“I didn’t tell her,” she said instead. “And I won’t tell anybody, if you don’t want me to. As far as my mother’s concerned, you’ll be a good-looking guy with a cute accent who’s modeling for Calvin and renting one of her apartments. But I warn you, she’ll like that part, and she’ll tell you so.”
He laughed. “Well, since I haven’t been able to get any kind of flattering response out of you, I have to get my ego stroked somehow, don’t I. Now you’ve got me all curious. Can’t wait.”
***
It didn’t take long for things to get out of hand. In fact, it took about five seconds.
Her mother came to the door of the modest ranch house at Faith’s knock, preceded by a cascade of yapping—Montclair, her little poodle, on the job.
“Hi, Mom.” Faith gave her mother a hug that was returned with interest. “This is Will.”
“Bella Goodwin,” her mother said. She was looking as neat and pretty as always in a pale-blue sweater and cream pants, both of which showed off her still-excellent figure. She cocked her head of neatly bobbed platinum hair at an angle, took his hand, and smiled up at him. “Now, aren’t you just the nicest surprise?”
Which sounded pleasant enough, but Faith wasn’t relaxing. Her mother’s ways were devious.
Will laughed, the easy, rich sound filling the little hallway, an influx of testosterone into Bella’s feminine surroundings. The half-circle of mahogany table was set with a vase of calla lilies tonight, the crystal chandelier sparkled overhead, and Will stood, big and brown, in the center of it all, flashing a smile that competed with any chandelier.
“Didn’t think I was a surprise, but we’ll hope it’s nice. I’ll do my best. And who’s this wee fella?” He crouched on the oriental hallway rug to give Montclair’s fluffy gray head a rub, sending the little dog into a frenzy of tail-wagging ecstasy.
“That’s Montclair. Oh, my, the accent,” Bella said. “That’s just the cherry on top of the ice-cream sundae. I do like some decoration at my dinner table.”
“Mom,” Faith said, “you’ll embarrass Will.”
“Oh, I don’t think Will’s easily embarrassed,” Bella said. “I think Will’s heard it all before.” And there she went, X-ray vision at work.
“Now, that’d be telling.” He rose to stand with another grin. “And I’m thinking you’ve heard it all before yourself, because if I’m decorative, I’m not the only one here. I’ve been trying to get Faith out with me for days, and now I get a double dose of Goodwin girls? My mum always did say I was born under a lucky star.”
“You have not been trying to get me out with you for days,” Faith said, feeling the treacherous color rise in her cheeks. Her mother never blushed, and Faith never failed to. And now they were both embarrassing her.
“No?” he asked. “Who asked you out for coffee yesterday? And who said no?”
“Ah…” she said. “I had work to do.”
His smile was all for her now, those eyes gleaming. “Yeh. I remember. Work. But I’m here now, because I am a lucky man.”
“Oh, boy,” Bella said. “Come have dinner. It’s getting too warm in here for me.”
A break, then, that Faith sorely needed, while she helped her mother dish up, and then they were sitting around her round oak dining table, set with pretty lace placemats, having dinner. Dinner, and that was it.
“You know, I can’t believe it,” Bella said, taking a dainty forkful of, yes, eggplant casserole. Which Will was eating, too, because he was polite. “Here’s Calvin getting back into the skin trade again, after going respectable for so many years, just like me. Makes me think that I should see if I’ve still got it.” She gave her hair a little pat. “Nah. I know I’ve still got it. But maybe not with my clothes off.”
Faith concentrated on her chicken medallions. “My mother was a showgirl,” she told Will with resignation. How long had that taken? Fifteen minutes?
“Seriously?” Will asked. “Awesome. With the…” He gestured towards his own head. “The feathers on your head and all?”
“That was me. And those headdresses weighed a ton, I’ll tell you. Calvin started out as a photographer for the casinos himself. That’s how we met. He’s known Faith since she was a little girl. And the two of us—we had a good time together, back in the day.” She sighed. “We both had our share of adventures, but we were each others’ go-to, when we needed a friend. He’s never been a smooth talker, but that’s overrated. Always good for a nice, comforting—”
“Too much information, Mom,” Faith put in hurriedly. “Will does not need to know that.”
