Heaven and Hell (9 page)

This was another indication of his
graciousness, not a word, not a show, he just did it, thoughtful,
sweet and that settled in my soul too.

Then out the door we went, across the front
of the hotel and down four cars, he turned us and stopped me at the
passenger side of a bright yellow Lamborghini.

Yes, a
bright yellow
Lamborghini.

Seeing his car, for some reason, I deflated.
Not totally but I felt it.

This was not to say it was not a cool car,
it definitely was. And this was not to say I didn’t look forward to
my first ever and probably only ride in a freaking Lamborghini, I
did, I definitely did.

This was to say it was expensive and flashy
to the point of being a shade off trashy and I did not see Sampson
Cooper this way. This car screamed, “Look at me! I have money! I
have fame! I am important! Bow to me, all you minions.”

Okay, maybe it didn’t say all that but it
said enough of it to make me, for the first time, wonder about a
Sam who stayed at an expensive hotel, owned an expensive tuxedo
that had been tailored for him and ate at restaurants like the one
he ate at last night. I didn’t pay, Thomas did and refused to even
discuss it (my debt to him and Celeste was growing by the day) but
I knew it was expensive and when I say that I mean, if you think of
the most expensive restaurant you’ve ever been to, it was more as
in
a lot
more. One bottle of wine was more than a three
course meal at a normal expensive restaurant, so it was
that
expensive.

And the Sampson Cooper I had in my head from
all I knew about him and his life before I met him and the man I’d
been in the presence of three times who’d been real, who cursed
when he felt like it, held my hand when he saw tears in my eyes,
that Sampson Cooper, or Sam, did not have a flashy car that
screamed, “Look at me!”

He opened my door for me and, with his long
fingers wrapped around my bicep, guided me gently into the car,
making sure I cleared my skirt and was settled in before closing
the door.

I glanced through the interior as he rounded
the hood and vaguely wondered how he’d get his tall, sizeable frame
in it then I looked out the windshield, weirdly despondent and
suddenly not nervous or even excited about the evening.

Very weird. Very stupid. And also
judgmental.

But there you go. Men were men and, just
like Cooter but for Sam in a bigger, showier way, they all found
their ways to prove they had a big dick, even Sam Cooper.

It wasn’t until Sam burst out laughing that
I realized he’d folded in beside me and he’d been there awhile.

I turned my head to look at him.

Okay, I was suddenly nervous and excited
again. This was because he might want the world to know he had a
big dick but he was unbelievably gorgeous while he was doing
it.

He stopped laughing but kept smiling at me
when he declared, “It’s Luci’s.”

“What?” I asked.

“The car,” he answered and I felt my lips
part.

Jeez, was he in my head or what?

Sam kept speaking. “She has five cars and
she insisted I use one and not rent one. She also insisted I stay
with her. I won on having some privacy and not spending every
minute I wasn’t workin’ having Luci in my face about all the things
Luci gets in my face about, and, baby, there’s a lot of that shit.
I gave in on the car. I see from your face I shouldn’t have. Then
again, I didn’t know I’d meet a beautiful blonde who’s the only
beautiful blonde on five continents who would not get off on
sittin’ beside me in a car like this.”

“I didn’t –” I started to deny through a
lie.

He kept smiling, though bigger, and
interrupted through it, “You did.”

“I –”

He leaned toward me, his hand reached out,
his fingers curled around the side of my neck again and I shut
up.

“You did,” he said gently and kept going,
“and I don’t care because I agree. This car is not me and it’s good
it’s not you either. But,” the smile came back, “wait ‘til it goes.
This ride screams euro-trash and anyone who’s got a hint of class
feels like an asshole sitting in it but when it purrs, it makes it
worth it.”

“Okay,” I whispered and I whispered because
I couldn’t get my voice to go louder. There were three reasons for
this. One, he was touching me again. Two, it hit me he called me a
beautiful blonde. And three, I really wanted to feel that
Lamborghini purr.

