Flushed (4 page)

But not yet. Not until she’d seen what there was to see.

Beyond the plaster at the opening’s lower edge was a dark
chasm, partly blocked by a box wedged between the frame and the plaster, a box
wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. It clearly didn’t belong there.
Imagining all the razor blades in the vicinity, Isabelle maneuvered her
toothbrush handle under the string and fished the package toward her until she
deemed it safe to grab.

It was cube shaped and too big to easily grasp in one hand.
Isabelle sat on the toilet’s closed lid and held the box in her lap.

Steven had said it was an heirloom.

He’d said a lot of things in the time she’d known him, most
of which turned out to be untrue. For example, “You’re the only one for me.”

Men.

She pulled off the string and tore the paper. It was a
shipping carton from an online book and music seller. Addressed to Isabelle.
Here, at this address.

Heat flushed her face. Somehow Steven’s reusing this box to
hide something in her house made the whole thing even more personal, even more
of an invasion.

The box’s flaps had been folded in a pinwheel to keep the
lid closed. She pulled it open and scattered packing peanuts to reveal a
smaller box.

A jewelry gift box. A decidedly modern, velvet jewelry gift
box.

Isabelle growled. What had that bottom-feeding troglodyte
hidden in her house? She snapped open the lid. To call this jewelry would be an
insult to feathered hair extensions and children’s candy necklaces. The sudden
buzzing in her ears must be Louis Comfort Tiffany turning in his grave.

No wonder it had been hidden. The public needed protection
from rings as ugly as this.

Kim held the belay rope as his student clung gracelessly to
the gym wall, her feet at his eye level in the room called Big Top, the main
room of Wall Werx. Shawna had possibly the worst form of any climber Kim had
taught. She also had the cutest butt. It was a bad combination, especially
since the girl was only nineteen, way too young to his twenty-nine-and-counting.
Most days, it was easy to keep a professional focus—he wasn’t into gigglers,
especially teenaged gigglers—but this morning was a different story. Hours in a
sleepless bed in his aquarium-like loft, watching thunderstorms all night, had
left him edgy and distracted. And here was Shawna, bleeding energy with every
move over the gym wall, her youthful legs quivering like arrows drawing his eye
to her greatest asset. He couldn’t wait for the lesson to end, when he could
waste his own energy on the wall and sweat out his frustration. Assuming Damon
ever showed up to run his own damn business.

“Falling,” Shawna said.

“Gotcha,” he said, bending the rope across the belay device
at his waist and activating the brake. He leaned back and sat in his climbing
harness to give her tension on the rope. Shawna released the plastic holds on
the wall and dangled by her harness, securely clipped to the rope’s other end.
Between Shawna and him, the rope ran over a big metal pipe in the ceiling over
Shawna’s head.

Kim said, “I’ll bring you down. Spread your legs for me.”

She giggled at his unintentional innuendo, but she did it.
Kim decided this would be her last fall today. “Bend your knees, Shawna. Tell
me about the fall.”

She bent her knees and Kim began the process of reeling in
rope with his left hand and pulling it through the tuber device that helped him
control her fall with his right.

“My leg started shaking,” she said. She swung gently from
the rope as Kim lowered her.

“What’s that a sign of?”

“I’m tired?” She swung closer to the wall. Her feet struck
it and she steadied herself with the sticky soles of her climbing slippers. She
was only four feet up. Kim held her anchor steady as she walked her way down to
the floor.

“You wasted energy, standing on your toes when you didn’t
have to. Heels stay down.”

“I thought I was,” she said. Perspiration shone on her face.
She sounded pouty, and not of the fun, Isabelle Caine faux-pouty variety. Which
was probably a good thing.

“Belay off,” he said automatically, concluding the climb. He
unlocked the brake and unclipped the carabiner that kept him anchored, coiling
the rope around the anchor bolt on the floor.

“That’s all for today,” he said.

She pulled the band off her ponytail and shook out her long
blonde hair. “Okay. Thanks, Kim.” She smiled.

He was careful not to smile back. When he’d first taken
Shawna as a private student, she’d never missed an opportunity to flash skin or
make sure he’d have to touch her. Not only was she too young for him, he’d been
involved with Jules and he observed a strict code of one at a time. He couldn’t
tell Shawna. She’d never flat out propositioned him and he didn’t want to
insult her and lose her business. He also couldn’t use the convenient line
about not dating his students, which had worked well up until he’d dated
Jules—one of his students.

In the absence of a response from him, Shawna had finally
given up—as long as he was careful. This frustrated, he’d have to be especially
careful.

“Next time you’re in, spend time in the boulder garden,” he
said. “You won’t need anyone to spot for you in there and it’s a great way to
understand how your body is moving—and how you’re wearing yourself out.”

