by Heidi Rice
“Doesn’t sound like you plan a whole hell of a lot now, does it? Just, FYI, next time you’re in a fix call one of your lackeys or, better yet, one of your brother’s pricey legal team. I bet they’ve got a ton more experience dealing with your bullshit.”
If she’d known she was going to get this much grief she would have. Despite the fact her brother would have given her that indifferent look that made her stomach hurt, and the presence of anyone from Goulding and Hatchard, the East Side lawyers Seb used for the Madison Foundation’s business, at the Sheepshead Bay precinct house at three in the morning would have put her in grave danger of having the press alerted. Then again, arguing at top volume with a pill like Ty Sullivan right outside the station house probably wasn’t helping to keep this debacle under wraps either.
“True, but you were closer and I thought you’d be a lot less conspicuous,” she replied, keeping her voice as nonconfrontational as possible.
From everything Faith had ever told Zelda about her big brother Ty—and what she’d witnessed all those years ago in St. J’s foyer—he was the stick-up-your-butt, hopelessly self-righteous, I-know-best type. And his current snotty reaction wasn’t disabusing her of that fact. Plus she’d had more than enough run-ins with her own brother to know it was next to impossible to win an argument with a person who assumed they were always right simply because they sported a pair of testicles.
The only difference with Ty was that he seemed to be engaging his emotions in this debate, if the huffing and puffing was anything to go by. Unlike Seb, who never lost the controlled, detached, closed-off look that was his fallback position whenever they had a disagreement. Up until this particular moment, she would have believed she preferred the emotionally-engaged reaction… But at three a.m. while stranded in Brooklyn, with her hair looking like a bird had been nesting in it for days, and the two thousand dollar Versace gown she had been loaned for her red carpet appearance at the Foundation’s charity gala in Manhattan last night, sporting unidentifiable stains on the hem courtesy of whatever was on the floor of the station house? Not so much.
She’d never been vain about her appearance. She knew her modeling career was a result of good bone structure, lucky metabolism, and her above-average height, all things she’d had nothing whatsoever to do with acquiring. Plus when she spent two hours in styling and then three hours posing for the camera, just to get a couple of signature shots, she knew how much of her success as a supermodel was down to her and how much down to the expert eye of the photographer or the talents of the makeup artist and hair stylist. But even so, Ty Sullivan’s superior glare was starting to make her much more aware than usual that she did not look her best.
Figuring out how she was going to explain tonight’s disaster to her sponsor at AA and then her brother was taking up enough of her diminishing brain power, after being awake for the last twenty-four hours. How she was going to avoid the handful of paparazzi who would probably be staking out the Mausoleum by now after hearing of her nonappearance at the charity gala was taking up even more. So she simply did not have the headspace to worry about what Ty Sullivan did or did not think of her.
“Conspicuous?” He barked. “Conspicuous how?”
“Conspicuous as in I don’t want the tabloids getting ahold of this story if that’s okay with you. I get enough grief from them as it is.” And was liable to get a lot more when they discovered she’d decided not to sign her latest three million dollar contract with Fantasy, the hair care company who had employed her as the face of their signature shampoo brand for six years. The poor, little rich bitch tag had been one she’d worked hard to play down in the last five years; this stunt would not help that.
Ty looked momentarily taken aback by her explanation before his glare intensified. “You know what your problem is, princess?” he said, the grinding disgust in the tone suggesting that whatever her problem was, it wasn’t one that was going to register on his ‘problems that deserve my sympathy’ list.
“No, but I’m sure you’re going to enlighten me,” she growled back. “Being as you’re such a prince.”
His eyes flashed with green fire and she remembered she was supposed to be doing contrite, not confrontational… A moment too late.
“You need to get the hell out of your ivory tower. If you lived with four kids under six in the Marlboro Projects and were fighting an eviction notice, like the client I’m representing in …” He pulled out his phone and checked the time. “Six hours. You’d have a real problem to deal with. Instead of whether you were gonna get splashed over the centerfold of the New York Post for some dumb stunt entirely of your own making.”
