The Complete Novels of the Lear Sister Trilogy

by Julia London

  He looked at the paper again that night as he waited for her call. And when she didn’t call, he looked at the paper several times over what turned out to be a very long weekend, where, in a new twist of the saga that was his life, Matt never left his penthouse loft. Honestly, he couldn’t remember the last time that he had stayed in for two solid days . . . Maybe back in ‘98, when he’d had a horrendous case of the flu. But even then, what’s-her-name had come and stayed with him (what was her name?).

  It didn’t matter anyway, because this time was nothing like that time. He felt fine. He just felt sort of . . . blah. Unsettled. Weird. Nothing sounded appealing. Not chasing women, or hanging out with his pals who liked to chase women. Bars, restaurants, and houseboats did not sound appealing. Not golf, not basketball. Nada. Zilch.

  What was bothering him, Matt finally admitted to himself (with the help of a couple of vodka martinis), was the goddamn pictures. The goddamn pictures and the uncomfortable and disquieting fact that he really had been gazing at her, looking deep into those blue eyes, lured in by that glimmer of light behind them. He looked almost devoted, and really, he’d never considered himself the devotee type.

  This was a problem.

  It was a problem because Matt was a serious high flyer, someone who had always told himself that he had neither the time nor the inclination for a long-term, serious thing. He did better with many women at a time. There was no space in his life yet for a wife and lots of kids—he had always thought those things would come in the future. When he was a little older. And had made a name for himself.

  But he was thirty-five years old. And he’d made a name for himself. He had, in fact, met all of his self-imposed criteria. So what was it, exactly, the thing that he was so afraid of?

  Oh yeah, right, like he didn’t know what it was. He knew exactly what it was. Didn’t understand it, not why, or how, or even what any of it meant. But still, he knew what he was afraid of, and it was a fear that gripped him right down to the bottom of his heart.

  It was that warm glimmer of light deep in those blue eyes.

  By the time Monday rolled around, Matt was ready to get out of his house before he drove himself crazy. Fortunately, he was snowed under getting ready for the Kiker trial, so he really had little time to dwell on the fact that she had not returned his call. In fact, he couldn’t even focus on the campaign at all until mid-week, when Doug and Jeff called from Dallas to discuss Tom’s platform, and more importantly, Matt’s work to get the Hispanic vote. “This is going to be key to the DA office, you know,” Doug reminded him “Maybe even as key as it is to the lieutenant governor’s office.” At the end of the conference call, Jeff said, “Great work with the Silver Panthers. You’re even getting a little press up here.”

  That was mildly surprising; one event at the Silver Panther conference didn’t seem worth reporting, particularly as it had nothing to do with the agenda they had just discussed over the phone. “Oh, yeah? What are they saying?”

  “That it was a good tactical move by Masters, preempting the incumbent and the independent. Which reminds me—we’ve got a tight schedule of statewide fund-raisers coming up, with a really big one between a couple of candidate forums. We’ll send the stuff to you and Tom this week!’

  “Okay,” Matt said, and had hardly hung up when Harold ushered in two new potential clients. Matt greeted the Dennards, who were both beaming, helped them to a seat, then asked what he could do to help them.

  “I’ve got an invention,” Mr. Dennard said. “It’s going to make millions when I get it marketed and produced. It’s a shoe insert that actually helps you walk and won’t let your arches down.”

  “He’s real smart with his hands,” Mrs. Dennard said proudly.

  “I see,” Matt said carefully. “And why do you think you need a lawyer, Mr. Dennard?”

  “Why, for a patent, of course! And I have to get one right away, because the minute some of them big company fellas see this, they’re going to try and steal my idea. That happened to a golfing buddy of mine.”

  “I don’t do patent law, Mr. Dennard. Did someone tell you I did?”

  “Well, no . . . we just asked for a lawyer,” Mrs. Dennard said.

  “Mind if I ask who referred me?” Matt asked.

  “Rebecca Lear!” they both chimed at the same moment.

