by Melody Mayer
Wow, that made her feel like shit.
“What?” Tom asked.
“I didn't say anything.”
“You just sighed like the weight of the world is on your shoulders.”
“How about the weight of no job, no place to live, et cetera, et cetera.”
Tom took a sip of his coffee. “You can live with me.”
As what? Bestest friends? There was no point in having that conversation, because it wasn't an option, no matter what. Her mom still didn't know that she wasn't working for Evelyn Bowers. She had to find another nanny gig. But how?
“Okay, so say I do go back to the country club and stand in the breezeway” Kiley mused. “I must already be known as the girl who has lost three nanny gigs in about as many days. No one is going to want to—”
Her cell rang. She plucked it from her faux-leather purse from Target, praying it wasn't her mother. “Hello?”
“Is this Kiley McCann?” The voice was familiar; she'd heard it before. An adult woman. But she couldn't place it.
“That's me,” Kiley told her.
“This is Tonika Johnson, City Department of Social Services,” the voice told her. “We met a few nights ago at Platinum's home.”
Tonika Johnson. Now Kiley remembered. She was the intense and businesslike social worker who had been at Platinum's mansion the night Platinum had been arrested and the children taken away by the department. Where they'd ended up when they were removed from the home, Kiley didn't know.
Why was this woman calling her now?
“Yes, of course I remember you,” Kiley told Ms. Johnson. Tom was looking at her quizzically, but Kiley turned away so that he couldn't observe her face.
“I have some good news. Platinum's children are back in the house.”
What?
“Oh my God, that's fantastic!” Kiley exclaimed. “Platinum's out of jail?”
“No, she's still in custody,” the social worker reported. “And will be, for the foreseeable future. However, the children are back at home. We were able to locate Platinum's sister in San Diego. She and her husband were willing to come to Los Angeles and serve as guardians. Whenever possible, we prefer that solution to placing the children in shelters or with strangers.”
“That's great news,” Kiley said. She was so happy for the kids. She really did care about them. Sure, they were a handful. And they were spoiled, not to mention rife with weird phobias. But basically, Serenity and Sid were regular kids who needed more structure and stability than they ever got from their mom.
“Thank you for calling to tell me,” Kiley went on. “That was very thoughtful of you.”
“Wait, Kiley. Don't hang up,” the social worker implored. “There's more. I just got off the phone with Susan, Platinum's sister. She wanted to know if you would be available to be the children's nanny again.”
It was lovely.
Lydia felt Billy curl his arms around her; his soft kisses on the back of her neck. The night before, she'd finally done the deed. Billy was gentle, considerate. There was no rush. It was all just so—
Her eyes snapped open; she took in her surroundings. She was in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar bedroom. She saw a cheap brown dresser with white polo shirts and accompanying pants strewn atop it, a faded System of a Down poster taped to the wall with edges curling, and another of Tiger Woods punching the air after making a famous putt on some even more famous green.
Holy shit.
The night came roaring back to her. The car ride up to Malibu. The heavily fortified sodas. Throwing her favorite hoodie sweatshirt out into the night. The cheap champagne and the skinny-dipping and the …
Shit, shit, shit.
She heard snoring behind her and looked over her shoulder. Luis. She didn't even know Luis. Only now she knew Luis.
“Goddamn.”
“Huh?” Luis groggily opened his eyes, focused on Lydia, and smiled. “Hey you.”
“Hey” Lydia peered at the old-fashioned windup clock on the nightstand. Eight-forty-three. Eight forty-three? She was so screwed! Anya had taken Martina and Jimmy up to Montecito for an overnight at the American home of some famous Russian tennis star, but would be back by nine-thirty so that the kids could continue their normal routine. Swimming lessons. Computer training. Russian lessons. An educational trip to the La Brea tar pits. Not to mention Martina's stadium-stairs run.
She jumped out of bed and started rooting around for her clothes, trying to ignore the blood rushing to her pounding head. The floor was a mess—she could barely see the carpet under the discarded warm-up suits, empty grease-stained pizza boxes, and CD cases. Where the hell was her stuff?
