Shattered

by Olga Bicos

  She didn’t want to think about the past. She needed to concentrate on Daniel. He was everything to her, the be-all and end-all of her existence. He had to be.

  But Daniel wouldn’t be home for another three hours.

  Emma stood, trying to shake off her fears as she paced around the lobby. She felt as if she was made of raw nerve endings, completely exposed. She needed Daniel right there in front of her, breathing life into his plans.

  She should just go home to her empty condo. She could call Dan, leave him a message that she didn’t feel up to coming over. Maybe try out that new recipe for the restaurant and forget all about his stupid ideas. But then she’d be alone with her thoughts—with her fears.

  “Screw it.”

  She could feel her heart thumping as she headed back to the bar. She remembered that saying: Never return to the scene of the crime. Daniel would have a cow if he ever found out…which was maybe why she was going back.

  In the elevator on the way up, she wondered if there wasn’t something wrong with her. Maybe she wanted to get caught. She was sick and tired of her secrets. But suddenly she was walking into the restaurant, and it was too late for retreat.

  Looking big and handsome in his Hawaiian shirt, Holly’s brother saw her right away. She glanced around, making a show of searching the tables before she made her way to the bar. Over the years, she’d learned how to hide things. She knew what people wanted to hear, wanted to believe.

  I can do this. I can pull it off.

  Holly’s brother was standing over her in no time, a grin on his face. She pressed her fingers against the counter to make her hands stop shaking.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Did your sister leave already? My plans for the night just fell through. I was hoping to catch her. She said something about dinner?”

  She knew she was pushing it, lying about dinner. She felt the rush of it, maybe even liked the feeling.

  “Sorry,” he said. “You just missed her.”

  He kept his smile, but there was a hint of something else. He wasn’t as trusting as his sister.

  Careful. He won’t be so easy.

  He poured the beer she’d been drinking earlier, placed the glass in front of her like a magician.

  “Tada!” she said as if it were a performance. She toasted him. “Thanks.”

  She took a drink. He was still watching her, cautious but definitely interested. She put the glass down. “Is the food here any good?”

  “Yeah. Sure. I’ll get you a menu.”

  She watched him grab a menu from somewhere behind the bar. What are you doing, Emma? But when he handed her the menu, she took it and smiled.

  “Checking out the competition?” he asked.

  She leaned in close and whispered, “Would you throw me out if I said yes?”

  “I don’t know. First day on the job? Hard to have that kind of loyalty.”

  “I can’t help myself,” she said. “Food is my passion. If they have something new here, I want to know about it.”

  It was as good an excuse as any, and he looked as if he needed a reason.

  “The ribs,” he said. “If you like ribs, they’re pretty good. A lot of people order them. Hawaiian barbecue.”

  She shut the menu and handed it back. “Ribs it is.”

  He took the menu and picked up her beer. “There’s a table free over there. I’ll serve you myself.”

  “Thanks,” she said, turning to get off the bar stool, still shaking a little. “Can you take a break? Maybe join me?”

  He seemed to think about it. To a guy like Harris, he was sure to interpret the conversation as just another come-on. One of many, by the looks of him.

  “Please?” She gave it her best shot. “Let me pump you for information.”

  “Give me fifteen minutes,” he said, guiding her to the table. He pulled out her chair and placed the beer in front of her. “When I bring you the ribs, I’ll take my break.”

  She watched him walk away. After a few seconds, she could breathe again, not so nervous anymore.

  Daniel wouldn’t like it. But then, Daniel was a dreamer. What did he really know about Holly? Not nearly enough. Over dinner, she could ask all the questions Dan wouldn’t because he was so damn sure of himself. As if his scheme with Holly couldn’t blow up in his face.

  She picked up the beer, feeling better. She told herself she’d done the right thing by staying. She was just being smart. For Daniel’s sake. She was keeping him safe…even if it was from himself.

  6

  Ryan watched Holly spill out the revolving door onto the sidewalk. There was a taxi waiting in front of the condominium complex. A doorman stood at the ready, beckoning.

