Clare opened the door behind her. “Not a chance,” she said, and walked out of the room. She’d made it about ten feet before he called after her.
“Hey, Cinderella.”
She glanced over her shoulder as he picked up her pink sandal and tossed it to her. “Don’t forget your slipper.”
She caught the shoe in one hand and hurried down the hall without looking back. She raced down the stairs and rushed through the lobby, afraid she might run into out-of-town wedding guests staying at the hotel. How could she possibly explain her appearance to Lucy’s great-aunt and uncle from Wichita?
The hotel doors whooshed open, and with the cruel morning sun stabbing her eyes, Clare walked barefoot across the parking lot and thanked God her Lexus LS was exactly where she recalled leaving it the day before. She gathered up her dress, shoved herself into the car, and fired it up. Popping it into reverse, she caught a glimpse of her face in the rearview mirror and gasped at the sight of black mascara under bloodshot eyes, wild hair, and pale skin. She looked like death. Like road kill. And Sebastian had looked like he belonged on a billboard selling Levi’s.
As Clare backed out of the parking space, she reached into the console for her sunglasses. If she laid eyes on Sebastian again in this lifetime, she thought, it would be too soon. She supposed his offer to take her home had been nice enough, but then in typical Sebastian style, he’d ruined it by offering to create unforgettable memories. Putting the car into drive, she covered her eyes with her gold Versace’s.
She supposed he was staying with his father, just as he had as a boy when his mother used to send him to Idaho from Seattle for the summer. Since she didn’t plan to visit her own mother anytime soon, she knew there wasn’t a risk she’d see Sebastian again.
She drove out of the parking lot and headed up Chinden Boulevard toward Americana.
Sebastian’s father, Leonard Vaughan, had worked for her family for almost thirty years. For as long as Clare could remember, Leo had lived in the converted carriage house on her mother’s estate on Warm Springs Avenue. The main house had been built in 1890 and was registered with the Idaho Historical Society. The carriage house sat at the back of the property, half hidden by old willow trees and flowering dogwood.
Clare couldn’t recall if Sebastian’s mother had ever lived in the carriage house with Leo, but she didn’t think so. It seemed that Leo had always lived there alone, overseeing the house and grounds and playing chauffeur from time to time.
The traffic light strung across Americana connecting Ann Morrison and Katherine Albertson parks turned green as Clare blew through. She hadn’t been to her mother’s house in more than two months. Not since the morning Joyce Wingate had told a room full of her Junior League friends that Clare wrote romance novels, just to spite her. Clare had always known how her mother felt about her writing, but Joyce had always ignored her career, pretending instead that she wrote “women’s fiction”-right up until the day Clare had been featured in the Idaho Statesman and the Wingates’ dirty secret was out of the closet and splashed across the Life section. Clare Wingate, writing under the pen name Alicia Grey, graduate of Boise State University and Bennington, wrote historical romance novels. Not only did she write them, she was successful and didn’t have any plans to stop.
Since the time Clare had been old enough to put words together, she’d made up stories. Stories about an imaginary dog named Chip or the witch she’d always believed lived in her neighbor’s attic. It hadn’t been long before Clare’s naturally romantic nature and her love of writing melded and Chip found a poodle girlfriend, Suzie, and the witch in the neighbor’s attic got married to a warlock that looked a lot like Billy Idol in his White Wedding video.
Four years ago her first historical romance novels had been published, and her mother had yet to recover from the shock and embarrassment. Until the Statesman article, Joyce had been able to pretend that Clare’s career choice was a passing phase, and that once she got over her fascination with “trash,” she’d write “real books.”
Literature worthy of the Wingate library.
In the cup holder between the seats of her car, Clare’s cell phone rang. She picked it up, saw it was her friend Maddie, and set it back down. She knew her friend was probably worried, but she didn’t feel like talking. All three of her best friends were the very best women to have around, and she’d talk to them later, just not right now.