“What are you doing?” Luis asked languidly. “Come on back here.”
“I've got to go,” Lydia muttered. She found her jeans and pulled them on. “Gotta work.”
“Me too.” Luis sat back on his elbows. “You were amazing.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where were her silver T-strap heels? She didn't chuck them out of the car too, did she?
“I won't tell your boyfriend, you know. My lips are sealed.”
“You don't even know my boyfriend,” Lydia reminded him. She found the sandals under the bed, tangled up with a pair of tighty-whities. Ugh. On they went; then she dug in her pocket for the keys to the Triumph.
“I'm still good on the car?”
“Yeah,” he told her as she searched for her bra and shirt— neither of which she could find. “Why not?”
“Thanks. Hope you don't mind if I borrow one of your shirts,” she said, going to an open drawer and extracting a T-shirt advertising some brand of golf balls.
Luis nodded sleepily. “I'll call you.”
“How about if I call you,” Lydia suggested, pulling the T-shirt over her head. Ouch. The contact of cotton on scalp exacerbated what was turning into a splitting headache. “Hate to whatever and run, but… got to. Bye.”
That was the best she could manage, considering how she had to get her ass back to work. Remember how to drive a stick shift. Figure out how to get one of those morning-after pills she'd read about in Glamour, because she'd been too toasted to even think about a condom and she didn't seem to recall Luis magically pulling one out, either.
Of course, there were a lot of details she didn't recall. How could she have been so stupid? It wasn't that she had anything against sex for the sake of sex. If two people mutually wanted to bang each other's brains out hanging upside down from the rain forest canopy, more power to 'em.
The problem in this case was that one of those people had a boyfriend; a boyfriend she really, truly cared about. Which gave her one more huge thing to figure out: what to tell Billy.
* * *
Tom leaned out the driver's-side window toward the intercom at the closed security gate at Platinum's estate in Bel Air. “It's Tom Chappelle. I've got Kiley McCann with me,” he said, after being asked to identify himself.
The male voice that came back was staticky but clear in its imperious tone. “The gate will open. Please discharge your passenger and back away from gate. I will be monitoring on closed-circuit television. You have three minutes to accomplish this task. Thank you.”
“But… she has luggage!”
“Miss McCann can leave it inside the gate at the bottom of the hill; the children will come down later to retrieve it. Thank you.”
“But—”
There was no time for but. The intercom cut off, and the mechanical gate began to open.
“Weird,” Tom commented. “I always used to drive up before.”
“Most of the time, Platinum just left the gate open,” Kiley recalled. “But that was because she was so wasted she couldn't remember to close it.”
Tom pulled his truck through and took out Kiley's battered suitcase and canvas tote; all she had. “I feel ridiculous leaving you here like this.” He frowned.
“I'm fine,” Kiley assured him, though she could hear the strain in her own voice.
He gave he
r a quizzical look. “You okay?”
She felt like saying: Are you asking your girlfriend, the one you were about to have sex with last night, or are you asking your friend Kiley? The way Tom had introduced her to Veronica still stung.
Instead, she replied, “Yeah, sure,” as breezily as possible. Even if she did find the nerve, now was not the time to broach the “my friend Kiley” thing. “I'll call you later and tell you how it's going.”
“Okay.” He pulled her into his arms. Evidently her resistance was palpable, because he held her at arm's length so that he could look into her eyes. “There's something wrong. I want to know what it is.”
Maybe she was making something out of nothing. Maybe it would have sounded lame for him to have introduced her as his girlfriend. Kiley didn't know anymore. So once more she insisted that everything was fine, and fixed a smile on her face to prove it.
“Okay.” Tom started back toward the truck.
Kiley was about to let it go at that—maybe she would tell him later, maybe she wouldn't. Then she heard herself calling to him—she just couldn't stop herself.
“Tom!”
He turned.
“If all I am is ‘your friend Kiley’ that's how I'm going to treat you, too. Like my friend Tom. I don't go to bed with my friend Tom.”
