“I [pant] did [pant].” I sucked in a big gulp of air, shooting a glance at Felix’s office. He was sitting at his computer, no doubt making all the last minute changes to copy before sending in final draft. “Give me five minutes,” I said, hurtling toward my desk.
“You only have four!” Allie yelled. Then looked down at her watch and amended it to, “Three now!”
I ignored her, diving for my desk and pulling up the file I’d typed out earlier. No time to read over it. I prayed it was relatively typo-free.
I formatted it, logged it into the system, my finger hovering over the send button. Five fifty-nine.
I stood, glancing over the tops of the cubicles toward Felix’s office. Allie sat on the edge of his desk, giggling. Legs crossed, thigh exposed, boobs inches from his face. He was one step away from drooling on his button-down shirt. God bless the little tart.
I pounded my finger down on the enter key, sending my column in just as the clock changed to six. I held my breath, waiting for confirmation that I’d made it in time. Two second later, the little window popped up telling me my open note to my stalker would indeed appear in the morning edition.
I let out a sigh so big it ruffled my hair, then closed my eyes and fell back into my chair with a moan of relief.
“What was that?”
My eyes popped open to find Cal suddenly at my side, his gaze on my screen.
“Uh…my column. I forgot to send it in earlier. Just made it under the wire. Lucky, huh? Well, that’s it for today. Ready to go?” I gave him my best attempt at a breezy smile.
His eyes narrowed. Unfortunately for me, Cal was no dummy.
I ignored him, instead grabbing my purse, flipping off my desk light, and heading for the elevator.
Only I didn’t get far.
“Bender!”
I must have been a little on the jumpy side, because at the sound of Felix’s voice booming from his office, I think I peed my pants a little.
“Yeah?” I squeaked out, my heart leaping into my throat. Please tell me the blonde did her job…
“Your column,” he said, his eyebrows hunkering down in an angry slash.
I licked my lips. “What about it?”
“It’s late.”
I did a mental sigh of relief so loud, I swear even Aunt Sue could have heard it. “Right. Sorry. I just sent it in. Must have slipped my mind earlier.” I smacked my forehead in a super-graceful move as if to illustrate the point.
Felix nodded. “Good.” Then disappeared back into his office.
And I made a beeline for the elevators before anything else could go wrong.
At Cal’s place we found a note from the aunts saying Sue had over-boiled the macaroni and they’d gone to pick up hoagies for dinner. Cal mumbled something about getting some paperwork done and headed off to his bedroom. Which was fine with me. After the nerve-wracking day I’d had, I could use a little me time anyway.
I plopped down on the sofa and booted up my laptop, checking my email. I half-hoped, half-feared another note from my stalker, but my inbox was conspicuously empty. As in no messages at all. Not a one. Marco was right, news of my involvement with the police was spreading faster than a summer wildfire, and my informants had all gone mum.
This sucked.
I prayed my article tomorrow did its job. Otherwise, I was likely to be stuck covering the baby bump beat with Cam for any kernel of a story.
Trying not to dwell on that unpleasant thought, I pulled up a blank screen and began typing my exclusive story on the fall of a child star turned murderer and the final hours of character actor Jake Mullins. I was halfway through Alexis’s emotional confession—just to the part when she dissed her husband’s acting abilities—when an IM popped up in the corner of my screen.
Hey, babe.
I sucked in a deep breath.
Hi, Black.
How you doin?
Got an hour? But I finally settled on, meh.
Meh? I take it that means not good.
This story, I explained. It’s…complicated.
There was a pause. Then, I’m worried about you.
I felt my throat suddenly clog with emotion. Here I
had blown Black off not once, but twice, and not only was he not mad, not even mentioning my standing him up, but he was genuinely worried about me.
I’m okay.
You sure?
I nodded at the empty living room. Yep.
I’ve missed you.
