by Julia London
“She’s in the kitchen,” Isabella said, and went racing ahead of him to show her mom her new stuffed bear.
Eli followed her in and sat with Isabella’s mom, Leonore, for a while, and even stayed for dinner. Before he left, he gave Leonore an envelope full of cash. It was a little unorthodox, he knew, and illegal as hell—but he didn’t want Leonore to have to declare the five grand as income on her tax return. She had it hard enough, working in a local grocery.
Eli’d been coming to Escondido every three or four months for about five years now, ever since Armando had died in the course of working a stunt Eli had designed for a movie they were filming. His death had been a crushing blow, because Eli had really loved that cheerful Mexican.
The whole thing had been a freak accident. Armando was one of his best guys, and he never had trouble on a stunt before the one that killed him. Armando was skiing down a fake mountain slope on fake snow and was to jump over an old Jeep made up to look like a war vehicle. But something went horribly wrong—the Jeep was in the wrong place and Armando crashed into it. The crash propelled him off the slope and he landed head first, the equivalent of two stories down, on concrete. He died a couple of days later, and Eli had never been able to rid himself of the guilt…especially because of Isabella.
Armando had been crazy about his little girl. He always talked about how he was going to make sure she had the best of everything, had every opportunity to be whatever she wanted to be. Seeing the girl and her distraught mother at Armando’s funeral had almost been Eli’s undoing. He swore to himself he’d make sure Armando’s dream came true.
Shortly after Armando died, Leonore moved to Escondido to be close to her family. Eli started bringing food and toys, and when it came time, he persuaded Leonore to put Isabella in a good private school, for which he was quietly paying.
But Isabella was growing up. She was almost thirteen, and she wanted things Leonore could not give her. So far, Eli had been able to come through. Xbox, Game Boys…that was stuff he could handle. Tonight, however, Leonore told him Isabella needed clothes for school. That confused Eli—he’d given Leonore more than enough to clothe Isabella. But as she talked, he realized that Isabella wanted the sort of clothes Leonore did not purchase, or know how to purchase. “Designer,” she said.
“Designer,” Eli echoed dumbly. What the hell did he know about designer clothing for kids? “I’ll see what I can do,” he’d said, feeling very sure he’d not get a clue anytime soon. But nevertheless, he gave Isabella a kiss good-bye and drove back to Los Angeles, wondering where in the hell he was going to get designer clothes for a twelve-year-old.
Eli got home too late to call Marnie. So he kicked back with a beer in front of the boob tube. He watched part of a Lakers game but that was quickly boring, so he started surfing. When he surfed past Entertainment Tonight, Marnie caught his eye.
Eli sat up so fast that he knocked over his beer.
Yep, it was Marnie, all right. She was standing out front of what looked like a taco stand near the beach somewhere. A breeze kept blowing her hair all over the shot, but he considered it a good sign that she was smiling and not crying. The ET guy was talking over whatever she was saying, but when they cut to Marnie’s sound bite, she said, “At this point, any speculation about a relationship between Vince Vittorio and Olivia Dagwood is pure fantasy,” she said. “At the moment, I’m not coordinating a wedding for anyone, much less those two.” This, she said with a bit of an incredulous laugh that had the reporter grinning. “I should say I wish I were coordinating their wedding, but I’m not.”
The studio ET guy smiled, too, and said to his companion, “That’s what they always say, don’t they, Mary?”
“That’s right. Coming up…”
Eli clicked off, picked up the beer bottle, and went to the kitchen for a rag. He came back with a fresh beer and a kitchen towel, which he used to clean up the beer on his coffee table. Then he walked outside and stood on his terrace that looked out over the valley, sipping his beer.
He was thinking about Marnie. And he couldn’t help but smile to himself. That was, he had to admit, a pretty damn good answer. She’d nailed it—at this brief moment in time, it was fantasy. And she wasn’t working for them. Tomorrow, it would be a different story, she’d be working for them again. Just not at the moment. Yeah, the girl had done good.
He was sort of looking forward to telling her so.
