Palm Springs Heat (19 page)

Focus on what matters, damn it
.

No matter how hard she tried,
though, Corynne mattered most. The peck on the cheek. The skanky crawl. The
loose-fitting shirt. The way she avoided making eye contact.

“Okay-yee, we start with sweetie
Corynne giving her spiel, then we turn it over to Mr. C.” Spike raised his
arms, making him look like a vulture in cowboy drag. He glanced around the
silent room, smacked his hands to his sides and shouted, “Act-chee-own!”

“Hi, I’m Corynne McFee. I’ve been a
member of The Rotation here at Fast Lane since February.” Corynne’s voice
sounded lower and smokier, like a woman in an ad for a “local singles” phone
line on late-night TV. “One of the great things about being involved with Clay
and with living the Fast Lane lifestyle is that there are so many opportunities
to get to know really amazing new people all the time.”

She’s already said Fast Lane
twice! Do they be expect
me
to do that?

“You’ve probably already heard
about the newest addition to the Fast Lane crew.”

Three
times!

“Her name is Lara Dixon, and she’s
really great. She’s pretty and exciting and fun, and she’s had a glamorous—and
mysterious—career in the movie business. I’m sure she’ll want to tell you all
about that.”

Wait a minute…

“You’re going to just love her. I,
myself, only got to meet her just a couple of days ago, and already I feel
we’ve known each other forever, like sisters.”

What?

The butterflies in Lara’s stomach
morphed into crows. Her mind—and her heartbeat—raced as Spike signaled for Clay
to talk.

“Thanks, Corynne,” he started. “You
know, all the girls in The Rotation are special to me.”

Lara could tell he spoke with his
usual bravado, but she couldn’t make out most of the words over the cawing in
her ears. She heard something like, “corra girlatation spesha,” followed by a
bunch of garble. The last syllables sounded like “wafferfall.”

Wafferfall? He’s not talking
about us making love in the waterfall? Maybe if I look at him I’ll be able to
understand
.

She tried to turn her head, but the
room moved instead. In slow motion.
I’m going so fast; why is everything
else going so slow?
She saw Sushma, hands on hips, head shaking in obvious
disapproval. Then she saw Corynne, eyes at half-mast, licking her lips and
making circles on Clay’s leg with her fingers.

She suddenly became aware of the
scent of the foxglove. Movement off to one side caught her eye. Her head
rotated at two miles per hour until she spotted Spike, crouching and pointing
at her with both hands in the stance used by TV cops carrying gigantic
handguns. His mouth moved as though his jaw had turned to liquid.

And there was no sound. The flowers
next to the bed swayed as though they were underwater.
Like a fish in a
bowl.

Lara forced herself to turn toward
Clay. He looked surprised.
Concerned?
His eyes still had that sparkle.
It grew and spread until the whole world seemed to shimmer, as if Lara were
looking through amber into a bright light.

And then, everything went black.

* * *

Lara’s eyes flickered open. It took
her a while to realize she lay on the bed in the studio with Clay cradling her
head in his lap. The buzzing in her ears blended into the hubbub around her.
The sun seemed to be beaming directly into her eyes, but Lara felt cold and
sick to her stomach. The fishbowl effect was as strong as before. Eyes peered
at her from every angle.

The world stopped spinning when she
saw Clay’s smile.

“Welcome back,” he said.

“Wafferfall?” Lara’s voice sounded
shaky and thin. She tried to sit up, but she swooned with a moan. Clay caught
her.

“Hey, whoa! There’s no hurry,” he
said. “Just take it easy.”

“He’s right, honey,” Corynne said.
“Don’t do anything rash.”

Lara’s vertigo returned when she
moved her eyes to Corynne.

Clay addressed the room: “Has
anyone called a doctor or 9-1-1
or anything?”

“I’m on it.” A dutiful assistant
whipped out his phone.

“A doctor?” Sushma interjected.
“What would be the purpose? She merely fainted from the lights.”

“Yeah, how ’bout that, Spike?” Clay
said. “I told you to cut back on the candlepower. She’s probably got
sunstroke.”

“Oh, dear,” Spike said. He looked
at Lara like she was the corpse at a funeral. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.”

“Spike,” Clay said, “look at me.”

Spike kept right on babbling.

