by DC Thome
The door opened and Morgan bowed politely. “I’m sorry, Miss Dixon.”
Lara acknowledged him with a look. “It does mean something, Tiffany,” she said. “It means a lot.”
They smiled at each other.
“Oh! Wait!” Lara dashed inside and returned with the slinky, shimmery, sequin-covered Donna Karan tank. “This is yours.”
Tiffany’s mouth dropped open. “Oh, Miss D….”
Lara hugged her again. “I’m not a personage anymore. You can call me Lara.”
Still sobbing, Tiffany turned and smacked into Morgan. She bounced backward, clutched the shirt to her bosom and bolted.
“She going to be all right?” Morgan asked as the girl disappeared.
“She’ll be even better than that. Okay if I look at the view one more time?”
Morgan nodded.
Lara had looked at a very similar view from the bluffs of Santa Monica dozens, maybe hundreds, of times in the last couple of years. But looking toward Santa Monica from across the bay, with Paradise Cove on one side and Point Dume on the other, made it clear just how close—and how far apart—the worlds that made up Los Angeles could be.
As Lara turned to go, something below caught her eye.
Clay.
“Yes,” Lara said. “I’m ready.”
* * *
No one spoke as Morgan and three guards escorted Lara onto an elevator to the ground floor. People sneaked glances at her as the somber procession passed their work spaces. Neither Morgan nor any of his assistants laid a hand on her.
Such gentlemen. Would I feel guilty if I just…
Lara suddenly broke ranks and slipped through a door to steps that led to the water.
And Clay.
He reacted not at all to her presence. He just kept sifting rocks.
Morgan and the other guards arrived at the bottom of the steps. Lara looked back at them plaintively, and Morgan led his cohort out of earshot.
“I want you to know something.”
Still Clay did not look at her. “I already know too much.” He sounded tired.
“I don’t think you do.”
Clay pulled up a handful of scraggly grass and let the blades flutter away in the breeze. “I heard the voice message.”
“It’s true. I came here on a mission. I was mad because I thought you gave my ex-husband the idea he could have a Rotation of his own. I made up this plan and sold Gina on the idea.”
“She got Anton Roche to say all those nice things about you?”
“I don’t know if it matters, but most of that stuff was true.” She bit her lip. “The conversation we had that first night, what we talked about…I had to do a bunch of research to make it look like we had something in common. To fool you into thinking I was your kind of woman. But, you seemed to be really interested in me, and that made me more interested in that stuff.” Her voice trailed off. “And in you.”
She paused. Give me some kind of reaction. Resignation. Anger. A shrug, even. “I’m not a bad person. In fact, I thought I could do a lot of people some good if I—”
“Cut me down to size—and make a million dollars while you were at it?”
Lara hung her head. “I was wrong. About everything.” She swallowed hard, fighting tears. Tears were winning. “I know that now. I knew it a week ago, but I didn’t know what to do. I was in over my head. I kept trying to climb out.”
“Well, you’re out now,” Clay said, “and you didn’t have to do anything.”
Lara stepped toward him. “Clay, I—”
“Stop,” he said. Lara could hear the disappointment in his voice, and that hurt more than anger or meanness ever could. “I’m not in the mood for a big discussion.”
“I thought—”
Clay shook his head. “I said I don’t want to talk.”
“Then don’t,” Lara said. “But I thought we had something. I thought that, in spite of everything—the deception—there was something real. I felt it—and I thought you felt the same. That first night, when we talked about love and war…I never had a conversation like that with a man. Or anyone, for that matter. Not since my dad…” She swallowed hard. “The salt flats. The waterfall at Heat. Didn’t any of that mean anything to you?”
“Fun times.” Sarcasm poisoned Clay’s words.
“That’s all?”
“I wanted you to feel like—”
“Like what? The center of the universe?”
Clay shrugged. “If that’s what you want to believe.”
“It’s not what I want to believe. But if it’s true, you can’t hate me for lying and leading you along. You were deceiving me, too.”
