation for the people who did it
day in and out, year after year. She knew she could never be one of
them, dependent upon tips to pay a mortgage, cover car insurance, or
put food on the table.

J.T. flipped on the
television as he wiped down the bar. Ash tensed.
Not the news,
please.
She eyed the clock. Just about midnight. Good. Maybe the
highlights would be through. She didn’t need any news from Boston
discussing the senator’s latest statement or the opposing
attorney’s trial preparations. She fidgeted on the stool beside
Eddie and sipped a glass of water.

“I should get going,”
she said. She watched the screen and prayed no political report would
appear. “I’m beat.”

“You drive tonight?”
Eddie didn’t look at her, just asked the question sideways as he
watched a preview for some new reality show.

“Um, yeah.” She
always drove when she worked the night shift. Didn’t matter that
everyone she’d met told her she could walk down Main Street at two
in the morning and not see a soul. City habits didn’t die that
quickly. She’d keep on driving herself, for a while anyway. Until
Paradise seeped into her veins a little more.

“Okay if I catch a
ride back with you?” he asked. “I walked.”

This time he did turn
toward her, and his gaze landed on her with such intensity that she
felt as though he’d burned right through the fabric of her shirt.

“Ah, sure.”
Stop
doing that to me. Stop setting me on fire every time I get too close
to you.
“How’s the cat?” she asked, to change the subject.

“Better. Vet gave it
some antibiotics.”

“You keeping it?”

He shrugged. “Haven't
decided yet.”

J.T. adjusted the
volume, turning it up as the final highlights from the eleven o’clock
news flashed across the screen.

“Tomorrow at six,”
the chipper blonde anchor announced, “tune in for the latest
chapter in the Senator Kirk arrest.”

Ash’s throat closed.

“We’ll hear from
the woman who used to work as the Kirks’ personal housekeeper, as
well as tell you what’s in store for this sullied senator from
Boston…”

Ash set her glass down
on the bar, too hard. A crack splintered all the way up one side.

J.T. frowned. “Geez,
take it easy. You okay?”

“Sorry. Wasn’t
paying attention, I guess.”

He swept it into the
trash. “No biggie. It happens.”

Ash buried her hands
between her legs so Eddie wouldn’t see them tremble.

“Can you believe that
guy?” he said, still staring at the TV. “You’d think we could
find one honest politician somewhere in the whole damn country. But
no. Even the ones who come across as Mr. Family Man, who tell us
they’re gonna change things for the better—”

“Yep,” J.T. agreed,
cutting him off. “Even they wind up bein’ like all the rest.
Making decisions from between their legs. Kirk’s no better. Another
John fuckin’ Kennedy.” He pulled on the tap and poured Eddie
another beer.

Ash cleared her throat.
“You know, some people say maybe he’s innocent. That he was set
up by someone who didn’t want him to get the vice-presidential
nomination.”

Eddie chuckled. “Yeah,
sure. They’re all innocent. Like JFK. And Jefferson, sleeping with
his slaves.”

“Don’t forget Bill
Clinton,” J.T. added.

Eddie laughed out loud.
“Oh, yeah. Especially Clinton. He was the most innocent of all. He
and Kirk are probably buddies. Probably sit around over stogies and
talk about the best blow jobs they ever got.”

Ash stiffened. “It
could be true,” she said. “The setup, I mean.”

Eddie turned. “Kirk
was busted DUI. Caught with coke and a hooker. How the hell does
someone set that up?”

She didn’t know.
She’d been asking herself the same question every night since the
arrest. But if her father said he was framed, then part of her, the
little-girl part that still remembered the way he’d sung her to
sleep every night as a child, had to hold out hope.

“Maybe the
Republicans held him down and poured whiskey down his throat,” J.T.
offered and snorted as he laughed at his own joke.

“Yeah, and maybe they
forced him into the car at gunpoint with that hot little piece of
tail,” Eddie continued. He tipped his head back and took a long
drink.

“Did they ever say
whether his zipper was up or down when the cops pulled him over?”

Ash slid off her stool.
“You ready to go?”