She didn’t know how much Maddie knew about the prior evening, but Maddie wrote true crime and would probably put some kind of psychotic killer spin on it whatever it was. Adele was just as well-meaning. She wrote fantasy and had a tendency to cheer people up by relating bizarre stories from her personal life, and Clare didn’t feel like being cheered up at the moment. Then there was Lucy, who had just gotten married. The rights to Lucy’s latest mystery novel had recently been optioned by a major studio. And Clare knew that the last thing Lucy needed was to have her own problems steal an ounce of her happiness.
She turned onto Crescent Rim Drive and continued past houses that overlooked the parks and the city below. The closer she drove toward her home, which she’d shared with Lonny, the more her stomach twisted. As she pulled her car into the driveway of the light blue and white Victorian she’d lived in for five years, her eyes stung with the painful emotion she could no longer hold back.
Even though she knew it was over with Lonny, she loved him. For the second time that morning déjà vu tightened the back of her skull and settled in the top of her chest.
Once again she’d fallen in love with the wrong man.
Once again she’d given her heart to a man who could not love her as much as she loved him. And like those other times in the past, she’d turned to a stranger when it all fell apart. Although she supposed that technically Sebastian wasn’t a stranger, it didn’t matter. In fact, it made what she’d done worse.
Once again she’d turned self-destructive and ended up disgusted with herself.
Two
Sebastian Vaughan pulled his white T-shirt over his head and tucked the bottom into his jeans. So much for doing a good deed, he thought as he picked up his BlackBerry from the couch. He glanced at the face and saw that he had seven e-mails and two missed calls. He slid it into the back pocket of his Levi’s, figuring he’d get to those later.
He should have known better than to help Clare Wingate. The last time he’d helped her, he ended up royally screwed.
Sebastian moved to the nightstand, grabbed his Seiko, and looked down at the black face with its compass and mile marker dials and features. He had yet to set the stainless steel watch to reflect the time zone change, and he pulled out the crown. As he moved the hands forward one hour, he thought back to the last time he’d seen Clare. She must have been ten or so, and had followed him to a pond not far from the carriage house where his father lived. He’d had a net to catch frogs and tadpoles, and she stood on the bank beneath a huge cotton tree while he waded in and got busy.
“I know how babies are made,” she’d announced, looking down at him through thick glasses magnifying her light blue eyes. As always, her dark hair had been pulled into tight braids at the back of her head. “The dad kisses the mom and a baby gets into her stomach.”
He had already lived through two stepfathers, as well as his mother’s boyfriends, and he knew exactly how babies got made. “Who told you that?”
“My mother.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” he’d informed her, then proceeded to fill Clare in on what he knew. He told her in technical terms how the sperm and the egg got together in the woman’s body.
Behind her glasses, Clare’s big eyes had filled with horror. “That’s not true!”
“Yeah. It is.” Then he’d added his own observations. “Sex is loud and men and women do it a lot.”
“No way!”
“Yes way. They do it all the time. Even when they don’t want babies.”
“Why?”
He’d shrug
ged and netted a few tadpoles. “I guess it must feel good.”
“Gross!”
The year before, he’d thought it sounded pretty gross too. But since turning twelve the month before, he’d started to think differently about sex. More curious than disgusted.
He recalled that when Mrs. Wingate had found out about his sex talk with Clare, shit had hit the fan. He’d been packed up and sent back to Washington early. His mother was so angered by his treatment, she refused to send him to Idaho anymore. From then on, his father had been forced to visit him in whichever city they happened to be living. But things between his mother and father deteriorated into full-blown rancor, and there were years in his life when his father had been absent. Large holes where he hadn’t seen Leo at all.
These days, if he had to characterize his relationship with the old man, he would have said it was mostly nonexistent. There had been a time in his life when he’d blamed Clare for that situation.