He hesitated, trying to figure out what Kiley meant. Then it seemed to dawn on him. “Wait. Is this about what I said at breakfast, when I introduced you to Veronica?”
Kiley nodded.
“But… I didn't mean anything by that!”
There was a note of desperation in Tom's voice that Kiley found strangely satisfying. “You said what you said, Tom,” she pointed out.
He raised his palms skyward. “I wasn't thinking…. Obviously you're much more to me. Don't you think you might be overreacting a little?”
“Maybe.” She took a few steps backward, up the hill. “Maybe not. We'll talk later, okay?”
Without waiting for his response, she started the long walk up to Platinum's mansion, and managed to resist the temptation to turn around and see what Tom was doing until she was halfway up the hill. That was when she heard a girl's voice calling to her.
“Kiley! Kiley! You're back, you're back, you're back!”
Serenity came charging down the hill. She threw herself into Kiley's arms, snarled hair flying. Kiley found herself hugging her tight. “I missed you, sweetie,” she told her.
“I told them I wouldn't take a shower until I was with you again,” Serenity proudly reported, a telltale musty smell emanating from her body.
“Well, that's the first thing we'll do, then,” Kiley assured her. “A shower. Or a bath. You choose.”
Serenity hugged Kiley. Kiley was deeply touched. She'd never gotten that kind of affection during her previous stint as the children's nanny.
Hand in hand, they headed for the house. It occurred to Kiley that Serenity was dressed in a most unusual manner. Gone were her way-too-sexy-for-her-years, “I got it on Melrose Avenue, if you have to ask how much it is you can't afford it” outfits. Instead, Serenity had on a pair of new jeans with a crease, a blue and white Los Angeles Dodgers T-shirt, and Nikes. Interesting. Maybe the state social worker had taken away Serenity's other clothes. Still, it nearly made Kiley chuckle. Serenity could be forced into different clothes, but she couldn't be forced into the bathtub.
As they neared the house, Bruce and Sid came into view, trotting side by side down the driveway.
“The colonel expects you at the house in two minutes,” Bruce warned, without stopping to say a proper hello. “We're on a four-minute deadline to get your bags, Kiley. Don't slow us down!”
Bruce was fourteen and Sid was nine, and Kiley had never seen either of them do a lick of exercise before. They were puffing hard as they ran down the hill to retrieve Kiley's bags.
“Who's the colonel?” Kiley asked Serenity.
“Did you see Freddy vs. Jason?” she asked. “He's both.”
“So. You're Kiley McCann.”
“Yes, sir.” Within ten seconds of meeting Platinum's sister and her husband, Kiley had learned that the husband didn't respond to yes or no. It had to be “yes, sir” or “no, sir.”
“At ease, Kiley,” he barked. “Have a seat.”
They were in the living room—the same white-on-white living room where the police had discovered Platinum's drugs on the coffee table—and where Serenity had found and smoked enough of Mendocino's finest to give herself a scary allergic reaction. Kiley took a seat on one of the couches; the kids' aunt and uncle were on the other. The uncle sat ramrod straight; his wife, Susan, was next to him, legs primly folded. He was tall, with close-cropped graying hair, green eyes, and a jutting chin, and wore dark trousers and a black button-down shirt with all the buttons buttoned. On his feet were the shiniest patent leather dress shoes Kiley had ever seen.
As for his wife, Kiley wouldn't have been able to pick her out in a crowd as Platinum's sister for all the salt in the Pacific. There was a passing resemblance in the high cheekbones and blue eyes, but this woman's blond hair had been set in a chin-length flip and then sprayed into submission. Where Platinum's garb was seriously rock and roll, Susan dressed as if her wardrobe had come from Dowdy Department Store. Her skirt was red and green tartan plaid and reached her calves; her blouse was crisp white cotton; and a cameo brooch glinted at her throat. Most impressively—or oddly, depending on one's point of view—she wore knee socks. Red knee socks. With squeaky-clean brown loafers.