“I was deceiving you?”
“You made me believe we did have something special. Like I was the center of your universe. And then you slept with Corynne.”
“I what?”
“I’ll bet you didn’t have to sweet-talk her. She’s already the center of her own universe.”
Clay stood up. “You’re crossing a line—”
“I’m crossing a line?” Lara stepped onto the rock with Clay and tapped his chest with her finger. “You left my side to go spend the night with her! Or are you going to tell me that was just business?”
“I guess it depends on how you define ‘business.’ We had an appearance in Seattle. For charity.”
Lara’s heart jumped.
“We didn’t sleep together. In fact, I didn’t get any sleep. I was too wound up thinking about you.”
“That was your ‘previous engagement’?”
Clay turned away. “What difference does it make?”
It would have made all the difference in the world—an hour ago.
“Making appearances is part of my job, Lara. And Corynne’s. It’s what the girls in The Rotation do.”
“But—”
“You have to leave now,” Clay interrupted. “I’m meeting with the lingerie people in a few minutes. I believe you’ve met some of them.” He took out his phone, pressed a button and spoke. “Do your job, Morgan.”
Morgan came back down the steps and held out a hand to help Lara negotiate the rocks.
“Oh,” Clay said, “the next time you see Virginia, tell her I understand.”
Lara paused. “Who?”
“Ma’am, please,” Morgan said.
Clay had turned back toward the water. Lara accepted Morgan’s hand and headed up the stairs.
19
In Gina Wray’s office the next day, Lara looked tired and beaten.
“Don’t worry about that nondisclosure bullshit,” Gina said. “Fast Lane has deep pockets, but we’ve got big guns on our side, too.”
“It’s not that I’m afraid to write about anything,” Lara said. “It’s that I don’t have anything to write about.”
“Oh, come on. You have something. You were there, on the inside. Hell, you had Clay Creighton inside you!”
Is that supposed to be a joke? “There isn’t anything,” Lara said.
Gina’s face grew stern. “Didn’t you come in here talking about how he’s a monster and a prick and how he needs to be taken down—”
“I was wrong.”
“—and how you had this great plan—”
Lara slouched. “I was wrong about that, too.”
Gina sat down and kneaded her temples. “Let’s think about this. What about the fact that he’s not in charge? His loyal readers will love that, right? It’s Fast Lane’s thing: The man’s in charge. And here is The Man, himself—the man among men—and his whole fucking life is run by a woman?”
“Hugh Hefner’s daughter has run Playboy for years.”
“Yeah, but he’s old enough to be a grandfather. Hell, he’s old enough to be everyone’s grandfather. And, besides, no matter who’s in charge, he still gets to pick his own blondes.”
And Clay has Ms. V-as-in-Viper do it for—wait.
Lara’s head came up off her hand. “You know that a woman calls the shots at Fast Lane?”
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Gina’s shoulders and neck stiffened. “Of course.”
Lara sat up straight. “And you know Clay doesn’t pick the women in The Rotation?”
Gina rummaged through papers on her desk. “For God’s sake, everyone knows that.”
“Actually, as far as I can tell, almost nobody knows that.” Lara sat on the edge of the chair. “And they work very hard to keep it that way.”
Gina got up and dug through the pockets of a jacket on a coat tree and pulled out her chrome-plated lighter. “That’s something you can put in there, too, right? The great lengths they go to to keep people in the dark?”
Lara noticed Gina’s hands shaking as she lit a cigarette. And that her chin was pointy. Lara mentally leafed through the photos of every woman who’d ever been in The Rotation. So many with dark hair. She looked down at her own painted chocolaty locks. Every woman in The Rotation for the past six years had brown hair. Except for that red-headed slut, Corynne.
Lara looked back up at Gina, still framed by the window. Smoke swirling around her caught the sunlight, making it look like she had a tangle of curls hanging over her face.
Lemony curls.
Lara jumped to her feet. “How much do you know about Fast Lane?”