“Hang on. Let me
finish my beer.”

“I’m ready now.”

Eddie’s jaw twitched.
“Can’t you give me five minutes? What’s wrong with you?”

She crossed her arms
and shifted from foot to foot. “I’m tired, okay? That’s what’s
wrong with me. My feet feel like they’re going to fall off, I smell
like ketchup, and I’m about sick to death of listening to the two
of you rip apart some guy you don’t even know. Half of what the
media reports isn’t even true. More than half.”

She stopped to draw a
breath, and silence echoed through the bar. J.T. whistled, long and
low. Eddie frowned, and something dark slid across his face.

“You know, I think
I’ll walk after all,” he said after a long minute of staring at
her. “Could use some fresh air.” He shoved some bills across the
bar, scraped his stool out of the way, and headed for the door.
“Thanks, J.T.,” he said. The door slammed shut behind him.

Ash watched Eddie’s
shadow disappear down the block. Well, fine. She hadn’t wanted to
drive home with him, anyway. She tried to believe her own lie as she
walked to her car in silence a few minutes later. One flickering
motion light clicked on as she crossed the back parking lot. Her VW
started up with a hesitation, a little cough before catching, and she
crossed her fingers that it would turn over.

Probably should get
it looked at.
She dropped her forehead onto the steering wheel.
But where? By who? The only repair shop she knew of in Paradise was
the place Eddie worked, and now she couldn’t take it there.
Suddenly, she felt lonelier than the day Colin had left her.

Ash sighed. She hadn’t
meant to say those things, hadn’t meant to lose her temper. She
just couldn’t help it sometimes. Not for the first time, she
thought she’d probably make a lousy courtroom lawyer. Holding her
tongue wasn’t her strong suit. She bumped her way out of the
parking lot and turned onto Spruce Street, taking the long way home.

She was better off
anyway, keeping her distance from Eddie. Keeping her distance from
all of them. She didn’t need to listen to him or anyone else say
things like that about her father. Randolph Kirk had screwed up, but
he was still Ash’s blood. Her fingers tightened around the steering
wheel as she passed the silent town square and eased through the
intersection in the center of town. A lonely yellow eye blinked down
at her.

But why did you do
it, Dad?
Even if someone had set him up, even if someone planted
the drugs and spiked his drink, what was he doing in a car with a
girl younger than his own daughters? Tears started up, and as Ash
made her way back to Lycian Street, she braked hard and edged to the
curb. She didn’t know. She couldn’t find the answers. And she
didn’t trust herself to ask her father.

She looked up and saw a
dark house. If Eddie was home, he’d turned off all the lights, even
the porch one they always kept burning. Now it looked like all the
other buildings on the block: lifeless and cold. She raised both
hands to her face and wept.

Ash balanced a grocery
bag in the crook of each arm and propped open the front door. She
blew her bangs off her forehead. Where was the mild summer the
weatherman had promised back in May? Each day in Paradise, she’d
woken to nothing but humid temperatures that hovered around ninety.
No rain, no relief, just heat and heaviness pouring down from above.
At only noon on a Saturday, she’d already soaked through a T-shirt
on her way back from the store.

“Ugh.” She let the
bags slide to the floor and checked her mailbox. She’d worked well
past midnight last night, thanks to a lively crowd that kept the band
playing long after regular closing. She really couldn’t complain,
though, not with a pocket full of tips that totaled well over a
hundred dollars.

Someone giggled.

Ash closed the rusted
door to her mailbox and spun around. She frowned. No one on the
porch. No gaggle of pre-teen girls walking along the sidewalk. She
heard it again: a giggle, definitely feminine. Turning in a slow
circle, she eyed Eddie’s door.

“
Woman stays the
night, things get complicated…”

She swallowed. Looked
as though Eddie had set himself up for some complications after all.
She negotiated the paper bags back into her arms, wanting to get
upstairs as quickly as she could. Sure, her housemate was entitled to
entertain whoever he wanted, whenever he wanted, but that didn’t
mean she had any interest in seeing who it might be. They hadn’t
spoken since that night in the bar, and she’d done her best to keep
it that way. What would she say to him, anyway?