“Okay.” She released the rope from her waist tie-in and
clipped it around the still-anchored top rope hanging slack from the ceiling.
The webbing of her climbing harness drew Kim’s eye back to her butt. Damon was
going to have to find space to install showers around here. Kim needed a cold
one.

Focus.

“Don’t push too hard. Take it slow,” he said and she nodded.
“Now get lost.”

She giggled. Not exactly a cold shower, but helpful,
nonetheless.

As soon as she’d gone, Kim was mobbed by questions from
other gym members. Scheduling mostly, a couple of safety issues about knots and
belay protocol, a stupid dispute over who had the right to climb a particular
route and the inevitable I’m-broke-can-I-pay-double-dues-next-month, which was
an issue only Damon, as owner, could answer.

Technically, none of it was Kim’s problem. He was at Wall
Werx on a contract basis to teach a climbing basics class. He also took private
students, paying Damon for gym time for any lessons, like Shawna’s, taking
place at Wall Werx. Apparently, his status as teacher made him the go-to person
when Damon wasn’t around, which was damn often these days. Kim didn’t mind
except on days like this when his whole system screamed at him to chalk up and
pump plastic, something the guy in charge couldn’t do. No way could he climb
and ensure the safety of gym members at the same time.

Kim never took his phone when out climbing himself, but as
teacher and guy in charge, he kept it clipped to his harness, ringer off, in
case of emergency. He pulled it free to see if he could locate Damon. He’d
missed a call. His Dallas realtor. She had a prospective buyer for the loft and
wanted to be sure the place was in show-worthy condition.

Was it ever. A week earlier, he’d moved his bike,
racquetball gear, skates, assorted junk—more or less all the sports equipment
he’d accumulated to support the last couple of years hobbies, a considerable
pile, as he seemed to go through hobbies almost as quickly as he did women—to
the storage locker for his unit in the building’s underground garage.

The ungodly collection of shoes that accompanied said
hobbies clogged the back of his Jeep, most of them sealed for aromatic
freshness in what had become the footlocker of the damn.

That had eliminated most of the clutter around the loft. And
he’d always been pretty good about making the bed. A guy who went through
girlfriends as quickly as he did learned to keep his place
first-impression-worthy.

Which brought him back to thoughts of the orange-breasted
lioness and wishing he could throw himself at the wall for the next hour or
two. Where the hell was Damon?

* * * * *

Where the hell was Charlie? Her texts and calls went
unanswered. Same for calls to the apartment he and Gina shared. He’d promised
to provide muscle for her Space Craft closet-organizer installation at Mrs.
Avery’s house, so Isabelle hadn’t called any of her usual helpers. Charlie might
not be the world’s most responsible guy, but money had become a more reliable
motivator for him since he’d been laid off a few weeks earlier. Not that he had
to do her heavy lifting to get her help. She’d tucked extra cash in the
rainy-day pot she kept on the mantel so he could take whatever he needed
without having to ask. It was just that he’d volunteered for this.

She ran errands to give her brother a chance to get it
together, and returned to a message from Stacey, wanting her to call. Nothing
from Charlie.

As she stood there in the living room, the phone rang. Maybe
Charlie received her mental nudge—some sort of stepsibling telepathy. She
grabbed the receiver.

“Is he still there?” Steven.

Crap.

“Who?”

He laughed. “I thought so.”

What did that mean?

“I talked to my buddy Bob,” Steven said. “Is it true your
‘real man’ is a plumber?”

He’d talked to Bob after the party? Isabelle’s stomach
gurgled.

“Kim is a plumber, yes,” she said. She wanted to stick to
the truth as much as possible, not that Steven had ever understood the concept.
Isabelle considered it simple respect, and she owed Kim Martin that much for
his kindness.

“Your girlfriend Stacey said you’d never mentioned him
before.”

“I don’t see how the details of my life are any of your
business.”

There was a pause. Isabelle pictured Steven taking a breath,
trying to work out what she wanted to hear, gearing up to ask about the ring
she wasn’t yet ready to let him know she’d found.

“You’re right,” he said, “I apologize.”

“Thank you.” She hung up before he could say more. It was
the most pleasant finish to a conversation with Steven she could remember.

The phone rang again. She picked it up. It might be Charlie.

“Why did you hang up on me?”

No such luck. “I have nothing to say to you. Keep bothering
me and I’ll make your life hell. You know how I can get.” She knew her voice
had become nasty. It happened whenever she thought about how he’d tried to make
his every thoughtless moment her fault.
You know how you get.

“I have to have my box back, Isabelle. Let me come and get
it. Please. You have no idea how important it is to me.”

