by Sally Felt
It was cube shaped and too big to easily grasp in one hand. Isabelle sat on the toilet’s closed lid and held the box in her lap.
Steven had said it was an heirloom.
He’d said a lot of things in the time she’d known him, most of which turned out to be untrue. For example, “You’re the only one for me.”
Men.
She pulled off the string and tore the paper. It was a shipping carton from an online book and music seller. Addressed to Isabelle. Here, at this address.
Heat flushed her face. Somehow Steven’s reusing this box to hide something in her house made the whole thing even more personal, even more of an invasion.
The box’s flaps had been folded in a pinwheel to keep the lid closed. She pulled it open and scattered packing peanuts to reveal a smaller box.
A jewelry gift box. A decidedly modern, velvet jewelry gift box.
Isabelle growled. What had that bottom-feeding troglodyte hidden in her house? She snapped open the lid. To call this jewelry would be an insult to feathered hair extensions and children’s candy necklaces. The sudden buzzing in her ears must be Louis Comfort Tiffany turning in his grave.
No wonder it had been hidden. The public needed protection from rings as ugly as this.
Chapter Three
Kim held the belay rope as his student clung gracelessly to the gym wall, her feet at his eye level in the room called Big Top, the main room of Wall Werx. Shawna had possibly the worst form of any climber Kim had taught. She also had the cutest butt. It was a bad combination, especially since the girl was only nineteen, way too young to his twenty-nine-and-counting. Most days, it was easy to keep a professional focus—he wasn’t into gigglers, especially teenaged gigglers—but this morning was a different story. Hours in a sleepless bed in his aquarium-like loft, watching thunderstorms all night, had left him edgy and distracted. And here was Shawna, bleeding energy with every move over the gym wall, her youthful legs quivering like arrows drawing his eye to her greatest asset. He couldn’t wait for the lesson to end, when he could waste his own energy on the wall and sweat out his frustration. Assuming Damon ever showed up to run his own damn business.
“Falling,” Shawna said.
“Gotcha,” he said, bending the rope across the belay device at his waist and activating the brake. He leaned back and sat in his climbing harness to give her tension on the rope. Shawna released the plastic holds on the wall and dangled by her harness, securely clipped to the rope’s other end. Between Shawna and him, the rope ran over a big metal pipe in the ceiling over Shawna’s head.
Kim said, “I’ll bring you down. Spread your legs for me.”
She giggled at his unintentional innuendo, but she did it. Kim decided this would be her last fall today. “Bend your knees, Shawna. Tell me about the fall.”
She bent her knees and Kim began the process of reeling in rope with his left hand and pulling it through the tuber device that helped him control her fall with his right.
“My leg started shaking,” she said. She swung gently from the rope as Kim lowered her.
“What’s that a sign of?”
“I’m tired?” She swung closer to the wall. Her feet struck it and she steadied herself with the sticky soles of her climbing slippers. She was only four feet up. Kim held her anchor steady as she walked her way down to the floor.
“You wasted energy, standing on your toes when you didn’t have to. Heels stay down.”
“I thought I was,” she said. Perspiration shone on her face. She sounded pouty, and not of the fun, Isabelle Caine faux-pouty variety. Which was probably a good thing.
“Belay off,” he said automatically, concluding the climb. He unlocked the brake and unclipped the carabiner that kept him anchored, coiling the rope around the anchor bolt on the floor.
“That’s all for today,” he said.
She pulled the band off her ponytail and shook out her long blonde hair. “Okay. Thanks, Kim.” She smiled.
He was careful not to smile back. When he’d first taken Shawna as a private student, she’d never missed an opportunity to flash skin or make sure he’d have to touch her. Not only was she too young for him, he’d been involved with Jules and he observed a strict code of one at a time. He couldn’t tell Shawna. She’d never flat out propositioned him and he didn’t want to insult her and lose her business. He also couldn’t use the convenient line about not dating his students, which had worked well up until he’d dated Jules—one of his students.
