“They’re comfortable.”
“They’re like a flashing warning signal to normal men.”
“You’re one to talk, Lilly.”
Poppy’s words bring a smile to my face. “I’ve got to get home. I have ten designs due by next week, or I can kiss my investor goodbye.”
“He’s got bad energy and a girlfriend! Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“How did I know you were going to say that?” I say, knowing full well that the church calls Poppy’s gift discernment, and she most certainly has it. Sometimes though, I’m not in the mood, and I want to live in my fantasy world where a man with an English accent takes a distinct interest in moi. “Besides, it was probably Caitlyn interrupting his energy message.”
Poppy drives me home and pulls up to the red curb. “Spa weekend. Don’t forget the wedding drawings. Our only hope is getting Morgan out of San Francisco and away from her father. That man will have her believing her troubles can be solved with the right diamond pendant.”
“We can’t jump to conclusions.” But our best friend has gone completely silent. What’s left to do?
Poppy waves goodbye, and her gauzy skirt blows in the cool San Francisco summer night. She’s a vision of Haight-Ashbury.
As concerned as I am for Morgan, I’m still floating from the brief moment with Stuart Surrey, British hottie and, sigh, someone else’s boyfriend. I can’t even blame my hair this time. It’s as straight as a toothpick.
chapter 14
Poppy and I have wasted the entire evening, and really, we’re no better off than we were this morning. As private detectives, we’re pathetic. Charlie’s Angels’ jobs are, for the moment, safe. But the question is, is Morgan safe?
I always knew she’d be the first of us to get married. I never doubted it. I mean, do the math. She has dates. Poppy and I don’t. Just by sheer probability, she’s ahead of us. But somehow, I pictured her married to a suave capitalist her father knew, not an elderly foreigner, most likely in need of a green card.
As I enter my apartment hall, I’ll admit, my mind is not completely thinking of Morgan and her secrets. My mind is on Stuart Surrey, and I feel a smile stretch across my face. I close my eyes and I picture those deep brown eyes and their ravenous intensity. Of course, I know he belongs to another. Technically. But somehow Caitlyn doesn’t exude warmth, and she called him her boyfriend. It wasn’t the other way around. I can’t help but think he’s with the wrong woman, and I must rescue him. However, I’m sure many a mortal sin started with that thought, and I try to repent to Jesus without allowing my mind to wander back to those dark eyes. But those eyes. It was as though they were only for me.
The light bulb in my apartment hallway is out, giving the building an even more eerie feel. It’s not enough we have to live in Bernal Heights, but we do it without windows and now in the dark of night. It feels like a truly creepy horror film, and like the dumb heroine of the film, I’m walking straight into it. Just waiting for the knife to plunge from a psychopath—who will be heralded as a misunderstood child when the court case comes to fruition—into my heart. High-profile attorney Mark Gerragos will be there to attack my character and use my grandmother to say I never made anything of myself.
“Lilly?”
I scream.
“Hey, it’s just me, Nate.”
“Nate, what are you doing creeping around here on my floor?” I try to catch my breath.
“I was trying to get the light bulb changed before you or Kim got home. I didn’t want the two of you coming home into the dark. I came down to get my espresso machine, because I was craving a good cup, and you’re holding it hostage.”
“This building has no maintenance. It’s really disgusting,” I say, rather than the obvious, You scared the life out of me!
“Where ya been?” Nate asks, scraping the ladder down the hallway like Freddy Krueger’s nails on the chalkboard.
“Morgan’s church. She wasn’t there, but it was interesting just the same. I have a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
Bad choice of words here in the dark.
“If a guy has a girlfriend, is he completely off-limits? And how do you know he’s her boyfriend just because she called him that?”
“Was he there when she called him her boyfriend?”
I cross my arms. “Yes.”
“You have your answer then. He’s her boyfriend. Otherwise he would have taken you aside and corrected the error.”