Sebastian snapped the watch on his wrist and looked around for his wallet. He saw it on the floor and bent to retrieve it. He should have left Clare on a bar stool last night, he told himself. She’d been sitting three stools down, and if he hadn’t overheard her tell the bartender her name, he wouldn’t have recognized her. As a kid, he’d always thought she looked like a cartoon, with big eyes and mouth. Last night she hadn’t been wearing big thick glasses, but once he looked into those light blue eyes, seen those full lips and all that dark hair, he realized it was her. The light and dark coloring that had been contrary and a little freaky in a child, had turned her into a stunning woman. The lips that had been too full on a child now made him wonder what she’d learned to do with that mouth as an adult. She’d grown into a beautiful woman, but the second he’d recognized her, he should have left her all weepy and sad and some other sucker’s problem. Screw it. He didn’t need the headache.
“Just once, you try and do the right thing…” he muttered as he shoved his wallet into his back pocket. He’d walked her up to her hotel room to make sure she made it, and she invited him in. He’d stayed while she bawled some more, and when she passed out, he tucked her in bed. Like a freakin’ saint, he thought. And then he’d made a tactical error.
It was around one-thirty in the morning, and as he’d pulled the sheet over Clare, he realized he’d knocked back a few too many Dos Equis and tequila chasers from her minibar. Instead of risking a night in a Boise jail, he decided he’d stick around and watch some tube while he sobered up. In the past, he had shared a cave with guerrilla leaders and an Abrams tank stuffed with Marines. He’d chased endless stories and been chased across the Arizona desert by pissed-off polygamists. He could handle one passed-out, fully clothed, smelling-like-gin, drunk girl. No problem. None at all.
He’d kicked off his shoes, propped up some pillows, and reached for the remote. These days, he hardly slept, and he’d been wide-awake when she got up and began to wrestle with her dress. Watching her was a hell of a lot more entertaining than the Golden Girls marathon on television, and he’d enjoyed the show as she stripped down to nothing but a pink thong and beige birth control patch. Who would have thought the girl with the thick glasses and terminally tight braids would have grown up to look so good in a stripper thong?
He moved across the room and sat on the couch. His shoes rested on the floor, and he shoved his feet inside without untying the laces. The last time he recalled looking at the clock, it had been five-fifteen. He must have fallen asleep somewhere during the Golden Girls fourth season and woken a few hours later with Clare’s little bare ass against his button fly, her back pressed to his chest, and his hand on her bare breast like they were lovers.
He’d woken up painfully hard and ready to go. But had he violated her? Taken advantage of her? Hell, no! She had a great body and a mouth just made for sin, but he hadn’t laid a hand on her. Well, except for her breast, but that wasn’t his fault. He’d been asleep and having erotic dreams. But once he woke up, he hadn’t touched her. Instead he’d jumped in the shower and let the cold water cool him down. And what did it get him? He was accused of having sex with her anyway. Oh, he could have screwed her every which way till Sunday. But he hadn’t. He wasn’t that kind of guy. He never had been; not even if the woman was begging for it. He preferred his women coherent, and it pissed him off that she accused him of taking advantage of her. He’d purposely let her think it too. He could have set her straight, but flat-out lied just to make her feel worse. And he didn’t feel bad about it. Not even a little.
Sebastian stood and looked around the room one last time. He glanced at the big bed and the rumpled covers. Within the spill of sunlight, sparks of tiny blue and red color caught his eye. He moved to the bed and picked up a diamond stud earring from the center of Clare’s pillow. At least two carats glistened from his palm, and for a moment he wondered if the diamond was real. Then he laughed without humor and slipped it into the small hip pocket of his Levi’s. Of course it was real. Women like Clare Wingate did not wear cubic zirconias. Lord knew, he had dated enough rich women in his life to know they’d rather cut their throats than wear fakes.
He turned off the television, left the room, and walked out of the hotel. He didn’t know how long he’d be in Boise. Hell, he hadn’t even planned on visiting his father until the moment he started packing. One minute he was lining up his notes for a piece on homegrown terrorists he was working on for Newsweek, and the next he was on his feet and reaching for his suitcase.