In the absence of a response from him, Shawna had finally given up—as long as he was careful. This frustrated, he’d have to be especially careful.
“Next time you’re in, spend time in the boulder garden,” he said. “You won’t need anyone to spot for you in there and it’s a great way to understand how your body is moving—and how you’re wearing yourself out.”
“Okay.” She released the rope from her waist tie-in and clipped it around the still-anchored top rope hanging slack from the ceiling. The webbing of her climbing harness drew Kim’s eye back to her butt. Damon was going to have to find space to install showers around here. Kim needed a cold one.
Focus.
“Don’t push too hard. Take it slow,” he said and she nodded. “Now get lost.”
She giggled. Not exactly a cold shower, but helpful, nonetheless.
As soon as she’d gone, Kim was mobbed by questions from other gym members. Scheduling mostly, a couple of safety issues about knots and belay protocol, a stupid dispute over who had the right to climb a particular route and the inevitable I’m-broke-can-I-pay-double-dues-next-month, which was an issue only Damon, as owner, could answer.
Technically, none of it was Kim’s problem. He was at Wall Werx on a contract basis to teach a climbing basics class. He also took private students, paying Damon for gym time for any lessons, like Shawna’s, taking place at Wall Werx. Apparently, his status as teacher made him the go-to person when Damon wasn’t around, which was damn often these days. Kim didn’t mind except on days like this when his whole system screamed at him to chalk up and pump plastic, something the guy in charge couldn’t do. No way could he climb and ensure the safety of gym members at the same time.
Kim never took his phone when out climbing himself, but as teacher and guy in charge, he kept it clipped to his harness, ringer off, in case of emergency. He pulled it free to see if he could locate Damon. He’d missed a call. His Dallas realtor. She had a prospective buyer for the loft and wanted to be sure the place was in show-worthy condition.
Was it ever. A week earlier, he’d moved his bike, racquetball gear, skates, assorted junk—more or less all the sports equipment he’d accumulated to support the last couple of years hobbies, a considerable pile, as he seemed to go through hobbies almost as quickly as he did women—to the storage locker for his unit in the building’s underground garage.
The ungodly collection of shoes that accompanied said hobbies clogged the back of his Jeep, most of them sealed for aromatic freshness in what had become the footlocker of the damn.
That had eliminated most of the clutter around the loft. And he’d always been pretty good about making the bed. A guy who went through girlfriends as quickly as he did learned to keep his place first-impression-worthy.
Which brought him back to thoughts of the orange-breasted lioness and wishing he could throw himself at the wall for the next hour or two. Where the hell was Damon?
* * * * *
Where the hell was Charlie? Her texts and calls went unanswered. Same for calls to the apartment he and Gina shared. He’d promised to provide muscle for her Space Craft closet-organizer installation at Mrs. Avery’s house, so Isabelle hadn’t called any of her usual helpers. Charlie might not be the world’s most responsible guy, but money had become a more reliable motivator for him since he’d been laid off a few weeks earlier. Not that he had to do her heavy lifting to get her help. She’d tucked extra cash in the rainy-day pot she kept on the mantel so he could take whatever he neede
d without having to ask. It was just that he’d volunteered for this.
She ran errands to give her brother a chance to get it together, and returned to a message from Stacey, wanting her to call. Nothing from Charlie.
As she stood there in the living room, the phone rang. Maybe Charlie received her mental nudge—some sort of stepsibling telepathy. She grabbed the receiver.
“Is he still there?” Steven.
Crap.
“Who?”
He laughed. “I thought so.”
What did that mean?
“I talked to my buddy Bob,” Steven said. “Is it true your ‘real man’ is a plumber?”
He’d talked to Bob after the party? Isabelle’s stomach gurgled.
“Kim is a plumber, yes,” she said. She wanted to stick to the truth as much as possible, not that Steven had ever understood the concept. Isabelle considered it simple respect, and she owed Kim Martin that much for his kindness.
“Your girlfriend Stacey said you’d never mentioned him before.”
“I don’t see how the details of my life are any of your business.”