  Only, she didn’t get inside the cab right away. She perched on the curb, clutching the jacket collar of her sensible gray suit, hugging her bag and purse. Peering over the car, she searched the street.

  She’d been doing it all day—stopping to look over her shoulder.

  Under the halo of light from the street lamp, he imagined he could see her face despite the fog. She’d be plenty worried. Worried about him.

  In his infinite patience for a tip, the doorman waited for his cue. She looked tiny beside him. It wasn’t the first time Ryan noticed how small she was, almost insubstantial, like maybe even that oversized bag might be too much for her. He couldn’t remember Nina ever looking small. She’d been five feet ten inches with an equestrian’s posture, and enough attitude to crowd a room.

  He kept to the shadows as the taxi sped past, Holly Fairfield now safely inside.

  He jammed his hands into the pockets of his jacket, walking uphill. She was probably going back to the apartment. With traffic, he might even beat her there.

  He stopped, thinking about the last twenty-four hours. Jesus. Was he really going to do this?

  If he followed her, if he let this thing get out of control, there was no way of knowing if he could come back from all that. Not again. Which was exactly why Daniel had brought her here. To screw with his head.

  Ryan started walking up the hill again. Last night, he’d dreamed of Nina. How long had it been since he’d had the dream? Five years maybe? Ten? Then, out of the blue, his head hits the pillow and he’s there, every detail just the same. The party at his mother’s house. Watching Nina fall apart, screaming her venom. Him, screaming right back at her. That’s a fucking lie. You’re lying! Trying to catch her. Trying to stop her.

  After the dream, he hadn’t gotten much sleep. He’d come back over the bridge before dawn, watching the light paint the hills as the fog spilled into the Bay behind him like a giant wave machine set on slow motion. Long before Holly had walked to work, he’d been waiting at the corner for her. The fog made it easy to follow unnoticed.

  He put his head down against the wind and headed for Dan’s place. After tonight, he’d be done. No more driving into the city. He’d make himself stop.

  Just once more.

  He reached the street in fifteen minutes, but he figured she was already inside. He stood under the awning across Washington where she couldn’t see him. There was an Italian place right on the corner. Venticello. And an old-time grocer just down the block, a nice place run by a Greek. The night was young, but the foot traffic seemed notably absent. As if maybe the locals had gotten the word: Strange man loitering. Guard your children and pets.

  The wind kicked up the fog, turning everything gray and out of focus. The film-noir effect made him feel as if he’d stepped out of time. Like maybe this didn’t count somehow, him standing here acting crazy.

  Tomorrow he’d go back to being Mr. Normal. He’d never lay eyes on her again, swear to God.

  Daniel’s building used clinker brick on the first floor, then switched to stucco and wood, making the top two floors look half-timbered. And there was a courtyard. There weren’t many of those in the neighborhood.

  The lights on the third floor were out, but he figured she was keeping vigil at the window. Last night, he�
�d known exactly when she’d given up for the night, had felt it like a switch turning off inside his chest.

  He’d leave before the brother got off work. That’s right, set a limit to the lunacy. Come morning, he’d get back to business at the vineyard. He had a million things to do. If he kept busy, he’d keep sane.

  He leaned against the brick, waiting. It wasn’t so bad, coming here this one last time. It didn’t mean anything. Only, he’d been saying the same thing all day. Just a little longer…

  Harris considered that he had a God-given talent, like some weird sixth sense, a hypersensitivity of a sort. He discovered it in grade school, when his mother told him she’d be right back from the grocery store with a loaf of bread and he knew he’d never see her again.

  Even then, he could put certain things together—the way his mother wouldn’t meet his eyes when she talked, that a mother wouldn’t leave her first grader and his toddler sister alone in the house if she was up to any good. He was just a kid, but he’d known she was lying.

  He could always tell when someone was lying. It made romance a real drag because when a woman lied he tended to hold it against her. Like Emma here, sitting across the table enjoying her ribs. She was lying through her pearly white teeth.

