She and Zander were standing where he’d left them, blond heads close, talking intently. To his astonishment, as he closed the gap, Claire reached up and gave the rocker a hug. Never a man to miss an opportunity, Zander enthusiastically returned the embrace, his hands creeping down her back to rest on the upper curve of her bottom. Nate’s fist curled involuntarily. If Steve were here…
But Steve wasn’t here.
Zander caught Nate glaring at him and offered his irrepressible grin, the one that charmed him out of trouble with men and women alike. Nate scowled. Not this time, mate. His employer’s grin broadened, but he released Claire. When she saw Nate, a curious mix of anger and apology crossed her face.
His survival instincts kicked in. “What’s going on?”
“Zee.” Dimity, Zander’s personal assistant, teetered over on heels so high she had to take tiny steps. “We need you for photographs with the new band members.”
“Jeez, I’m sick of them already,” Zander complained, but dumped his glass. “Goodbye, Claire, next time I’m visiting my mom and brother you can take me fishing.”
“It’s a date,” she said.
“Then we’ll definitely leave your chaperone ashore,” said Zander, kissing Claire’s cheeks in the French style. As he left with his PA, Nate gestured Andrew to follow.
“Chaperone?” Claire asked.
“Don’t worry about it.… I’ve organized you a ride to my condo.”
“I should tell you something first.”
“Later,” he said. “When I’m off duty. I can’t look after you and do my job.” Dusk was falling, along with inhibitions, as alcohol took effect on the guests. And the civility of this crowd was tenuous at best.
She hesitated. “Of course.” They walked through the crowd. A young woman had stripped to her bra and thong and was frolicking in the pool in front of a geriatric rocker. He had his hand in the halter of his young date’s top. Shocked, Claire glanced at Nate.
“Think of it as a bazaar,” he advised. “Everyone here wants something—sex, money, fame, contracts.”
She shook her head. “That doesn’t make him less of a creep.”
“The exploitation is mutual,” he said dryly. “You think she wants him for his looks?”
“Hey, Nathan!” An old girlfriend of Zander’s caught him by the lapels. She was drunk, swaying on her stilettos. “Has Zee replaced me yet?” Stormy asked in her sex-kitten voice.
He steadied her, smiling his reassurance. “You know you’re one of a kind.” She’d really loved the son of a bitch and Nate knew firsthand she had taken the breakup badly. He’d been there when Zander dumped her. Sometimes he hated his job.
She dropped his arm for that of Zander’s English tour manager, Bill, who looked as if he couldn’t believe his luck. “We need some privacy, mate. Where can we go?”
“The top floor of suites has been reserved for guests.”
“Yeah, but is it guarded?” Bill pressed a nostril on his beaky nose closed and feigned a snort, too drunk to be cautious. Stormy giggled.
“You’ll be given a warning,” Nate said evenly. He could feel Claire’s gaze on him.
But she didn’t say anything until they were in the elevator heading down to the lobby. “They’re doing coke,” she said. “And you’re okay with that?”
“If they’re consenting adults, my policy is hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil…and think of the dollar bills.”
A frown creased her brow. She searched his face. The Nate she was looking for didn’t exist anymore.
The elevator doors opened and he ushered her into the bustling lobby and then out to the courtyard where a limo waited.
“Do you like your job?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Twelve hundred a day. What’s not to like?” Handing her his house key, Nate opened the limo door. She didn’t get in.
“You won’t do another runner on me, will you?” When he’d left New Zealand, he hadn’t said goodbye.
“Where else would I go?” he said, trying to keep the sharpness out of his voice.
“Promise me, Nate.”
He gave a curt nod. Still, she hesitated. “Just remember,” she said, “I’m not here to make your life harder. Only to make mine easier.”
Nate nodded again, fighting the guilt kindled by her appeal. “Go back to my place, catch some sleep, we’ll talk in the morning.”
“I’ll wait up,” she said.
His mouth tightened. “Fine…but I’ll be late.”
“It’s good to see you, Nate.” She smiled wryly. “Even if you can’t say the same.”
The door clicked shut, the limo drove away and he could breathe again. Think again, without the pressure of those clear blue eyes on him. There was a flight to New Zealand tomorrow night. He’d make sure she was on it.