Like I’m giving up this easily. “Okay, another question. Is it acceptable to see where things go? If maybe they break up?”
“If maybe they break up?”
“Just never mind!”
“I’m just saying.”
“Maybe I didn’t want to hear the truth. Maybe I wanted you to lie to me and tell me that true love rules over all. Did you ever think of that, Nate?” Did it ever occur to you I’d ask a Christian guy if I wanted the truth? “Maybe I needed for romance to reign for one moment in time? I’m so sick of everyone making reality plain enough for me. Don’t you all think I live in reality as it is? Dating men who hate women and look like Michael Moore? What more reality is it you think I need?”
Nate is quiet for a minute. “I don’t think you need any more reality. I’m in the same boat, right?”
“At least we have each other to be pathetic with. What happened to your newfound George Clooney scenario?”
“I asked a girl out today.”
“You did?”
“But she said no. She said her parents were in town.”
“Maybe they are.”
“Maybe they aren’t. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I did it; that’s all that matters. Getting over that first hurdle, that’s the big problem. That’s why I set you up with Michael Sloan. I was doing you a favor, preparing the way. I think I need to leave my apartment more. George Clooney doesn’t stay holed up in his place.”
“I’m proud of you, Nate.”
He slides the ladder under the light fixture. “Will you hold this for me?”
“Yeah. One bulb. How does one expect a single bulb to light an entire hallway? I bet Morgan never has to deal with this.”
“She just has to deal with that psycho father of hers. Every time I see her in the newspaper, there’s her dad lurking somewhere behind. He’s her Hitchcock. Everyone has their cross to bear, Lilly.” He screws in the light bulb, and the hallway is once again dingily illuminated. “You should really get a heavy flashlight in case this happens again. It can also be a good weapon if you ever need it.”
“You’re not making me feel any better.”
“I’m not trying to. You live in San Francisco.”
“Where’s Kim?”
“I don’t know. She was acting strange when I called for my espresso pot. She said she needed a few minutes. I figured she was late for a date or something. By the time I got down here, she was gone.”
“It’s not like this couple is engaged or anything,” I say, going back to the subject of Stuart Surrey.
“Still wrong. You’re better than that.”
“If you could have seen the way he looked at me, Nate,” I sigh dreamily.
“Are you looking for the moral answer, the truth, or neither?”
If I were looking for the moral answer, I wouldn’t be asking Nate.
“If I’d been born into a rich family like Morgan, I’d have a shot at men like Stuart Surrey with his British accent and wavy hair. Oh, Nate, you should have seen his hair!”
“Men of Morgan’s society want a trophy wife. She’s going to have to be careful she doesn’t end up as one.” Nate’s all business with me. We used to sort of flirt, but ever since I looked straight into his eyes, he’s avoided me like public transit.
Nate stacks the ladder up against the wall. “Can I get my espresso maker now?”
“Only if you make it down here so I can have one too,” I say, as I unlock the latch. “How come I can’t ever have what I want, Nate? Why did
God give me the ability to tell good clothes from bad clothes but not the money to buy them? How fair is that? He might as well have made me blind.”
“Why did He allow Paul to go to jail? Or get shipwrecked? Or beaten?”
“You’re so not helping.” But I have to say, it always amazes me how much Nate knows about the Bible and yet denies it as the guidebook for his life.
“Hey, I went to Sunday school. There’s a reason I don’t go anymore.”
I look up into Nate’s hazel eyes, and my heart breaks. Have you ever known anyone who seemed so completely upstanding? So wonderfully polite, and there for you no matter what? And yet they repelled God like Off does mosquitos? That’s my Nate.
“I’m certain I’m not just supposed to forget Stuart,” I say, wondering if my mentioning another man has any effect on him whatsoever.
“Like you were certain you were getting the job at work? Or that Robert would stick around even though you didn’t care one iota about him?”
