by Gina Ardito
For the first time ever, Kate let her have the last word. The rest of the drive passed in silence.
Once they arrived at the house, though, her mother picked up where her sister left off. Vivi barely had her coat off before the interrogation began in the middle of the living room. “What’s with you and Bass?”
“Nothing,” Vivi insisted as she bent to release Beowulf from his travel carrier. “We’re still friends.”
“But he’s seeing that old model, that Ava Whatever. I saw it in the magazine section of Sunday’s paper.”
“So?” She pointedly ignored her mother and made smoochie noises near the puppy’s wet, black nose. Her family had enough ammunition to use against her; she wouldn’t allow them to see how much Bass’s withdrawal really stung her.
“So in the eight years you and he were friends, you couldn’t reel him in?”
Her gaze shot to her mother, angry and resentful. This was a mistake. She never should have come here today. “You know, despite his nickname, Mom, Bass is not really a fish.”
“He could have been more than a friend. He could have been a husband.”
With impeccable timing, tow-headed Matthew burst into the living room, eager and bouncing. “Where’s the puppy?” He raced toward her, his smile beaming and hands outstretched. “Lemme see. Please?”
Relieved to change the topic, she displayed Beowulf for her nephew. “Wanna take him outside for me?” she asked. “He probably needs a little outdoor time, if you catch my drift.”
“I can do that! Has he got a leash?”
“In my purse. Hang on.” She fumbled in her shoulder bag until she found the silver clasp and pulled out the dog’s leash.
Beowulf immediately squirmed in Matthew’s hold, and the boy giggled. “Look at him! He knows exactly what we’re planning for him, doesn’t he?”
“He should,” Vivi replied. “We go walkies at least four times a day.”
The dog’s tail wagged furiously, and he let out a series of yips.
“Okay, okay,” Matthew exclaimed. “I get it. Let me put on my coat, and we’ll head out.”
Vivi took the dog again and clamped the leash into place on Beowulf’s collar, and her mother reached into the closet for Matthew’s coat. While he zipped up, Mom handed her the empty hanger. Vivi then transferred the dog’s leash into his eager hands.
“Come on, Beowulf,” he crooned. “Let’s go walkies.”
Vivi hung up her coat and stowed the pet carrier in the closet before turning back to her mother. “Need any help in the kitchen?”
Mom refused to accept the peace offering. “Why not? Maybe Scarlet and Kate can teach you something useful about landing a man.”
“Great.” She glanced at the clock as she followed her mother. How many hours until she could escape? Too many.
Chapter 6
After her less than festive Christmas holiday, Vivi decided to spend New Year’s alone, at home with Beowulf. Sarah had invited her to a party, but she wasn’t in much of a celebratory mood. Too much family time and too many battle scars left her needing a chance to lick her wounds in private. Unfortunately, Sarah didn’t get that memo.
A little after nine on New Year’s Eve, her phone rang.
“Why are you still home?” Sarah demanded, her words a bit slurred. “The party started two hours ago.”
“I’m going to pass, Sarah,” she replied. “I told you yesterday I wasn’t feeling up to it.”
Sarah clucked her tongue like a disapproving nanny. “I knew it. I knew you’d have problems dealing with the holidays minus Bass. You guys have spent too much time together to not miss each other. But, hey! That’s all the more reason why you should come. To take your mind off the fact that he’s not with you tonight.”
She hadn’t confessed her suspicions to Sarah that Bass’s attachment to Ava wasn’t a temporary job. If she had, she would’ve had to explain seeing the photos on the Gossipmonger website, which would require explaining her obsession with SebAva and the Google Alerts on her laptop, which would incite a lecture from her receptionist that she did not want to sit through.
“I’m fine without him tonight. I’m fine without everyone tonight. I’m still recuperating from Christmas with the fam. Tonight, I just want to be alone. Okay?” No family lectures, no southern belles, no pregnant sisters. Just Vivi and her new best friend—who currently sat in the corner, licking his privates.
“You don’t have to lie to me,” Sarah pressed. “I know how miserable you are.”