There was a pause. Isabelle pictured Steven taking a breath, trying to work out what she wanted to hear, gearing up to ask about the ring she wasn’t yet ready to let him know she’d found.
“You’re right,” he said, “I apologize.”
“Thank you.” She hung up before he could say more. It was the most pleasant finish to a conversation with Steven she could remember.
The phone rang again. She picked it up. It might be Charlie.
“Why did you hang up on me?”
No such luck. “I have nothing to say to you. Keep bothering me and I’ll make your life hell. You know how I can get.” She knew her voice had become nasty. It happened whenever she thought about how he’d tried to make his every thoughtless moment her fault. You know how you get.
“I have to have my box back, Isabelle. Let me come and get it. Please. You have no idea how important it is to me.”
Her stomach clenched with anger. Yesterday, it had been an heirloom. Today it was his box. Weird thing to say if it were an heirloom. Steven always was a sloppy liar.
“Isabelle?”
“Don’t call me again.” She hung up.
Her tread was heavy enough to shake the flowers in their vase as she stomped past the living room coffee table on her way to the bedroom. The stupid heart-shaped ring sat on her dresser, exactly as she’d left it last night. In its box.
Oh, sorry. Steven’s box. The box with her name on it.
Had he bought it for one of the sluts he’d cheated with?
Or maybe he’d thought a gift of jewelry would soothe Isabelle’s suspicions? A little bauble to keep his meal ticket happy?
She tore the thing from its box. It hadn’t gotten any less ugly since last night. The candy-red stone had to be a carat and a half at least, framed with tiny diamonds and perched atop a gold-filigreed setting. If this was an heirloom, bad taste ran in Steven’s family.
She slid it onto her ring finger. It choked at her knuckle. Clearly, it wasn’t intended for her hand.
Bastard. Two-timing, womanizing, unfaithful, untrustworthy, oversexed bastard.
She opened the toilet lid and threw the thing in. She snarled at it. “You’re the one, Isabelle. I love you, Isabelle.” It winked at her, red as a cheap whore’s nail polish.
Perhaps the whore Steven had bought it for.
Isabelle flushed. Water sucked the ring out of the bowl with a satisfying whoosh. Gone. Vanished, same as any tender feelings she’d ever had for the jerk who’d hidden it in her walls.
Be ready for me, she thought darkly. You know how I get.
She tore through the house, wishing she had something else of Steven’s to destroy. But she’d taken care of that months ago. Everything from his brand of beer in the fridge to the mingling of their music collections, to the awful Viking warrior poster he’d framed in their bedroom—her bedroom. It was all gone. All except that hideous, huge heresy of a ring. And now that was gone too. Down the toilet. How appropriate.
She spent her frustration shredding the cardboard box she’d found it in and stomping on the pieces. Childish, perhaps, but effective.
Finally calm, Isabelle remembered Stacey had asked her to call. She smoothed her hair and dialed her friend from the bedroom phone, her favorite in the house—a replica of a style popular in the late 1920s. Stacey picked up with, “Bob is incredible. I think I’m in love.”
“Hello, Stacey, it’s Isabelle. I take it you are well?” Caller ID was so uncivilized.
“Well?” Her friend laughed. “Well, well, well…hmm, the only words that come to mind are ones that make you flinch. Let’s just say I barely made it out of bed in time to get to work.”
Isabelle laughed. “I meant to warn you, barbequed wings can be a powerful aphrodisiac.” It was a joke, though it would explain a lot about her night.
“We’re really busy at the Barn,” Stacey said, and Isabelle immediately noticed the telltale sounds of Stacey’s store in the background—customer voices, concrete-floor, soaring-ceiling roar, paint-can-agitator clanging. “I can’t talk, but I need a huge favor.”
“Anything. You know that.”
“Double date with Bob and me tonight.”
Not even close to what she’d expected. “What? Why?”
“As long as you and Kim are there, we won’t get naked.”
“That’s a relief, but I don’t see your problem.”
