Flawless (30 page)

“Never mind,” said the producer crossly, stalking off. Six months ago he was struggling to pay the mortgage on his exwife’s four-bedroom in the valley, but now he had a hit show
on his hands he expected the world to stop when he spoke. He wasn’t about to hang around for some two-bit diamond dealer to notice him.

Meanwhile Magnus had moved away from Nancy and was scanning the room for Scarlett when he was surprised by a forceful tap on the shoulder.

“Hi,” said Jake coldly. “I’m Jake Meyer, Scarlett’s business partner. And you are?”

“Magnus Hartz.” Magnus smiled, revealing a mouthful of expensive dentistry to rival Jake’s own. “Scarlett and I are old friends.”

“Really?” said Jake. “Because I couldn’t help but notice she seemed less than thrilled to see you. May I see your invitation?”

“All right, look, I don’t want any trouble,” said Magnus, his smile fading in the face of Jake’s naked hostility. “I came here to surprise Scarlett.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve done that now. So if you don’t have an invitation, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“This is ridiculous!” said Magnus. “Half of these people don’t have invites. It’s a store opening, not a wedding reception, for heaven’s sake.”

“Out!” Jake pointed imperiously to the door.

“Listen, you little shit,” said Magnus, finally losing his temper. “I’m not going anywhere until I’ve spoken to Scarlett. Scarlett!” He shouted over the heads of the other guests, determined to get her attention.

In the middle of a discussion with a client about the latest Amnesty report on Russian diamond mines, Scarlett was in no hurry to respond. OK, so Magnus was divine beyond words, and probably only very faintly married, but if he thought he was going to swoop in and sweep her off her feet…

“Erm, it looks like your friend is in some trouble,” said the client, gently. “You might want to get over there.”

Turning around, Scarlett clapped her hand over her mouth in horror. For there was Jake, his face beet-red with exertion,
physically dragging Magnus to the door while a gaggle of amused spectators looked on.

“Let go of me! Let go, you fucking thug.” Although a good six inches shorter than he was, Jake was as strong as a pit bull and just as determined. Unused to physical fights—he didn’t think he’d punched anyone since school—Magnus was no match for him and could do little more than yell as he was ignominiously ejected from the store, thrown onto the street like a sack of garbage.

“Stop it!
Stop
!” Scarlett arrived just in time to see Magnus sprawl out onto the sidewalk amid a barrage of camera flashes. “What are you
doing
?” she turned on Jake. “Have you lost your mind?”

“He refused to go quietly,” said Jake, dusting off his suit and restraightening his tie like a gangster in a movie. “I asked him nicely, didn’t I, Perry?”

He looked to the store manager for support, but the poor man was too overwhelmed with delight, seeing his crush get so unexpectedly physical, he could barely get a word out.

“He left me no choice.”

“I could have you arrested for assault,” seethed Magnus. On his feet now, he dabbed at his cut cheek with a Brooks Brothers linen handkerchief.

“Up yours,” said Jake firmly. “You were trespassing.”

“Of course he wasn’t
trespassing
, you Neanderthal,” said Nancy, who’d emerged from the store and now stood by Scarlett’s side.

“Stay out of this,” snapped Jake. “Nobody asked you.”

“He’s a friend of Scarlett’s,” she shot back, undeterred. “Tell him, Scar.”

“That’s right,” said Scarlett. Seeing Magnus’s bleeding face, the nurse in her took over and she began to tend to him, examining the wound with her fingertips. “He flew in from Seattle to surprise me.”

Seizing the moment, Magnus pressed her fingers to his mouth and kissed them.

It was no good. Married or not, liar or not, she’d missed him like hell.

“I’m sorry about Jake. Are you all right?” she asked gently.

“Fine,” he whispered. “Listen, Scarlett, about my divorce…”

“Shhh,” she said, stroking his cheek. “You can tell me later. Let me deal with this first, OK?”