  “Mmm,” she said, wiping her mouth with the napkin. “Good.”

  People who lied had a tendency to do that. Fill in the silence. Emma hadn’t stopped talking since he’d sat down.

  “Glad you like them.”

  “Is that allowed?” she asked as he took a sip of his beer. “Drinking on the job?”

  “I thought it was part of the job description. Maybe I should check?”

  She laughed. A nervous laugh. Or maybe there’d been so much cloak-and-dagger in his life that he’d begun to suspect everyone. But he had a good radar for this sort of thing, and the gig with Daniel East had stunk from day one.

  “Do you like it?” she asked. “Bartending?”

  “I live for it. I left the Evil Kingdom of Corporate America determined only to do good in the world,” he said, reciting the old line.

  “And that would be?”

  “To pour drinks and serve as supertherapist to the masses. At no charge…all tips appreciated, of course.”

  His antennae were telling him that Emma here was in on whatever Danny-boy had going. That’s why she’d come back, to pump him for information about his sister. Not that he’d been very obliging. No such luck for the chef. In fact, he had a couple of questions of his own.

  “That guy last night,” he said. “The one who barged in and made such a ruckus at the party. Who was he?”

  “No one important,” she told him.

  He nodded, going with it. That’s why she’d spent half an hour haranguing Holly with the soap opera of the man’s life?

  He hadn’t been listening so much as keeping his ears open to the conversation between the two women. But as soon as the name Ryan Cutty came up, he’d paid attention. Ryan Cutty. The guy in the gossip column. Mr. Black Sheep himself.

  He smiled, seeing that when she raised her glass to drink Emma’s hands shook. It was a shame really. A nice girl like her involved with Daniel East.

  “Well, I’m back to work,” he said, getting to his feet. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

  She wiggled her fingers in goodbye, but he could tell she was only too happy to see his backside, that she was sorry she’d asked him to join her.

  He walked away, whistling to himself. He nodded to the other bartender. It was a slow night, no biggie that he’d taken his break early.

  Holly thought Harris had lost his job because he’d been fighting corporate America, working on the side of good as he helped the little guy. Problem was, she didn’t know the particulars of how he’d gotten there, what he’d done along the way to his change of heart. By the time he’d destroyed his career, Harris couldn’t wait to join the ranks of the unemployed.

  But those assignments had allowed him to hone certain skills, skills that were coming in handy here in beautiful San Francisco, where his sister had chosen to start her brave new life. Lucky for her, Harris was on the job.

  Not two minutes after he left the table, Emma was heading out the door. She’d practically left tread marks.

  Apparently, the ribs hadn’t agreed with her.

  Emma shut the door and collapsed against the wall of Daniel’s Pacific Heights apartment, catching her breath. She’d run most of the way here.

  That’s it, girl. Outrun the fear.

  She’d made a mistake. A terrible mistake.

  “Hey.” Daniel stepped out from the kitchen, surprising her. She hadn’t expected him to be home.

  “Where have you been?” he asked.

  She stood there looking like someone who had something to hide. Which she did.

  I was out ruining all your careful plans. What do you say, Daniel? Do you still love me?

  “I asked you where you were?”

  And now he was jealous.

  “You said three hours,” she reminded him. “I decided to stay for dinner at that new place where Holly and I had drinks. Try it out.”

  She dropped her keys onto an anonymous sculpture of a hand resting, palm up, on the Louis XV occasional table—one of the few pieces she liked. Everything else in the apartment had names attached—the Kevin Walz steel lamp, the Dennis King dining table. She’d decorated her apartment with primitive masks, Oaxacan wood sculptures and colorful arts and crafts from South America, liking the humor and lively colors. Daniel’s furniture needed labels. He could point to any little piece and say, “Look at my Kem Weber chair, my custom-designed Marco sofa.”

  “The Bali Bistro, it’s called.” In the kitchen, she poured herself a glass of chardonnay from the bottle he’d opened. She couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. “By the way, their ribs suck.”

  “Ribs.” Daniel made a face.