I’ve missed you, too, I typed, honestly meaning it. Okay, so I knew Black was a fantasy. And our whole relationship consisted of a few words on a screen. But I had missed him. I’d missed having someone who cared enough to ask if I was okay. I’d missed having someone I felt comfortable talking to. Really talking. Honestly. Maybe it was because of the anonymity, the fact that I’d never really expected to meet Black in person, but I felt I could be honest with him in a way I couldn’t with anyone else in my life. I didn’t really know why. And I didn’t want to analyze it. All I knew was, he felt good. And I’d missed it.
Hey…Knock knock, he typed.
I couldn’t help the corner of my mouth tilting up.
Who’s there?
Madame.
Madame who?
Madame foot’s caught in the door.
I laughed out loud.
Good one.
Thanks. Talk tomorrow?
Definitely. And this time, I really meant it.
’Night, Bender. Be good.
’Night, Black.
And then his little “online now” icon disappeared. I left the IM window open, rereading our conversation again to hold on to that comforting feeling just a little longer. And I found myself chuckling out loud a second time over his corny joke.
“What’s that?”
I spun around to find Cal standing behind the sofa, looking over my shoulder, squinting at the conversation on my laptop screen.
I quickly flipped the top down.
“Nothing.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t look like nothing. You chatting with someone?”
“No!” Which in hindsight might have come out a decibel or two higher than convincing.
His other eyebrow lifted.
“Someone special?” Cal teased.
I rolled my eyes. “It’s no one. Just a friend.”
“Uh huh.” He sat down on the sofa beside me, giving me an expectant look. He clearly wasn’t going to let this one go.
“He’s…a pen pal.”
“So, it is a man.”
“Sorta.”
“Sorta?”
“No, he’s a screen. I mean, he’s not real. Well, I guess he’s real in that there is someone typing, but he could be anyone, you know? Some loser in his mother’s basement, some creep in prison, who knows?”
“So, your pen pal is a felon?”
“No! Look, I don’t know who he is. He’s just…nice.”
He tilted his head to the side, his expression softening, going serious. “You going to meet this nice guy?”
I shook my head in the negative. “No, it’s not like that. Look, he’s just someone who…gets me. Not many people do, you know?”
He leaned in. The scent of fresh soap still clung to him. “Maybe that’s what you’d like to think.”
I pulled my eyebrows together. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He smiled. “It means if you’d quit being such a hardass, you’d see there are lots of people who care about you. Who care about your well-being.” He reached out a hand and gently tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. “Who get you,” he said quietly.
I swallowed. Hard. My body felt frozen, my skin tingling, blood rushing to my head as I tried to read the look in his dark eyes. It was soft. Almost tender, if I thought Mr. Tough Guy did tender. His face was inches from mine, so close I could feel his breath on my lips. My tongue darted out to lick them, and I followed his eyes to my mouth.
Oh, God. He was going to kiss
me.
What’s worse—I really wanted him to.
Maybe it was because I still had a warm fuzzy feeling running through me from talking to Black. Or maybe it was the emotional toll of the day. Or maybe it was just the fact that I hadn’t gotten it in long enough that I was beginning to forget what it was even all about.
But I found my mouth drifting toward his.
He leaned in a fraction closer, and his lips brushed over mine. I was surprised at how soft they were, that anything about him was this soft. They tasted like toothpaste, minty and clean. His goatee grazed against my cheek, sending shivers down my spine as I closed my eyes, drinking in the moment. I think I sighed into his mouth as his tongue touched my lips, gently parting them.
“Hello? We’re back!”
I jumped off the sofa like a jack-in-the-box, immediately putting two feet of distance between Cal and me as the aunts bustled through the front door.
“In here,” I said. I licked my lips, tasting Cal there, and felt my cheeks burn a bright candy-apple red.
Aunt Sue and Aunt Millie bustled into the room, dropping an armload of items onto the coffee table: a bag of sandwiches, a two-liter bottle of Coke, and a purple Tupperware container with Hello Kitty painted on the side.