Jake looked, as his mother would have said, as if he’d lost a cow and found a chicken. If his hope had been to get rid of Magnus and score some macho points with Scarlett, the strategy had backfired terribly. He should have known she’d automatically be attracted to the bird with the broken wing.

“You’re a disgrace,” she scolded him.

“
I’m
a disgrace? Great,” said Jake. “So that’s all the thanks I get for trying to protect you, is it?”

“Protect me?” Scarlett frowned. “Protect me from what exactly?”

“Undesirables,” said Jake, glowering at Magnus.

“I’d hardly call him
that
,” muttered Nancy, not quite under her breath.

“Like Mr. Seattle here. What exactly is it you do in Seattle, Marcus?”

“It’s Magnus,” said Magnus coolly. “And I’m an attorney.”

Jake gave a derisory laugh. “What a surprise.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” snapped Magnus.

“Nothing.” Jake gave an innocent shrug. “It means it doesn’t surprise me, that’s all. You look like a lawyer.”

And you look like a pimp
, thought Magnus, eyeing Jake’s flamboyant shirt and perma-tan with ill-concealed distaste. But he bit his tongue. The last thing he wanted was to get back to fisticuffs and make himself look like a dick in front of Scarlett.

“Next time you find yourself on the wrong side of the law, call me.” He smiled, handing Jake his card. “My specialty is human
rights cases. But I’d be glad to make an exception. Any friend of Scarlett’s is a friend of mine,” he added, sardonically.

Jake, furious at the implication that he was both a lawbreaker (true, but not the point) and the sort of person who might, in a month of Sundays, require the help of a loser like Magnus, searched in vain for a suitably withering comeback. But one too many cocktails seemed to have played havoc with his linguistic skills, and nothing came to him.

“I think I’m going to go,” said Scarlett, whose hand seemed to have found its way into Magnus’s quite of its own accord. “I’m pretty sure I’ve spoken to everyone here at least once, and people are starting to leave already.” She nodded toward the steady trickle of revelers making their way out the door. “Magnus and I need to talk.”

“You are joking?” said Jake. “What if someone else decides to buy? What d’you want me to tell them?”

“I thought you said Perry could handle that side of things?” said Scarlett.

“Not on his own,” said Jake indignantly. Had he said that? Why the fuck had he said that? “You’re the designer. You’re the one I dragged all these clients out to see. You can’t bail on your own fucking launch party.”

Seeing her hesitate, Magnus saw another chance to play the good guy.

“It’s OK,” he said. “I can wait. We’ve got all night, after all,” he added, shooting Jake a meaningful, triumphant glance. It was obvious the guy liked her—why else would he be playing the jealous lover to such a ludicrous degree? Serve him right to have to imagine them in bed together, the violent little so-and-so.

“OK,” said Scarlett, hugging him gratefully. “I won’t be long, I promise.”

“Catch you later,” said Magnus to Jake, slipping his arm casually around the small of Scarlett’s back as they strolled back into the party. Jake bit down on his tongue so hard it bled.

“Pretty girl, your partner. Screwed her yet?”

Jake spun around. Terrific. That was all he needed.

“Fuck off, Tyler,” he snarled.

Tyler Brett, his hated rival, stood behind him with a girl on each arm, one of whom Jake could have sworn he recognized. Was she a porn actress from one of his Vivid Video productions? In a cream jacket and jeans, with his newly dyed black hair gleaming and a cigar clamped between twenty thousand dollars’ worth of Hollywood White porcelain veneers, Tyler looked oilier than a tinned sardine and a lot less palatable.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no,’ I guess?” he smiled smugly. “Not into the old rebel type, huh? Prefers the preppy type, it seems?”

Porn Girl giggled, her eyes rolling wildly. She was clearly high as a kite.

“Cheer up,” said Tyler, who was enjoying needling Jake. “Looks like she’s bailed out your business, even if you aren’t getting any pussy. Smart move, hooking yourself up with a store like this. It’s gotta beat sitting around watching me take off with half your clients. Right?”