“Spiker!”

Spike stopped and looked at Clay.

“Turn off the goddamned light!”

Spike stood frozen and muttering. A
gaffer cut the switch.

“So, should I call 9-1-1 or not?” The assistant with the
phone looked from Sushma to Clay.

“I’ll be all right.” Lara had to
close her eyes to sit up. “I just need some air.”

“Everyone out!” Clay commanded.
“You’re using up all the air!” It was as take-charge as Lara had ever heard him
be.

“I’m going to take that as a ‘no.’”
The assistant with the phone looked back as he followed everyone else out of
the room.

Pretty soon, Lara and Clay were
alone. Except for Sushma. Lara could focus now—enough to be able to detect not
even a hint of compassion on Sushma’s face.

“Um, Shush,” Clay said, more
sweetly than Lara thought Sushma deserved, “when I said ‘everybody,’ I meant
everybody
.”

“As chief operating officer, I have
every right to be here.”

“I didn’t say you didn’t have the
right.” Clay didn’t utter another word, but his puppy-dog eyes said
please
as
clearly as if he had shouted it. Sushma glared at him, then huffed, turned
abruptly and left.

* * *

Lara nestled against Clay with her head
on his shoulder. He brushed her forehead with his other hand, following the
line of her upswept hair.

“I don’t think
that
was in
the script,” he said.

“There was a script?”

“You gave everyone a scare.”

“Everyone? Even Sushma?”

Clay smiled.

Lara massaged her forehead. “She
doesn’t like me.”

“Who says?”

“We’ve butted heads.”

“She butts heads with everyone.
It’s her thing.”

Not the way she butts heads with
me.
Lara looked down and saw Clay’s slippers. “Why are you wearing
slippers?”

Clay chuckled, but stopped when
Lara’s face remained serious. “No big deal,” he shrugged. “Just part of the
Fast Lane lifestyle. Be comfortable. It’s one of the Cardinal Virtues.”

“The Fast Lane lifestyle? You mean
business as usual?”

“Well, yeah. What else?”

Lara pushed away from him, dropped
her feet over the side of the bed and forced herself to stand. She was woozy,
but managed to right herself before Clay sprang to his feet and grabbed her
arms.

“Maybe we
should
call a
doctor,” he said. Lara could see genuine concern in his eyes.

“Right before I blacked out, I
heard something like…” Lara looked Clay in the eye. “Am
I
‘business as
usual’?”

Clay’s face went blank.

“The War Room,” Lara continued.
“Rev. The salt flats. The waterfall. All business as usual?”

Clay’s lower lip quivered. “Oh, no.
Not at all. I mean, now, here…the video, and all…yeah. But, there’s business,
and then there’s…”

“What?”

“Um…”

Lara could feel Clay’s hands get
clammy. “Are
you
going to be all right?”

“I’m trying to think what to say.”
He looked around the empty studio. “What an idiot. I mean, I give men advice
on…you know…things with women.”

“Maybe you’d better sit down.”

“No.” Clay held Lara more firmly.
She liked how strong and powerful he felt. Assured. Assuring. “No, you are
not
‘business as usual.’”

“I’m not?”

“I—I don’t…You’d think I would know
what to say.”

I know what I want you to say.

Saying nothing, he pulled Lara to
him and kissed her. Lara recognized it as a delay tactic, but she didn’t resist;
it made her heart beat faster and cleared the clouds from her mind.

The door opened and Tiffany
fluttered in. “Um, Ms. V is wondering how Miss D is—oh! Oh!”

Tiffany turned away and held her
hand up as a blinder. Lara and Clay looked like a couple of thirteen-year-olds
caught necking.

“I’m fine, Tiffany,” Lara said.
“Tell Ms. V I’m ready whenever she is.”

15

The subsequent shooting of the
intro video went smoothly. Lara talked about her life, which made her glad she
and Gina had rejected the notion of concocting a designer past.

The designer past in Sushma’s
folder, though, still weighed on Lara’s mind hours later as she stood on her
deck, sipped wine and watched the sun sink behind Point Dume. While Kyle hadn’t
been big on love, he did have a fondness for kink. He especially liked sharing
fantasies populated by real people. To please him, Lara made up stories about
being with his friends or a pizza delivery guy. Kyle talked about actresses and
set decorators he worked with. But Kyle’s fantasies turned out to have
contained more fact than fiction.