Her stomach clenched with anger. Yesterday, it had been an
heirloom. Today it was his box. Weird thing to say if it were an heirloom.
Steven always was a sloppy liar.

“Isabelle?”

“Don’t call me again.” She hung up.

Her tread was heavy enough to shake the flowers in their
vase as she stomped past the living room coffee table on her way to the
bedroom. The stupid heart-shaped ring sat on her dresser, exactly as she’d left
it last night. In its box.

Oh, sorry. Steven’s box. The box with her name on it.

Had he bought it for one of the sluts he’d cheated with?

Or maybe he’d thought a gift of jewelry would soothe
Isabelle’s suspicions? A little bauble to keep his meal ticket happy?

She tore the thing from its box. It hadn’t gotten any less
ugly since last night. The candy-red stone had to be a carat and a half at
least, framed with tiny diamonds and perched atop a gold-filigreed setting. If
this was an heirloom, bad taste ran in Steven’s family.

She slid it onto her ring finger. It choked at her knuckle.
Clearly, it wasn’t intended for her hand.

Bastard. Two-timing, womanizing, unfaithful, untrustworthy,
oversexed bastard.

She opened the toilet lid and threw the thing in. She
snarled at it. “You’re the one, Isabelle. I love you, Isabelle.” It winked at
her, red as a cheap whore’s nail polish.

Perhaps the whore Steven had bought it for.

Isabelle flushed. Water sucked the ring out of the bowl with
a satisfying whoosh. Gone. Vanished, same as any tender feelings she’d ever had
for the jerk who’d hidden it in her walls.

Be ready for me
, she thought darkly.
You know how
I get.

She tore through the house, wishing she had something else
of Steven’s to destroy. But she’d taken care of that months ago. Everything
from his brand of beer in the fridge to the mingling of their music
collections, to the awful Viking warrior poster he’d framed in their
bedroom—her bedroom. It was all gone. All except that hideous, huge heresy of a
ring. And now that was gone too. Down the toilet. How appropriate.

She spent her frustration shredding the cardboard box she’d
found it in and stomping on the pieces. Childish, perhaps, but effective.

Finally calm, Isabelle remembered Stacey had asked her to
call. She smoothed her hair and dialed her friend from the bedroom phone, her
favorite in the house—a replica of a style popular in the late 1920s. Stacey
picked up with, “Bob is incredible. I think I’m in love.”

“Hello, Stacey, it’s Isabelle. I take it you are well?”
Caller ID was so uncivilized.

“Well?” Her friend laughed. “Well, well, well…hmm, the only
words that come to mind are ones that make you flinch. Let’s just say I barely
made it out of bed in time to get to work.”

Isabelle laughed. “I meant to warn you, barbequed wings can
be a powerful aphrodisiac.” It was a joke, though it would explain a lot about
her night.

“We’re really busy at the Barn,” Stacey said, and Isabelle
immediately noticed the telltale sounds of Stacey’s store in the
background—customer voices, concrete-floor, soaring-ceiling roar,
paint-can-agitator clanging. “I can’t talk, but I need a huge favor.”

“Anything. You know that.”

“Double date with Bob and me tonight.”

Not even close to what she’d expected. “What? Why?”

“As long as you and Kim are there, we won’t get naked.”

“That’s a relief, but I don’t see your problem.”

“I think Bob’s special. He might even be ‘The One’. But to
find out, we need to stay out of bed long enough to have a real conversation.
If you guys are there, we might stand a chance. Especially since you and Kim
aren’t sleeping together yet.”

Stacey hadn’t even bothered to frame that last lob as a
question, which irked Isabelle. She might discourage her friends from using the
f-word, but if anyone should know how much Isabelle enjoyed sex, it was her
similarly afflicted friend. Evidently, Isabelle’s months of celibacy since
she’d tossed out a certain ring-hiding swine had Stacey thinking she’d turned
prude.

“Please, Isabelle. Please?”

Bob was Steven’s spy into Isabelle’s life. If she could
sparkle on the arm of gorgeous, kind, sexy Kim Martin through the course of an
intimate dinner, it would surely get back to the slug.

But Kim wasn’t exactly dying to see her again, was he?

Crap.

“I’ll have to check with Kim,” she hedged, then immediately regretted
it. What had happened to the respectful honesty mantra she was so fond of?

“Please, Isabelle. Promise him anything. Sleep with him if
you have to—not like it would be any big sacrifice, what a hunk—but really.
Please.”

“I’ll call him.” Or see him. He’d told her to drop by. He’d
given her a card…Isabelle tucked the phone against her neck and strained to
reach her wicker clothes hamper. The phone cord was simply not long enough.
Maybe her friends had a point about the uselessness of landlines.