by Alina Adams
"So," Bex said.
"So," Craig agreed.
"Same time next year?"
"Oh, no." His eyes danced. "You're not getting away from me that easily."
Bex smiled in return. She told him, "Good answer."
THE END
Skate Crime
OTHER ALINA ADAMS TITLES
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO: TONI
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR: SABRINA
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX: GABRIELLE
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT: GINA
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN: TONI
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE: SABRINA
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: GABRIELLE
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: GINA
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SKATE CRIME
PRINTING HISTORY Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / 2007
Copyright © 2012 by Alina Adams Media.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
* * *
SKATE CRIME
Prologue
The second week in July, Bex Levy received two proposals.
One took her by surprise. Still, she said "yes" immediately.
The other left her dumbfounded. To it, she had no idea what to say.
"I think we should get married," suggested Craig, the man who Bex guessed might technically be called her boyfriend.
The reason Bex still stumbled, even mentally, over Craig's exact designation was because, while they had been dating for almost six months — doing all of the expected boyfriend/girlfriend things like going out, staying in, having phone conversations so long that the receiver was actually hot after being set down, and racking up way too many miles on their respective cars driving from Bex's apartment in Manhattan to Craig's house in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania to see each other — there was still, on a semantic level, no way that Craig Hunt could be reasonably described by anyone as a boy.
For one thing, he was thirty-four years old, which made him a decade Bex's senior (though, having recently turned twenty-five, she could pretend that the age gap was actually growing smaller, with Craig not due to turn thirty-five for another seven weeks). For another, he was one of those people that, Bex suspected, had never really been young. A foster child who'd become an adoptive father himself (under some very bizarre circumstances) at the age of twenty, Craig was currently the widowed, single parent of a fourteen-year-old son.
Everyone Bex had dated prior to Craig, regardless of age, had been a boy, and thus a "boyfriend" candidate. Craig Hunt was a man. Which meant Bex had absolutely no idea how to refer to him.
Not that apt monikers were, at the moment, her greatest concern.
She and Craig were sitting inside her studio apartment. An apartment so small that once Bex unfolded the sofa bed and angled it so that the frame's edge didn't scrape the side of her desk, the room was effectively filled. Only a foot on the left side near the window and a foot on the right beside the door to the bathroom remained as actual, available floor space. Bex and Craig were sitting on the bed. Not due to any romantic intentions, but merely because there was no place else to do so. And they had to sit somewhere to eat the roasted chicken Craig had miraculously managed to coax out of her Easy-Bake kitchen, where oven, fridge, and sink appeared to have been built for the exclusive use of Hobbits and/or Oompa-Loompas.
It wasn't exactly where and how Bex had expected a proposal of marriage. And it most certainly wasn't when. So she blurted out the first thing that came to her mind. She had a tendency to do that.
"Why?" Bex asked.
There — where, how, when, and why, all nicely covered. Wasn't she the good journalist?
"Because," Craig said, apparently so used to her blurts that he didn't even bother to politely fake being phased, "I like being married."
“To me?"
"I don't know." Again, not phased. "I've never been married to you. I would, however, very much like to be."
"I mean..." Slowly, the power of sentence construction was returning to Bex's tongue. Not coherent sentence construction, mind you, but enough to drive her foot even deeper into her mouth. "I know you liked being married. Before. But that wasn't to me. You're talking about Rachel. But Rachel's only been dead — "
"I know how long Rachel has been dead."
"It hasn't even been a year."
"That's the number I've got, too, yes."
"How can you — what about Jeremy?"
"A part of this is because of Jeremy. Look, Bex, it's not that I mind driving up to see you, per se. But I can't very well bring Jeremy with me here, and neither one of us wants you staying over at the house when he's there — "
"God, no."
"So, it's awkward. If we were married, I wouldn't feel like we were sneaking around."
"We're not sneaking around."
"What are we doing, then?"
"We're... dating."
'To what end?"