Kyle had told Sushma’s
investigators that Lara had “slaked her rapacious sexual appetites” by
indulging in sexcapades with not only his friends and a pizza guy, but also his
dickhead brother.
Kyle said “rapacious”?
Lara shuddered and cringed.
Just the thought of sex with Drake Lobo turned her stomach. But a scumbag like
Kyle understood lack of proof was no problem; gossip could be deadlier than
actual indiscretions. No one expected the women of The Rotation to be
virgins—hell, they were
supposed
to be experienced—but the notion of a
slut who cheated on her husband
with his brother
would not fly in the
Fast Lane universe. Once tagged to a man, a woman was supposed to keep her
panties on tight unless
he
demanded otherwise.

If Sushma kicked me out of The
Rotation, would I be off the hook with Gina? Would it matter?
Lara gazed at
the sky, but the colors were invisible.
No, I have to confront Sushma. In
private. Make her see reason.

Or, at least, challenge her to come
up with more proof than just the word of that fucker Kyle.

Thinking of Gina reminded Lara of
the voicemail message. She rested her wine glass on the railing and opened her
phone.

“You are
not
going to
believe this, but things just got a lot cooler.” Gina sounded like a little
girl at Christmas. “I got a major publisher to agree on a book deal, a
long-form version of the article you’re doing. We’re talking seven figures.
Seven fucking figures! They want all the dirt, and by all, I mean
all
.
Names. Places. Pornographic details. So take good notes.”

If things get any cooler, I’m
going to die from the heat.

Heat. Lara thought about the
waterfall. She could feel Clay’s fingers massaging her hair.

“Hey.” Clay’s voice came from
behind Lara as she snapped the phone shut. Jolted, she fumbled the damn thing
to the deck and kicked it through the railing. It bounced onto the deck below,
then skittered through that railing and plummeted so far she couldn’t even hear
it smack the rocks.

Lara looked over the railing, fruitlessly
scanning the murky shadows of the jagged wave-washed terrain.

Clay sidled up next to her. “I’m
sorry. That was my fault.”

“Oh, well. Just a cheap, stupid
phone.”

“Could be a big deal to some
people.”

It could be a big deal to me
.
“I’m not really a big phone person,” she said with a shrug.

She looked at Clay out of the
corner of her eye.
Can he tell I’m trying to con him?
“I mean,” she
continued, “it’s not like I can’t live without it.”

“Really?” Clay turned her to face
him. “
Is
there something you can’t live without?”

You take the lead.

Instead, he kissed her.

 
Nice, but not what I hoped
for.

“It’s been an amazing week,” he
said.

The understatement of the year.

He continued: “The night we met, did
it even cross your mind that you might be living here? And so soon?”

 
That was the plan
.
“Life can be unpredictable.”

“There’ve been women all my life…”
Clay faltered.

“Yes?”

“I’ve been surrounded by sexy,
smart, exciting women all my life.” Another pause. “But you’re not like the
others.”

“Oh?”

“In some ways you are. The part
about being sexy, smart and exciting.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

Clay hesitated again. “I think
about you and—the company be damned.”

“I see.”

“I know. That sounds lame.”

“No it doesn’t.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No.”

“What I mean is…what I want to say.
Ah, here I go again.”

Lara put a finger over his lips,
then pulled him close and kissed him.

“We have all night to talk,” she
said. “For now…” She tugged on his arm, but he didn’t move. He looked sheepish.

“What?”

“I can’t stay here tonight. I have
a previous commitment.”

Lara frowned.

“And here I was just going on about
‘the company be damned.’”

Lara tried to mask her
disappointment. “Hey, it’s a previous commitment. I understand.”

“Tomorrow night,” Clay said
brightly. “I’m free then.”

“No ‘previous commitments’?”

“I just made one, didn’t I?”

They kissed again, and then Clay
scrambled up over the roof and disappeared into the night.

Lara went to the railing and gazed
upon the moonlight shimmering on the water. She couldn’t stop herself from
looking again for the phone, but all she could see were blackness and foam. Not
an ideal send-off to bed. But for now, she was comforted by the sound of the
ocean in her ears and the taste of Clay on her lips.