Explicitly Yours Series

by Jessica Hawkins

  Lola had come into his home and disrupted his system. During the ten years Brigitte had lived there, she’d tried to do the same, but Beau’d always put up a fight. Not with Lola. He was happy she could make those little changes that made her feel at home.

  Beau’d found her unprompted comments earlier about laundry and dishes adorably amusing, her nerves obviously strung tight. Her behavior had been mildly strange all day, though, up until she’d sat him down in the VIP room. She’d been collected then, as if she’d done that dance a hundred times. She had, but he didn’t want to get that same dance. It should’ve made all the difference that it was him sitting in that seat.

  A pit of doubt formed in his stomach. Perhaps her comments hadn’t been so offhanded. Maybe they were meant to serve as a hint, something more significant than he’d thought.

  He looked up from the glass. “I’m out of options. I have to call the police.”

  “Not yet. Just wait a minute.” Brigitte played with her bottom lip. She’d been staring out the window behind him for a good two minutes, since he’d finished telling them exactly what’d happened. Brigitte went and got the cat ears from the foyer table. Beau didn’t even realize he’d brought them in. “You said these were just hanging on your driver’s side mirror? And her phone’s disconnected?”

  “Yes.”

  Brigitte’s expression changed, her eyebrows angling inward. Beau didn’t get looks of pity often. “Beau…”

  “Never mind.” He picked up his phone again. He had more phone calls to make, starting with the LAPD. If Brigitte was going to tell him this wasn’t an accident, he didn’t want to hear it.

  “I think—”

  “I don’t care what you think.” He focused on scrolling through his contact list. “You don’t know the whole situation.”

  “Warner, give us a minute.” Brigitte waited until Warner had left the room to come over and touch Beau’s forearm. “Come upstairs with me before you call anyone. I want to see one thing.”

  Beau hovered his thumb over the call button.

  “If I’m wrong, we’ll call the police.”

  Beau returned his phone to his pocket. “What’s upstairs?”

  She left the kitchen, and he followed. Before reaching the second floor, she glanced back, as if to make sure he was still there. In his bedroom, she opened the closet’s double doors. She ignored Beau’s side and went to Lola’s dresser. The top drawer was full of lacy undergarments.

  “Is it all there?” Brigitte asked.

  “How should I know? I don’t keep track of her fucking panties.” Beau went deeper into the closet as Brigitte shut the drawer and checked the one underneath it. “What are you looking for?”

  She didn’t answer. Beau sifted through Lola’s dresses and touched the peach-colored one he’d bought her for their evening at the ballet. For once, he’d gotten her out of black—her go-to, safety color. She’d looked stunning. Good enough to eat—and he would’ve, had he had the chance. He slid the smooth silk through his hand. Any excuse he could think of to touch her that night, he’d used. She’d let him, up until a certain point, and then she’d politely moved his hand away and said, “Beau, you promised.” He couldn’t count the number of times she’d said that to him. Yes, he’d promised, but he was only a man, not a fucking saint.

  Brigitte was at the bottom drawer now. She slammed it shut, squatted on the floor.

  “Brigitte, I’m wasting time.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. It looks like all her stuff is here.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  She didn’t look up at Beau, and that made him nervous. Normally, she delivered any news with a tremor of excitement. “I mean—the cat ears, the lipstick mark, choosing Cat Shoppe for a special occasion…it’s almost like a message. A ‘fuck you.’”

  Beau’s ears static-crackled when he swallowed. It sounded like Brigitte was suggesting Lola’d gone out of her way to hurt him, but that wasn’t possible. He had no doubt Lola loved him. “You think she set me up?”

  Brigitte picked at nothing on the carpet. “I think nobody gets over being hurt that bad as quickly as she did.”

  “She wasn’t over it. We were working on it.”

  “Still.” She looked up. “She moved in here two days later.”

  Beau took a step back. It didn’t sound like Lola. She didn’t lie or manipulate. She wasn’t malicious. She would never do to him what he’d done to her.