Contrite came surprisingly easily at the mention of his client. The last of her temper fizzling out as she noted the lines around his mouth. The firm sensual lips pursed in a flat line of displeasure. He was right. He had a real job, with real consequences. And she was the one who had screwed up. While Faith had been the one to suggest calling him at this ungodly hour when she’d been on her way to the station house before her mobile had died on her, it would have been fairer and more honest to simply ring Seb and take the heat.
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter where my ivory tower is located,” she said, resigned. “I’d still get stalked by the press.”
“Don’t kid yourself, if you were hanging out on my house barge, no way would you get caught by the press. But that’s never gonna happen, because we’re not big on ivory towers in Brooklyn.”
The comment was delivered with such contempt; Zel’s reflex action was instant and unstoppable. She might have been sober for five years, but her wild streak would never be completely tamed. Hence the decision to go for a midnight swim on Manhattan Beach to celebrate the sheer joy of finally escaping from the hollow, pointless world she had despised for so long. Or the impulse to call Ty Sullivan’s bluff now.
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’d love to hang out on your house barge. Invitation accepted.”
“Huh?”
He looked so surprised, his dark brows shooting up to his hairline, that she couldn’t resist a wry smile.
Funny how everyone always assumed she’d led such a charmed life. When in reality, so much of it had been marred by the sudden loss of both her parents at the age of thirteen—and the subsequent disintegration of her once close relationship with her brother. Money was useful, and it would be disingenuous of her not to admit that having such a lucrative job had helped to paper over a lot of the cracks. But smiling for the cameras while she felt hollow inside, and never being able to stop long enough in one place to enjoy more than a few soulless shags in yet another anonymous hotel room, took its toll on a person’s psyche, too… Not in the way grinding poverty did. So maybe she didn’t deserve Ty Sullivan’s sympathy. But she wasn’t the shallow thoughtless egotist he had obviously pegged her as. Or at least she was trying hard not to be.
All she needed to do now was prove it. “Let’s get going before the press finds us here.”
“Hold up a minute…”
“It will be easier all ’round if I stay at your barge tonight. It will solve you having to worry about how I’m going to get back to Manhattan at this hour,” she added, deciding to do the decent thing and help him out… as well as herself. Knowing his overdeveloped sense of responsibility, he would insist on driving her home and that would only make her conscience kick up even more of a fuss. Plus staying the night at his barge—under that surly wave of self-righteousness and disapproval—would be her penance for being such a monumental ninny and getting herself into this fix in the first place. “And don’t forget you’ve got a wake-up call in five hours.” She looped her arm through his, ignoring the pleasant flutter of reaction in her abdomen when his muscular forearm flexed under her fingertips—which was simply her normal biological response to a good-looking man. “You need your sleep, and I’ve taken up more than enough of your time.” She directed him towards the car park, her conscience kicking up another notch when he relaxed and allow
ed himself to be led. “I don’t want you fluffing your lines tomorrow,” she continued. “Your client with four kids under six might get evicted from her Marlboro Project and then I’d have that as well as your sleep deprivation on my conscience.”
Lifting the car keys he had looped over his thumb, she flicked the unlock button, and the tail lights on a shiny black SUV flickered across the lot.
When they got to the car, he stopped dead, those deep emerald eyes glassy with fatigue but strangely intense as they roamed over her face. “You sure about this? The barge isn’t up to your usual standards.” For the first time he sounded unsure, and more confused than pissed off, so she ignored the implied dig—and the misconception.
He had no idea how low her standards had sunk, before she’d gotten into the program. Back when she was sofa-surfing the fleshpots of Continental Europe and doing her utmost to lose herself in a haze of booze and other controlled substances, a house barge in Brooklyn would have been the height of luxury. Plus she’d always been surprisingly frugal and low maintenance, despite her often luxurious surroundings. Because she’d been born with a serious case of wanderlust, and she’d learned at an early age that material comfort could often mask an emotional wasteland.