“No more than anyone else. Stuff that’s, you know, just out there. Media reports. Online sources. Rumors. For God’s sake, there’s rumors up the wazoo. Anyway, I’m sure we can block out your piece without too much trouble.”
Gina paced behind her desk as she rambled on about the inner workings of Fast Lane’s corporate structure, but Lara’s eyes locked on the lighter, which Gina had tossed onto the desk. Specifically the engraved initials.
V.W.
“So you’re a big fan of German cars?” Lara asked.
“What do German cars have to do with…” Gina followed Lara’s gaze back to the lighter. Lara reached for it, but Gina dived over the desk and scooped it up.
“V.W.? Huh.” Gina stared at the lighter as though she had never seen it before. “I never thought about it. I don’t think it has anything to do with cars. It’s just a cool piece I picked up at a vintage shop a few years back.”
“I don’t think it has anything to do with cars, either—Virginia.”
“What are you—“
“Virginia Warren, to be specific. The woman who was in The Rotation for just a few weeks.”
Gina’s eyes narrowed to knife-edge slits. She tucked her hair behind her ears. Smoke escaped from her flared nostrils and pursed lips. She looked like a dragon preparing to blast a pesky villager. “What are you getting at?”
“I think we both know what I’m getting at. My question is, why get me involved?”
“Okay, let’s just say I am this Virginia Warner.” Gina took a deep pull on her cigarette. “So what?”
“It’s Warren,” Lara said, holding her steely gaze. “And this meeting is over.”
Gina stormed across the room and cut Lara off at the door. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, then, feel free to go on without me.” Lara reached across Gina and opened the door. “Oh, and I have a message for you: Clay says he understands.”
“Oh, does he?” She coughed. “You go tell Clay-boy to fuck himself! Because one thing’s for sure, he’s never going to be fucking you again. He has plenty of better options.”
Lara looked deep into Gina’s eyes and saw rage boiling in her soul the way smoke billowed from her throat. And something more.
Pain.
Lara felt her own rage subside. “Now I understand.”
“What do you understand?”
“You loved him.”
Gina half-spat, half-laughed a mouthful of smoke into Lara’s face. “Every woman loves Clay Creighton.”
Lara was unfazed. “But he loved you back, so you had to go.”
“What a fucking joke!”
“You still love him.”
“I’ll tell you what you understand.” Gina’s voice rose by one octave and several decibels. “You understand jack shit. But my lawyers will be happy to enlighten you.”
“How did they do it? Fake sex tape? Or did they slip something into your tea that made you fail a drug test?”
“I don’t have to listen to this anymore.” Gina stabbed Lara’s chest with the fingers that held her cigarette, flicking ash onto Lara’s top. “You signed a contract, and when you get hit with a million-dollar judgment for not living up to it, you’ll understand something, that’s for goddamn sure.”
Lara moved Gina’s hand away and brushed off the ashes. “Don’t worry. I have every intention of keeping our agreement.” She exited calmly, closing the door behind her.
Gina threw open the door and yelled after Lara, “I don’t care what you write—you and Clay Creighton can both go fuck yourselves!”
She slammed the door, then jerked it right back open. “And the same goes for that whore, Sushma Vishniedoodoo!”
20
Lara spent the next couple of days in seclusion, writing Gina’s article. She left her apartment only to let in the Salvation Army guys who were there to pick up the clothes from Fast Lane. Someone might be thrilled to buy a $1,400 hand-painted Dolce & Gabbana T-shirt for $6.95. She threw in the clothes she had gotten from Gina, too. Including the crimson dress she never got to wear.
While in the lobby, she also picked up her mail. Her new phone had come, but she was in no hurry to even take it out of the box. She didn’t care if anyone tried to call her and didn’t plan to answer if they did.
The first draft poured out of her, but she revised carefully, double-checking sources and weeding out innuendo. She emailed her final draft to Gina first, and then to Sushma.
Gina’s reply came just a few hours later “My lawyers will be contacting you—and don’t think you can avoid them by not answering your phone.”