  Would she?

  He wiped his temple with his sleeve. “Maybe she’s still angry, and maybe she wants to hurt me. That I can wrap my head around. But not planning it ahead of time to the point you think she would’ve packed a bag.” He shoved a finger toward the dresser. “All her shit’s here.”

  “I don’t see her personal things.”

  “She only came here with one bag,” Beau said. “She left everything else at Johnny’s.”

  Brigitte shook her head slowly. “I’m talking about irreplaceable stuff. Passport, license, social security card, birth certificate. She wouldn’t’ve left those things behind.”

  “She didn’t. I have them. I filed all that in the study when she got here.”

  “Is it locked up?”

  “No. I wanted her to have access to…” Beau narrowed his eyes. His chest was burning, most likely from the steak. That, or his body knew something his mind refused to register.

  “You hate Cat Shoppe. She knows it’s a night you’d prefer to forget, and she made you relive it. That woman—you hurt her. Bad. You didn’t break her heart, Beau—you put it in a goddamn blender.”

  “I’m not denying—”

  “Have you slept with her since then?”

  He paused. Were they clues, her rabid efforts to keep him at arm’s length, the kisses that sometimes felt off? His face heated. Was it possible, after making him wait like a fool, that she’d never planned to sleep with him?

  “Not your business,” Beau said.

  “Fine.” Brigitte stood. “Check the study.”

  “I will. Only to show you you’re wrong.” Beau left the room, went downstairs. Lola wouldn’t do this to him. Not after the progress he’d made the last few weeks. Not after he’d promised her he would do better. Be better. He had a lot of work to do, but it was early. What were a few rocky weeks when they had their whole lives to figure this out? Leaving him when he’d just let her closer than anyone’d ever been—it was unfathomable.

  He opened the door of his study too quickly, accidentally knocking it against a wall. One drawer of the file cabinet sat ajar. He went directly to it, opening it all the way.

  His heart hammered up against his chest. Lola’s folder of paperwork was empty. He pulled it out, dumped it upside down. Nothing. He dropped it. The other files belonged to him, but he proceeded to check each one for something of hers, also tossing them when he found nothing. Anything important to Lola was gone.

  “Gone,” he said.

  “That’s what I thought,” Brigitte said behind him.

  He shoved his hands in his hair, grabbing it in two fists. There were papers everywhere. Lola was gone. She’d pulled the rug out from under him, and this was all she’d left behind—a mess at his feet. Why? To punish him for loving her?

  He yanked the drawer all the way out, scanned it one last time for any stray papers, then threw it on the wood-paneled floor with a deafening clang. “What the fuck?”

  He’d made the grave mistake of underestimating her. He’d thought the game was over. He’d waved his white flag too soon.

  He was losing control. He didn’t care. He wanted to lose it. He was the master—and she’d played him. She’d turned predator into prey. Without thinking, he slammed his fist into the steel cabinet. Satisfied by the throb in his hand, he did it again and again.

  “Beau,” Brigitte cried over the noise, “you have to calm down.”

  He turned on her. She had her palms over her ears. “Calm down? You want me to calm down?” He’d let himself l
ove her. She’d pretended to want that from him. She’d made a fool of him twice, and nobody got away with that. He overturned the entire file cabinet, smashing it on the floor. “Do you have any idea what she’s put me through?”

  Brigitte held her hands out. “It’ll be okay. I’ll get Detective Bragg on the line. He’ll find her—”

  Beau laughed hollowly. “You think I want to find her?” He picked up a Young Entrepreneurs award from his desk and launched it against the wall, shattering it into a million little pieces. “I hope I never see that fucking bitch again.”

  Brigitte covered her mouth. She was trembling. “Beau. Brother. Go upstairs and rest. I’ll bring you ice for your hand. None of this will seem as bad in the morning.”

  Rest? That was the last thing he needed. Maybe an all-night bender, or a grueling session on his treadmill. But it wasn’t his body he wanted to punish.