That wanderlust had led her astray in her teens, when it had stopped being about enjoying new experiences and instead become a plea for attention or a uniquely self-destructive way of dealing with all the things in her life she couldn’t control.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said, pulling open the heavy door of his SUV. “You won’t even know I’m there.”
“Yeah, right,” he grumbled, giving her another steely-eyed once-over, which set off unfortunate sizzles of reaction all over her skin.
Seriously, what a shame the man was such a monumental grump, because he could bottle sexy with that glare.
“But if you’d rather not, I really don’t have a problem waiting for the subway to open if you drop me there,” she added, giving them both a final get-out clause.
She’d certainly been in worse places than Sheepshead Bay at the crack of dawn.
“Forget that. Faith would murder me.” He climbed into the driver’s seat and waited for her to get in on the passenger side. A maneuver that was less easy than it looked given that Versace hadn’t factored SUV travel into the design of the gown.
Once she was finally settled, he turned on the ignition.
“But just so we’re clear,” he said. “You get the couch.”
“Not a problem,” she said graciously as he reversed out of the lot. “Take me to your house barge, Sir Galahad,” she added, unable to resist teasing him, when he glared back at her across the console.
“Why do I get the feeling I’m gonna live to regret this,” he grunted, before driving off into the night.
Chapter Three
‡
Ty jerked out of a groggy dream, to the piercing beep of his iPhone alarm ringing in his ear. Hauling himself up, he scrubbed exhausted hands down his face. Jay-sus wept, as his pop would have said, his body ached as if he’d been hit by a truck last night.
Sunlight streamed into the snug cabin past the crack in the shutters and gleamed off the flat-screen TV anchored to the wardrobe at the end of the bed. He needed caffeine, preferably tongue-scorchingly hot and lots of it. Whipping back the sheet, he stared at his shorts. Weird, why had he kept those on? When he always slept in the raw in the summertime. The pulsing in his groin wasn’t all that surprising though, given the freaky dream he’d been in the middle of involving Faith’s fancy friend, Zelda Madison, emerging from the water on Manhattan Beach, buck naked. Freaky, psychedelic, and kind of disturbing, because it had been so vivid it had given him an epic boner.
Throwing on a T-shirt, he waited for the thing to deflate, before he tugged back the screen door. He strode into the boat’s main living area, making a beeline for the coffeemaker, only to smack into an invisible wall when his gaze landed on the barge’s couch.
Lying face down under a haphazardly slung sheet—one slender arm and one long, toned leg thrown over the side of the bunk and the graceful line of her naked back visible right down to the slope of her ass—was the star of his psychedelic dream. Looking real solid for a figment of his imagination.
“What the hell?” He whispered through chapped lips. Blood rushed into his groin and his head at exact the same moment, making his body sway into the tidal swing of the boat.
The apparition stirred, one slim shoulder shifting but then snuggling back into the bunk. Thank the Lord, the last thing he needed now was for his surprise guest to flip over and give him a full-frontal shot of her naked rack.
The unedited version of last night’s trip to the Sixty-First precinct house flooded full-throttle into his foggy brain, clearing out the cobwebs faster than his mom on the warpath, back when he was a kid and watching a Yankees game with Pop and his brothers had left their living room looking like a bomb site.
While his temper spiked, the burning pulse in his crotch refused to die.
His dream was a reality and she looked dead to the world. Probably because, just as he’d figured, she’d been wasted last night.
Of course, she’d seemed sober, but then he guessed party girls learned early how to hold their liquor. She must have been on one hell of a bender to have ended up swimming on Manhattan Beach, not to mention agreeing to come back and sleep on a house barge.