“Why do I let you into my house?” I flick on the light. The house is a shambles. My stuff is thrown everywhere. The table is knocked over. “Kim? Kim?” I shout.
Nate pulls me back. “Wait here.”
He goes into the room and looks around. I can hear him moving things around and swearing under his breath. When he comes back, his face is completely ashen. “She’s gone.” He holds up a note.
“Who’s gone? Kim? I told you she probably had a date.”
“Her stuff is gone, Lilly. Her closet is cleaned out.”
Frantically, I run to the table. My heart pounds, and I can actually feel it in my throat. “The check. Nate, help me find the check!” I tear through my purse to see if I took it with me.
“I don’t think it’s here.” He hands me the note, which reads simply, “I’m sorry. I had to get out of here. I’ll find a way to pay you back.”
“She wouldn’t have done this. She wouldn’t have.” But there’s a note in my hand, indicating she did.
Nate looks away. “She borrowed money from me a while back. A couple thousand. I knew I might never see it again, but I wanted her to know I trusted her, and that I believed in her.”
“Just today you told me that I needed to give her time, that she wasn’t like me.” Which I guess is true, because I wouldn’t steal $20,000.
“And she’s not, but I never thought—”
I slide down onto my futon, still unable to believe Kim could do this. “How am I going to explain this to Sara?”
“You’re just going to have to call her and put a stop-payment on the check.”
“But what if Kim just went to the bank for me? What if she’s just doing me a favor, and I call the police?”
“She didn’t clean out her closet to go to the bank, Lilly. What does this note mean if she went to the bank for you?”
I drop my face in my hands. “I can’t believe I would be so stupid as to leave the check here. To not deposit it. I keep acting like everything bad happens to me, but sometimes I just don’t think. Sara even warned me, and I was too proud to listen. No,” I shake my head. “I still don’t believe Kim would do this. There has to be an explanation.”
Nate sits beside me and puts his arm around me. “I was taken in too.”
“She just didn’t do this, Nate. I can’t believe she would do this to me.”
“I think she probably did do this,” Nate says, scanning the loft. “At least she didn’t take the computers,” Nate says, a slight smile on his lips, and I pause to look at him.
“Leave it to you to look for the silver lining in every cloud.” It’s then that I notice Nate’s hazel eyes haven’t left my own. I feel myself being pulled toward him, and before I’m fully aware, my lips are on his. He kisses me, deeply and tenderly. And I must say I’m returning the gesture with entirely too much enthusiasm.
“Nate!” I pull away. But in my heart, I’m thinking, George Clooney has nothing on you, babe!
He moves toward the door quickly, as though he was someone else two seconds ago. “I’m sorry.”
“About?”
“Listen, I got you something else today. It was supposed to be a surprise for the official launch of the business.”
“What business?”
“Wait here.” Nate leaves the apartment, and my heart is still pounding like the rumble of an approaching earthquake. He has a million things to offer a woman: he’s sexy, he’s generous to a fault, and he works all night on the phone with China but has most of his days available. He’s like a walking Ken doll, and my heart is literally aflutter. He’s not a believer. Yeah, I hear that voice, but I’m not exactly open to it at the moment. I’m tired of being alone, God. Do You hear me?
Nate comes back with another huge box, not yet acknowledging that he kissed me like the end of a Cary Grant movie. “Nate, what did you do?”
“It’s a sewing machine,” he says, setting the huge box on my now tilting table. “It transfers your drawings from the computer and helps you sew them faster.”
I fall into his arms, and I feel his warmth surround me. We don’t speak for a long time, and I’m afraid to look up. Afraid we’ll fall into another kiss and be unable to stop this from exploding. Yet I don’t pull away either. I just rest in his arms for a long time, the missing money being so far away it’s like a disappearing space shuttle in the morning sky. Only a dot of despair remains.
“I’ll help you set it up tomorrow.” Nate pulls away.
I just look at him. My eyes say, Are we going to talk about this?