  Nothing so pedestrian as ribs could be part of the menu at the East Side Café. Daniel wanted only the new, the innovative, while Emma hated all his nouvelle cuisine hoopla. She preferred ethnic, what Daniel termed “food for the unwashed masses.”

  “I wouldn’t have bothered if I’d known you’d be home so soon,” she said, wishing now she’d never gone back to the bar. “Have you been waiting long?”

  “Ages.”

  He came up behind her, kissing her neck. Daniel was jealous for only a minute, basically because he knew that she loved him. And why would she cheat on the great Daniel East, anyway? “You did good tonight.”

  Making friends with the enemy.

  “Don’t,” she said, pushing past Daniel when he started to raise the hem of her T-shirt. “I’m not in the mood.” Not in the mood to hear his chortling plans. Too often Daniel sounded like a twelve-year-old boy with a new toy.

  But it wasn’t Daniel who’d screwed up tonight, she reminded herself. She dropped onto the couch and drank her wine. She felt as if she were teetering on the edge of some stupid confession. Get a grip.

  She sunk back against the cushions as if she could disappear there, tucking her feet under her, clutching the wineglass. Daniel lived on the tenth floor. On a clear day, she could look east along Pacific Avenue all the way to the Bay Bridge and Berkeley.

  Daniel preferred the view north. He’d stand at the window, ignoring the magnificent blue of the Bay to stare toward Sausalito where his nemesis lived. He took particular glee in that fact that Ryan had been driven from the city he once loved. Daniel alone remained to take up the baton of familial responsibilities, King of the Hill.

  Dammit, why couldn’t she get her hands to stop shaking? What had she done that was so bad, anyway? She’d eaten some ribs, maybe flirted a little with Holly’s brother. So what?

  “I thought I was going to be nice to you?” Daniel asked softly.

  He was standing in the doorway, wearing one of his favorite outfits, a mini-herringbone tan suit and a custom-made tank top to match. He’d ditched the jacket but still wore the Dolce
and Gabbana lizard-skin boots. The outfit had cost a small fortune and made a stark contrast to Harris’s Hawaiian shirt with its hula dancers.

  The comparison didn’t stop there. Daniel was tall and fashionably slim with defined muscles and narrow hips that barely caught the waistband of his trousers. The sharp angles continued in his face, drawing attention to his mouth, full and sensuous. And his eyes. There was always a sort of hunger in those brown eyes.

  By the looks of it, Harris didn’t skip meals and didn’t stress about it, either. But if she had to hazard a guess, she imagined that while Daniel looked good in clothes, Harris would look even better out of them.

  Daniel prompted, “Baby?”

  She shook her head, startled by her thoughts. “Nothing.”

  She couldn’t tell Daniel that she was afraid of a bartender who asked too many questions. For all his smiles and affable banter, Harris Fairfield looked like a man who knew she had secrets.

  She’d thought he’d be like his sister, all sweet and easy.

  “Does it ever get to you?” she surprised herself by asking. “What we’re doing with Holly?”

  Daniel watched, turning the etched-crystal glass in his hand. The muscle in his jaw pulsed. This was the part he hated. Her doubts.

  “I’m just getting what I’m due,” he said gently.

  “And a little more.” But she could see he didn’t want to hear it. Daniel always resented any hint of reality in his life. Another contrast between the two men. Daniel put on a show, making a woman feel important with his avid looks and beguiling smiles. Tonight, Harris appeared just as busy, only he’d been looking past her flirtatious manner to discover what lay beyond.

  She shivered on the couch. She couldn’t believe the guy had her this freaked out. He was just a stupid bartender, she told herself.

  “Hey,” Daniel said, stepping into the room. “It’s me. What gives?”

  She could see Daniel was worried. And maybe he should be.

  She couldn’t remember a time before Daniel. They’d been kitchen brats together. Later, when she was ten, she’d fallen in love, mooning over the handsome waiter who never failed to bring her presents—ribbons for her hair, a necklace made of candy. When she’d been fourteen and in trouble, it was Daniel she’d run to for help.