Reborn (2 page)

She squeezed between the dark shadow of the apartment Dumpster and the rough stucco of the building, disturbing some of the feral cats that slept on or beneath it during the heat of the day. One of them yowled at her and she hissed back.

She located an old umbrella she kept hidden nearby and used it to tug down the bottom rung of the fire escape. It hit the ground with a crash that made her wince, but she began climbing quickly, hanging the umbrella on one of the rungs. It didn’t take her long to reach the landing on the third floor, where the window into the breakfast room was cracked just enough to allow her to lift it open.

She slid the window open quietly and eased her way in, careful not to make a sound, placing her feet very carefully and deliberately, keeping the curtain between her and the rest of the room, holding her shoulder bag securely so it wouldn’t swing and hit anything.

Once she was all the way in the room, she stopped and listened carefully. She didn’t hear anything, but she waited another minute, breathing slowly and carefully. When she was reasonably sure there was no one in the apartment, she eased out from behind the curtain and went to the armchair where she kept a purple JanSport backpack full of emergency supplies. In it were a couple extra sets of clothes, keys to an old car parked nearby that belonged to one of her mom’s clients, three hundred dollars in cash, and some snacks. She undid the small zipper in the front and went to a painting of Elvis that hung on her dining room wall.

Taking a small flathead screwdriver out of the bag, she dug carefully at the velvet in the corner of the painting. It peeled up reluctantly, revealing a hidden compartment with a driver’s license, a credit card, a Social Security card, and a birth certificate, all bearing the name Lillehammer Marceau. The driver’s license had a picture of Sarah on it, but it said she was eighteen years old. She’d been twelve when the photo was taken, but she’d started to develop early, and with makeup she could pass for eighteen even then.

Her mother had told her, “If you think something bad is going to happen, or I tell you to run, you come and get these papers and run away, okay? Take the old car and go. Don’t tell anybody. You understand?”

It had been Sarah’s idea to hide the emergency ID in the painting, and before she hung the picture back on the wall, she’d asked her mother, “Where will I go?”

Her mother’s beautiful lips, usually pouting and full, had compressed into a tight line, and her eyes had seemed to be looking somewhere far away. “I don’t know, sugar, but don’t you call and tell me where you are. You’re a smart girl. Find a new life.”

Sarah slipped the identification cards into the small pocket of the backpack and zipped it up carefully.

She picked up the backpack and swung it over one shoulder and went back the way she came, this time as Lillehammer Marceau. She left town that night and never returned.

CHAPTER
One

Lille sat on the bumper of the cream-colored Mercedes convertible that Paul had bought her as an engagement present and looked out at the South Florida waves. It was strange to be near the beach without a sweater. Even during the spring and summer, San Francisco Bay tended to be chilly. The wind threatened to tear off the scarf that covered her hair, but she wasn’t too worried about it. She had a dozen others in her red leather shoulder bag, and this one was hardly her favorite.

She glanced down at her naked ring finger in the early morning light and rubbed it absently. She didn’t regret breaking off her engagement; she’d known from the beginning that Paul wasn’t right for her, but she missed the sparkle of the ring on her finger.

A smile flickered over her full lips.
Maybe I am my mother’s daughter,
she thought with just a hint of self-mockery. Mom was still in Vegas, still bouncing from one man to another, always trusting her new man to take care of her, buy her pretty things. Lille didn’t understand her and probably never would. She’d gotten in touch with her mom several years after she’d run away—she’d tracked her down with the help of a private investigator—and discovered that her father had beaten her mother to within an inch of her life right after Lille had fled, and then he’d been sent back to prison. But he’d been let out on parole a year ago, around the time Lille had started dating Paul. Paul had proposed to her three months later.

Lille brushed a strand of hair away from her face and leaned back, sighing a little.
Poor Paul,
she thought, vaguely ashamed. She’d let him believe that she was sweet and charming, but she’d never let him see her darker side, the side that enjoyed, more than a little, the thrill of dominating. She’d been pretending—in one manner or another—her whole life, but she’d never looked for a man to take care of her until Paul. She’d thought it would make her feel safe—to be in a relationship with someone so normal. Instead she’d felt . . . trapped.

Before Paul she’d always dated guys who made no bones about the fact that they were self-centered and arrogant. She liked the thrill of charming them—of making them realize that they were as susceptible as everyone else to a pretty face. She liked it when they begged her to take them.

Issues of control, absolutely,
Lille silently saluted her therapist.
But I like what I like.

It hadn’t taken a therapist for Lille to realize that her need for control came from her past. For months after she’d run away to San Francisco, she’d had to protect herself any way she could. Finally she found work in a nicer part of town. She’d learned to use both her beauty and innate fashion sense to her advantage and had found a job in a boutique, working for a gay couple. They’d rented the room above the shop to her, and a few years later she’d started going to college part-time to learn fashion merchandising. She’d met her best friend, Mary, at a craft fair on campus. Mary was one of the only people Lily had ever learned to trust, largely because Mary herself was so trusting. Lille had always felt like she had to look out for her.

A month ago, Mary had shocked the hell out of her by moving to Florida. Mary’s mother, whom Mary had never met, had passed away and left her a sex store called the Fetish Box. Mary had asked Lille to help manage it, which Lille hadn’t considered at first, not really, but the thought of it, the chance to manage a store that unlocked your wildest fantasies, the idea of starting somewhere fresh, nagged at her.

And then she got the call that changed everything: someone had broken into the store and attacked Mary. Lille suddenly felt powerless and out of place, as if she wasn’t where she belonged. As if she was needed somewhere else.