“Buckle up,” he murmured, let me go and
turned away.

I buckled up. Sam turned the ignition and
the car came to life.

I sighed with deep content and I did this
audibly
.

Sam burst out laughing again.

I bit my lip to stop myself from doing
anything (else) stupid as Sam backed out of the spot, still
chuckling and my mind turned to Celeste’s advice because I was
getting the distinct feeling I was not holding
anything
secret.

I pulled myself back on track when we were
away and I did this by asking, hopefully casually, “Uh… Luci, that
is, Luciana owns five cars?”

“You can call her Luci, I’ll say it before
she says it and when she meets you, she’ll definitely say it.”

This was a somewhat weird comment but I had
no time to decipher it or ask because Sam kept talking.

“And yeah, she owns five cars. She’s loaded.
Her parents are loaded, she’s a trust fund baby and, on top of
that, before she hooked up with Gordo, she was a model. A
successful one. You see her face, you’ll probably recognize
her.”

Oh man. I wasn’t sure that was good.

Sam went on.

“Sayin’ that, about ten seconds after you
get over it, you’ll see she’s not a Luciana, she’s a Luci.”

“How is she a Luci?” I asked.

“She’s a Luci because, regardless if she’s
sittin’ beside a catwalk at a fashion show in Milan or sittin’ on
your deck, drinkin’ a beer, she always acts like she’s sittin’ on
your deck drinkin’ a beer.”

I felt my heart flutter because I liked that
he liked that because I was the kind of girl who knew all about
sitting on a deck drinking a beer and
not
the kind of girl
who knew what it was like to sit beside a catwalk at a fashion show
in Milan. And I felt slightly less nervous because I liked that
Luci was like that. It was only then I realized that part of my
anxiety was about meeting Luciana, going to her party and being
amongst her set which was not my set.

But the way he described her, at least she
was.

“So, uh,” I started cautiously, “what does
she get in your face about?”

“The better question is, what
doesn’t
she get in my face about?”

I looked from the view of the road, the
brilliant blue of the lake stretching out on one side, sharp rises
of green mountains dotted with gray stone on the other, to Sam.

“Sorry?” I asked as a prompt.

He glanced at me then back at the road.

“She’s an only child. Gordo was like a
brother so she thinks of me as her brother-in-law. Before we lost
him, they didn’t have kids. She loves kids and since she can’t have
her own and won’t be an aunt any other way, she’s counting on me
and she’s impatient.”

I found this open declaration intriguing for
more reasons than the fact it was an open declaration.

Before I could say word one, not that I had
any clue what to say, Sam kept going.

“She’s desperate for me to hook up. I’m
thirty-five, she’s known me five years, Gordo’s been gone one of
those. She’s spent that time concentrating on me.”

“I get this,” I said softly, because I did
but not for the reason Sam thought I did and I knew the reason he
thought I got it because, at my words, there was an intense pulse
coming from Sam that hit the air of the car. I powered through the
pulse and continued, “My friend Missy lost her husband in a car
crash. Sudden. They’d been married less than a year.” I looked out
the side window and kept sharing. “I never saw her cry. That was a
long time ago and I still have never seen her cry. But she had a
full-time job and still, she volunteered for, like, seven
charities, went for every promotion going and enrolled in night
classes to get her MBA. All this time, she’s never slowed down.
She’s done anything she could do to concentrate on anything other
than losing Rich, what that meant, dealing with it and moving on.
Now she’s a Deputy Director of one of those charities she
volunteered for. It’s her life. It’s been years and she hasn’t even
dated.”

I told Sam this but what I didn’t tell him
was one of the charities she went all out for was me.

By this time, I’d been married to Cooter for
five years and there wasn’t much of me left. All my friends had
said things, done things, I’d noticed the looks and they all
avoided Cooter like the plague and not because he made it clear he
didn’t like my friends around the house or me spending time with
them (both of which he made very clear), but because they hated him
for what he was doing to me and, by that point, they hated him so
much they couldn’t be responsible for their actions or their words
if they had to spend too much time with him.