All Kiley could think was: This woman makes my mom seem fashionable. And: Susan might be the children's blood relative, but the colonel wears the pants in the family, literally and figuratively.
That the kids had called their uncle the colonel was no accident. Their uncle, Richard M. Jones, was indeed a colonel. Or had been, in the United States Marine Corps, before he'd retired two years earlier. That he and Susan lived in San Diego was no accident, either. After a number of combat deployments that took them around the world, Colonel Jones finished out his Marine Corps career as one of the commanders at Camp Pendleton, just north of San Diego. His job was to turn raw recruits into formidable soldiers—he was the guy who taught drill instructors that it was better to be feared than loved.
“May I tell you what I think, Miss McCann?” the colonel boomed. Kiley suspected she was going to hear his opinion whether she wanted to or not. “I didn't want to come on this mission. I don't much care for my sister-in-law. Platinum has no values. No ethics. No pride. Are you following me so far?”
“Yes,” Kiley said, nodding hastily. “Um, sir.”
“But when that call came from Social Services—” Susan began.
“We knew it was our duty to come here,” the colonel concluded. “I'm glad we did. It's a good thing our own children are in college and the military, and that I'm retired. It made me available, which is just what these three children need. Some structure, discipline, and tough love. They're still young; I suspect that there is still time to shape them up. I'm sure you agree, Miss McCann?”
What could she possibly say?
“Yes, sir.”
“Excellent,” he boomed. “Now, McCann, I have one question for you.”
“Sir?” Kiley asked, feeling as if she was in a really bad war movie.
“Are you with me, or are you against me?”
“Umm …” Kiley hedged. There wasn't much choice. She needed the job, and it certainly was true that Platinum's kids needed structure for a change. Whether this drill colonel was the one to provide it remained to be seen.
“I'm with you, sir.”
“Why don't you tell her what her pay will be, dear?” Susan asked.
“Same as with Platinum, not a penny more or less,” he barked. “I'd call that fair, McCann. You?”
Jeez.
“Yes, sir,” she replied.
“Excellent. Now, McCann, one more thing. We can't have two generals here. I suspect that the children are going to be looking to yo
u for rescue, divide and conquer, all that.” The colonel was on a roll. “So, Miss McCann, these are my terms: it's my way or the highway. Do we understand each other?”
“Yes, sir,” Kiley said again. Clearly this was not a give-and-take kind of conversation.
He offered her a tight smile. “Now, about the uniform.”
The colonel looked Kiley up and down, and Kiley suddenly got very self-conscious about her simple jeans and battered T-shirt combination.
“There will be a dress code for you when you are on duty. You will wear clean trousers, black, no denim, a shirt with a collar. White or pastel will be fine. I don't want the children having to wear anything that we would not require of ourselves. Do I need to have Susan take you to the PX for clothes?”
“Dear,” Susan began. “There is no PX here. We're in Los Angeles.”
“Of course, old habit,” the colonel boomed. “The stores. The … mall.” He said these words as if they were distasteful in his mouth.
“I don't own black trousers or white or pastel shirts with collars, sir,” Kiley said.
He nodded and turned to his wife. “Understood. Take Kiley shopping. Let's give her a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar clothing allowance. That should be sufficient. You understand the dress code, Kiley?”
“I do, sir.”
The colonel stood up and stuck out his hand. Kiley shook it. “Well then, welcome aboard.”
“It's good to be back, sir,” Kiley acknowledged, grinning a little at how official she sounded.
“Please go upstairs and tell the junior division to assemble down here in two minutes. For each minute they are late, they can expect two additional minutes of silence after dinner at the table. Dinner will be at eighteen hundred hours.”
Whatever the hell that was.
“Yes, sir. I'll be right back.”
Kiley's head was pounding as she bounded up the stairs. This guy really thought he was going to get all Platinum's kids at the dinner table at the same time? Kiley could scarcely remember a meal where the entire family had been together at the table. Usually, each kid drifted down, got something from Mrs. Cleveland, the chef, and then brought it back upstairs to their room to eat.