Private Entrance (The Butterfly Trilogy) (35 page)

     But Kenny couldn't leave it.

     Pushing through dense shrubs that embraced the small dwelling, he found a window with the drapes parted, and peered in to see Coco emerging from the bathroom wearing a terry cloth robe, her hair wet from the shower.

     Continuing around the side of the house, he found the garden gate unlocked. As he quietly went through, he broke out in a sweat. Part of him wanted to turn back, but the greater part made him press on. He was about to make one of the biggest decisions of his life.

     The last time he had left The Grove, he had gone on a sugar binge and nearly gone over the edge himself. He had not left in the two and a half years since and was terrified to do so now. But Coco needed his help.

     He tapped at the glass door, startling her. There were shadows under her eyes but she smiled as she drew the door open and said, "Kenny! How unconventional of you."

     He put his hands on her arms and searched her face. "How do you feel?"

     "I didn't sleep. And then I went for a walk. That man is still here, I can feel it." She looked up into his eyes so full of concern. Last night he had asked her to marry him. He had called it a solution, but Coco knew that marriage would only make matters worse, locking them into a relationship they would both eventually want to get out of.

     "I came to talk to you about my proposal."

     "I can't think straight."

     "Then let's get out of here. I still have my car."

     She stared at him. "You'd do that for me? Leave The Grove?" But she looked uncertain. And when she glanced at the crystal orb, sitting on its wooden stand, Kenny said, "Make this your own decision, Coco. Look, just Palm Springs. How's that? There and back." And already he was thinking of the donut shop on Palm Canyon Drive, and the Baskin Robbins ice cream parlor on Mecca Avenue, and the drug store with its huge candy counter. And they terrified him.

     Twenty minutes later they were on the road, passing two of the resort's vehicles that were out searching for Ophelia Kaplan. The sun soon set and night fell over the desert. Coco and Kenny said little, she thinking of her scare the night before and wishing she could find a cure for her psychic
curse, he feeling his heart race as he left his haven. Kenny turned on the car heater and tuned the radio to an FM station that played soft melodies. Coco's head fell back and soon she was asleep.

     "Wake up, Coco." A soft voice, a gentle hand on her shoulder.

     She opened her eyes and was confused for the moment. Where was she? Then she realized she was sitting in a car. But it wasn't moving. And Kenny didn't have his hands on the wheel but was turned sideways in his seat, gently shaking her awake.

     "What happened?" she said, stretching. "Are we in Palm Springs?" But then she heard a strange roar and smelled something odd. She sat up. "Where are we?" She peered through the window. She blinked at the moonlit beach, the breakers crashing on the shore, and, beyond, the Pacific Ocean stretching away to the starry horizon.

     "Unless California finally had the Big One and Palm springs is now beach front property, we are not where you said we were going."

     "We're in Malibu."

     "You brought me here on purpose?"

     "I kidnapped you."

     "Why?"

     "Because you need to break from your dependence on that crystal, Coco. This was the only way I could think of doing it."

     "Take me back."

     "I only have enough gas to go another ten miles. And that gas station is closed for the night."

     Now she saw the scenery to her left, through Kenny's window. Palisade cliffs, a gas station and convenience store, and a small highway motel.

     "We're in luck," Kenny said. "We got the last vacancy."

     The cabin was small and rustic, but clean, and the bathroom was surprisingly polished and shiny with little soaps in new wrappers. There was only one bed, and it wasn't king-sized.

     Coco stood in the center of the tiny room with her hands on her hips. Outside, there was only the silence of the night and the whisper of the ocean. And Kenny sitting on the edge of the bed, looking sheepish. "I'll give you a Hershey bar if you take me back," Coco said.

     He smiled. "I see you haven't lost your sense of humor."

     "Who's joking?"

     Their eyes met. The moment stretched. The salty perfume of the sea invaded the room, filled their heads. And the rhythmic throb of the surf...

     They reached each other in two strides, lips meeting, fitting, tasting perfect. Arms encircling, drawing tight. Coco's finger's feasted on gold-tipped surfer-blond hair while Kenny's discovered firm breasts with hard nipples. The lovemaking was urgent because they were starved and because they knew they had a lifetime to engage in more leisurely intimacy. Hot tears streamed down Coco's cheeks and into their joined mouths as she thought in joy that this was the man she was going to spend the rest of her life with, and Kenny cried, too, because this was the first of many wonderful memories that were going to fill his mind from now on down through the years.

     Later, as they lay contented in each other's arms, Coco said, "Maybe soulmates aren't all what they're cracked up to be. Maybe we don't
find
them, maybe we create them."

     "Want to hear something funny?" He got out of bed and Coco watched his naked back as he went to where his pants were draped over a chair. He was slender and not muscle-bound. He told her that as a kid he had dreamed of becoming a karate champion but had never even made it to "pink belt," he was that uncoordinated. But never had she seen more perfectly sculpted buttocks. They still bore the red imprints of her fingers where she had dug in and held onto him as he had thrust into her. Just thinking about it made her arousal spark anew.

     Then Kenny came back to the bed and Coco's eyes were riveted to his heavenly cock that, unlike the rest of him, had not lost weight while at The Grove. Kenny was well endowed and that had come as a delightful surprise.

     She saw that he had brought back his wallet. "Remember last night when you told me you were looking for a wise man? You asked me if I thought
I
was a wise man? And I asked you if that was a joke?" He handed her the wallet, opened to his driver's license.

     Her eyes widened and her jaw fell. "Oh my God," she whispered. "Kenny
Wiseman?
But why didn't you tell me?"

     "Because I wanted your decision to be with me to come from your
heart, to come from within yourself, not because the crystal told you to."