On the rooftop, he relieved Andrew and sent him to keep an eye on JT’s entourage. Surrounded by TV cameras, Zander was putting on his gloves in preparation for his big gesture—smashing the guitar ice sculpture to signal the official launch of his tour. He gestured Nate over.
“I told the gorgeous widow she could have you for three days,” he said. “You can thank me by getting rid of JT. That prick’s really starting to annoy me.”
CHAPTER THREE
N
ATE
DIDN
’
T
HAVE
MUCH
in his fridge. Starving, Claire surveyed the contents. Long-life milk. A cantaloupe. One block of cream cheese. Greek yogurt. Each sitting on its own shelf. She checked the freezer. A packet of bagels. He must eat breakfast here and nothing else.
When in Rome. She cubed the cantaloupe and added it to the muesli she’d discovered in the pantry, eschewing the milk in favor of yogurt. She’d been too nervous about seeing Nate to eat on the plane. Or at the party.
Thinking about their encounter, she nearly let her appetite desert her again. But she was determined to regain the weight she’d lost after Steve’s death, so she found a spoon in one of the many empty drawers in the kitchen.
The only thing this house had plenty of was space.
Her footsteps echoed across the flagstone floor as she took her bowl of muesli into the dining room where an eight-seater dining table sat in solitary splendor. Heavy drapes of a hideous salmon pink clashed with the golden wood. The place was obviously a rental, because it held no personal touches at all.
Claire put her bowl on the table, picked it up again. She didn’t want to eat here, or in the living room that had a river-rock fireplace that Fred and Wilma Flintstone could have broiled a brontosaurus in, one enormous couch, a slab of coffee table and a high-tech entertainment system. The only place in this mausoleum that looked lived in was Nate’s office.
She’d found her lawyer’s unopened envelopes there.
On impulse she opened the French doors leading off the kitchen and took her breakfast onto the patio that overlooked the canal. The balmy air carried a sea breeze from Venice Beach, one block north, which simultaneously made her homesick and reminded her why she was doing this. For a new start.
As she ate, Claire worried about Nate. He’d looked so different, impeccably groomed, clean shaven, expensive haircut. For a moment when he’d recognized her, she’d thought with relief,
Ross and Dan were wrong. He hadn’t changed.
He was still Nate, loyal and caring, who valued people above everything. Nate, who always remembered birthdays and Christmas and organized get-togethers because as he’d once told her, he was replacing every bad memory of his foster childhood with a good one.
The muesli caught in her throat. Putting down the spoon, she stared out across the canal, to the brightly lit houses. Their refracted light on the black water made it glisten like oil. How many good memories did it take to cancel out having one of his best friends dying in his arms?
She’d been so sure he’d open up to her. She knew how to be sensitive, unlike Ross and Dan, who’d told him bluntly that it was time to reengage with the people who cared about him. Though equally frustrated and hurt by Nate’s withdrawal, Claire empathized with his need to distance himself from well-meaning friends and relatives. Hell, she understood it.
Except, as soon as the shock wore off, he’d become remote, cynical, jaded…at home in a world he once would have laughed at, condoning behavior he once would have scorned. She’d never seen a man so disconnected from his old self.
That’s when she knew even an emotional appeal wouldn’t work.
So she’d gone out of her way to be understanding and conciliatory. And he’d lied to her. Outright lied to her. Claire pushed the bowl away. Zander had told her they weren’t flying out for another couple weeks.
Anger rose in her and she quashed it, the way she’d quashed other emotions over the last eighteen months. Because they didn’t serve her. She’d learned that when Steve died. It didn’t matter how much you wept or raged or begged God for things to be different. You couldn’t change reality. So you had to work with it. Her son and Steve’s mother needed her to be strong. She needed to see herself as strong.
Claire pressed the light button on her wristwatch: 1:00 a.m. She’d wait up all night if necessary. However reluctant he was to see her, Nate wouldn’t break his promise. She might not be able to rewrite the past, but she would direct her future.
Taking her half-eaten meal to the counter, Claire did a mental time-zone conversion, then retrieved her cell from her tote bag and dialed a New Zealand number. Along with Nate, Lee and Ross, Dan had been her husband’s troopmate in the SAS, but he hadn’t been in the convoy during the ambush. It had taken him a long time to come to terms with that.
He was also Steve’s cousin. As a kid, Steve had spent most school holidays at the Jansens’ family farm, and Lewis, who wasn’t happy about moving, had recently expressed a desire to do the same.