How tall was she? Too tall for the dimensions of the bunk it seemed. Her neck cricked at a funny angle under the pile of sunshine hair that had made her a fortune. Her signature feature puffed over her face in a cloud of blond fuzz, the long tangled tresses trailing over her slender shoulder and spilling over the side of the bunk in a golden waterfall. Like some fairytale princess from a storybook. The one with the hair in a tower with the weird name. He titled his head to one side, noticing her tattoo. A ring of black thorns circled her bicep.
The fantasy became dark and edgy and discordant.
Not a lot of fairytale princesses got caught skinny dipping in Brooklyn Bay.
And her hair didn’t look anywhere near as well groomed as it did in the giant billboard ad that had looked down over Times Square last Christmas. But it did still look soft and tactile, reminding him of the summery scent that had invaded his SUV while they drove home together in the moonlight. That had to be some shampoo, able to keep her hair smelling that good even after getting dunked in the Bay and spending a night at the station house.
He shook the sentimental thought lose, while resolutely ignoring the dumb reaction in his crotch as he filled the kettle and headed for the shower cubicle in the barge’s compact bathroom.
Twenty minutes later he was dressed in a crisp shirt and tie, and a dark blue Calvin Klein suit. He slicked his damp hair back as he gulped down his first shot of caffeine for the day and concentrated on stopping his dick from getting delusional.
His houseguest was still comatose on the bunk, the pile of hair and the pearly soft skin lustrous in the morning light. She was going to have one hell of a sore head when she finally came to. Although he would have gotten some satisfaction out of telling her ‘I told you so’, he figured it was probably for the best he wouldn’t be here to see it. Quite apart from his dick’s dumb reaction, something about that radiant, ethereal beauty, which could stun a man into speechlessness even in the middle of the night in the Sixty-First Precinct House, when they were sporting a fairly bad case of ‘who the hell signed me up for this gig’, really unsettled him. He hated to be predictable, and he had always despised women as high maintenance and high class and generally useless as Zelda Madison. It was lowering to realize that despite his crusading belief in defending the civil rights of the poor and huddled masses, that he should be as susceptible as the next guy to the woman’s pampered, patrician beauty.
He jotted down a note and attached it to the table next to the couch, then dug through the week old pizza boxes and takeout cartons and the piles of court reports to find his case files
for today and stuff them in his briefcase. One of these days he needed to find time to shovel out this dump. His mom would have killed him if she could see it now. To Kathleen Sullivan, a speck of dust had been considered a mortal sin.
He quashed the prickle of guilt and grief that always accompanied thoughts of his mother. After all, it hadn’t been his idea to invite Zelda Madison, supermodel and high-society party animal, back for a visit.
He stole another glance at the woman in question before his breakfast Pop Tart popped out of the toaster. Grabbing the sweet treat to go along with his briefcase, he headed out the glass door onto the boat’s deck, ready for another day of fighting for truth, justice, and the American way. And forced himself not to look back.
He’d be glad when the woman was gone. Out of his hair. He was going to have a hard enough time focusing in court today after she’d robbed him of a decent night’s sleep.
She might be stunning to look at, but her reckless, irresponsible behavior made her a danger to herself and a liability to everyone else.
Fighting off the fogging feeling of fatigue, and dismissing the dying heat in his crotch, he took the gangplank two rungs at a time, busy justifying the lingering pulse of attraction while he keyed in the code to exit the marina’s security gate. With his workload, he hadn’t gotten laid in over eight months, and if he didn’t count that weekend hookup after the office’s Christmas party, with Shelly the court reporter which hadn’t ended well, it was more like a year. He had enough responsibilities crammed into his busy schedule, to his clients and his family, without inviting any of Zelda Madison’s unnecessary drama into his life.
Even so, he couldn’t quite throw off the ripple of disappointment as he headed across the marina’s parking lot towards the crosstown bus—at the thought that when he returned this evening, his uninvited houseguest would be long gone.
You can call a cab from the convenience store across the lot. If you want to return the two hundred dollars, don’t get the money out of the ATM in the store, it isn’t safe, just mail a check or hand it to Faith next time you’re in the pub. The code to exit the marina is 1562.