Force of Nature (16 page)

“Don’t say anything,” Jules cut him off. “It’s better if you just…don’t talk.” He headed for the door.

“Will you please just listen.” Robin grabbed his arm. “Just wait a sec. Just…” He exhaled. Because even though Jules’s body language was far from receptive, he’d stopped and
was
listening. “I don’t remember giving her my key.”

Jules pulled free. “That makes it
so
much less sleazy. You were too drunk to care who you were with, right? So you took advantage of this woman, who probably thinks—”

Robin lost his temper. “Yes,” he shot back. “I got drunk. I didn’t have the presence of mind to foresee the fucking future and know that the one person I do care about was going to do the one thing he said he’d never do—and walk through my door today.”

“Yeah, I gotta go,” Jules said.

“You should have
called
me—”

“Oh, so…what? It’s
my
fault?” Jules stopped himself, visibly trying to curb his emotions. But when he spoke his voice was still clipped. Tight. “Look, it’s late, I have to—”

Robin was not going to just roll over and die. “Is there a chance we can have dinner later or tomorrow or—”

“No.” Jules didn’t hesitate. “No chance. What happened before was a mistake.”

“It
was not.
”

“Yeah.” Jules got in his face. “It was. This is not what I want.
You
are not what I want.”

And there it was. Robin’s heart on the floor. Smashed flat. With Jules’s shoe print clearly on it.

“Well,” he said in the silence that followed that news flash. “Before? When your tongue was in my mouth? You sure could’ve fooled me.”

“Just…go back to L.A.,” Jules told him, and walked out the door.

C
HAPTER
T
EN

“G
ot a sec?” Martell asked, knocking on Ric’s office door. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you were sleeping.”

“No, that’s all right.” Ric waved him in. “I was just closing my eyes. It’s a little hard to sleep with”—he pointed to the ceiling—“elephant woman upstairs.”

They’d spent the afternoon moving Annie’s things out of her beach house and into his extra bedroom, which was directly above his office. She was up there right now, either moving things around or herding cattle or maybe tap-dancing. Ric wasn’t sure which.

“Bro.” Martell sat at Ric’s desk. “I’m not any kind of relationship expert, but even I know that when there’s a woman you want to get with, you don’t describe her as elephant-like.”

“I meant she was heavy-footed,” Ric said. “And I don’t want to
get
with her, thanks.” Maybe if he said it enough, it would be true.

“Yeah, you really don’t want to use
heavy
, either. Not unless you want her living off of cans of Slender and getting so skinny, she’ll look like a ten-year-old boy. You’ll have to put a paper bag over your
own
head, in order to hit
that…
”

Ric sighed. “Can we not talk about Annie, please? Unless you’re here to apologize for making a move on her in front of me.”

“I was just doing that to piss you off.”

“Is that supposed to be an apology?”

“If it makes you feel better, you can call it that. I know it’s been a tough day,” Martell pointed out. “You’ve always lived in terror of the girlfriend moving in.”

“She’s
not
my girlfriend.” And it wasn’t as if she’d
moved in
moved in. Still, Ric had to admit that lugging Annie’s stuff upstairs to his guest bedroom, and making room for her in his single bathroom, freaked him out a little bit more than he’d expected. She was going to be around. Night and day.

Day and night. And night and night and night…

“Before we close off that topic of conversation,” Martell said, standing up, “I just need to…” He came over and slapped Ric upside his head.

“Ow!”

“That’s for subscribing to that shit Annie’s brother told you,” he said. “Far as I can figure, you really must’ve wanted to believe it. But you did, because it kept her nice and safe, didn’t it?”

Ric laughed. “Yeah, from what, me?”

“Nailed it on the head, Dr. Evil. I see you lying there, worrying about how you’re going to be able to keep your hands offa her, her living in your less-than-spacious apartment. Lying in your bed every night, knowing that Annie’s mere yards away, right down the hall, knowing that she’s attracted to you, too. Maybe bumping into her in the bathroom when you get up because you can’t sleep, and she’s like
Oh, hi, Ric
.” His made his voice breathy and high, sounding more like a transvestite stripper than Annie.
“I can’t sleep, either. Maybe if we both go into
my
room—”

“Thanks, man,” Ric said. Mother of God, he was so screwed. He had one of those bathrooms with two doors—one that led into the hallway, the other that went directly into the master bedroom.
His
bedroom. He was going to have to leave that door permanently locked and get used to using the hall entrance or the chances of them coming face-to-face in there at an inopportune time was a real possibility. “That’s really helping.”