For the next two weeks he was staying with Dan and his wife, Jo, while Claire made the Stingray Bay beach house more suited to permanent residency and got the boat renovations under way. She and her son could both do with the break.
“Lewis is in bed,” Dan said after they’d exchanged greetings.
“Did I get the time wrong? I thought it was only 9:00 p.m. there.”
He laughed. “I worked him into the ground…poor kid. We’re docking lambs.”
“I hope he’s not giving you any trouble.”
Because he’s been giving his mother a lot of trouble lately,
she thought wryly.
“Occasional moments of teen angst, but we’re ignoring them. Is our other boy giving you trouble?” Claire had asked Dan to keep her flying visit to L.A. a secret from Lewis because she didn’t want to get her son’s hopes up. Nate had dashed them enough times already.
“I’ll get back to you. Currently I’m cautiously optimistic.” With Zander in her corner, surely Nate had run out of excuses. A phone started ringing somewhere. “Listen, I’ve got to go. Give Lewis my love and tell him I’ll phone tomorrow.”
She reached the hall after the answering service had kicked in. “Hi, Nate, it’s Marcie. Left a message on your cell too, but just to confirm…Roberta doesn’t need an escort to court tomorrow. Her husband’s back in jail. On an unrelated charge, thank God. Talk soon. Bye.”
Claire stared at the phone. Did all her old friend’s associates break the law?
She wondered if Zander had broken the news yet or if she’d have to. Once she could have predicted Nate’s reaction. Now…
Claire hugged herself as she heard the front door open. Now she didn’t know him anymore.
* * *
“Y
OU
’
RE
STILL
UP
.” Catching sight of her as he opened the front door Nate smiled, but his brown eyes radiated a cold anger.
Zander had told him.
Claire returned a conciliatory smile. Then he shouldn’t have lied to her. “I said I’d wait up.” She noticed that his dark hair was disheveled, his tie hung loose and his immaculate white shirt was half undone. “Are you…drunk?”
“I don’t get drunk.” Nate slipped the suit jacket off, threw it at the coat stand and missed. He wore a gun holster. “More like comfortably numb.”
“I hope you didn’t drive.”
“No, we caught a cab.” Half turning, Nate held out his hand. “Pia, come meet my stalker.”
“Mia,” corrected a female voice. Disbelieving, Claire stared at the tipsy goddess, all curves and collagen lips, who grabbed Nate’s hand and stumbled inside.
Knowing how important it was to settle this, he’d brought a pick-up home?
“Mia, meet Claire. Claire, meet Mia.”
“I don’t do threesomes,” Mia said flatly.
Nate laughed. “You’ve gotta love Hollywood,” he said. “It’s okay, babe, Claire’s a friend…married to my best friend.” Freeing his holster, he removed the cartridge from the gun, then opened the hall cupboard, revealing a small safe. “I know in this town that doesn’t mean much, but in our circle it’s a very big deal. Well, maybe not too big a deal since Claire has screwed me…metaphorically speaking.” Depositing the weapon, he slammed the metal door shut. Hard.
Claire took a deep breath. “Nate.”
He smiled and wagged a finger at her. “All this talk of understanding, when you intended playing Zander’s heartstrings all along. He says I have to do my dooty…that’s how Americans pronounce it, dooty. There’s some irony in being lectured on doing the right thing by a guy notorious for putting himself first.”
Mia laughed. “That is funny.” She fondled his chest, clearly oblivious to his real mood.
“Almost as funny as you lying to me about tour dates,” Claire said evenly.
“I promised Mia a private party, so we’ll discuss this tomorrow. C’mon, babe, let’s find a drink.”
“I’ve been hitting on this guy for months,” Mia confided happily to Claire as Nate ushered her past. “Talk about hard to get.”
“You’re telling me.” Claire followed them to the kitchen. “You could have avoided this, Nate,” she pointed out. “I sent letters, my lawyer sent letters.… You’re not the only one struggling with Steve’s and Lee’s deaths.”
He had his back to her, opening cupboard doors. “All due respect, Claire, you have no friggin’ idea what I feel.” He passed Mia a couple of glasses.
She wanted to shout,
Steve was my husband.
But that would crack her self-control and she needed those shields. “You agreed to be a trustee,” she reminded him quietly. “All I’m asking is that you do your job.”
“Here it is,” he said, holding up a Jack Daniel’s bottle.