She shrugged. It was either shrug or admit, "I dunno." And, under the circumstances, a shrug seemed more mature.
"I love you, Bex," Craig said softly. "But this 'dating' thing, this tiny-apartment-take-out-food-just-out-of-college lifestyle... I'm too old for it. I've done Barefoot in the Park already."
"With Rachel," Bex reminded.
"Yes. With Rachel."
"And now you want the house, the nine-to-five job, the kids. Good-bye Barefoot in the Park, hello Brady Bunch. Craig Hunt is Robert Reed. Cue theme song and moppets."
"You seem to know a lot more about what's going on in my head than I do, Bex. Theme song and all." She couldn't tell if Craig was joking or not. "How do you figure that works exactly?"
"It's what I do for a living."
"Read minds?"
"No." Technically, Bex was merely a figure skating researcher for the 24/7 television network. "But the biggest part of what I do is extrapolate a big picture from small details. I collect a bunch of facts about a given person or situation, and then I turn it into a comprehensive story."
"A three-minute up-close-and-personal segment wedged in between televised Short Programs can hardly be considered comprehensive. Not everything is necessarily as simple as it seems on the surface."
"But it is, it is," she insisted. "A well-put-together three-minute segment features just enough pertinent, telling details so that our viewers can draw their own big picture. People aren't that complicated. They're mostly predictable. Telling their stories is what I do, even when the people themselves don't know that there is a story."
"Well, it's certainly what you're doing to me, right now. Though you'll forgive me if I don't exactly agree with the conclusions you've drawn about how I feel or what I want."
"Are you saying you're not at a point in your life where you're looking for this idyllic family existence?"
"Would that really be so bad?"
"I don't know. All I know is, you're not looking for a new life. You're looking to recreate a life you already had. With Rachel."
"Yes," Craig said, again unashamed. "Though may I remind you that what Rachel and I had was hardly normal or traditional. And, for the record, I may be trying to recreate the broad strokes of a life, but I am not trying to recreate her with you. Rachel was Rachel, and you're Bex. I don't suffer from any confusion on that part."
"What about my job?"
"What about it?"
"I work in Manhattan. And... other places." Bex's job not only required that she report to 24/7's midtown offices, but, during the October through March skating season, it also demanded she jet off every four weeks to glamorous locations ranging from Moscow, Russia, to Beijing, China, to Fort Worth, T
exas. It wasn't the kind of gig she could do part-time from a Martha Stewart-decorated home in the suburbs.
"And you'll continue working in Manhattan. And other places — if that's what you want. We can find someplace to live that works for everybody. What, do you think I'm a total idiot?"
"I don't want to have kids. I mean, not right away. Not in the near future. Not soon. I don't know when."
"Fine. I asked you to marry me. I didn't say anything about kids."
"Why are you being so reasonable?"
"Because I want you to say yes."
"And if I don't?"
It was the first thing she'd blurted out all evening that appeared to genuinely throw him. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, what if I don't say yes? Is that it? Are we over? Are you giving me an ultimatum? Or do we just go on pretending you never asked and I never refused and everything is okay and the same as before?"
He thought about it. Bex guessed the possibility of her saying no had never crossed his mind. Bex didn't know whether to be flattered or offended.
"I — I don't know," he finally said.
"So you might dump me?"
"I don't know."
"Well, then, I... then I... I don't know, either."
They sat just looking at each other for a long moment. Finally, Craig said, "This went well."
"Am I on a time limit? Do I have to give you an answer in a certain amount of time?"
"You mean, like Jeopardy?”
"Yes, Craig, exactly like Jeopardy. Want to hum that theme song while you're at it?"
He smiled, "Now you see why I love you."
"I love you, too."
"Then it seems like this should be easy."
"And yet it's not."
