Weird Girl (29 page)

36

The next day, she was skittish. Any time Marco came near
her, she sidled away so that he couldn’t rob her again. Unfortunately, that
also made it impossible for her to steal from him. She spent most of the day
trying to decide if it wouldn’t be better to just go for some artwork. In the
end, she decided that defeated the purpose of the challenge, so she vowed to be
extra vigilant at dinner while she strategized.

Her clothes were washed and folded every day, so she never
had to worry about having something to wear. But, for some reason, she found
herself wishing that she had something else, something a little nicer. Other
than the Dior dress, she had been surviving in jeans and gym shorts for weeks.

She jogged up the stairs to her room to take a shower before
dinner. Locking the bedroom door behind her, more to keep Larry safe than to
keep Marco out, she kicked off her sneakers and unbuttoned her jeans as she
walked to the dresser to consider her wardrobe options. A flash of color in the
corner of her vision caused her to do a double take when she realized that
Jackson was lying on her bed, propped up against the headboard with his hands
behind his head.

“Jesus!” she gasped. “How long have you been up here?”

He grinned, looking thoroughly cheerful. “Half an hour?”

She tried to look stern. “You know, you do have your own
room, with your very own bed. You don’t have to use mine all the time.”

He chuckled softly. “I guess some habits are hard to break,”
he said, his voice low.

“Well, you could have said something,” she snapped. “I was
getting undressed!”

Jackson grinned and clicked his peppermint against his
teeth. “There are worse ways to spend an afternoon.”

Cleo’s heart sped up, and she silently cursed herself.
“You’re such a jackass,” she said, rolling her eyes to cover her discomfiture.
She turned back to the dresser and yanked open the top drawer. Not finding what
she was after, she cursed and moved on to a lower drawer.

“Looking for something?” he asked, thoroughly enjoying the
view of her ass when she bent over to dig through the clothes.

Without bothering to turn around, she said, “Not all of us came
here with a lot of options, Jackson. I’m sick of wearing the same shit over and
over again.” Instead of a response, all she heard was a rustling of fabric and
a slight creak as he moved to the edge of her bed and stood up. When she
glanced back, he had his hands in his pockets and a twinkle in his eye. Cleo
slammed the drawer closed and opened the top one again, grabbing clean
underwear and a bra. “How did you get it all into one suitcase?” she muttered,
scowling at his outfit.

Jackson wore black pants, a maroon dress shirt, and
pinstriped suspenders. His hat was black with a mottled black and white
feather. He rocked back on his heels and tried to maintain his cool—it was hard
not to look at the bits of blue lace dangling from Cleo’s hand. “I think I
might have something,” he said, strolling past her to the secret door that
connected their rooms.

With a disgusted sound, Cleo called after him, “I’m not
wearing one of your suits, Jackson.” When he didn’t respond, she went into the
bathroom, quickly stripped, and got into the shower.

One minute later, Jackson re-entered her room via the
connecting panel with a matte black garment bag draped over his shoulder.
Finding the room empty, he called her name. Then he heard water. She was in the
shower, and she had left the bathroom door open. He thought about just leaving
the bag on her bed, but some inner devil prompted him to walk to the bathroom
doorway. “Cleo,” he called when he was a few steps away, just to give her
advance warning. After all, Jackson was a gentleman.

“What?” she called back through the thickening clouds of
steam.

He stopped in the doorway. “I’ve brought something for you
to wear. I’m gonna hang it on the door.” The shower enclosure was completely
opaque, but the combination of Cleo and water brought back memories of that
morning at the pool. Jackson felt like he was playing with fire just being
there. Meanwhile, on the other side of the shower wall, so did Cleo.

“It had better fit me,” she cautioned, primarily to keep the
conversation going so that he wouldn’t walk away yet. This felt like dangerous
territory, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about it.

Jackson, however, lived his life with a strict balance of
caution and risk, and this moment, he felt, was one that called for caution. He
may have achieved a degree of acceptance where Cleo was concerned, but that didn’t
mean he was ready for the gambling part yet. After hooking the garment bag over
the top edge of the door, Jackson took a deep breath, inhaling the scents of
Cleo, and walked away.

When she was finished bathing, Cleo hesitated to turn off
the water. “Jackson?” she called out. No response. “Jackson, you’d better not
be out there,” she warned. When she didn’t hear anything, she turned off the
water, counted to ten, and then opened the shower door. Quickly drying off and
putting on her underwear, she tiptoed across the bathroom floor, peeked out
into her bedroom to be certain that she was alone, and unzipped the garment
bag.