“I think Bob’s special. He might even be ‘The One’. But to find out, we need to stay out of bed long enough to have a real conversation. If you guys are there, we might stand a chance. Especially since you and Kim aren’t sleeping together yet.”
Stacey hadn’t even bothered to frame that last lob as a question, which irked Isabelle. She might discourage her friends from using the f-word, but if anyone should know how much Isabelle enjoyed sex, it was her similarly afflicted friend. Evidently, Isabelle’s months of celibacy since she’d tossed out a certain ring-hiding swine had Stacey thinking she’d turned prude.
“Please, Isabelle. Please?”
Bob was Steven’s spy into Isabelle’s life. If she could sparkle on the arm of gorgeous, kind, sexy Kim Martin through the course of an intimate dinner, it would surely get back to the slug.
But Kim wasn’t exactly dying to see her again, was he?
Crap.
“I’ll have to check with Kim,” she hedged, then immediately regretted it. What had happened to the respectful honesty mantra she was so fond of?
“Please, Isabelle. Promise him anything. Sleep with him if you have to—not like it would be any big sacrifice, what a hunk—but really. Please.”
“I’ll call him.” Or see him. He’d told her to drop by. He’d given her a card…Isabelle tucked the phone against her neck and strained to reach her wicker clothes hamper. The phone cord was simply not long enough. Maybe her friends had a point about the uselessness of landlines.
“Mirabelle, eight o’clock,” Stacey said. “Thank you, Isabelle. I gotta go. I promise not to pick ugly bridesmaid dresses.”
And with that, the conversation was over. Isabelle was free to pop open the hamper and pull out last night’s satin blouse from among her dirty clothes. Sure enough, Kim’s business card was right where she’d left it, tucked into the blouse’s turned-back cuff.
Except it was the card Stacey had given her with the possible commercial business lead.
Or was it?
Isabelle went to the kitchen. The business card on top of the penne pasta jar said Wall Werx. The business card from her blouse said Wall Werx. She held them side-by-side. One of them was imprinted with the president’s name, Damon Franklin. The other had no name on it at all.
A shiver wound down Isabelle’s spine. Maybe Stacey was right, that it was no coincidence, her getting Kim’s card at the same time Steven was breaking Isabelle’s heart. Maybe Kim was the perfect way for her to get back
at the dimple-faced rat bastard.
All he could say was no.
* * * * *
“No,” said Kim.
“Damon lets us put on our own music,” the kid said. He wore the standard more-attitude-than-thou knitted cap favored by so many of the teen boys who seemed to arrive in after-school packs. They came in with big attitudes, but none of them were stupid enough to pick a fight in here. So far, at least.
“Yeah,” said his friend with a buzz cut and a neck covered with tribal tattoos. They were both fairly serious climbers, Kim knew, as he’d seen them in here a lot. Long-limbed and tightly wired, they looked good on the wall. Kim wondered whether they climbed outside the gym and whether anyone had talked to them about what to say to the cops if they got caught buildering.
“Damon isn’t here today,” he said. “I’m picking the music. Let’s see you move to it.” He nodded at the wall. They stood there, giving him a poor-old-dude-is-so-uncool look.
If he’d been quicker to think of it, Kim might have locked the doors in the post-lunch doldrums, enjoyed a private workout and skipped all this nonsense. It would have served Damon right for being both gone and unreachable. But he hadn’t. In consideration, he should at least get to pick the music. And he had. The walls of the Big Top fairly throbbed with an ex-pat Cuban rap band he was fond of.
Kim gave the teens a poor-dumb-kids-don’t-know-nothing look and leapt at a jug hold, low on the east wall. It was the starting point for the Testament route, but he had something else in mind. He hung from his right hand for a few beats, letting his body torque to the music. He brought his feet up onto smaller holds and slapped the wall to emphasize the beat before launching a highly stylized horizontal traverse. He’d never tried anything like this before and the rap tempo was far slower than what the kids usually chose, but it worked surprisingly well, giving him enough time to sketch his next move before he had to commit, every plastic bolt and hold vibrating with the bass.