“What’s this?” I asked, pulling back the lid on the container.
“Hattie.”
“Hattie? Hattie Carmichael!?” I took one giant step back from the Tupperware.
Aunt Sue nodded. “We picked her up from the crematorium on the way home.”
I wrinkled my nose. “And brought her home in Tupperware? Don’t they usually give you an urn for that?”
“They wanted to charge us two hundred dollars for an urn,” Millie piped up. “Can you believe the nerve? I mean, we’re just going to spread her ashes tomorrow anyway. Who pays two hundred dollars for an urn they’re only gonna use for one day?”
I was at a loss to answer that question.
“So, Millie offered to go down the street to the dollar store and pick up a pretty ceramic jar or something,” Aunt Sue said.
I looked down at the plastic container. “That’s not a ceramic jar.”
Millie shrugged. “I think my eyesight might be slipping a little.”
Understatement alert.
But Aunt Sue waved her off. “No matter. This works. In fact, it’s better. Spill resistant lid.” She flipped the Tupperware upside down and shook it. “See?”
I looked from one wrinkled face to the other. Then to Cal for help. He just grinned, holding up his hands in a surrender motion as if to say, “Hey, they’re your aunts.”
“So, you are coming with us to spread the ashes tomorrow, right?” Aunt Sue asked.
I nodded. “Right.” It was the least I could do. Especially considering Mrs. Carmichael was now residing in a leftovers receptacle.
“Good. We’ll leave at eight. The gates open at nine.”
“Gates?” I asked, grabbing onto the word. Suddenly I had a bad feeling about this.
Aunt Sue blinked innocently at me. “Yes. They don’t open until nine in the fall.”
“What doesn’t open until nine?’
“Disneyland.”
Mental forehead smack.
“Disneyland? Wait—you’re spreading Mrs. Carmichael’s ashes at Disneyland?”
The aunts nodded in unison.
“It’s what Hattie wanted,” Aunt Sue spoke up. “She was the first Mickey Mouse, you know. Her fondest memories are of the Magic Kingdom.”
“It is the happiest place on earth,” Millie added solemnly.
I shook my head. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s not legal to spread human remains there.”
“No one will ever notice,” Aunt Millie assured me.
I had a hard time believing that.
“I don’t think this is a good idea.” I looked to Cal to back me up.
Thankfully, he nodded in agreement this time. “She’s right. They have security cameras all over that place.”
Aunt Millie waved me off. “No one’s going to bother a couple of old women.”
“Dropping ashes from a Hello Kitty container?!”
“Oh, we got that covered,” Aunt Sue assured me.
I hated to even ask. “Covered?”
She nodded. “We’re going to transfer her into one of those souvenir soda bottles as soon as we get in the park. No one will bother us carrying around a soda pop. Then we’ll just kinda tip the cup over a little and, voila, she’s in her favorite place.”
I felt faint.
“Where exactly are you going to do this?”
“On It’s a Small World,” Aunt Sue replied. “Hattie loved that ride. Hattie was the first Mickey Mouse, you know.”
Yes. I knew.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” I said for the third time in as many minutes.
But I got two pairs of bony arms crossed over two pairs of saggy boobs and two matching glares. “This is what Hattie wanted,” Aunt Sue told me. “She was taken from this world too soon. The least we can do is honor her last wish. You’d honor my last wish, wouldn’t you?”
I bit my lip. “Yes?” Only it came out more of a question.
“Then it’s settled. We leave at eight.”
I opened mouth to protest…but realized it was futile. With or without me, these two were going to deposit Hattie Carmichael on It’s a Small World tomorrow. Unless I wanted to spend the afternoon bailing them out of jail, I’d better make sure they did it stealth-like.
“Oh, this is going to be so fun!” Aunt Sue said, clapping her hands. “I love Disneyland. You know, Hattie Carmichael was the very first Mickey Mouse.”
Lord help me.