He laughed, a weird, strangled, braying sound, like a donkey being tortured. For the second time in as many minutes, Jake felt his fists twitching. But this time he managed to restrain himself. Brett might talk a good game, but he must be feeling the heat tonight, seeing Flawless make such a resoundingly big splash on her opening night. Not even his very public altercation with Magnus could take away what they’d achieved.

“See you around, Tyler,” he said civilly, making his way back indoors. Deciding he needed a stiff drink, he made a beeline for the bar. Within minutes he was engulfed by a bevy of beautiful, eager girls. Automatically, he turned on the charm. But for once their naked adulation gave him no thrill.

He’d lost sight of Scarlett and Magnus. But the image of that bastard’s hand resting on the small of her back was seared into his memory like a cattle brand. All the happiness he’d felt earlier
about the launch being such a success seeped out of him now like air from a slow-punctured tire. This should have been his moment. His and Scarlett’s together, a joint triumph. But now this fucker from Seattle had shown up and ruined it.

It had been a long time since Jake could remember hating someone so much.

Two hours later, snuggled up in a booth at Jerry’s late-night deli, sharing a plate of fries and a bucket-size glass of lemonade, Scarlett and Magnus had eyes only for each other.

“So,” said Magnus, sprinkling a french fry with salt and feeding it lovingly to Scarlett, like a mother bird, “let me tell you about Carole.”

“You don’t have to,” said Scarlett, thinking how odd it was that even his fingers were beautiful. “I’m sorry I lost it with you before. I just…I couldn’t understand why you never said anything when we met. I felt like such an idiot when my mother told me the next day.”

“Don’t apologize,” said Magnus. “You were right. I
should
have told you. That night was so magical, I suppose I just didn’t want to fuck it up. There’s never a right time to bring up the wife in the attic, is there? But I should have said something. It was wrong of me.”

Their waitress, a harassed-looking woman who must have been sixty if she were a day, plonked two glasses of red wine down in front of them with all the finesse of a baby elephant, then shuffled back to the kitchen without a word.

“Where do they find these people?” said Magnus.

Scarlett giggled and took a sip of her wine. “Eeugh,” she grimaced. “Paint stripper. So you and…Carole?”

“Carole.”

“You’re still not divorced?”

He took a deep breath. “We’re not, no. But don’t read anything into that. I realize it sounds strange, but the truth is we simply never got around to it. Neither one of us has been serious enough with a new partner to think about marrying again. And until that happens, there didn’t seem much point in going through all the legal hoopla, dividing assets and all that.”

“Are you still friendly?” asked Scarlett. “I mean, what happened? How long were you together? Why did it end?”

“Whoa, whoa, easy with the Spanish Inquisition,” said Magnus. “Yes, we’re friendly. She still lives in our old house. I moved into an apartment on the other side of town. Why did it end?” he shrugged. “Who knows what makes two people grow apart? I mean, there was no big fight, no infidelity or anything like that. We’d been together since college; maybe we married too young, I don’t know. Anyway, the time came to think about kids and we were both hesitant. I think that’s when we started to realize that maybe we weren’t right for one another, long term. She’s a great girl. But it’s over, very, very over. It has been for years. I don’t talk about having a wife because I don’t think of her as that anymore, and neither does she.”

Scarlett scanned his face, looking for traces of dishonesty, of a story only partially told. But if he was lying, he was good at it.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, reaching across the table and taking her hand in his. “Maybe part of the reason I didn’t tell you was because I wasn’t planning on seeing you again.”

“Thanks a lot!” said Scarlett, reaching for another fry. God, they were good.

“But I couldn’t get you out of my mind, not for a day, sometimes barely for an hour. I kept wondering where you were, what you were up to, picturing you in Scotland mostly, in that fucking awful dress.” Scarlett laughed. “Then I remembered the name of your charity, so I checked out the website one day. I couldn’t believe it when I read your blog, about your store burning down.
After everything you told me that night about Brogan O’Donnell and all the intimidation.”

“I know,” said Scarlett with a shiver. “They actually torched the place that evening—while we were talking, probably.”