“Nah, actually,” Martell said, “that’s not going to happen. Not that easily. You took care of that when you messed around with Crazy McShotmycar. Good job, Enrique. Annie’s safe. At least until you convince her you’re not a total dick.” He stood up. “I gotta go. You gotta get ready for that party. By the way, delivery came. Your tux is hanging out front. Plus there’s some box with Annie’s name on it.”

Ric sat up. “Is it her dress?”

“Like I open boxes that aren’t addressed to me?”

Ric went into the outer office, and there it was. A very large box on Annie’s desk. “She told Cassidy that she didn’t have anything to wear to a formal party, and he asked her dress size and said he’d take care of it.”

“I guess that’s one of the benefits of working with a gay FBI agent,” Martell said, slumping into one of the waiting-area chairs. “You end up looking fabulous. Damn, my shit is tired.”

“You really think he’s gay?” Ric asked.

“I don’t know. You’re the one who said the word first. I believe I used
brainiac.
You had to bring mirror balls and disco music into the equation.”

“Xavier Sanchez, the drummer in my father’s band,” Ric said. “He’s gay.” The box for Annie was sealed with tape.

“No shit?” Martell thought about that. “Dude can play.”

“Not just drums, but soccer, too.” Ric finally found Annie’s scissors.

“Sanchez?” Martell’s disbelief no doubt came from the fact that the drummer was well over six feet tall and built like a grizzly bear.

“Yep. Someone that big shouldn’t be able to move that fast, but he does. He kicks ass.” Ric carefully sliced the tape on all four sides of the box lid. He lifted the lid to reveal…Lots of tissue paper. “I guess I just wish Cassidy looked more like Sanchez. Or Bruce Willis from
Die Hard.
Instead of Jack from
Will & Grace.
”

“Oh, Cassidy’s much cuter than Jack.” Martell laughed at him. “I’m kidding. Look at you—yeah,
I’m
gay. Bro, if you’re worried about him, talk to him. Find out what kind of work he’s done, who he’s worked with. This case? It’s probably not his first. Talk to the other agents. If there’s something wrong with him, believe me, they’ll tell you.”

“Whoa,” Ric said as he parted the tissue paper.

Martell stood up to look, too. “Damn.” He started to laugh.

So this sucked.

Annie rested on the bed in Ric’s guest room, spread-eagled on her back, staring up at a displaced spider walking across the ceiling.

It wasn’t the spider that sucked.

It wasn’t the room, either, even though it was filled with tired-looking furniture just a step or two up from college-dorm quality. It wasn’t Ric’s apartment, sunny and bright, with a kitchen that was small but recently renovated, a living room with a flat-screen TV and video-game system that looked identical to the one Bruce had in his basement, and a sundeck—balcony really, since it didn’t have any stairs—that overlooked a slightly overgrown but lushly gorgeous tropical garden.

It wasn’t even the bed that necessarily sucked, although it did. Ric had told her it was his old one. He’d upgraded to a king when he’d moved into this place. Annie didn’t doubt for one second that this mattress was haunted by the ghosts of girlfriends past.

It wasn’t the fact that she’d have to carry Pierre, every morning and night, up and down the slightly slippery stairs that led from the first-floor office.

It was Ric, who’d demanded she move in, but clearly hated that she was here. It was the preoccupied grimness with which he had done everything this afternoon. After trying in vain to start a conversation, Annie’d finally given up. They’d worked in silence, packing up her things and bringing them up to this room.

Ric had used the bug sweeper to check all of her earthly possessions for any surveillance devices that Burns’s gang might have planted on them while she wasn’t home. But then, after clearing space for her in the quirkily tiled bathroom, he’d finally gone downstairs, leaving her to rearrange the furniture because there was no way in hell she was going to be able to sleep with the head of her bed directly on the other side of the wall from the head of
his
bed.

Of course, moving the furniture had revealed a dire need for her to unearth his vacuum cleaner from the hall closet, which was good, because as long as she was moving, working, cleaning, she didn’t have to think.

About Ric—with Lillian. About the kind of person who would have sex just for the sake of having sex, with zero emotional connection.

About the kind of person—obviously an idiot—who would still have feelings of attraction to the kind of person who would have sex just for the sake of having sex, regardless of having seen him nearly having sex with another woman.

God help her, even though she’d cleaned and shoved furniture around the room, even though she’d unpacked and showered, Annie kept thinking about the fact that at the party tonight, she and Ric were going to pretend to be together.

And that was
really
going to suck. Especially when he put his arm around her. Or when he smiled at her. Or when his normally heavily lidded eyes did that sexy extra-hooded thing that she had quickly come to recognize as meaning he was going to kiss her…

“Hey.”

Speak of the devil. Ric was outside of her door, knocking softly, even though it was partly open.

Annie sat up, adjusting the sleep shirt and boxers that she’d thrown on after her shower. “Yeah,” she said.

