Intimate Portraits

by Cheryl B. Dale

  “It doesn’t matter, Rennie.” Her stomach twisted. “I don’t need to hear this.”

  She had fought her personal demons concerning Rennie’s relationship with Jane and had put them aside when he’d said he didn’t miss Jane anymore and that he loved her, Autumn.

  But an affair with Sarita was different.

  Rennie himself had described Sarita as every man’s fantasy. She’d wondered if he fantasized about Sarita, longed for her like other men, but until today she hadn’t let herself be tormented by it.

  To discover he actually had fantasized about Sarita, gone further…

  Rennie and Sarita had been lovers.

  There, she’d faced it. There was something else she had to face. Could any ordinary woman live up to Sarita’s memory? After having been with Sarita, would Rennie be satisfied with a nonentity like Autumn?

  Her heart felt as if it weighed ten tons.

  Rennie’s hand dropped from the glass. His shoulder touched hers as they stared at some sort of jade pendant collection that she later remembered little about except that it lay on cream colored velveteen.

  “Come over here so we can talk.”

  She didn’t want to talk, but he pulled her to a side corner. So close his breath warmed her ear, he said, “Autumn, I never loved Sarita. Not like I love you, not even like I loved Jane. Sarita came to see me and she looked lost, like… And I was homesick as anything, out there by myself with no friends, no family, not much money. She was just starting to make it. Having someone like her interested in me was flattering. And she seemed as glad to see me as I was to see someone from home.”

  “Rennie, you don’t have to tell me this.” I don’t want to know.

  “I do have to tell you, Autumn. You’ve entitled to know what I am. With Sarita, I thought I was helping her. Then I got sucked in and… I told myself I loved her. But it wasn’t love. It was something else. Sex. Weakness. I don’t know. By the time I realized what she was, I was in real deep.”

  He kept his mouth at her ear, not looking at her. “She liked to take men and wrap them up in knots. One man died because she set him against his friend. Oh, she liked kinky sex and group sex and whatever else was in fashion. Designer drugs, too. But she really got off on getting men to fight over her. The blood, the idea that they were ready to kill each other over her… It jacked her up like… I woke up one morning and realized I hated myself and had to get out. I told her I had to concentrate on my studies. And I did.”

  She could imagine the scene. He’d had plenty of experience at telling a lovesick female he would be her friend but not her lover, that she’d find someone else. He’d make it seem so logical, be so reasonable.

  She knew firsthand how smooth he could make it.

  “Was she upset?” How could she sound so calm?

  “Upset? You could say that.” Rennie gave something like a chuckle. A bitter chuckle. “I don’t know why. I was simply another man to her. I sent her flowers like Francisco said, but it was to soften my leaving. Not in hopes of making up with her. I had no intentions of getting involved with her again. Ever.”

  “Did you continue to see her?” Go ahead, turn the knife.

  “We kept in touch. I wish we hadn’t. She met Francisco through me. When he stayed with me last year, we ran into her and,” he made a wry face, “given the two of them and their appetites, it wasn’t long before the inevitable occurred. I liked her, Autumn, at least the person she could have been. She was so damned cheerful, so full of energy and ambition. I kept waiting for her to change, but she couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. I never loved her. I don’t think I’ve loved anyone like I love you.”

  People kept sliding by their corner, chatting and laughing like everything was normal. Normal like last week before…

  She wanted to believe Rennie, wanted to ignore the sick jealousy rushing through her, but what if he was mistaken? What if someone like Sarita was what he wanted deep down in those hidden depths he guarded so closely?

  Something like weariness touched his eyes. “I told you.” He lowered his voice further as a jabbering group of pubescent females rushed past. “I told you you’d be disappointed in me if you ever came to know me, but you didn’t believe me. You and I don’t share the same background, the same ideas. Now do you understand what I was trying to say? I’ve done things I’m not proud of. Things you’d never understand or approve of.”