The next day Lara received a terse reply from Sushma: “Where and when would you like to meet?” Lara suggested lunch at a market in the valley on Sunday. She needed to visit the area anyway, so why not consolidate trips?
* * *
Sunday’s excursion began with Lara pulling into the driveway of an unassuming Chatsworth bungalow and parked next to an SUV so big and shiny it made her Taurus look like a rusty tin can. Lara cut through scraggly desert plants and weeds toward a chain-link fence laced with green plastic privacy strips. Shimmying through an opening between the house and the fence, she heard exactly what she expected to hear: bubbling water and bimbos in a hot tub.
A bleached-blonde with enough silicone in her chest to fill a three-layer Jell-O mold saw Lara first. A redhead was preoccupied, what with her mouth being full of Kyle’s cock.
“Oh-oh,” the blonde said. “I think the meter maid’s here.”
“Meter reader?” Sitting on the edge of the Jacuzzi, Kyle couldn’t be bothered to open his eyes until the blonde poked him. When he saw Lara, he hollered, “Oh, shit,” then shoved the redhead into the froth between his legs.
“Lara—what the fuck?”
Apparently the Mae Wests affixed to the redhead’s torso made her too buoyant to stay under for long. She came up spitting water from her collagen-engorged lips. “I was thinking the exact goddamn thing,” she sputtered.
“Then we’re all on the same page,” Lara said, “because that’s exactly what I was thinking.”
“Lara…sweetie…you’re going to have to be a little more specific.”
“The footage you gave to Sushma Vishnuveda.”
“Who?”
“Is that the Japanese chick? Are we going to do some kind of interracial girl-on-girl thing?” the blonde asked.
The redhead nodded in Lara’s direction. “That’s cool. But who’s this bimbo?”
Lara ignored them.
“Chill, ladies, I’ll take care of this. Lara and I have history.” Kyle’s smile was so snaky Lara swore she could see a forked tongue flitting through his teeth. “Lara, really. I—” He stopped. “You know, you look really good.”
“Oh, for—”
“No, really. Something’s different. Did you…” He raised his eyebrows and cupped his hands on his chest.
“That’s right, Kyle,” Lara said, “I got a boob job. They’re all over the place now.”
“I knew it,” Kyle said.
“She got a boob job?” the blonde sneered.
“Yeah, what was she before? An A-cup?” the redhead chimed in.
“Double A,” the blonde said. “She looks like an A now.”
The redhead nodded.
Lara glared at all three of them in turn, then went into the house.
“What’s up her ass?” the blonde asked.
“It’s probably fake, too,” the redhead said.
Lara came back with a toaster and an extension cord.
“Jesus!” the redhead said. “What’s she gonna—”
“Just relax,” Kyle said. “She’s not going to do anything. Isn’t that right, Lara?”
Lara calmly plugged the toaster into the extension cord and the extension cord into an outlet, then stepped up to the edge of the tub.
“Christ and candy bars! She’s a psycho!” The redhead knocked Kyle into the water and used his submerged body to clamber onto the deck. The blonde didn’t need a boost; the sudden tensing of every muscle in her body shot her out of the pool like a rocket.
Kyle stood up, but before he got any closer to safety, Lara shook the toaster and said, “One more step and you’re toast.”
Kyle eased himself back to a sitting position, keeping both hands on the edge of the tub. “Toast,” he said with a fake chuckle. “I get it. Good one.”
“I’m done joking around. Let’s talk about Sushma Vishnuveda. From Fast Lane?”
“Fast Lane.” Recognition spread over Kyle’s face. “I don’t remember anyone name Vooshma, though. There was a guy.”
“There was a guy?” the redhead interjected. “You got some kind of male-on-male thing going on?”
“Please, babe, I’ll explain everything,” Kyle said to her. “It’s just that, you see, I’m in kind of a spot right now.” He turned back to Lara. “A private investigator. Looked like a gangster from an old movie. He was digging around for dirt.”