Craig said, "Look. How about this? When I dropped Jeremy off at the rink this morning, Toni told me about this thing, this tribute thing, they're having for Lucian Pryce out in Colorado next week. The Figure Skating Hall of Fame is honoring his fifty years of contributions to skating. It's a major shindig. Dignitaries, Olympic champions, former students are flying out to lay wreaths at his feet, or on his ice or whatever. Toni is going there to talk about when she and Lucian skated Pairs together. She suggested taking Jeremy with her. She thinks Lucian could really work with him on his presentation, knock it up a level. Now that Jeremy's competed at his first Worlds, Toni says the judges are expecting him to stop skating like a Junior, blah, blah, blah — you know the drill. I was against it. After everything that happened with Rachel and Robby and Felicia, and well... everything, the last thing I wanted was my son in Lucian Pryce's clutches. Not that Toni wouldn't look out for him the best she could, but Toni and Lucian have their own history. I had no intention of getting Jeremy in the middle of that." He sighed. "On the other hand, what if I go out there with him? I can keep an eye on Jeremy, and you can take — what is it, a week? Ten days? — to... think. I won't bother you. I won't put on any pressure. Take all the time you need to figure out what you really want."
"As long as it's a week to ten days," Bex clarified.
"Hey," Craig said, shrugging, "none of us are getting any younger."
No. Thanks to the adult decision he was expecting her to make in a week to ten days, Bex felt older already.
Bex’s second proposal came about an hour after Craig decamped for home. When the phone rang, she thought maybe it was him, saying he'd reconsidered the whole thing and yeah, let's give Bex's pretend-it-never-happened idea a shot. But it wasn't Craig. It was Bex's 24/7 boss, Gil Cahill. If Gil was calling Bex on a Sunday night at home, the news couldn't be good. Actually, if Gil was calling, period, angst was destined to follow.
Bex knew it was Gil on the other line because she picked up the receiver, and he was already in the middle of a conversation. No small talk, no salutation even.
"Mollie let me down," he raged. "Some nonsense about bed rest or whatnot, one of those women things. So this is your big chance. You want it or not, Bex?"
Bex said, "Hi, Gil." It seemed safest under the circumstances.
"Summer is always such a dead time for skating, which is why we agreed to pick up this Lucian Pryce special thing. Something to plug the hole and get those teenage girl demos the chief keeps saying we need to balance out the male ones."
"You're covering Lucian Pryce's tribute?"
"No, Bex, pay attention. You are."
"I am?"
"I had it all set up. Got a director flying out next week to shoot the actual show, but Mollie was going to go up early, do the features, local color, background, that sort of thing. Of course now, because her uterus can't behave itself, I've got no feature producer, and everyone else is booked covering real sports. That's why I thought of you. Well, actually, Ruth here in my office did. She figured you've already done the research on most of these guys, and you're always itching to be a producer, so this is your big chance, right? You want it or not?”
"I want it," Bex said without thinking. Like Pavlov's dog, she'd started mentally salivating at the words "producer" and "big chance." She'd do it.
It was only after she'd gotten off the phone with the travel department to set up her plane ticket to Colorado for the next day and hurriedly began tossing articles of clothing that screamed "distinguished producer" rather than "lowly researcher" into her well-worn suitcase that Bex allowed herself to realize that a trip to Colorado to further her heretofore rather undistinguished career meant the designated week "off" with Craig was officially... off.
She considered calling to tell him. But she didn't know what to say exactly. And she didn't know what he would say in return.
As always under such indefinite circumstances, Bex chickened out.
She figured her arrival would be a surprise. As would whatever happened next. A big surprise for both of them.
CHAPTER ONE
SKATINGANDSTUFF.COM MESSAGE BOARD
FROM: Sk8luv4ever Posted at 8:17 PM
Anyone going to the Pryce tribute in Colorado next week? Will you pleeeeease post a report? Chris Kelly and Gina Gregory are supposed to be skating in it and I haven't seen him perform in years. Pictures too please!