In the end, it was an easy choice. She’d run away before—she could do it again, only this time she would be running toward something. So she’d done it. Two weeks after she’d given the ring back to Paul, she’d packed her things into the car and driven all the way from San Francisco to Hollywood, Florida.

The smile grew into a battle grin as the waves crashed in front of her and the wind finally won the battle with her scarf, tearing it from her hair and sending her smooth, golden locks whipping in the wind.

The sun chose that moment to break free of the low clouds on the horizon and send shafts of golden white light over the waves. She’d never seen the sun rise over the ocean, she now realized, and between the wind whipping through her hair and the clean light of the sun, she felt energized, almost reborn, just as she had felt when she first looked out at the waves in San Francisco at fourteen, when she’d decided who Lillehammer Marceau was going to be.

It was time to decide again, she thought, and stood, brushing sand off her 1950s-style suit and smoothing her hair. She marched to the driver’s side, opened the door, and slid onto the immaculate white leather seats. She fetched another scarf from her bag and used the rearview mirror to tie her hair back again and freshen her lipstick.

“Fetish Box, here I come,” she told her reflection, and blew herself a kiss.

A loud
honk woke Max Jobman up from
a sound sleep, and his German shepherd, Bambi, scrambled up beside him. He’d been so knackered when he’d finally gotten home from his pub last night that he’d passed out on the couch while petting the dog. Friday night had been busier than usual since it was so close to Halloween; he hadn’t been able to pick Bambi up from Mary’s house next door till after three in the morning. Mary was both his neighbor and business partner. When her mother, Mandy, died a few months back, she’d left her half of Jobman’s—the pub his uncle Bryan had opened in the 1970s—to Mary. It had sure shocked the shit out of him at the time. Mandy had been like a mother to him, but he’d never known she had a daughter. Max had already inherited his half of the business when his uncle died not long before, and he’d expected to get the other half when Mandy passed away, but instead, her pale, dreamy artist of a daughter had come to town. And now there were more surprises. Mary had mentioned that she was expecting her best friend, Lille, to arrive early this morning, but he hadn’t expected it to be at the ass-crack of dawn.

He certainly hadn’t been looking forward to the new arrival. Things had just settled into what felt like a normal routine after the upheaval of the past month or so, including the recent break-in at the Box, and from the way that Mary described her best friend, he figured that she wasn’t likely to be much of a calming influence on any of them.

He thought about ignoring the honk for one brief second, but the incidents of the past month compelled him to get up and check. He knew he would never get back to sleep anyway. He’d been feeling restless lately, and powerless in the face of everything that had happened at the Box. He hadn’t even been in the mood for a quick romp with Cherry last night.

He snatched up his T-shirt from the arm of the couch and pulled it over his head. Bambi stood in front of him, grinning, eager to investigate. Max stood and stretched before locating his jeans on the floor. He tugged them on, going commando as usual, and snatched up his keys from the coffee table. Barefoot, he padded across the cool tile to the front door, where he slid on the flip-flops that he kept there for easy access. Bambi trotted at his side as they made their way down the sidewalk in front of his part of the property and rounded the corner to the street that led to the beach. Mary’s house sat diagonally to his on a shared lot, with her corner facing the beach. His uncle and Mandy had lived together in the house for years before they were married. They’d bought the property together and built Max’s house later. Mary was coming out of her garage just as he reached the drive.

A beautiful blonde wearing a red scarf in her hair and oversize sunglasses pulled up to the curb in a classic 1960s Mercedes convertible. It was creamy and round and reminded Max of the white chocolate Godiva truffles that they sold at the Fetish Box. Mandy had left the Box—as they called it—to Mary as well. Max didn’t own any part of it and didn’t want to.

The blonde, Lille, he assumed, stepped out of the car wearing a suit that was downright ridiculous for the beach, but absolutely perfect for a set of curves that made his mouth fall open, just a little. She came toward them and raised her sunglasses, revealing eyes as green as the rolling hills of his homeland, Ireland.

“Hey, baby,” Lille said to Mary, and shot him a flirtatious glance under her thick lashes.

He didn’t know exactly what prompted him to say it, self-defense maybe, but his response to the blond bombshell in front of him was a surly “Do ye know what fucking time ’tis?”

Her smile widened impossibly, revealing perfect white teeth. She made a pout with her lips as if she was disappointed in him, then blew him a kiss.

“You must be Max. Love the tattoos. Are you always this grumpy in the morning?” she teased, and handed him her bag. “Carry this in for me, darling,” she ordered him airily, and turned back to Mary.

She said something to Mary; Max wasn’t sure what. Suddenly all he wanted was to rip that scarf off her head, toss her over his shoulder, and take her to his house and fuck her. He wouldn’t even undress her, just shove that ladylike little skirt up to her hips and take her from behind, her breasts in his hands as he rode the attitude out of her.

He grimaced, his grip tightening on the thick leather of her bag, shifting it to cover his front. His dick was tenting the front of his jeans, not that he gave a piss whether anyone saw his hard-on.

Next to him, Bambi whined a little and wagged her tail. She was undoubtedly hoping they were headed to the beach.

He realized the blonde had left, heading into the house, so he pinned his glare on Mary.

She was laughing at him, her large gray eyes crinkling at the corners, pale skin luminous in the morning light.

“That gel is going to be a pain in the ass,” he muttered with utmost certainty.

She made a moue of her lips and patted him on the cheek, mimicking her friend, which made his snarl all the fiercer.

She actually laughed at him. “Think of it this way . . . she’s bound to liven the place up now that we’ve all settled into our nice, quiet, boring lives.”