  He waited but she couldn’t speak.

  When he threw his hands out and turned away, she forgot her headache.

  She was losing him. She would lose him if she didn’t do something.

  Like stamp her foot. “Now who’s putting words in whose mouth!”

  He jumped at her show of temper, turned back.

  She didn’t retreat. “Yes, I mean it. You keep accusing me of putting words in your mouth when you’re as bad as I am. If I’m disappointed in anything, Rennie, it’s that you don’t trust me enough to tell me these things, that you let them come up and slap me in the face when I’m not expecting them.”

  “Autumn.” He looked around as a crowd came toward them, led her into a mercifully empty showcase on the balcony. “It isn’t that I don’t trust you. You must know I trust you.”

  She pushed him away. “I don’t know anything of the kind. Keeping secrets about Fran and Sarita, about you and Sarita. Kicking me out when you and Fran were discussing whatever it was you were discussing this afternoon. Does that look like you trust me?”

  When he would have spoken, she shook her finger at him. “Don’t think I don’t know you're afraid I’ll tell whoever it is whatever it is you’re scared Fran’s done. Do you think I can’t see what’s going on?”

  “What?” His brow wrinkled.

  Gibberish. She’d spouted off gibberish.

  She hit her forehead. “I know you don’t trust me. But I won’t tell anyone anything about Fran. Why won’t you trust me?”

  “It isn’t that I don’t trust you. I don’t want you to get involved in something that’s not your fault.” He licked his lips. “I should never have gotten sucked in by Sarita. I knew it was wrong, but I rationalized it because I wanted to. That’s the kind of man you think you’re in love with. Someone who can’t stick to his principles.”

  “Damn your principles.” Tears prickled, but she never cried.

  She turned to hide them and found they had wandered over to the balcony railing.

  A long ramp curved down to the atrium. Inside it, a man dressed in a business overcoat with a red and green scarf entered, stopped, and surveyed his surroundings. When he looked up, she recognized the symmetrical face and thick brows.

  An ordinary man. A man that could show up anywhere.

  Something about the confidence in the mouth and chin made him a likely subject for a portrait.

  She’d seen him someplace, but couldn’t recall where.

  Not that it mattered. She was too close to losing Rennie. If she didn’t do something, say something, he’d leave her.

  And she couldn’t bear it. If he had sex with every woman he met and would always keep his heart locked away from hers, she would learn to live with it. She was his, and had been from the time she was five years old, when hiding behind Reseda’s cushiony hip, she had peeked out to see him smiling at her and decided that maybe life wasn’t so bad.

  She could have Rennie or lose him. It was that simple.

  Gripping the metal railing of the balcony, she used a long, shuddering breath to compose herself. “So you made a mistake when you were young and homesick and lonely, and let yourself be seduced into a life of evil by a glamorous actress. So what? Big deal. I don’t care.”

  “You say that now but—”

  “I mean it. I don’t care about your principles, or about your girlfriends or about whatever secrets you want to keep from me. I love you and I want to marry you and if you’ve gone to bed with a hundred Saritas, I still wouldn’t care. You can’t back out, it’s too late. You proposed to me in front of Fran.”
>
  He stood for a long moment. Then he reached out to touch her hair. Tenderly, wearily. “I won’t back out.”

  Fear and anger fled. Relief flooded her. “Good. Let’s go look at the rest of the exhibit.”

  “I’m at your disposal. Now and forever.”

  She turned and gripped the railing to hide her misting eyes.

  Down below, in the airy atrium, the man in the holiday scarf she almost but not quite recognized, crossed the lobby.

  Forgotten scents of pizza and wood ashes and beer swept through her memory.

  Helen. That’s where she’d seen him.

  “Rennie. That man down there by the far column.” She leaned over the railing. “He was in Helen.”

  “Which man?”

  “The one in the overcoat and scarf. See him? He’s headed back toward the offices.”