  “What’s going on?” Warner asked, entering the study.

  Beau went to his bar cart. “Get out. Both of you.”

  “Sir—”

  “We aren’t leaving you,” Brigitte said. “You’re not in the right state to be alone.”

  “Don’t tell me what I am or am not. I’m not your goddamn puppet.” He poured himself a generous helping of Scotch and turned his back to them, wired with adrenaline. “Do me a favor, Brigitte. Get her shit the fuck out of here. By the time I come out of this room, I want Lola completely erased from this house.”

  “Beau—”

  “If I see anything of hers,” he continued, “I will go into a rage like you’ve never seen.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “Is that what you want?”

  Warner moved in front of her, but she stopped him with a hand on his bicep. “No.”

  “Then get rid of her.”

  “I will.” She nodded slowly. “I’ll handle it. The housekeeper will come first thing tomorrow and scrub this place until it’s shining. Just promise me you’ll calm down.”

  “Get out.”

  Beau returned to his alcohol once they’d gone and the door was shut. He finished his drink off in one large gulp and poured another. Lola would’ve needed nerves of steel to pull a stunt like this with someone like him. He’d told Brigitte he never wanted to see Lola again—that wasn’t true. Not by a long shot. Just like anyone who screwed him over, Lola had to pay for this. And he wanted to be there when she did.

  21

  Beau wasn’t any calmer by his fourth drink. Slumped in a desk chair in his study, he’d replayed the entire evening twice already, more and more certain he’d been set up.

  * * *

  Lola had been quiet since they’d left the restaurant, and he could feel her eyes on him as he drove, even though his were focused out the windshield. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “What?”

  Beau looked over at her. She was fidgeting with the cat ears in her lap. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about this whole thing, but she seemed more excited than he’d seen her in a while. “You’ve been staring at me.”

  “Oh.” She paused. “I was just thinking about how this is our last night like this.”

  “Like what?”

  * * *

  Beau drank more. She’d never answered him. Or if she had, he couldn’t remember what she’d said. The alcohol was making his brain mercifully fuzzy.

  He’d centered his phone on the desk, staring at it. It never rang. He’d been toying with an idea, one he hadn’t been sure about, but with each drink it sounded better. He couldn’t sit there anymore and do nothing. He wanted to know where Lola was, where exactly she was going to undress, shower, lay her head tonight. It was unclear to him still what he’d do with that information, but at the very least, it would give him some of his power back.

  He dialed a number he hadn’t used in a while. He’d already wasted enough time doing nothing.

  A man answered. “I told you before—”

  “I know what you told me,” Beau said, “but this time it’s personal. I need someone I can trust.” The line was silent. “Are you there?”

  Detective Bragg hacked into the phone. “I’m here. All sixty-eight years of me.”

  “I’ll make it worth your time.”

  He grumbled. “My rate doubles during retirement.”

  “Fine.”

  “Triples when I’m woken up in the middle of the night.”

  “Don’t push it, Bragg. It’s only eleven.”

  “Middle of the night for me. I went to bed hours ago.”

  Beau waited through another coughing spell.

  “That’s what happens when you disturb an old man’s sleep, Olivier. So what’s this personal business? Brigitte? Your mom?”

  Beau stared down into his drink. The policeman-turned-private-detective was the only person he trusted with important matters. “Why do you assume that?”

  “You got nothing else personal. You don’t got a wife, so she ain’t cheating. No kids, so it isn’t a runaway teen. There a cat in your life I don’t know about? Check the trees—I hear they like to climb.”

  “Jeff,” Beau warned.

  “All right.” He heaved a sigh. “Go.”

  Beau picked up his Scotch, stood and paced his study. His shoulders were already loosening. “You’re going to find someone for me, and it has to be tonight. She won’t be very far yet.”

  “She?”

  “Yes. A woman.”

  “What woman?”

  “Do you need to know?”

  Bragg cleared his throat. “Guess not.”

  “One minute I was talking to her, and the next she was gone.”