  “Ah,” Matt said, nodding, silently wondering how many more ways the woman could possibly complicate his life. “I’ll have to thank her,” he said, and began to explain to the Dennards what they probably would have to do to get a patent, and the name of another lawyer who might be able to help them. It took a full, unbillable hour before Matt was confident that the Dennards understood what they needed to do.

  The next afternoon, Matt finally found the time to get by the campaign offices, and when he did, Angie was out front, manning phones. She had tipped her hair in green this week, which Matt thought a much better color for her than the pink of last week. “Yo, Ang,” he said, strolling through.

  “Matt!” she all but shouted, jumping up from her chair before he could manage to squeeze through the tiny entry. “Hey, listen—can you do me a favor? Can you watch him? I’ve got to get to the post office before it closes, and they’ve been behind closed doors a lot longer than I thought,” she said, motioning toward the back.

  Matt stopped, confused. “Watch who?”

  Angie pointed beneath her desk. Matt bent over, saw Grayson sitting in the little cubbyhole of the desk. “Hi, Matt,” he said solemnly.

  “Hi, Grayson. What are you doing under there?”

  “Reading,” he said, and held up a book, My Best Dog Friend.

  “You like dogs?”

  “I have three. Frank and Bean and Tater.”

  Matt and Angie looked at each other. Angie shrugged. “So? Will you watch him? He’s really no trouble, but if I don’t leave right now—”

  “So what’s the big meeting about?”

  Angie was scraping stuff off the desk into a green canvas backpack. “I don’t know. Some fund-raiser or something like that.” She dipped down on her haunches, peered under the desk. “Grayson, will you let Matt watch you? Please, please, pretty please with a cherry on top?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay,” Matt echoed, “but how long?” he asked, following Angie as she threw the backpack over her shoulder and stuffed a box of campaign letters under her arm (all hand-addressed in perfect calligraphy, naturally. God forbid someone should feel like they weren’t personally involved in Tom’s campaign).

  “I don’t know. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Pat’s coming later—if you have to take off, hand him over to her.” She pushed the glass door open. “Bye!” she yelled, and was outside before Matt could say anything else.

  Grayson crawled out from beneath the desk. He was wearing khaki cargo pants that pooled around his ankles. On his feet were some sneakers that looked disproportionately enormous. His polo shirt hung to his knees, and the kid’s hair . . . man. That was some bad hair, no two ways about it, poor kid.

  “Wanna play something?” Grayson asked.

  Matt sighed, started toward the back. “Like what?” he asked over his shoulder with Grayson following solemnly behind.

  “I don’t know.”

  They walked into the larger office next to Tom’s, the one with a blackboard on which the daily tasks were written by some enterprising campaign staff member. Anyone who had extra time tried to tackle any of the tasks listed there. Today’s list included getting quotes for air time from various media outlets in the major metro areas. Some helpful soul had left some phone books, an empty McDonald’s bag, five million catsup packages, and a list of TV stations with lines drawn through them, quotes per minute of air time listed on the side, and a list of radio stations beneath those that hadn’t been touched.

  “Looks like we’ve got radio,” Matt said, and tossed his stuff aside. “This is like searching for a needle in a haystack, you know,” he said to Grayson, shaking his hea
d.

  Grayson shook his head, too.

  “I mean, here the party has hired that big-ass public relations firm out of L.A. Why don’t they get Gunter and his people to do this stuff?”

  “Maybe he’s sick,” Grayson suggested.

  “Maybe,” Matt said with a shrug. “Still seems to me there would be someone out there to do this grunt work instead of wasting our time with it, right?”

  “Right,” Grayson emphatically agreed.

  “Right on, bro,” Matt said with a wink. “But you have to play the hand you were dealt. So why don’t you sit over there and read your book while I make a couple of calls?” he suggested as he sat down and opened a phone book.

  “But I don’t like this book anymore,” Grayson said.

  Matt glanced up. “Okay, so . . . do you have another one?”

  The kid shook his head.

  “Toys?”

  “Hot Wheels.”

  Cool. Matt hadn’t seen a Hot Wheels in about twenty-five years.

  “And Rescue Heroes.”

  Dude, even cooler. “Okay. Why don’t you get them out?”