The next morning I awoke to the sight of fuzzy Elvis staring down at me. Again. What I wouldn’t have given to be back in my own room.
I stumbled out of bed, rubbing my eyes, making my way on autopilot through the house toward the scent of coffee. Cal was already at the kitchen table, sipping his cup, reading the paper. Aunt Sue was frying bacon. Or, more accurately, burning bacon.
I wrinkled my nose. “I think it’s done.”
“What?” she asked, over the sizzling sounds.
“I think the bacon’s done!”
“What did you say?”
“It’s burnt!” I yelled.
Aunt Sue looked down at the blacked strips in her pan. “Oh. So it is. Oh well, I guess we’ll just have eggs,” she said, shrugging her shoulders as she reached into the refrigerator.
Just in case, I popped a couple pieces of sourdough into the toaster.
“By the way,” Aunt Sue said, cracking eggs into a bowl, “your cell’s been going off all morning.” She gestured to my purse sitting on the counter.
I popped it open and looked at my phone readout. Four calls. All from Felix. I bit my lip. Apparently he’d read my column.
I was just contemplating putting the phone on mute, when Cal slammed his coffee cup down on the kitchen table behind me.
“What the hell is this?” he asked.
I spun around to find Cal—a very pissed off Cal—holding up today’s Informer.
I guess Felix wasn’t the only one doing some early morning reading.
“Um…my column.”
“Obviously. Are you out of your mind?”
Aunt Sue angled around him to read it, then did a subdued little, “Oh, my,” her big, round eyes going my way.
I crossed my arms over my chest in a defensive posture.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Cal asked.
“What? I should just sit back and let this creep systematically destroy everything around me? I can’t go home, I’m being babysat twenty-four seven, my neigh-bor’s dead, and someone’s trying to blow me up! Everywhere I go this guy is threatening me. I’m sick of it!”
“The police—” he started.
But I cut him off. “The police aren’t doing jack. You saw them test the scene yesterday—they came up with nothing. I’m tired of chasi
ng leads to nowhere. I’m calling this guy out in the open.”
“And if he doesn’t turn himself in?”
I sighed. “I’m not stupid. There’s no way he’s turning himself in.”
Cal narrowed his eyes. “Then what exactly do you expect to accomplish with this bluff?” He threw the paper down on the table.
“Don’t you watch any cop shows?”
He didn’t answer, just glared.
“If he doesn’t want to see his name in the paper as a murderer, he’s got to shut me up before I turn in my column for tomorrow.”
Something shifted behind Cal’s eyes. “Shut you up.”
I nodded.
“You mean—”
“I mean he’s going to come after me, and that’s when I’ll catch him red-handed.”
A muscle twitched in Cal’s jaw. “No.”
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“No way am I letting you use yourself as bait.”
“This isn’t about you letting me do anything. It’s about me taking my life back.”
“Over my dead body.”
“Don’t tempt me,” I countered.
Cal threw his hands up in the air. “This is dangerous, reckless, and about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Are you calling me stupid?” I thrust my chin up, hands on hips.
He ground his teeth together. “And just how, exactly, are you planning on catching this guy before he actually silences you?”
I bit my lip. “That’s kinda where you come in.”
“Me.” A statement, not a question.
“Yeah. You’re the trained bodyguard. With you watching my back, we’re sure to get the jump on him before he does on me. Right?”
“No,” he said again, shaking his head.
“You have to. You’re being paid to keep me safe,” I pointed out.
“But not if you’re going to throw yourself into harm’s way!”
“Fine.” I squared my jaw. “I’ll do it myself.”
He stared at me, his nostrils flaring, his eyes flashing. “Like hell you will.”
I planted my feet shoulder width apart, matching him glare for glare. We stood like that in a totally silent standoff for a full minute.
Finally Cal broke the staring contest, threw the rest of his coffee down the drain, and slammed his empty cup on the counter.
“Fine. Let’s go to Disneyland.”
Scandal Sheet Page 19