FROM: GoGoGregoryl Posted at 8:19 PM
I'm going got my laptop will try to post live but don't know what the wi-fi sitch will be in CO got my cell phone too will try to take pictures those skaters won't be getting away from me LOL!
* * *
Bex’s plane touched down in Colorado Springs at 8:15 PM. By the time she'd taken the cab to her hotel a few blocks from the Olympic Training Center, the one usually used to host athletes, coaches, officials, and fans at times of major competitions, it was 9:10 PM. When she finished unpacking her suitcase, it was 9:13.
Bex figured it was too late to call Craig and let him know she was in town. In his hotel, as a matter of fact. Not that Bex knew for sure that Craig and Jeremy were staying at the official hotel. They might be bunking in the skaters' dorms on the grounds of the OTC. Or in some other hotel miles away. Bex didn't know that hotel's number. And she didn't know if Craig had his cell phone on him. Although, as a rule, he usually did.
Besides, Bex had stuff of her own to do. Her first assignment was to meet Lucian Pryce at his home, bright and early at 5 AM the next morning. Bex would follow him to the rink, where, before the morning session commenced, she and a locally hired film crew would tape him on the ice. Footage they could later use as b-roll and interstitial material for the special.
If Bex expected to be at Lucian's at five, that meant she would need to rise at least by 4:15 and get herself ready. Which meant she had no time for superfluous phone calls.
Bex went to bed, turned off the lights, and ordered herself to get a good night's sleep. By the time she rose, in advance of her wake-up call, at 4:10 the next morning, she'd slept by her calculations, easily a refreshing eight to nine minutes.
With that kind of rest deficit Bex did the best she could with what she saw in the mirror. She pulled her chestnut hair back into a ponytail, scrubbe
d her face first with cold water, then with an astringent cleanser to close her pores. Followed by a moisturizer to open them up again. The one-two punch seemed rather self-defeating to Bex, but the perky girl who did makeovers at the mall on the outskirts of a small town Bex could no longer remember the name of had insisted that it would all somehow add up to great beauty. Some day.
Bex pulled on a pair of blue jeans, rejecting the long johns she usually donned underneath on the argument that it was summertime and she didn't need to suit up quite as intensively as she usually did for wintertime work in Moscow or even New Hampshire. She decided to go with layers for the top half: a light green T-shirt, followed by a dark green linen blazer. A bit Miami Vice, but it was the most businesslike attire she owned. The rest of her wardrobe consisted mostly of sweatshirts with the names of competitions she'd covered sprayed across the front and a host of "24/7'-labeled merchandise she periodically borrowed from the supply closet at work.
At 5 AM on the nose, she was on the doorstep of Lucian Pryce's two-story suburban home. Bex wondered whether to ring the bell or knock. On the one hand, she had been invited. On the other, it was 5 AM. Then again, this was a skating household. Five AM was practically midday for them. Then again-again, she had no evidence that only skaters were in residence. Perhaps the Pryce household also consisted of some — what were they called? Oh, yes, normal people.
She settled for knocking. But firmly. When no one answered, Bex bit the bullet and rang the bell. The door was instantly answered, but not by Lucian.
It was his wife, Olympic champion Gina Gregory, five feet tall, freckle covered, frizzy red hair sticking out in every direction, and, if Bex remembered correctly from her research manual, over thirty years younger than her coach-turned-husband. Bex's first reaction was that it was a bit disconcerting to catch Gina like this. From the time she won her first World Championship medal on the way to Olympic Gold, Gina Gregory always appeared on television perfectly coiffed, her hair shellacked into place, her freckles evened out and obscured by a nonobtrusive tint, her skirt and blouse neatly pressed, hose aligned, lipstick and nail polish color coordinated, preferably with her purse. In fact, the only reason Bex even guessed that the early-morning disheveled figure currently standing in front of her was, in fact, Gina Gregory, was through the process of elimination. What other thirtysomething woman would be opening Lucian Pryce's door at 5 AM wearing a bathrobe?