  “They’re with my mom’s stuff,” Grayson said anxiously. “Can I go get them?”

  “Sure,” Matt said, and Grayson instantly dropped his book and rushed out the door.

  Matt had just dialed a local radio station when Grayson returned, backing into the room, dragging a huge bag. Matt ignored him, turning his back as he asked to speak to the sales department. From there he had an uninformative and thankfully brief conversation with the sales rep, wrote down some figures, and hung up. Only then did he look up and see what Grayson had brought. There were the Hot Wheels, lined up, bumper to bumper, by color. And the Rescue Heroes, which he had also lined up, like a little army on the edge of the desk.

  And then there was the vacuum cleaner.

  Matt closed his eyes, rubbed one, opened them again, and yessir, that was a toy vacuum cleaner. “What the hell?” he asked, pointing at the vacuum cleaner.

  “My fackum cleaner,” Grayson said, looked at him with great expectation.

  “No. No, no, noooo, kid,” Matt said, shaking his head as Grayson looked curiously at the vacuum cleaner beside him. “You can’t play with a vacuum cleaner. That’s a girl’s toy. Don’t you play boy games?”

  “Like what?” he asked.

  “Like . . . hunting for frogs, or digging holes. Don’t you do stuff like that with your friends?”

  “You mean with Jo Lynn?”

  “No, I mean with your pals.”

  “I don’t have any friends where I live,” he said apologetically.

  This wasn’t right, not right at all. She was going to warp a perfectly cool little kid and turn him into a girly man. Matt put his hands on his waist, stared down at Grayson. “What about your rescue guys?” he asked, gesturing at the four of them lined up there. Grayson followed his gaze and looked at them. “They hate vacuum cleaners, you know.”

  “They do?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Matt said, shrugging out of his coat and loosening his tie. “This is what they think of them,” he said, and walked around to the front of the desk, picked up the fireman, and dive-bombed him into the vacuum cleaner. Only he must have used a little too much force, because the piece of plastic snapped off.

  But it made Grayson laugh, and he got the gist of the game, kicking the sweeper.

  “That’s what I’m talking about!” Matt said, and handed Grayson the paramedic Rescue Hero and blithely watched the kid go after it. In fact, he was having such a good time watching him that he didn’t hear Tom’s office door open, didn’t hear them at all until Rebecca exclaimed, “What are you doing?”

  He and Grayson both jerked up, staring with horror at each other before turning toward the door where Rebecca was standing, gaping at what was left of that stupid cheap vacuum cleaner. Tom stood behind her, shaking his head. “That’s not cool, man.”

  Rebecca looked at Matt with the same blue eyes that were haunting him on a fairly routine basis, looking for an explanation. “Okay,” he said, holding his hands out. “The vacuum cleaner doesn’t hold up to some army tactics. So, ah, what have you guys been doing?” Matt asked in a blatant attempt to change the subject.

  Tom slapped his hands together and rubbed them vigorously. “That bingo thing was so great!” he declared. “I’ve asked Rebecca to set up a big star-studded fund-raiser for me this summer. Statewide invites.”

  Matt bent down to pick up the pieces of the vacuum cleaner. “A fundraiser?”

  “Yeah. I’m thinking one with all the big stars of Texas, like Renée Zellwegger,” he said, and looked at Rebecca. “Do you think you can get Renée Zellwegger?”

  “I’ve never met her—”

  “Yeah, but maybe Bud or someone knows her. Maybe your dad?”

  “I don’t think so,” Rebecca answered, looking puzzled.

  Tom shrugged. “Okay, just ask around. Tell your dad you’re trying to get her, and maybe he can help.”

  “But my dad—”

  “Wait, wait,” Matt interrupted, still trying to absorb it. “Jeff said they’ve already set out a schedule of fundraisers.”

  “Yeah, but this is going to be even bigger and just for me. I’ve got my own backers, and I told Rebecca if she could find a big outdoor venue, we could do like a barbecue and dance, something like that. You know, make it a thou to fifteen hundred a plate, more for the inner circle.”