It was a dress, a deep eggplant jersey with a surplice wrap
bodice. She twisted the hanger left and right, watching the way the flared
skirt swished. It felt like heaven when she put it on, super soft and flowy
with a V neckline that showed just the right amount of cleavage. She padded in
bare feet into the bedroom, where a shoe box rested on the end of her bed.
Lifting the lid, she found a pair of gold sandals with four inch heels and
skinny straps across the toe and ankle. Beside the shoe box there was a black
velvet jewelry box that held a delicate gold lariat necklace with a little gold
skull and dagger hanging from it. It went perfectly with the dress, and Cleo
tried to hate him for it. “Asshole,” she mumbled when she looked at herself in
the full length mirror.

***

He was already outside with Marco when Cleo went down for
dinner. Marco, as always, sat at the head of the table. Normally, Cleo sat to
his left and Jackson to his right. But tonight, when Cleo saw the gleam in
Marco’s eyes, she surprised everyone by taking the seat on Jackson’s right,
putting herself too close to one adversary in order to be far enough away from
the other one.

“How’s everything fit, Cleopatra?” said Jackson softly when
she pulled her chair closer to the table. Diego began serving drinks and trying
not to show fear anytime he had to stand near Cleo.

“My name’s not fucking Cleopatra,” she whispered back.
Shooting a brilliant smile at Diego that made the man go pale, she muttered,
“And why exactly do you keep women’s clothing in your room?”

Jackson laughed. “Just a little something I picked up this
morning when I was…running a few errands.”

Diego and another man served the meal, and everyone tried
their best to keep the conversation light and humorous. Overall, it was a
pleasant experience, and when Marco offered Jackson a cigar once the plates
were cleared, Cleo said, “Hey, where’s mine?” Both men swiveled their heads to
stare at her.

Marco finally gestured to a servant, who rushed into the
house and returned with a rosewood humidor and monogrammed cutter. He allowed
her to select a cigar from the box, snipped the tip, and then produced a
lighter. Cleo watched carefully as first Marco, and then Jackson, held their
cigars to the flame and then puffed. When her turn came, she confidently leaned
forward, unknowingly enhancing her cleavage, held her cigar for the man to
light it…and immediately had a convulsive coughing fit. Jackson reached out and
began rubbing her back, which did nothing to stop the coughing (but was
comforting, nonetheless). When she had finally reclaimed her lungs, Cleo wiped
the tears from her face and waved away the ashtray that Marco held out to her.
With Jackson still gently rubbing her back with his right hand, she took
another experimental puff. This one was better.

They smoked their cigars and drank brandy as night descended
on the jungle. At some point, a servant lit torches at the perimeter of the
terrace, and the light of the flames danced on their glasses while they talked.
At no point did Jackson stop rubbing Cleo’s back.

When they were ready to go to bed, Cleo maintained her
distance from Marco. He knew exactly why, and laughed at her. “But without
risk, my dear, you will never have what you desire most.” Cleo flipped him the
bird and asked Jackson to walk her upstairs, figuring that as long as Jackson
was beside her, Marco couldn’t be.

At her door, he took two steps back and put his hands in his
pockets. “Goodnight,” he said.

Cleo was surprised. “Aren’t you going to come in and talk
for a while?” she asked, missing the warmth of his hand on her back.

He shook his head. “Not tonight. I’m going on to bed.” And
then he turned and entered his own room, gently closing the door. Cleo went to
change for bed, half expecting him to be coming through the connecting panel at
any moment. She fell asleep with the lights on, waiting for him. He didn’t
come.

37

On Christmas, the final day of the game, Cleo kept to her
room all day. Jackson finally convinced her to go for a walk outside. He was
trying to figure out what was causing her to act so strangely. They wandered in
amicable silence for a while. Finally, he reached out and pinched a purple
orchid off of its stem. “What did you call these again?” he asked.

“
Cattleya trianaei
,” she replied, taking it from him
and tucking it into her hair. “They’re also called Christmas orchids, because
they bloom in winter.”

They walked for a while longer before he spoke again. “Cleo,
what do you want?” he asked.

That confused her. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“Whatever you need it to mean,” he said. “What do you want
for lunch today? What do you want to do tomorrow? What do you want out of
life?” He sat down on a bench and pulled her down beside him. “Don’t you have
goals? Plans? Dreams?”

She picked another orchid and started rubbing the petals
between her fingers. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never spent much time
planning ahead. I mean, when I have a plan, I’m good at planning—you know, like
if I’m going to break into someone’s basement to steal a file.” She smiled at
him and let a petal fall to the ground. “But for the most part, I wing it. What
do I want for lunch today? I’ll pick whatever looks good. What do I want to do
tomorrow? Ask me tomorrow. What do I want out of life? To not be bored.” She
shrugged. “I’m sorry I don’t have a better answer for you.”