     She put her arms around his neck to draw him down and kiss him passionately. "Kenny Wiseman," she said, filling her mouth with his name. "You thought you were a coward, hiding out at The Grove, afraid to go back into the world, afraid you would return to the sugar addiction. But you aren't a coward. You did a brave thing, taking me away from my insanity, bringing me back into the real world. Leading me to where I belong, right here with you. Kenny, I want to take you home to meet my family. I just know they will adore you." And he would never be an orphan again.

     "Let's go to Switzerland," she said. "Let them study you and find a cure for Alzheimer's."

     "It's a big decision," he said and she knew what he meant.

     Looking back at her sexual encounters at The Grove, she saw that they weren't bad, she had chemistry with them, and in fact any one could have blossomed into a relationship. Yet she had found fault with each. Was it on purpose, because deep down inside she really wanted Kenny? "I don't have to consult Daisy or any crystal," she said. "I know what I want to do. I want to go to Switzerland with you."

     "Would you be happy there? Without your police work, what would you do?"

     She grinned as she reached for him. "Maybe the Swiss police can use a good psychic."

T
HEY CALLED IT JUICE
. J
UICE WAS POWER, MONEY, SOCIAL
standing and clout. Juice was how things worked in Vegas, how one succeeded, survived. Gregory Simonian once had juice.

     Years ago—before the newspaper editor's wife kissed his cock, before being called a "gangster" in the man's paper, before marrying Gayane Simonian—Fallon was unmarried and in the Wagon Wheel casino playing blackjack. He was winning big and the pit bosses figured he was counting cards so they reported it to Simonian who had him thrown out. Fallon had laughed it off but had secretly plotted revenge.

     Marry Simonian's daughter and take over the casino.

     Tonight, as Michael Fallon went to the gold and marble bar that filled an entire wall of his penthouse living room and poured himself a scotch, he smiled as he remembered the day, long ago, when he had been thrown out of the Wagon Wheel by Gregory Simonian. "Fuckin' Albanian," Michael had said on the sidewalk. He was twenty-two years old and his pride had been hurt.

     "I think he's Armenian," said his best friend Uri, who was with him.

     Albanian, Armenian. Simonian was a dead man.

     But then Michael caught a gander at Simonian's daughter and had a better idea.

     Simonian had thought his daughter was safely hidden at the Barrington Academy for Young Ladies. Maybe from ordinary men, but not from Michael Fallon. His dossier on the girl included photos, hobbies, friends, and a list of all her likes and dislikes. Not too bad looking either. Seducing her had been a piece of cake. Spotting her at her favorite hangout in town, flirting with his eyes, then with his body. Michael had always had a way with the ladies, charming them, treating them well and being generous afterward. He had thought of getting Gayane pregnant and forcing Simonian to insist on a shotgun wedding but decided instead to try the respectable approach, it might come in handy someday.

     Michael had not only expected Simonian to fight the relationship, he had
counted
on it. Fallon knew one thing about females: deny a woman what she wants and she will want it all the more. Gayane had threatened to get married without her father's blessing—this was, after all, Nevada—and Simonian, caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place, decided that it was better to keep his daughter's favor and at the same time keep an eye on the bastard Fallon by giving him a job in the casino.

     On his wedding night Michael made gentle love to Gayane, not out of tenderness or affection but so that she wouldn't have an excuse to go crying to her father that her marriage was a failure. The loveless union didn't bother him because it was just a stepping stone to his true ambition: owning the Wagon Wheel.

     And then love blindsided him, hitting him square between the eyes when he wasn't expecting it. He completely forgot Gayane, lying dead on the bloody sheets, as his attention was suddenly focused on the baby in his arms.

     Francesca, for whom he would kill.

     
Had
killed.

     And Fallon intended, after Francesca's wedding on Saturday, to keep a close eye on Stephen, making sure he was keeping Francesca happy. Making dead sure...

     They had made love on satin sheets the color of peaches and sunsets, and now Francesca lay awake, wondering about her future.

     Stephen was a fabulous lover, considerate, taking his time, making sure she was satisfied. Afterwards, she always loved watching him as he slept. But tonight was different. With the wedding only a day away, Francesca continued to be conflicted.
Am I really doing this to please Daddy?

     Francesca and her father were so close, and had been for so many years, that she often didn't know where her own identity ended and his began. In retrospect, many things that she had thought were her wishes turned out to be her father's. Francesca had never had a burning desire to go to business school. But she had gone as her father wished and convinced herself it was a dream come true.

     And now the wedding.

     She loved Stephen. She wanted to be with him. But her feelings for him were so inextricably tangled with her feelings for her father that she wasn't sure of her own motives anymore. Francesca had hoped that the closer she got to the day of the wedding, the more certain she would be that she was doing the right thing. But here it was Thursday and the wedding was day after tomorrow and the only certainty that had grown in her was that she was not doing this for herself but for her father.

     "I owe it to him," she had told her shrink. "Daddy so badly wants to be accepted into the Vandenbergs' circle."

     "So you will sacrifice your life for him?" Dr. Friedman had asked.

     Her father didn't know she was seeing a therapist. He would hit the roof if he found out. But going to Father Sebastian for counseling hadn't helped. "Marriage is more than just physical love," the priest had said—a man who had never been married.

     "I took my mother from him," Francesca told Dr. Friedman. "She died giving birth to me. I owe him something in return."

     Slipping out of bed so not to wake Stephen, Francesca walked softly across the thick carpet to the dresser where her mother's photo stood. Gayane Simonian at twenty-one. Hauntingly beautiful. Dead at a young age because of the child within her. "I had to choose," Francesca's father had told her, "the doctor said there was internal bleeding that he couldn't stop unless
he took the child out. He could save Gayane, but the baby would be sacrificed. Or he could save the child and Gayane would be sacrificed."