But, after Rich died, Missy had approached
me three times, each increasingly more assertive, to discuss what
was happening to me or, more to the point, what Cooter was taking
from me. Finally, I had to lay it out that Cooter and I were just
fine, not perfect but happy and I’d done this in a way that was not
mean or ugly but
definitive.

After that, none of my friends said things
or did things (but I still noticed the looks). And, sitting in that
Lamborghini, it hit me that they didn’t probably because Missy
warned them I was living the dysfunction and, until I got my head
out of my ass, there was nothing they could do.

And I got this too. I loved them all enough
to know that, even if a man had stripped away most of what was
them; I’d take what was left rather than pushing something that
might mean she’d take away anything I could get.

I pressed my lips together and tried to
force this new knowledge out of my brain. I was failing at this
when Sam spoke again, taking my attention and when he took it, the
way he took it, he took
all
of it.

“So tell me, baby,” he asked gently, his
tone in his deep, rough-like-velvet voice gliding along my skin,
coating it with a sheen that was like an invisible barrier that I
knew, if I had a lifetime of his voice stroking that soothing
ointment along my skin, nothing would ever harm me and my head
turned to him. “You get this, what do I do?”

I was lost in his voice, so lost, his
question confused me. “What do you do?”

“Gordo was my boy, we spent a lot of time
together, good times. He also had my back in some serious
situations and there was no one I trusted more than him. Knowin’
Luci loves him like she does, witnessing her devotion even after
he’s gone, gotta admit, Kia, I dig that. Gordo deserves that. But
time is passing. She’s young and she’s got a life she isn’t livin’
because she’s dedicating hers to livin’ mine. How do I stop
that?”

There was something about this question, an
intimacy, a trust that threw me. I’d been in his presence three
times and he was asking me a question the answer to which was
beyond important. It was about friendship and the wrong answer
could lead to the wrong action and might result in the end of their
friendship and that could mean me giving him an answer that would
guide him to a loss of something that was unbearable.

And, for some insane reason, I found my
mouth telling him that.

And I did it like this, “I don’t know,
honey. I don’t know Luci so I can’t say and I’d never give blind
advice when something as important as friendship lies in the
balance. Your friend, if he knew what would happen to him, would
trust you to handle her with care. And I wouldn’t be handling her
with care if I pretended to know the answer just for the sake of
giving you one.”

Sam didn’t reply but the air in the car
changed again. This wasn’t an intense pulse. But whatever it was
shifted in like it was going to stay awhile, it was warm, languid
and it had the kind of feel you wanted to float in forever.

I faced forward, trying to ignore the air
and what it was doing to my state of mind and understanding of the
world.

“Kia,” Sam called.

“Yeah,” I answered the windshield.

“Your friends handle you with care?”

Oh man.

Shit.

I closed my eyes and opened them, trying to
think fast of how to answer without giving away any secrets.

When I did this by not speaking at all,
undeterred, Sam compounded his question.

“His boys?”

I pressed my lips together.

Then I gave away a secret, I didn’t say much
and hoped it wasn’t too much.

“Yes,” I answered his first question, paused
then answered his second question softly, “and no.”

“Right,” he murmured, that word quiet but
heavy with an easily read edge of harsh.

This said he got me and he gave a shit. This
said he understood and he knew exactly what kind of “boys” Cooter
had. And being a man, this meant he could probably guess a variety
of ways, some of them likely accurate, of just how Cooter’s friends
did not handle me with care not only after his death but prior to
it.

And they hadn’t.

Well, it appeared I’d said three words and
still I said too much.

I looked out the side window. Sam drove
without speaking. After some time, he turned into the forecourt of
a rather large but weirdly not imposing pink villa.

He rolled the Lamborghini to a stop, a
red-coated valet rushed to his door and another one rushed to mine
as I undid my seatbelt and saw Sam turned to the valet but shaking
his head.

Then, when I’d released the seatbelt, he
turned to me.