Vivi forced a laugh. “Oh, come on, Sarah. It’s not like Bass and I are soul mates and one of us died.”
“No, it’s more like my parents giving each other permission to cheat.” She gave an exaggerated, “Eeeeewww!”
The sigh escaped before she could squelch it. “For the thousandth time, Bass and I are not a couple. We’re friends. That’s it.”
“Yeah, right. If you’re just friends, how come neither of you has ever dated anyone else?”
“Because we’ve both been on the crappy end of the romance stick.”
“So because of one bad experience each, you both gave up on love?”
“One horrific experience. Besides, there’s more to life than love, you know.”
“Yeah, sure. There’s breathing, too. But everybody breathes. Breathing doesn’t make your worst day better. It doesn’t give you a thousand reasons to smile. You and Bass have something really special, and you’ve spent the last eight years, hiding behind ‘we’re just friends.’ That’ssss sssstupid.” The slurring worsened as Sarah attempted to whisper, but only managed to smash her words together into incoherency. “Youshouldcometotheparty. Getoutofthehouseforawhile.”
“No, thanks. I’m not interested.”
“Come on! Don’t you know if you spend New Year’s alone, you’re doomed to spend the year alone?”
“I’ll take my chances. And Sarah?”
“Yessss?”
“Drink lots of water and pop a few Tylenols before you go to sleep tonight, or you’re doomed to the mother of all hangovers tomorrow.”
“Thankssss, bosssss.” Sarah’s drunken twitters pierced Vivi’s eardrums, and she yanked the receiver away from her head before she suffered permanent damage.
“Goodnight, Sarah. Happy New Year.” She hung up and absentmindedly stared around her apartment. Beneath her teeny decorated Christmas tree in her teeny living room, the stocking with Bass’s name in gold sparkly glitter and one unopened present remained.
She frowned. How long would she have to look at that reminder that her best friend had abandoned her?
Screw it. Day after tomorrow, she’d find a way to get these gifts to him. What she needed was a liaison, a go-between who could visit Bass without arousing the suspicion of the press. And she knew exactly who that should be.
Rising from her couch, she strode to the closet for her coat and Beowulf’s leash. “Let’s go, boy. A quick walk for you and a visit to a friend for me.”
The pup gave up on his privates in favor of the excitement of his evening constitutional.
Right on schedule, the minute they hit the first floor, Mrs. Melendez’s door opened. “Happy New Year, Miss Cupid!”
“Happy New Year, Mrs. Melendez.” She indicated the leash gathered in her gloved fist. “I have to take Beowulf for a walk, but when I’m done, can I stop down and talk to you about something?”
“Ah, sí.” The woman nodded with the enthusiasm of a bobble head doll. “You come back. I make café Cubano, eh? And we’ll have some pastelitos to ring in the new year.”
Cuban espresso and those yummy fruit-filled pastries? No need to ask her twice. “Count me in. Can I bring you anything?”
“No. You come. We talk. Eh?”
“Give me fifteen minutes.” Vivi cut Beowulf’s walk short, but with the wind chill plummeting the nighttime temperature below zero, she had no doubt he didn’t mind. Racing inside her building again, she met Mrs. Melendez on patrol in the lobby. “Let me just
put Beowulf back upstairs.”
Mrs. Melendez shook her head and opened her door wider to usher Vivi inside. “You bring him, too. He’s welcome. You think he’ll like pastelitos?”
“He might,” she replied as she strode past the older woman into the apartment. “But they’re not good for him, so he’ll have to pass.”
The warmth inside hit her as if she’d stepped into a sauna. Mrs. Melendez, a Cuban native, had never grown accustomed to harsh New York winters and kept her thermostat at a balmy seventy-five degrees year-round. Her apartment, decorated in vivid greens, blues, and tangerines, enhanced the tropics atmosphere. The old woman’s pet parrot, Chico, in his gilded cage in the corner of the living room, was overkill in Vivi’s opinion.