He pushed the door open, saw her and looked away, as if he’d walked in on her in her underwear. “Sorry,” he said, holding out a box. “This came for you. It’s the dress for tonight.”

Annie slid down off the bed. “What color is it?”

“It’s, um…”

She took the box to the bed, opened it, and…It was metallic. Silver and shiny and…“Holy crap.”

“It’s definitely got some
holy crap
, with maybe a little
Jesus
thrown in,” Ric said helpfully.

She held it up. This was a dress? It was a sweep of fish-scale-like fabric—and not a whole hell of a lot of it, either—with what seemed like dozens of spaghetti straps. There were shoes, too, at the bottom of the box—silver sandals with a too-high, treacherous-looking heel that could double as a shiv during an unexpected knife fight.

“Am I holding it upside down?” she asked Ric.

He held up a flap of fabric. “No, I think this is the top.”

“That’s pretty skimpy.”

“It looks like some kind of halter,” he said. “All these strings probably crisscross in the back. I think you’ll have to tie it.”

Tie it? How? By looking in a mirror with her hands behind her back? “I don’t think I can wear this,” Annie said.

“Then don’t,” Ric told her. “You can stay home.”

Not a chance. “You better wait outside,” she told him. “I’m going to need help.”

This freaking sucked.

Ric stood outside of Annie’s bedroom door, wondering how his life had managed to get so totally out of control. Yesterday’s problems—convincing Annie to stay on as his receptionist—were laughably small. Damn, what he would give to go back to that place. Yes, there were huge misconceptions that came with it, but it was true—ignorance
was
bliss.

His cell phone rang, and he dug for it in his pocket. Great, it was his mother. No doubt she’d used her maternal superpowers and knew from an anagram of the combined initials of today’s guests on
Oprah
that a woman had moved into her only son’s apartment.

“Hey, Mom.” He braced himself.

“Is your father with you?”

“No,” Ric said, relaxing, but just a little. This could be a diversion—make him think he was safe, and then,
bam
, blindside him with
so who’s your new girlfriend and why haven’t we met her?
“Why, is he AWOL again?”

“He should’ve been home by now. He went to some meeting…”

“There’s technology for this,” Ric told his mother. “One word: microchip. You could probably implant it while’s he sleeping on the couch.”

“Ha ha,” his mother said. “Very funny. He’s my husband, not my basset hound.”

“He’s probably jamming with the band,” Ric reassured her. When his father sat down at a piano, time ceased to exist for him. He’d been better lately, though—ever since he’d gotten a new super-slim cell phone. He no longer had to take it out of his pocket when he sat down to play, so when his wife called to tell him dinner was ready, he felt it vibrate. Which didn’t mean that he still wouldn’t turn it off or even just ignore it if he were in the middle of a particularly good session.

“I know.” But his mother didn’t sound convinced. “If you see him, will you remind him that we have guests coming for dinner tonight?”

Man, but he hated it when his mother talked in code. Ric looked at his watch. “Mom, if you want me to swing past the studio, see if he’s there, just ask me.”

“I hate doing that,” she said. “I know you’re busy…”

“I’m working tonight, but it’s downtown,” he told her. His father’s rehearsal space was right on the way to the party at the Bijou.

She sighed. “Will you please stop and see if he’s at the studio?” She managed to choke the words out just as Annie pulled open the door. “And kick his butt home if he is?”

“I definitely need your help,” Annie said, then realized he was on the phone. “Oops, sorry.”

“Will do,” Ric told his mother, before she could ask who was the woman whose voice she’d just heard, and was Ric finally going to give her a grandchild. “Gotta go.”

And okay. This was interesting. Annie had put on a bathing suit—one of those same racing one-pieces that she’d been wearing since she was twelve years old. With it on, Ric could help her figure out how to tie the dress’s strings without any danger of embarrassing them both.

At least not too much.

Clearly Annie was already discomfited. “I should be able to do this.”

He saw right away what the problem was. “This needs to go around your neck like…” Together they made the adjustment. “Now everything just needs to be tightened, like a giant shoelace.”

She stood still, quietly, obediently—possibly for the first time in her entire life—in front of the mirror in her room, just letting him do it. He focused on the string—keeping both sides of it even—rather than on the smooth coolness of her sun-kissed skin beneath his fingers, trying to ignore the way the dress accentuated her curves.

“This tight enough?” he asked, looking over her shoulder at her reflection. She was still holding the top against her breasts, but now she let it go.

“Only if I want to be flashing everyone all night,” she replied as he started all over again. “Although maybe that’s the idea. I mean, God.” She turned slightly, and he realized there was a slit in the side of the skirt that went practically to her hip.