He was at her doorstep at ten sharp. Mr. Banks’s car was missing from the drive, and in the front windows, he could see Mrs. Banks doing some sort of tae kwon yoga thing. She grinned Marnie’s grin when she saw him and waved at him to come in.
“Hi, Eli!” she said as she stretched one arm long in front and bent both knees. “This is the lotus,” she said, and moved, very slowly, into another bent-knee, arm-weird position. “This is the lion. Do you do tai chi or yoga?”
“Ah, no,” he said, and stayed against the rail that lined the three steps into the sunken living room where she was doing whatever she was doing.
“You should. It’s very relaxing.”
“I’ll give it some thought,” he said, smiling as she turned away and crouched again.
“You’re up and at ’em early this morning,” Mrs. Banks said cheerfully as she stretched one arm out and bent the other.
“I figured I needed to talk with Marnie after what happened yesterday,” he said.
Mrs. Banks turned slowly, still crouching. She reminded him of a raptor. “She’s still asleep,” she said. “You can go on back and wake her if you want.”
“Wake her?” he asked skeptically.
“Don’t worry, hon. She’s decent. Go on—last door on your left,” she said, and took a crouching step across the floor.
Eli leaned back, glanced down the hall warily. He wasn’t too keen on waking Marnie up, but it was pretty obvious Mrs. Banks wasn’t going to interrupt her exercise to do it, and really, who slept until ten? Half the morning was gone.
“Thanks, Mrs. B.,” he said, and pushed away from the rail and walked down the corridor, hoping like hell that his boots clopping along the tile floor might wake her up before he had to.
No such luck, apparently. He tapped on the door and stood patiently, waiting for someone to answer. No one answered. In fact, he couldn’t hear anyone inside at all.
“Don’t be shy. Just go on in, Eli,” Mrs. Banks called to him. “You’ll never wake her mewling like a kitten.”
Eli glanced to his left, down the hall. Mrs. Banks’s dark red head was floating above the railing she was leaning over. “Go on,” she urged him with a smile.
He knocked again, turned the knob, and pushed the door open a little. The room was dark—even the blinds had been closed. He pushed the door open a little wider and stuck his head inside. The floor was strewn with clothes and shoes and handbags and lacy things he didn’t want to look at too closely. A fan turned lazily above the bed…at least Eli thought that was the bed. And he thought he could make out the shape of a body beneath the comforter.
Cautiously, he stepped inside. “Marnie?”
No answer.
Eli tiptoed through the debris to the bed and reluctantly put his hand on the lump near the head of the bed. It felt strange, he thought, because it almost felt like a leg. He leaned over, picked up the edge of the comforter…and almost had a heart attack when a red-toenailed foot kicked out and Marnie shrieked.
Eli came up like a shot and Marnie rolled over onto her stomach in her comforter cocoon and stuck her head out. She was sleeping upside down with her head at the foot of the bed. Her hair was sticking out in every direction, and her eyes were the size of baseballs.
“What are you doing here?” she cried, pushing up to all fours and scrambling out of her cocoon to stand in front of him in a skimpy little silk number with spaghetti straps—and one strap, he couldn’t help noticing, had slid down her arm. Damn, but the thing skimmed over her perfect boobs and perky nipples and flared out at her hips. It didn’t
even pretend to cover her long legs. Somewhere in the recesses of guy central, that nightgown got a standing ovation.
Marnie seemed to realize what he was seeing in the same moment he was seeing it and dove for something on the floor. She came back up with a little silk robe, which she quickly shrugged into. Only the robe wasn’t much of an improvement—it barely covered her, either.
“What are you doing?” she cried.
“I’m sorry!” he said, throwing up his hands. “Your mom—”
“Augh!” she shrieked and shook her fists to the ceiling. “I seriously have got to get my own place.” She lowered her hands to her head. “Shit!”
“I’ll just go out,” Eli said, pointing to her open door, “and ah…wait?”
“Yes, wait, wait,” she said, now covering her mouth with her hand. “I’ll be out in a minute.” She didn’t wait for him to move; she turned and disappeared into what was obviously a connecting bath.
Eli quickly backed out of the room and shut the door. He stood there a minute, staring at the door, trying to erase the image of her in that slinky nightgown from his mind’s eye.