  “But, Tom,” Matt tried again, “the party has carefully planned the fund-raisers. As in when and where and who . . . you can’t just insert a big bruiser in the middle of all that.”

  Tom laughed. “Hey, pal,” he said cheerfully, “who’s running for office, you or me?”

  “Matt, can we go hunt for frogs?” Grayson asked, oblivious to the conversation around him

  Why? There was a huge toad and his pretty little lily pad standing right in front of them.

  Chapter Twenty

  And it is precisely these variations in behavior and attitude that trigger in each of us a common response: Seeing others around us differing from us, we conclude that these differences . . . are but temporary manifestations of madness, badness, stupidity or sickness . . .

  PLEASE UNDERSTAND ME

  So here she’d spent several days romanticizing his gift and thinking about little else but him, and he shows up to bust Grayson’s vacuum cleaner and get all bent out of shape because they had planned a big gala fund-raiser? The man seriously needed to get over himself . . . or maybe she did. Definitely one of them did.

  Rebecca picked up a piece of Grayson’s little Hoover, which, incidentally, he loved until this afternoon, and his Rescue Buddies, and shoved them into the portable toy box that accompanied them everywhere. Big Pants squatted down to help her, and they both reached for the paramedic at the same time. Rebecca slapped his hand away.

  “Ouch,” he whined.

  “Where’s the S.W.A.T. guy?” she asked Grayson. He shrugged his shoulders.

  “I think he’s over here,” Matt said, and fell over himself—literally—getting it off the desk to hand her.

  “Matt, let’s talk about the Hispanic Democrats. Jeff says you’ve got some ideas?” Tom said over her head.

  “Ah . . . yeah. Just give me a minute—”

  Rebecca stood up, gripping Grayson’s portable toy box with the pieces in it.

  “Come on back to the office,” Tom said. “Rebecca, you keep up the good work! And don’t forget to call your dad and tell him all about me!” With a jaunty wave, Tom started back to his office.

  Matt shoved a hand through his hair, winced at Rebecca’s cool expression. “Will you wait one second before you take off?” he asked, following Tom.

  Rebecca waited exactly one second as she watched him stride down the hall, feeling very baffled by Big Pants, but what else was new, and a little baffled by Tom’s sudden interest in her father. During their hour-long meeting, he had asked her twice if Dad knew about the campaign, wh
at he thought of it, and if he was going to come to any of the events. She tried to explain to Tom that her dad really wasn’t political (and didn’t even attempt to explain his aversion to Democrats in general, or her reservations about him showing up anywhere she was trying to work), but Tom was insistent. “Tell him about me,” he had said without an ounce of self-consciousness.

  In spite of her very best efforts to keep the old girl down, Doormat Rebecca reared her ugly head and said, “Sure!” God, she was too polite sometimes! And gullible. And entirely too easily pushed around. She looked at Grayson. “What happened here? You broke your toy.”

  He shrugged. “Matt said it was a girl’s toy.”

  “Did he,” she breathed. She was going to stand up for herself and stomp on Big Pant’s humongous he-shouldn’t-be-playing-with-vacuums ego. She envisioned doing, in slow motion and really hard, like they did in the Matrix movie.

  She found the Rescue Buddy policeman and the fireman, asked Grayson if there was anything else. He pointed to his book, tossed aside. She put that in the sack, too, then returned to the small office where they normally stashed their stuff, gathered up her purse and briefcase and her son, and walked out to her Range Rover. She loaded the stuff into the back, then went around to the passenger side where Grayson was sitting, kicking the dash. “Hop onto your booster.”

  “Rebecca!”

  Great. She glanced over her shoulder as Grayson climbed over the console and into his booster seat. Matt was jogging toward her, his tie flapping behind him. When he reached the Rover, he stopped, flashed that heart-melting grin, and said, “Hey, I’m really sorry.” When Rebecca didn’t respond, his grin just got deeper and whiter. “I had no right to do a number on the vacuum cleaner. I’m an idiot.”

  “I’m with you so far,” she muttered.

  “Grayson and I promise to never do it again, don’t we, buddy?”

  “I promise, Mom!”

  Dammit, but she could feel a small, hairline crack in her anger.