Claiming that she needed extra time to get ready for
Christmas dinner, Cleo returned to her room. She once again put on the navy
dress and python heels. She spent extra time on her hair and makeup, put a
fresh coat of polish on her nails, and spritzed perfume in her cleavage.
However, she wore no jewelry, no lock picks, no weapons—there was nothing
whatsoever that Marco could remove from her except for her dress, and she was
fairly certain that she would notice that. As she was putting on red lipstick, Jackson knocked politely to ask if he could escort her downstairs.

The staff had put fresh flower arrangements everywhere,
along with dozens of white candles flickering with a soft glow. Marco was
dressed entirely in white. Jackson wore black on black. As soon as they were
seated, Diego came rushing out to babble about some sort of crisis with the
food. Marco went in to speak to the cooks, leaving Cleo and Jackson alone at
the table. She was very quiet, busily planning what she needed to do. Jackson nudged her with his elbow and held out his hand. “Peppermint for your thoughts?” he
whispered with a slight smile.

She grinned and took the candy, putting it in her mouth and
clicking it against the backs of her front teeth as she cocked her head and
looked at him. “I’m glad you found me again,” she whispered before looking
away. Marco rejoined them a few seconds later, and the staff began serving the
food.

Again, she waited for dessert and cocktails time. Jackson walked to the edge of the terrace to make a phone call.  After a fortifying long
island ice tea, expertly mixed by Diego, Cleo went in for the kill.

Marco was quietly discussing something with one of the
servers when Cleo approached. Using her sexiest smile, which she had practiced
in front of the bathroom mirror earlier, Cleo looked Marco dead in the eyes and
said, “I think it’s time to up the ante.”

Looking intrigued, Marco dismissed the server and gave Cleo
his undivided attention. “Continue,” he said, taking a sip of whiskey.

“You told me once before that my greatest asset was my
“womanliness”,” she said in a low voice. “I also happen to be very direct
sometimes, so I figured it was time to let you in on a secret: I’m going to win
this game tonight. And I’m going to do it with…certain skills that you haven’t
seen. Yet.” She reached for his whiskey and took a sip, licking her lips slowly
as she handed it back to him, the mark of her red lipstick vivid on the rim of
the glass. “Do you understand what I’m telling you?” she asked.

Chucking softly, Marco reached out and tucked the end of his
index finger under the edge of her neckline, running it down to the V and back
up the other side. “I would be delighted for you to show me your skills,” he
said. An instant later, Jackson’s fist shattered his nose and he fell like a
tree, blood spurting all over his snowy white suit.

Dropping to her knees, Cleo yelled, “Somebody get a towel!”
as she unbuttoned the top two buttons of Marco’s dress shirt. An instant later,
she was backing away to make room for Diego. Not even looking at Jackson, she grabbed a cocktail at random off of the table and ran down the stone path, her
navy dress instantly blending with the darkness. She kicked off her shoes and
moved silently through the garden until she found a bench as far as possible
from the chaos. Heart pounding, she chugged the cocktail, nearly choking on a
piece of fruit. Then, she unclenched her hand and tried to see the gold
necklace in the moonlight. It was a mid-sized chain, clearly high quality, a
little longer than men usually wore. The surprising thing about it was the pair
of wedding rings that hung from the bottom.

Huh.
It was about as deep as she could get at the
moment. The long island ice tea, combined with a shot of whiskey and whatever
it was that she had just inhaled, now infused her with a warm glow that crept
down to her toes. She wiggled them in the soft grass and thought about how nice
Jackson had looked tonight. Sighing, she lay back on the bench, her feet
hanging off the end, and looked up at the sky. This sky wasn’t nearly as pretty
as the other sky, the one that she saw from the pool, she decided. So, she
rolled off of the bench and stumbled into the jungle.

***

The water felt so good. So did the weight of Marco’s
necklace resting on her chest, the two rings nestled just south of her
cleavage. She gave a little push against the side of the pool and allowed
herself to drift. It was so comfortable that she closed her eyes, dangerously
close to falling asleep. The tiny bit of current in the water rotated her
slightly, and because some primitive part of her brain was still awake enough
to be worried about drowning in the deep end, she opened her eyes to get her
bearings. And screamed and nearly drowned anyway when she saw a man standing at
the edge of the pool, watching her.

She stood up in the water and immediately crouched back down
in an attempt to hide her nakedness (which was unnecessary, since the view
while she floated was much more comprehensive, and that ship had sailed several
minutes ago). “Hello, Cleopatra,” said Jackson as he walked around the edge of
the pool.