“You guys aren’t acting much like friends,” Mia ventured.
“Sure we are.” Nate flashed Claire a hard smile. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll lend you whatever money you need to bring the boat up to spec. That will take the pressure off selling the house. And I’ll sign any papers your lawyer sends me. But no one pushes me into doing what I don’t want to, Claire. Not even you.”
Her throat tightened. “That’s not good enough.” She needed to make her own way, follow new dreams, since following the ones she and Steve had shared was no longer an option.
“That’s my best offer.” One arm hooked around Mia’s waist, the other hand clutching a bottle of JD, he headed for the stairs.
Mia glanced over her shoulder with a worried frown. “Are you all right?” she said to Claire.
Her mouth started forming an automatic yes. “No. The last six months have been hell. My son’s been getting into trouble and I’ve had to move him away from his deadbeat friends.” She hated resorting to emotional blackmail, but Nate had left her no choice. “And I really need Nate to talk to him about Steve’s death.”
Shocked, Mia stopped. “Your husband’s dead?”
Dropping his hand from her waist, Nate turned and looked at her. “He died almost immediately after impact,” he said harshly. “There’s nothing to add.”
“And I’ve told Lewis that. We all have. But Dan wasn’t on patrol and Ross can’t remember a thing. You are the only eyewitness. I understand it’s difficult for you, but he needs to talk to you about his father’s last hours.”
“No.” His hand tightened on the balustrade. “I’ll pay for counseling.”
“What?” Unable to believe his callousness, Claire stared at him.
His gaze fell from hers. “And you can have my share of
Heaven Sent,
” he added. “Consider it an apology for your wild-goose chase.”
She didn’t think he could hurt her more. He’d rather buy her off than spare a measly few days helping get her and Lewis’s lives back on track. He was going to ignore the emotional welfare of a thirteen-year-old boy, a kid who’d idolized him.
Mia kissed Nate’s cheek approvingly. “Aren’t you sweet.”
Something broke in Claire. “You selfish, insensitive son of a bitch! For months I’ve been making excuses for you to my son and stopping your mates from coming over here and dragging you home. ‘Give him time,’ I said. ‘He’ll come back to us.’ You think it doesn’t hurt that our friendship died with Steve?”
Nate stood perfectly still, his face white under his tan, Mia wide-eyed beside him.
“Do you think I enjoy having to swallow my pride and chase you halfway across the world?” The dam had broken; she couldn’t stop the deluge of words even if she’d wanted to. “It’s been a year and a half since the ambush, and you’re telling me that I can’t move on with my life because
you’re
grieving? He was my husband, Nate.”
“Claire.” He took a step toward her and she held up a hand.
“
My
husband. All I want to do is take control of my finances and protect my son.” Tears prickling her eyes, she turned to Mia. “Can’t you see he’s only using you to avoid dealing with me? The war hero is a goddamn coward!”
Mia opened her mouth, closed it. Nate stood frozen to the spot.
She had to get out of here. Holding tight to her anger, Claire stormed out of the house, remembering too late her bag was still in the kitchen. She’d walk along the beach until they went to bed, then sneak back and gather her stuff, because she wasn’t going to spend one night under her former friend’s roof. At least she still had Nate’s spare key.
She heard hurried footsteps behind her. “Claire!”
Blindly she kept marching along the canal path. “Go to hell.”
“Come home, Claire.” Nate tried to take her arm and she shook him off.
“Not until I’m good and ready.… Go exploit poor Mia.”
“We decided she could do better than me.… And you can’t go walking around here at night,” he added patiently. “It’s not safe.”
She hadn’t even considered that. Her anger deflated, leaving only a bone-deep weariness. What was she going to do now? Her footsteps slowed and then stopped. She looked at him, but the streetlight was behind him and his face was in shadow.
“I’ve been selfish,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Too little, too late.” Claire returned the way she’d come. This time he knew not to take her arm.
“How many days are we talking about?” he asked as they reached his house.
Relief was a lump in her throat. “I figure two, maybe three at most.”
“I don’t want anyone to know I’m in the country.”
Her heart sank.
“That means Lewis too,” he said, spelling it out.
She’d had to rip a scab off a wound to make him do this. She wouldn’t show vulnerability again. “You’re in luck. He’s at Dan’s for the school holidays.”
“I can’t tell him anything he hasn’t already heard from you.”