“Well, it’s all a good twenty years ago anyway.” Bella shrugged and took another ladylike bite. “And if I’ve shocked Will, let’s say I’m surprised. He’s a model himself. He’s been around the block.”
“Well, I’m not quite a model,” Will said. “But I’m not too shocked, no.”
“Mm-hmm.” Bella nodded. “Just breaking into the business, are you?”
Will seemed to be having trouble keeping a straight face. “You could say that.”
“Then you should know that Faith’s the one who really gave you your big break,” Bella said. “And that she’s got more power there than you probably realize. Assistant? Maybe so and maybe not.”
“Mom—” Faith said again.
“Oh, shush, honey. I’m proud of you. Calvin was just thinking about taking some stock photos,” she explained to Will. “Dime a dozen. The rest of it—that was all Faith.”
“Ah,” he said. “The website. And the writing contest.”
“Well, yes.” Faith needed to change the subject. She’d known bringing him to dinner would be a bad idea. If her mother pulled out the album with her publicity photos, Faith didn’t care, she was hauling Will off pronto. Bella was trying to get a rise out of Will, or expose him, or warn him off, or something. Faith couldn’t tell what she was trying to do, but it was making her more than a little nervous. “I thought, if Calvin was going to be taking pictures for stock photo sites anyway, we’d try something new with it, hopefully something more lucrative. Especially for me, since I’ll be managing it. If it works, I could get a full-time job out of it. That’s the point. And it’s not the skin trade. Really, Mom. The skin trade?”
“I’m beginning to see what you meant about being very busy,” Will said. “What with the erotica management and all. Nightmare, thinking all that up, eh.”
“Would you stop—” she began, and broke off.
“What? Teasing you? Nah. Sorry. Can’t. Too easy.” His smile was slow, and now she was nervous for more reasons than one, because that smile was sending tingles down her spine.
“Oh, honey, the whole thing was her idea,” Bella assured him. “My hard-working, proper daughter. My naughty side is coming out in her at last, but in a whole lot smarter kind of way. She’ll never let it get the better of her. The erotica contest, the special website, even the idea of the big Polynesian warrior and the little blonde girl? Beauty and the Beast, because she knows that never gets old. That was all Faith. You’re just part of the plan.”
Will was still looking at Faith. “Beauty and the Beast.”
“Of course not.” Faith tried to ignore the warmth that she could feel creeping up from the all-too-wide boat neck of her sweater. Her chest was heating, and her cheeks were glowing, too, and he was watching it happen. “That sounds terrible. I was just trying to think of something more interesting, something that would make it…work. Which, yes, was out of self-interest. My job with Calvin’s only half-time, but if this takes off, with me handling the marketing end, I could drop my other job.”
“Oh, no,” Will said. “And me getting so attached to my apartment manager. What if I have a power failure in the night? Who am I going to call?”
“I told you.” She was trying not to smile, but she couldn’t help it. He was smooth, yes, but he was so obvious about it, he was pretty funny, too. “I’m very busy. I wasn’t talking about the apartment management. I also work in marketing
communications for the Roundup. The casino. Very, very busy.”
“Well, then,” Will said, “I’d better do my bit, I guess, to help you on your way. Be the very best Beast I can be, inspire as many dirty stories as I possibly can. As it’s for such a good cause.”
***
He sat, watched the tide of pink creep up the porcelain skin of her chest, her throat, into her cheeks, and felt the heat rising in himself right along with it. Even as she tried to be matter-of-fact, tried to pretend that all those dirty thoughts, that entire shot list hadn’t been hers, when he knew they had been. He was looking at her, and she was looking straight back at him, her blue eyes caught in his gaze, and she seemed to have forgotten that she was holding her fork. He was ready to lay her right down on this table, and she could see it. Never mind what he’d told Solomon. Never mind what he’d told Faith. He couldn’t help himself.