  “When was this?”

  “About an hour ago.”

  “As in sixty minutes? Hang on while I grab a pen. I haven’t even shit out what I had for dinner yet. An hour’s nothing, kid.”

  Beau massaged the bridge of his nose. It was nothing. An hour was a long time in his and Lola’s story, though. He’d only actually known her two or so months. Lola was beginning to seem like a wild dream, a hallucination brought on by a night fever. Something untouchable.

  “Got my pen,” Bragg said. “Shoot.”

  “Her only family in the area is her mom. She works at The Lucky Egg diner in East Hollywood.”

  “What about the girl? Where’s she work?”

  “She left her job at Hey Joe on Sunset Boulevard a few weeks ago.”

  “Think the folks there’ll know anything?”

  Beau spun his drink on his desk. It wasn’t impossible that Johnny knew something. Veronica too. Maybe Lola had mentioned something to her, and they were all in on it. They weren’t friends to him. Fuck, Lola might’ve stopped there to say goodbye. Maybe she was there now. Beau could be there in twenty minutes, and with money as leverage, he could have Johnny talking in twenty-five.

  Johnny responded to threats, but Beau didn’t. He wasn’t going to play Lola’s game and track her down himself. He was an important man. He hired people like Bragg for that.

  “They might know something,” Beau decided. “Her ex-boyfriend works there. Start with him.”

  “Going to tell me how to do my job? You want to do this yourself, be my guest.”

  “I’ve got better things to do,” Beau said. “That’s why I’m paying you.”

  Bragg muttered something into the phone. “All right. Tonight—what’s the last place you saw her?”

  Beau’s mind went to the strip club, Lola’s hips swaying within his reach. She was in her element there, sexy as hell. Just like the night her sweet, red mouth had lovingly eaten his cock the first time. “Cat Shoppe. It’s a strip joint, also on Sunset Boulevard. You know the place?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’m not allowed in there, so don’t mention my name until you know what you’re dealing with.” Beau rubbed the skin above his eyebrows. “On second thought, maybe you should start there.”

  “Sounds like you got ideas on how to do this, which is fine since the clock’s ticking. You go talk to
the boyfriend, and I’ll hit the strip club.”

  “No. Like I said, this isn’t worth my time.”

  “And like I said, don’t tell me how to do my fucking job. So what else you got?”

  “That’s everything. She’s got black hair, blue eyes.” And she’d leave you with an impression that stayed no matter how many times you tried blinking it away. Like glimpsing the sun. Beau grit his teeth against the thoughts he wanted to shut out. “Don’t worry, Bragg. You can’t miss her.”

  “I’ll start with the titty bar after I get something going on her license plate number and credit cards.”

  Beau took another long gulp of his drink, welcoming the burn of alcohol down his throat. He set the tumbler on his desk. “She doesn’t have a car.”

  “Don’t tell me that.”

  “No license plate. She could be on the goddamn city bus for all I know.”

  “The bus? She’s a slippery one, eh?”

  “Apparently.”

  “How about a name? She got one of those?”

  “Right. It’s Lola. Lola Winters.”

  “Lola…Winters,” he repeated slowly as if writing it down. “Middle name?”

  A middle name? At times, he’d thought he’d known Lola inside out. He’d anticipated her every move, directed her, surprised her. Once in a while, though, he was reminded how little he knew. Like the girl she’d been before Johnny, how many kids she wanted or even if she was a dog or cat person. He’d never thought to ask her middle name.

  “I don’t know.”

  “How about a cell number?”

  Beau rubbed the back of his neck. “She doesn’t have one of those either.”

  “Let me get this straight. You want me to find some chick who’s got no job, no car, no cell. And she disappeared into thin air?”

  “I called you because you’re the best.”

  “Yeah, well—the best is going to cost you, Olivier.”

  “Bill me.” Beau hit ‘End’ and put his phone away. It was only a matter of time now before he had her back. The question was what he’d do with her.

  Afterword