His black Land Cruiser was parked next to the entrance, where he’d left it the previous night, and he climbed inside. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. He’d never had a problem writing a story before. Not at this stage. Not when all his notes were in order and all he had to do was pound the damn thing out. But each time he tried, he ended up writing complete shit and hitting the delete key. For the first time ever, he was afraid he would miss his deadline.
A pair of black Ray-Bans sat on the dash, and he reached for them. He was tired, that’s all. He was thirty-five and so damn tired. He covered his eyes with the sunglasses and started the SUV. He’d been in Boise for two days, having driven straight through from Seattle. If he could just get enough sleep-a good solid eight hours ought to do it-but even as he told himself that was what he needed, he knew it was a crock. He’d functioned on a lot less sleep, and had always done his job. Be it in sand or rainstorms-once, in southern Iraq, both at the same time-and had managed to complete his work and make his deadline.
It wasn’t even noon, and the temperature in Boise was already eighty-five as he drove from the parking lot. He turned on the air-conditioning and angled it to blow on his face. He’d had a complete physical last month. He was tested for everything from the flu to HIV. He was in perfect health. There was nothing wrong with him physically.
Nothing wrong with his head either. He loved his job. He’d worked his ass off to get where he was. Fought for every inch and was one of the most successful journalists in the country. There weren’t many guys like him around. Men who’d made it to the top, not by pedigree or résumé or a degree from Columbia or Princeton, but by what was in them. Yeah, talent and a love of the business had played a part, but mostly he’d made it by grit and spit and the hundred-proof determination flowing through his veins. He’d been accused of being an arrogant prick, which he figured was pretty much the truth. What bothered his critics most, however, was that the truth didn’t keep him up at night.
No, something else was keeping him up. Something that had hit him from left field. He’d been all over the world, continually amazed by what he’d seen. He had reported on such diversities as prehistoric art in the caves of eastern Borneo to raging wild fires in Colorado. He’d traveled the Silk Road and stood on the Great Wall. He’d been privileged to have met the ordinary and the extraordinary, and had loved every minute of it. When he took a moment to look at his life, he was amazed all over again.
Yeah, he’d experienced some bad shit too. He’d been embedded with t
he First Battalion Fifth Marine Regiment as they’d pushed three hundred miles into Iraq and all the way into Baghdad. He’d been at the point of the spear and knew the sounds of men fighting and dying right in front of him. He knew the taste of fear and cordite in his mouth.
He knew the smell of famine and abuse, seen the flames of fanaticism burning from eyes of suicide bombers and the hopes of brave men and women determined to stand up for themselves and their families. Desperate people looking at him as if he could save them, but the only thing he could do for them was to tell their story. To report it and bring it to the attention of the world. But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. When it got right down to it, the world didn’t give a damn unless it happened in their backyards.
Two years before 9/11 he’d done a piece on the Taliban and the strict interpretation of Sharia under the direction of Mullah Muhammad Omar. He’d reported on the public executions and floggings of innocent civilians, while powerful nations-the champions of democracy-stood on the sidelines and did little. He’d written a book, Fragmented: Twenty Years of War in Afghanistan, about his experience and the inherent consequences of a world that looked the other way. The book had earned critical praise, but the sales had been modest.
All of that changed on a clear blue day in September when terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, and suddenly people turned their attention to Afghanistan and light was shed on the atrocities committed by the Taliban in the name of Islam.
A year after his book’s release, it hit number one on the best-seller lists, and he suddenly found himself the most popular boy in school. Every media outlet, from the Boston Globe to Good Morning America wanted an interview. He’d granted some, rejected most. He didn’t care for the spotlight, or for politics or politicians either. He was a registered independent and tended to vote all across party lines. He cared most about shining a light on the truth and exposing it for the world to see. It was his job. He’d fought his way to the top-sometimes kicking and shoving-and he loved it.
I’m In No Mood For Love Page 2