“You know,” Bella said after a minute, “I’m the last to be prejudiced because somebody’s in the business. How could I be?”
“Looks like you still could be in that business, too, whatever you say.” Will tore his gaze from Faith and concentrated on Bella. “Easy to see where Faith gets her good looks. Although,” he added with his best smile, “I won’t go any further with that. Such a thing as dinner table conversation, at least that’s what my own mum tells me.”
Faith passed him a dish. “More green beans?”
“What, nobody’s ever told you that you’re as pretty as your mum?” He took it from her and served himself up a few more vegetables. At least it wasn’t eggplant—which had sounded terrible, and turned out to be aubergine. But then, he didn’t care for aubergine, either. “Hard to believe.”
Bella laughed. “You are so good. You’ve really got the gift, haven’t you?”
“I have?” Not quite the reaction he’d expected, because there was a cynical gleam in her eye.
“In fact, you’ve got more than that. You weren’t standing behind the door when anything was handed out, that’s obvious. Good thing you brought him over tonight, honey,” Bella told Faith. “Because this one…” She shook her head. “I could have given you a run for your money, back in the day. But Faith? No. She’s not up to your weight.”
“Mom.” Faith’s color was even higher now. “Please. We talked about this.”
“Men like you…” Bella sighed. “You’re like that chocolate cheesecake going around and around in the display case at the diner. It looks so good, you just can’t help yourself. It tastes just that good, too. You’re taking that first bite, and you’re thinking, oh, yeah, this is delicious, and I’m not sorry. And then it’s gone, and, yep, you’re just that sorry.”
“Uh…” Will sat, at a loss for once.
“Thanks for the tip, Mom,” Faith said. “Please stop.”
“Hope I’m—” Will began, then broke off. “Hope I’m a bit more than that,” he managed. “More than…ah….chocolate cheesecake.”
“You’re thinking I’m racist,” Bella said calmly. “But I’m not. Chocolate cheesecake’s delicious. So is regular old white cheesecake. So is…lemon cheesecake. But it’s all the same in the end. A real nice moment on the lips, and a lifetime of regret on the hips.”
“All right,” Faith said. “We get it.” The color was all the way there now. Will didn’t think he’d ever seen a woman blush as much as she did, and he was embarrassed himself, and a little offended, and turned on as hell by her all the same. But however embarrassed he was, she was more so.
“So I’m not specially bad for her because I’m Maori,” he said. “Just because I’m…”
“Yeah. Because you’re that,” Bella said. “Too good-looking. Too used to getting it easy. And, honey,” she told her daughter, “if you have to take a number, take a pass. I’m just telling you for your own good,” she said as Faith uttered a choked little sound of protest. “We can all see it. Not like he’s hiding it. I’m just putting it out there.”
It was out there, all right. It was right out there. And whatever his chances had been, they were that much less now.
***
“I’m sorry,” Faith said when they were in her truck again, driving back to her place. Their place. “I didn’t know that would happen. But she’s protective.”
“I managed to suss that out, yeh. Reeled me in, didn’t she. And then she got me straight through the gills.” He didn’t think he’d ever been so thoroughly dismissed.
“Sorry about that,” she said again.
“No worries.” He did his best to pretend that he hadn’t cared. “She can think what she likes, though I hope I’m not as bad as all that.”
“I can tell you’re offended. And I’m sure you’re thinking, what right does she have to say anything? When she talks about the skin trade, and what she used to do, and all that. But it’s because she’s a mom. A great mom. She’s trying to make sure I don’t make the same mistakes she did, just like she always has. She taught me that, and everything else, too. How to stand up for myself, and how to stand on my own two feet, not to depend on anybody else. That you can’t count on anyone but yourself, and how not to get sucked into thinking you can.”
“Well, that’s a bit harsh. I’d like to think you can count on some people.”