There was something she was supposed to say to that, she
knew, but she couldn’t for the life of her think of what it was. “Go away,” she
said, nodding at herself in the moonlight.
Yep, that was a good one, Cleo.

“You’re drunk,” he said. “Don’t you know not to go swimming
when you’re drunk?”

“I most certainly am
not
swimming,” she said
indignantly. “I don’t know how to swim. You, sir, have interrupted a perfectly
peaceful float.”
So there.

“You really don’t know how to swim?” he asked as he took
another lap around the edge of the pool.

“Nope,” she said proudly.

He crouched down near the rim. “Don’t you know it’s a
really
bad idea to go swimming if you’re drunk
and
you don’t know how to swim?”
he asked.

“Don’t you know it’s a bad idea to tell me it’s a bad idea,
because that’s a bad idea?” she mumbled.

Suddenly, he stood and walked over to the bench, taking off
his suit jacket and neatly draping it over the stone. He pulled his necktie off
and sat down to remove his shoes. Then, he approached the stone steps.

This alarmed her. “What are you doing?” she asked nervously.

He stepped down into the water. “I’m coming in for a chat,”
he said conversationally.

She backed up a step. “No, you can’t do that. Your clothes
will get wet.”

Taking another step down, he nodded. “Yep. Water tends to do
that.”

Cleo moved farther back. “But you can’t come in here. It’s
my pool and I told you to go away.”

Jackson stepped down once more. The water now lapped at his
belt buckle. “But you’re drunk. Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s dangerous to
swim without a lifeguard?” He started slowly coming toward her in the water.

She scrambled backward until she had to stand on tiptoe to
keep her chin above the surface. “What?”

He advanced toward her until she had her back pressed
against the tile wall. “I’ve come to save you. You could drown,” he said.

“Bbbut I won’t drown,” she stuttered. “So you can feel free
to leave now.”

Jackson took one more step to close the distance between
them. His black dress shirt was now plastered to his chest, and she could feel
the buttons brush against her skin each time he breathed. “How about you tell
me what the hell just happened at dinner, and include somewhere in there where
the fuck you got this.” He ran a finger up her abdomen to lift the rings and
gold chain up out of the water.

Feeling slightly breathless, she told him about Marco’s
wager. She felt him get tense when she got to the part about the instant win
option, but he didn’t say anything. Finally, she described what had happened
that evening, where her success, as it turned out, had depended entirely on Jackson.

“So, I pretended that I was going to take him up on it,” she
said. “I flirted and dropped hints, hoping that he would cross the line in
front of you, and hoping even more that I could count on you to react a certain
way. Which you did. Really well. Wow, that was a lot of blood. Anyway, I
grabbed the chain when I unbuttoned his shirt, and then I made a swift exit. So
I win, I guess.”

The shadows made his face inscrutable. “So, why didn’t you
just sleep with him?” he asked. “You know you could have, and you would have
won the first day.”

For some reason, this really upset her. “Why would you say
that to me? Why would you even believe that I would sleep with him just to win
a game?”

“Well, maybe because that’s what got you into trouble with
the therapist,” he said. “If you would have done it then, why not now?”

Embarrassed, she looked down at the scant inch of water
between their chests. “Ummm…I’m not really sure. I mean, I’ve lately been kind
of thinking….Anyway, it’s not really your business—”

He cut her off with a kiss, slow but thorough. When he
pulled back slightly to change angles, she put her arms around him and used her
buoyancy in the water to rise up to meet him. With him fully clothed, and her
naked, they made out like teenagers, pressed up against the wall of the pool.
Finally, he pulled back so that they could breathe. “Do all lifeguards do
that?” she gasped. “Because if they do, I definitely want swimming lessons.”

Jackson kissed her again, running his hand slowly down her
vertebrae. When it reached her lower back, he suddenly let go of her like she
was on fire. She wasn’t expecting this, and gravity naturally did its thing,
causing her to slip down under the water. He quickly yanked her back above the
surface, where she coughed and hacked and spat water all over his face. “You
asshole!” she croaked, thumping him hard on the chest with her fist. “Why did
you do that?”

Instead of answering, he scooped her up in his arms and
carried her out of the pool, gently depositing her on the bench. “I think it’s
time you went to bed,” he said, draping his suit jacket over her shoulders and
picking up their shoes and her dress. Looping his necktie over one arm, he
pulled her to a standing position and helped her navigate back to her room,
where he pushed her onto the bed, threw a blanket over her, and left her alone.
The ass.