Ash turned away, but
not quickly enough. Eddie’s door opened, and a petite blonde
stepped into the foyer. Eddie followed. At their feet trotted the
kitten, batting at the blonde’s heels.

“Y’all are too
much,” she said, with a nudge at Eddie’s chest. “I don’t
believe a single thing you say.” The words floated on the air,
laced with a southern accent. Her mouth crinkled up at the edges as
she laughed. Eddie scooped up the kitten and, with a rough pet across
the top of its head, steered it back inside his apartment. The moment
he shut his door, though, it began to cry, in plaintive little mews
that broke Ash’s heart.

She stared at a patch
of wall behind Eddie’s head, one knee propped under a grocery bag
that had begun to seep something sticky.

“Oh, hi,” the
blonde said. “I didn’t see you standing there.”

Ash felt her grip
loosening. “Hi.”

“I’m Savannah,”
she added.

Ash fought back a
smile. Savannah? Did people really name their children such things?
Yet somehow it fit this model-thin woman standing in the entryway,
smelling like Eddie’s soap and flushed with morning lovemaking. Her
fingers threw long, thin shadows on the walls as she adjusted her
ponytail, like anemone waving in ocean breezes. Ash looked down at
her own knotty knuckles and wondered if Eddie noticed hands as much
as she did.

“Ash,” she said
after a minute. “I live upstairs.”

“Oh.” The blonde’s
eyes widened. “You’re the lawyer, right?”

Ash shot Eddie a look.
He’d told his bed bunny about her? While something about that
pleased her, down deep where she didn’t dare analyze it, she didn’t
need too many people knowing about her past. Least of all someone who
probably chattered to half of Paradise on a daily basis. Ash should
have known better. She should have kept it all to herself, every last
detail. It was just safer that way.

“Well, sort of. I
haven’t passed the bar exam yet.”

Savannah shook her
head. “Wow. I couldn’t even make it through two semesters at JC.
Too boring.”

Ash’s back began to
ache. She glanced at Eddie.
Say something. Don’t just stand
there.
But he didn’t. Not to her, anyway. He just put his arm
around Savannah’s waist after a minute and led her out into the
morning.

Ash watched them go,
and jealousy sparked a hot stone in her stomach.
That’s what he
likes? A ditzy bottle-blonde who barely made it out of high school?
She slid to a seat, knees rubbery. Raspberry jelly had leaked through
one bag, gluing her shorts to her legs. She rubbed her temples and
told herself not to care.

She'd barely had a
half-dozen conversations with him. He wasn't her type, anyway. He
spent two years in college. She went to Harvard. He spent his life in
Paradise, and she was using it as a place to hide out. He dated a
different woman each week. She was trying to get over a three-year
relationship. He fixed cars, and she—
what, Ash? What exactly are
you going to do with yourself now that you’ve decided that a
hundred-thousand dollar degree isn’t going to work out the way
you’d planned?

As if on cue, her cell
began to ring.

Ash pulled the phone
out of her pocket and checked the screen. Her oldest sister.
Terrific.

“Hello?”

“Ashton? Where are
you?” Jessica Kirk-Malloy’s voice, no-nonsense and demanding an
answer, spat through the receiver.

“What do you mean,
where am I?”

“Don’t play stupid.
I know you moved out of your apartment. I saw Colin last week.” She
paused, and the edges of her words softened a little. “I didn’t
know you two broke up. Sorry.”

Like you really
care.
“Yeah, well, things weren’t working out.”

“Mm hmm.” Jess
paused. “So what happened? Dad knows you turned down the job at
Deacon and Mathers, by the way. He’s furious. You know he went to
school with Bill Mathers, right?”

Of course she knew. It
was all he’d talked about after they offered her the position. It
was the other, unspoken, reason Ash hadn’t felt right about taking
it. She wanted to prove herself after law school, make it on her own.
Finding out her father had pulled strings had soured her on the whole
deal.

“Mom says you’ve
been avoiding her calls.”