“Well, her,” Faith amended. “I can count on her. Because she’s still a mom. She wants me to be independent, but she has me manage her apartment complex, when she could get somebody with real handyman skills to do it, and then she pretends I’m doing her a favor. She does it because that’s what she can do for me. She couldn’t send me to college, but she’s helping me pay off the loans all the same. She does what she can do. Everything she can do. And she’s taught me how to do the rest for myself, so I can survive.”
It sounded like such a lonely life. Such a hard life. The two of them against the world? “I wouldn’t have said that she wasn’t a good mum,” he said cautiously, because she sounded a bit defensive, and why was that?
“She was,” Faith said again. “She went to every parent-teacher conference, even if she’d just gotten home from doing two shows a night. On her feet for hours every night in spike heels, with that smile plastered on her face. Once she got the showgirl job, that is, because before that, yeah, she was an exotic dancer, and she wouldn’t be ashamed to tell you so. So if she seems a little jaded about men, a little cynical? She’s got reasons. But she’d trade shifts so she could go to Back-to-School night, even when the other parents didn’t talk to her. That’s the kind of person she is. She’s always held her head high.”
“But it’s Vegas.”
“Doesn’t mean people don’t still look down on women who take their clothes off for money. And she wasn’t a hooker, if that’s what you’re thinking.” She was driving a bit faster now, speeding down Tropicana Boulevard, her hands clenching on the wheel. “In fact, that’s the one time I got in trouble in school. Fourth grade. A boy said my mother was a hooker. He didn’t even know quite what it meant, I’m sure. He’d heard it from his parents. I didn’t know, either. But I knew it was bad.”
“What did you do?”
She laughed, but it wasn’t her usual Faith-laugh. It was short. Dry. “I punched him. Gave him a bloody nose. Then I kicked him in the balls. Man, I’ll tell you, he went down like a rock. My mom had to come get me at school, because I got suspended. I’m a dangerous enemy, just so you know.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. But I suspect your mum is, too. What did she say?”
“She told me not to fight her battles. I asked her what a hooker was, and she said, ‘That’s a woman who has to have sex for money.’ You notice that? Has to. She said, and I still remember this, ‘So you know? No, I’m not a hooker. But I’m not going to look down on women who do what they have to do to take care of themselves, or to take care of their kids. We’re all just doing what we have to do to get by.’”
He didn’t know quite what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything.
“She was a good mom,” she rep
eated after a minute. “She had fun, sure she did. You just heard her tell you so, because she’s honest. But she told me I was smart, and that being smart mattered. She made sure I wouldn’t have to use my body to survive. She pushed me in school. She was proud of me.”
“I can see that.”
“And you know, men want women to be sexy. Then they look down on them for being sexy. Like if they’re sexy, that’s all they are. My mom’s more than that.” She shook her head, pulled onto Torrey Pines at the light, and slowed to twenty-five. “I’m not making sense, I suppose.”
“No. You are. So where was your dad?”
“Married.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.” She sighed, pulled into the little parking lot of the apartment complex, and turned the engine off, but kept sitting there, so he did too. “She didn’t know, of course. Because men are good at lying. Some men, anyway,” she went on hastily, as if that would be a shock to him. “She didn’t tell him about me, because she didn’t want to wreck his wife’s marriage. She told me the truth, though, when I was old enough to hear it. She didn’t sugarcoat it, because life’s hard, and facing the truth is the only way through. My mom’s a decent lady, although I don’t expect you to see that.”
“I see it. And my dad buggered off himself, didn’t he,” he found himself admitting. “Worse than that, I guess you’d say. After five kids, when I was eighteen. So I know about strong mums who do what they have to do. And I know about looking after your mum, too. About wanting to protect her. Don’t worry about me. She was keeping you safe. That’s a mum’s job, keeping her kids safe.”
She was still sitting there in the dark, and she didn’t look like she was moving. Normally, that would have been his signal that a woman wanted him to kiss her. Normally.
“You know,” she said, looking at him at last, “you’re just way too confusing.”
That startled a laugh out of him. “Me? How?”
“Would you just be one way? Let me make up my mind? At first I think you’re a player, and my mom’s completely right. And then you’re so sweet. Stop that. It’s messing me up.”
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