  “He was in Helen? Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I saw him in the pizza place and then in the elevator when we took Laney and John’s suitcase up to their room. I remember thinking he had such an ordinary face, it would be hard to do a portrait. Except for the chin and jaw. That made me wonder how to catch him in the right light to…”

  They looked at each other. “Laney said there was a gun,” she said slowly. Where did that come from?

  Rennie understood. Without a word, he took off.

  What if the man was dangerous?

  “Rennie!”

  He didn’t stop.

  She began to run, too, getting to the entrance of the three story ramp as he started down, then brushing past climbers and nearly running over a man in a wheelchair as she hurried to catch up.

  Chapter 19

  Sam Bogatti had found her office earlier, but it was empty. Now she was there, but she had company.

  He listened outside the door. Shit, who was she railing at like that? Classy dame like that shouldn’t know such words, much less repeat them. Today’s women were bad as men.

  “You were responsible! You cheating, lying sonofabitch! I trusted you, like you said, I trusted you and you feed me this crap!”

  “Dani, calm down. For chrissake, there’s no use in bringing the entire staff in here.” The man’s voice was deep, modulated. An orator’s voice. Soothing, rational.

  Unlike Dani Huertole’s.

  “Why?” she asked plaintively. “Why did you do it? I would have worked my fingers to the bone for you. I would have campaigned, talked you up, done whatever you wanted. I would have looked the other way whenever you pulled off your dirty little deals. All I asked was one tiny favor.”

  “I love you, Dani, and I tried.”

  “If you loved me, you’d never have done this to me!”

  “It wasn’t my fault. I swear it wasn’t my fault. Think about it. You’ll realize I couldn’t have helped it.”

  “Then whose fault was it?” Her voice had quieted, but something in its steely control alarmed Sam. “Who will you blame it on, Gus?”

  Sam was used to hysterical females and angry men, but he didn’t like this false calm.

  This broad’s frigging crazy-mad and ready to blow.

  “Dani, you haven’t thought this out.” The man remained reasonable. “There was no other way. If there had been any other way out, I would have found it.”

  “I loved her.”

  “I’m sorry, but you’ll get over it. After you think about the choices.” The modulated voice broke, rose. “What are you doing with—Dani, don’t—Wait!”

  The air exploded. Once.

  And again.

  Sam knew then. “Shit!” He wrenched open the door.

  Two more shots filled the air.

  Gus Huertole lay on his back behind a heavy desk, eyes staring upward at the tiled ceiling and mouth open as a stream of blood colored his shirtfront. His hand moved, then stilled.

  “Holy shit!”

  Sam’s exclamation jerked Dani Huertole around, gun still clutched in her hand. Eyes were wild, face contorted in fury. Too frightening for him to approach. No time to rush her.

  “Get back,” she snarled.

  Oh shit. Her gun swung up. Toward him.

  His mouth dried. His wife. His boys.

  Holding up his hands, he stood still. “It’s okay.”

  The Ruger was in the back of his belt. Why the shit hadn’t he taken it out before he went in?

  Something had told him he shoulda dropped the job. He shoulda listened.

  His heart hammered in his ears. He took a step back.

  A sudden jerk of her hand put the barrel into her mouth. Before he could do anything, say anything, she fired.

  Blood and brains spattered the wall. Her body slumped against the desk. Gore everywhere.

  Her head fell over, away from him.

  Lucky he didn’t shit his pants.

  Light from outside streamed through the windows, touching each detail, brightening Huertole’s white shirt against the redness, turning the navy of Dani’s blouse to bright blue, bringing out the red glints in the cherry desk, turning the gray of the gun beneath still fingers to silver.

  Highlighting the bloody pulp in her hair and on the walls.

  Someone behind him whimpered. He whirled, saw the photographer frozen behind her boyfriend. Both stared past him with wide horrified eyes.

  The Merriwell woman was the whimperer.