“Did you find her?”
He all but jumped out of his skin and jerked toward Mrs. Banks. “I sure did,” he said simply. “She’s, ah…I think she’s putting something on.”
“Then come on into the kitchen with me, Eli. I just made a pot of coffee and have some cheesecake left over from our book club meeting last night.”
Eli took one last look at Marnie’s door and followed Mrs. Banks.
She led him into a big white-on-white kitchen with an island and a pattern of ducks on the tile backsplash. It reminded him of his mom’s kitchen—cheery and bright and full of familiar smells.
One of the smells was dog, and he heard the unmistakable thumping of a big tail. Sure enough, Bingo was on a pillow in the corner, his leg in a cast and one eye banged up. Other than that, he looked a whole lot better than he had the night Eli last saw him. He squatted down; the dog rolled onto his back and held up one paw so that Eli could scratch his belly. “How you doing, Bingo?” he asked, and reached into his pocket, withdrew a couple of gourmet dog biscuits, and gave them to the dog.
“Oh, how nice!” Mrs. Banks crowed. “He’s doing great. Bob actually took him on a little walk yesterday,” Mrs. Banks said at the other end of the kitchen. “Bob is my husband. Have you met Bob?”
“Yes. In the garage.”
“Well, of course, in the garage. He’s so antisocial, Bob. Every time the girls come over, out he goes to that damn garage. The Lord only knows what he does there. Cream?”
“No thanks. Just black,” Eli said, and straightened up, looking around the kitchen. The door to the dining room was open, and as he moved to take the cup of coffee Mrs. Banks offered him, he noticed something from the corner of his eye. He turned fully toward the dining room.
The table had what looked like two dozen or more little moons stuck on a stick, and around the moons were tiny little stars. They stood about a foot tall, and the stars spanned about a foot around each moon.
“I think they’re cute,” Mrs. Banks said, standing beside him as he looked at the moons.
“What are they?” he asked.
“Decorations. Little galaxies.”
“Oh,” Eli said, and sipped his coffee. “Are you having a party?”
Mrs. Banks laughed at that. “Not me, silly. They’re for you-know-who.”
Frankly, it took Eli a minute to figure out you-know-who. And about the time he did, Marnie appeared with her hair in a ponytail and wearing some gym shorts that said SoCal across a pleasantly plump ass, and on top, a tiny little tank top thingie.
“Good morning,” Mrs. Banks trilled.
“Mom,” Marnie said, frowning. “I would appreciate it if you would not send strangers back to my room in the morning.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Eli is not a stranger.”
“You know what I mean,” she said gruffly and stomped toward the coffeepot.
Mrs. Banks winked at Eli as Marnie went sailing past and whispered, “Marnie is not a morning person.”
“I can hear you!” Marnie exclaimed to the kitchen sink. Mrs. Banks tittered gleefully and drank her coffee.
Marnie poured some coffee and turned around, clutching what looked like a soup bowl in both hands, and tried to smile at Eli. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Just let me get some coffee in me, and then I’ll be all right.” And with that, she slid down on a stool at the kitchen island and slurped coffee.
Eli walked to the island and sat across from her. “I caught you on E! last night.”
Marnie instantly perked up. “You did?”
“You did?” Mrs. Banks cried happily. “Did you tape it? Oh God, I hope you taped it.”
“Ah, no,” he said uncertainly. “I didn’t even think to.”
“How’d I look?” Marnie asked anxiously. “Was I a geek?”
“No, not at all,” he said genuinely. “You did great, Marnie. I was very impressed with the way you handled it. You’re a natural with the press.”
Marnie suddenly beamed at him and almost knocked him off his bar stool with the intensity of it. “Thanks,” she said through her enormous smile. “I was a little worried—I thought it was one reporter, but it turned out to be like, eight or nine, and I sort of panicked.”
“No, really,” he insisted. “It was great.”
Marnie and her mom exchanged twin beaming smiles.
“So, ah…if you don’t mind me asking…what’s with the galaxies in there?”