After unclipping Beowulf, she stuffed the leash and her gloves in her pocket and removed her coat. The pup sniffed around for a minute or two, padded into the kitchen, and plopped himself down near the corner where, in Vivi’s apartment, his water and food bowls sat.
“Umm...” Vivi said to Mrs. Melendez. “Could I trouble you for some water for him?”
Nodding, Mrs. Melendez headed to her kitchen area and pulled a small glass mixing bowl from a lower cabinet. She filled the bowl with water and jerked her head at her bistro table. “You sit.”
After Beowulf had his water, Mrs. Melendez poured the café Cubano into two delicate china cups and placed one in front of Vivi, along with a plate piled high with fruit-stuffed puff pastries. “So,” she said as she took the seat across from Vivi. “You tell me what you need, eh?”
How to explain? Without sounding like a jilted girlfriend? Or a desperate loser trying to buy back the man who’d left her? Start with the plan, she supposed, and fill in the blanks as needed. She sipped the dark, thick coffee for fortitude. Once the caffeine jolt hit her, she found her courage.
“Feel like making paella for Bass again?”
****
Bass was forced to wait until noon on New Year’s Day to call Vivi. Twelve hours past the time he wanted.
She answered on the third ring, her easy smile obvious in her voice. “Hey, you. Happy New Year.”
“Happy New Year. Did I wake you?”
“No. I’ve been up for hours. How was your night?”
Ridiculous to the extreme. Whenever he thought Ava’s friends couldn’t spend more money in a more extravagant way, they found a way to out-lavish the previous gala. At last night’s party, they drank Cristal out of hand-hammered, jewel-encrusted gold goblets. The gold gave the champagne a tinny aftertaste, but the partygoers didn’t care. Nothing mattered but the excess.
“Wild,” he lied. “Ava is amazing, and her friends...” He stopped there. There was only so far he was willing to go in this game. “How about you? What’d you do last night?”
“Sarah invited me to a party at her place, but I opted to stay home and watch movies instead.”
“Alone?” He held his breath.
“No. Wulf was here with me.”
Wulf. Again. “That bum’s still staying with you?”
“He’s not a bum. I told you, Wulf is in this for the long haul.”
“Uh-huh.” His hands curled into fists, but he remembered what Ava had said last night about Vivi’s business as deceit for the lovelorn and forced a blasé tone. “You tell your family about him yet?”
“Better than that. He went to my parents’ house with me on Christmas,” she replied with a little too much cheer, in his opinion.
He did? What happened to “not ready to share him yet”?
“How did that go?”
“Oh, you know.” She sighed. “The usual.”
Sympathy warred with triumph. “The new guy didn’t pass inspection, huh?” Or was the new guy just a figment of her imagination? Either way, he won, and he could be gracious in his victory. “I wouldn’t take it too hard. You know how your parents are. They weren’t too wild about me the first year or two, either.”
“Oh, no, everybody loved Wulf! Especially Russ. The boys spent most of the afternoon playing ball in the yard. Even my dad got involved.”
Mr. Maxwell left his cozy spot in the den to venture out into the cold and play ball with the new guy? What the hell?
Once again, he forced a calm outer shell, far from the turmoil building inside him. “Sounds like everything went great.”
“Gee. Ya think?” Her tone grew caustic.
Ah, at last. The black lining in her silver cloud. “What? What’d I miss?” Maybe Wulf set fire to the kitchen curtains or broke two pieces of the family china. A man could dream…
She sighed. “The usual. My date is more popular than I am. You know how it goes by now. I’m the outcast in the family. Always will be. Do you know what Kate said to me last week?”
“What?”
“That I should have taken up Julian on his offer to lose the weight and I would’ve been married and a responsible adult by now.”
“Screw that!” Kate. Bass rolled his eyes. Vivi’s sister was a sanctimonious prig who never smiled, laughed, or had fun. He pitied her coming child because that poor kid would probably wind up living like a china doll—taken down and dusted off to show to company, then placed back on a shelf, never seen or heard until the next royal summons came. “There’s nothing wrong with your weight, Vivi. Or anything else when it comes to you. Your family’s a bunch of idiots. Kate, especially.”