I can see by the stunned deer look that Nate isn’t quite sure what’s just happened either.
“Thank you for the sewing machine,” I say like a complete idiot who’s talking to her business professor. But how does one say, “Thank you for kissing me like Cary Grant in Notorious”? Nate knows what that kiss means to me. That I think it’s the best screen kiss in history, one where you felt the film might melt on the projector. How do I say, “Thank you for helping me remember that I’m not completely repulsive to the male species”?
“Call Sara now.” With that, Nate slams the door and I’m left alone. I look at the table tossed aside in this mess. I can’t believe after two years of working with Kim, of cleaning up her dishes, she would do this. It seems utterly impossible.
Nate Goddard kissed me.
chapter 15
I pick up the phone, then put it back down. I lost $20,000 in less than twenty-four hours. If this doesn’t prove to my Nana that I am woefully bad with finance, I’m just not sure what will. Sadly, it also proves to Sara that her fears were correct. She even warned me about Kim. How could I be so stupid as to leave the check? It’s like leaving a dimebag in front of an addict.
I look around my loft, at the tornado of fabrics thrown around, the table tipped. Kim had to have help in her crime. Even she couldn’t make this big of a mess, and I’m just glad I really didn’t have anything to take. Why would she even leave a mess? She knew where the check was. I can’t for the life of me imagine why she left the computer. Maybe as a peace offering. I notice that Nate’s espresso machine is gone. He never even said a thing about it. But it’s gone, along with the contents of Kim’s closet and my money.
I pick up the phone and dial Sara’s number. I hear the line ring and Sara’s clipped voice, “Hello.”
“Hello!” she says more urgently.
“Sara?”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Lilly, Sara. I have bad news.”
“It had better not involve my money. Why are you calling so late? Lina is sleeping, and I don’t appreciate you taking such liberties with my private line.”
Oh Lord, where will I ever get this kind of money to pay her back?
“I’m afraid it does involve your money.” My voice is shaking.
“It’s not my money anymore. Read the fine print, Lilly. You owe me $20,000, plus interest at the end of the year. No matter what. Is that all?”
“I realize that. I will pay yo
u, but I need for you to try and put a stop-payment on the check. I’m begging you.”
“Lilly, where is the check?”
I hate with all that is in my being to say this. “I think Kim may have taken it, though I’m not certain about that and I don’t want to falsely accuse her. I left it here in my loft, so—”
“I’ll call my accountant, but I make no promises. Kim is probably in Mexico right now with what’s left of your company. Didn’t I warn you, Lilly?”
“You did,” I say like a repentant child.
“Do you think I speak to hear myself babble? Did it ever occur to you that I’ve been running a successful business for years and that I might know more than you? Perhaps I’ve seen things in Kim.”
“I’m sorry, Sara. You’re right. You obviously know much more than me.”
“Which is why I wanted you in finance.”
I can’t help it. I laugh here. “I lost $20,000 in a day. Why on earth would you want me in finance?”
“Because you’re honest to a fault, and it’s so hard to find an employee to trust with the books. I couldn’t trust my own husband, so when I told you to watch out for Kim, didn’t you think I might have been speaking from experience?”
“It never even crossed my mind. I’ve lived with her for two years. I thought we were business partners.”
“See, honest to a fault. Innocents never recognize how harsh the world really is. I’m doing you a favor, Lilly. Take off those rose-colored glasses, or you’ll end up the loser every time. Successful people see the world as it really is.”
Another speech on reality.
I hope I never see the world through Sara’s eyes, where no one can be trusted and the world is just out to get you. The fact is, yes, Kim stole from me, but at the same time, Nate brought me a brand-new sewing machine and a computer to create my designs. One can view the world through Sara’s warped eyes, or one can see the silver lining. I choose silver.
“Please just try to get the check stopped,” I implore. “If the money is gone, it’s gone. I’ll work around it,” I say, like I have any idea just how that will happen.
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