“Oh, those,” Marnie said, flicking a wrist in the direction of the dining room. “They’re just decorations for the reception. I was down at the Third Street Promenade, and I saw them in this funky little boutique, and as it turned out, they had about twenty of them. The stars light up, isn’t that cool? I thought if I wasn’t fired, I should snatch them up. So I did.”
“Okay…but why the galaxies?” Eli asked again.
“Oh, because that is Olivia’s theme,” Marnie said patiently. “Stars. And I’ve got a jump on some cool table decorations, too.”
“Great, great,” Eli said. “And how are we going to get them up there, again?”
“Ah, don’t worry. I have an idea,” Marnie said, and tapped her head with her forefinger as she winked at him. Then she lifted the giant cup of coffee and sipped from it.
“All right. I’ll bite…how?”
Marnie smiled again. “Nope, I’m not telling you. I talked to Cooper yesterday, and he thought my idea was peachy. He’s gotta check out a couple things, but he’s going to let me know.”
“He is, huh?” Eli asked skeptically, and made a note to self—call Coop and ask him kindly not to interfere with Eli’s friggin’ gig.
“So, think we’ve got two questions that have to be answered,” Marnie said. “One, is there going to be a wedding—”
“I hope for your sake there is, because I don’t know what you’re going to do with twenty of those,” Eli said.
“Oh, we’ll find a use for them,” Mrs. Banks assured him.
“And two, am I still the wedding planner?”
Eli’s gaze narrowed slightly. “I say it’s about time we found out. You wanna go pay a visit to the happy couple?”
Marnie’s brows dipped into a V over her eyes and her smile. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Ooh, where are you going?” Mrs. Banks asked. “Bel Air?”
At Marnie’s long-suffering sigh, Eli chuckled. “Give me fifteen minutes,” Marnie said, and stood up. “Mom, promise me you will not badger Eli while I’m getting dressed.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Mom,” Marnie said in a voice full of warning.
Mrs. Banks gave her daughter a wide-eyed look of innocence.
With a groan, Marnie left Eli with Mrs. Banks, who trotted over to the fridge and returned with a half-eaten cheesecake that looked, Eli had to admit, out of this world. “So Eli,” she said slyly, as she
sliced off a piece and put it on a plate. “My friend Diane says she heard from a hairdresser friend of hers who has a friend that is a massage therapist that Jude Law and Nicole Kidman are getting together.” She pushed the plate halfway across to him. “Is that true?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Banks,” he said, and reached for the plate, but Mrs. Banks suddenly snatched it back, out of his reach.
“You don’t know?” she asked with a devilish smile. “Or you won’t say?”
Jesus. How long was Marnie going to be?
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was a half hour later, not a quarter, before Marnie returned to the kitchen, because she had a small crisis in her closet. Now that she was fully awake, having seen Eli again had her thinking…what did one wear when one definitely wasn’t trying to seduce her boss, but wouldn’t mind too much if he seduced her?
In the end, she decided there really wasn’t a perfect dress for that scenario, and settled on the slightly casual but good enough for Bel Air halter dress, matched with a pair of cute kitten-heeled gold sandals that had little flowers on the straps.
She left her hair in a ponytail because of a major case of bedhead and no time to correct it after her closet crisis.
She thought she must have done okay, because Eli sort of did a double take when she returned to the kitchen. He had his head between his hands and there was an empty plate with cheesecake crumbs in front of him. Mom was sitting across from him with a big man-eating smile on her lips.
“Eli knows Tom Cruise,” she chirped.
“Oh man,” Marnie said with a wince. “I’m so sorry, Eli.”
“For knowing Tom Cruise?”
“No. For knowing my mother.”
“I resemble that remark,” Mom said brightly and hopped off her stool. “I don’t have any more time to chat, kiddos. I’m meeting Bev in an hour and we are going to get spray-on tans. So if you will excuse me,” she said, putting away the cheesecake, “I’ll see you guys later. Oh, Marnie, don’t give Bingo any treats. After the two fat gourmet biscuits Eli brought him, that silly dog will just get enormous lying there. Okay. Bye, Eli!” she said cheerfully, and went out of the kitchen whistling, pausing to pet Bingo.