  He moved for the door, but something in her heartbroken face touched him.

  “It’ll be okay. Some people don’t know when they got it good, do they?” He patted her kindly on the shoulder as he went past. “You oughta be thankful it wasn’t you. It coulda been, you know.”

  He brushed by. They stood unmoving, her and her man. Still stunned. Them kind of people weren’t used to death like this.

  Escaping, he felt tons lighter.

  The wacko dame had done his job for him. Unbelievable.

  “Forget the photographer for now,” Bernie had said. “We got bigger problems. Take care of Huertole’s wife. We got the jewelry back to her in time, but she’s still a loose cannon waiting to go off. If she does, Huertole’s chances for winning are slim and none. Nobody’s going to vote for a man whose wife’s having an affair with another woman.”

  So Dani Huertole had taken care of herself. But she’d also taken with her the candidate that Bernie’s client had spent so much money to protect.

  Bernie’s client was going to be one pissed hombre.

  What the shit. This was looking more and more like a good time to quit the business.

  In the rental car, Sam popped a fresh piece of gum into his mouth and started toward the airport.

  The trip home on the small airplane decided him. Actually, an air pocket over Kentucky where he spewed the enchilada he’d had for lunch decided him.

  This is it, he promised. For sure they’d find his body parts strewed over the frigging mountain peaks.

  No more jobs involving nice people who didn’t deserve to be hit. No more rides in frigging little planes that could crash at any time. No more getting calls in the middle of the night and having to take off when the kid had a big game the next day.

  He’d got enough money socked away. His wife was a frugal woman, not like some of the bimbos Bernie took up with. If he bought into that motel like her brother wanted him to do, they could manage real good. Even with the costs of college for two boys. Especially if they could get hockey scholarships.

  Yeah man, I’m quitting.

  In a small airport outside Chicago, Sam reached his own car and opened a new piece of gum to celebrate his deliverance from the big hand of the sky.

  That’s all she wrote, folks.

  Kinda nice he hadn’t had to off the photographer.

  She and the big guy made a good-looking couple.

  ****

  Some days after the tragedy at the High Museum, Autumn worked in her condo while Rennie hung out. She was studying real estate specifications for an office in a new building near Lawrenceville when Rennie’s cell rang.

  After
he hung up he relayed an invitation. Laney wanted him and Autumn to come to her house for dinner the following evening.

  “Mom got in, and she and the rest of the family will be there. I think the idea’s to throw a kind of engagement party for us.”

  Autumn dropped her papers. “Your mother knows? Who told her? What did she say?”

  Rennie, his back to her as he searched for the remote control, shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her or talked to her.”

  “Well, what did Laney say she said? She doesn’t approve, does she? Of you and me, I mean. That’s why Laney’s having us over to her house instead of us going to Reseda’s.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Rennie turned, remote in hand. “I imagine Laney’s having us over to help cheer up John. From what she says, he’s pretty concerned about the hearing coming up.”

  “But John didn’t know about Gus’s connection to that drug cartel. He’s an innocent victim. He and Fran both.”

  Rennie sat down beside her. “The government lawyers may not believe that. He and Francisco will both have to answer some pretty hard questions. But they’ll be all right.”

  She sighed, went back to her own personal worries. “So what did Reseda say when she found out about us? Laney must have said something.”

  He shrugged. “That she’s a little disappointed because she had you and Francisco paired up, but that as long as one of us had the good sense to get you in the family, she’s okay with it.”

  “She didn’t say that. You made that up.”

  Rennie chuckled. “She’s thrilled, absolutely thrilled according to Laney. I can’t tell you her exact words. I told you, I haven’t talked to her.”

  “Then you’d better pick up the phone, don’t you think?”

  He cut his eyes at her and made a sound of disgust. “There’s a program on Georgia football about to come on. It’s a preview of their bowl game.”

  She handed him the phone.

  Reseda was volubly thrilled.