Her burst of laughter warmed his insides. “That’s what I love most about you, Bass. My ego never had a more stalwart supporter.”
The words hung between them. That’s what I love most about you. Did she mean it? Not in the mode of friendship, but as in real love? A love where she could see herself sharing her life with him? His heart urged him to pounce, to push her to admit how much she loved him, so he could confess how much he loved her. Then he could tell her to be patient with him and convince her to dump Wulf, if he really existed.
“Oh!” she exclaimed before he could form words from his feverish thoughts. “I figured out a way to get your Christmas presents to you. Wait’ll you hear this.”
He didn’t want his Christmas presents yet. Not until he could give her the ring he’d bought her. “I told you there’s no rush. I can’t chance the press finding us together right now. We should just wait.”
“No. Listen.” Her excitement made her words bounce. “Mrs. Melendez is going to make you paella. She’ll bring it to your apartment. Your gifts will be in her tote bag. If the press asks, she’ll say she was your private cook for decades and always makes you paella for the holidays. It’s not an out and out lie.”
“Yeah, it is. I’ve never had a private cook.”
“But the press doesn’t know that.” She giggled. “And she always makes paella for you for the holidays—well, at least for the last eight years or so, anyway. It’s perfect. You don’t even have to be home. I’m going to give her my key to your place, and she’ll leave the paella in your fridge, your gift on the counter. You just have to tell the security staff to expect her, and we’ll do the rest. Pretty clever, huh?”
“Very.” Particularly since her plan left him no reason, under normal circumstances, to avoid giving Mrs. Melendez Vivi’s gift to take back with her. Then again, under normal circumstances, Vivi would already be wearing the diamond hiding in his bureau drawer.
“She’s going to stop by Thursday afternoon, okay?”
“Wouldn’t you rather wait until we can exchange face-to-face?” God knew, he did. “I mean, I know you think I’m a big nine-year-old about Christmas, but I don’t mind waiting.”
“No dice. I want you to have it now. Besides, I’m afraid Wulf might ruin your gift if it stays here too long.”
Wulf might ruin it? How? In a jealous rage? “What the hell…? Vivi, is this guy violent?”
Her laughter rang out again. “No, of course not. He’s just…careless, I guess.”
Careless. “How careless?”
“Relax, Bass. Nothing to worry about. Although, he has ruined two pa
irs of my shoes already.”
“What’s he doing? Wearing them?”
“No. Never mind. It’s not important. How’s Ava?”
“Happy.”
“Lucky her.”
“Why? You’re not happy?”
“I…” She paused, and her sharp inhale pierced his eardrum. “I miss you, Bass,” she murmured, soft and kind of sexy. “Wulf is fun and all, but…he’s not you.”
He swallowed a lump in his throat—probably his heart. God, he hated tiptoeing around her. They’d never before been so awkward with each other. He opted for humor to ease the tension. “Well, I never ruined your shoes, so that’s one checkmark in my pro column.”
“True. So, don’t forget. Thursday afternoon. Paella.”
“Can’t wait.” Because he’d have the opportunity to grill the one person who knew everything going on in Vivi’s building: Mrs. Melendez.
Chapter 7
Bass took the day off to make sure he didn’t miss Mrs. Melendez’s visit. In the morning, he called down to the lobby to alert the staff he was expecting her, gave them a full description of her appearance, and left an order to contact him once she got on the elevator.
Sure enough, at ten minutes past twelve, his intercom buzzed from the lobby. He hit the speak button. “Yes?”
“We just sent her up, Mr. Lawrence.”
“Thanks, David.”
He opened his apartment door and waited for the elevator to reach his floor.
The bell rang, the doors slid apart, and Mrs. Melendez stepped out into the plush carpeted hall. She struggled with a large tote bag on her right shoulder, counterbalanced by a reusable shopping bag, overflowing with foodstuffs, in her left hand. Her eyes grew wide as she glanced around the hallway, apparently lost.
“Mrs. Melendez,” he said, waving a hand from his doorway. “Over here.”