CLEA STOOD out on the sidewalk, tapping her foot with impatience. “What are you
doing
here?” she snapped as Davy came out the side door. “Are you trying to ruin my life?”
“I have no interest in your life,” Davy said. “I want my money back.” He looked her up and down slowly, and Clea braced herself for the insult. “You’re looking really good, Clea.”
“Thank you,” Clea said, slightly mollified. He looked really good, too, for a treacherous son of a bitch. Hot memories came back and she stifled them. “Look, it’s my money,” she told him. “You stole it from me three years ago, you know you did. It’s mine.”
“Not all of it.” Davy folded his arms and leaned against the storefront. “And you owed me. You dumped me, I took your money, that made us even until-”
“I left you years ago.
Get over it
. Move on.”
“You betrayed me,” Davy said, his voice tensing.
“Oh, I did not,” Clea said, exasperated. “Look, I’m beautiful, I’m charming, I’m expensive, and I give the best head in America.”
“True,” Davy said, looking taken aback. “But-”
“But I’m not faithful,” Clea said. “I never was. There’s no point in it. If somebody who can take better care of me comes along, I’m going with him. That’s just sensible.”
“It may be sensible,” Davy snapped, “but it’s pretty damn hard on the other guy in the relationship.”
“What relationship?” Clea said, mystified. “What made you think we had a relationship?”
“We were living together,” Davy said. “I thought-”
“No you didn’t.” Clea folded her arms. This was why men were a pain in the ass. They only thought of themselves. “You didn’t think at all. You looked at me and saw what you wanted to see, a faithful hottie of a girlfriend. You didn’t want to know me, you just wanted to
have
me. Well, you had me. It’s over.” He was looking at her as if she were speaking Chinese, so she spelled it out for him. “I’m not responsible for you not knowing me, Davy. It’s not my fault you never looked-”
“Oh, come on,” Davy said. “We were
living together
.”
Clea shrugged. “I saved a lot on rent. I don’t see what that has to do with this. I mean, did I ever say, ‘Davy, you’re the only one’?”
“No,” Davy said.
“Did I ever say, ‘I’ll never leave you, this is forever, you’re the love of my life’?”
“This is really depressing,” Davy said, leaning against the storefront again.
“So you’re mad at me for not being what you wanted me to be,” Clea said. “Well, I’m mad at you, too. I wanted you to be rich, and you weren’t, and I ended up with that bastard Zane.”
“If you’d been faithful to me, you wouldn’t have,” Davy pointed out.
“If you’d had money, I wouldn’t have,” Clea said. “It’s your fault. But am I still blaming you? No. I’ve moved on. You should, too.”
“I’d love to,” Davy said. “Give me my fucking money back.”
“It’s
mine
,” Clea said, amazed that he couldn’t see the justice of it all. “You
stole it
from me. You took
my family home
from me.”
“Oh, please,” Davy said. “You’d have burned the family home to the ground if you could, you hated that place.”
“It was worth
money
,” Clea snapped.
Davy went on, ignoring her the way he always had. “And I stole a third of what you took. Keep the original stake, but I want the rest of it back. Hell, Clea, you were married to two rich guys, you don’t need it.”
“You don’t know what I need.” Clea stepped back. She hadn’t been married to two rich guys, she’d been married to two
poor
guys, at least they’d been poor when they died, and she didn’t need that thrown in her face, thank you very much. “It’s my money, and I need it.” She looked through the gallery window and saw Mason take Gwen’s hand. “I want to get
married
,” she said savagely, “and rich men do not marry poor women.”
Davy followed her eyes. “You think you’re going to marry this guy? No. Guys like him marry Jackies, not Marilyns. He’s stringing you.”
“Very funny,” Clea said. “No, he’s going to marry me. He brought me home to Ohio with him.”
“Which does not make him the first man to transport you across a state line for immoral purposes,” Davy said. “I’ve done it myself.”
“But you never will again,” Clea said. “Now go away.”
“You
really
think I’m going to?” Davy said.
“You don’t have any choice.” Clea stuck her chin out. “There’s nothing you can do.”
He smiled at her and she felt a chill. Davy had been good at a lot of things, she remembered, many of them illegal. “Don’t spend my money,” he told her. “I’m coming for it.” Then he went back inside.
“Oh, well, that’s just fine,” she said to the empty street. It wasn’t enough that she was broke and aging and being ignored for a woman ten years older than she was, now she had Davy Dempsey on her ass. Well, she’d just have to be nicer to Ronald so he’d keep an eye on Davy, except that this was Ronald’s fault for telling Davy where she was. It was Davy’s fault for not taking care of her in the first place. It was Mason’s fault for not taking care of her now, she should have been
married
to him by now. She looked through the gallery window to see him talking seriously to Gwen, leaning close.
“
Men
,” she said and went back inside to retrieve her future.
WHEN DAVY came back into the office, Tilda was on the couch with Steve and her third shot of vodka, this one cut with orange juice for flavor. “You know, you never did tell me what you were looking for in her room,” she said, trying not to sound cranky.
“Money.” Davy picked up the vodka bottle. “My money. Clea seduced my financial manager into embezzling my entire net worth.”
“You had enough money to have a financial manager?” Tilda said, impressed.
“He was a colleague,” Davy said, looking for a glass.
Tilda got up and got him one from the cupboard while Steve fibrillated with separation anxiety on the couch. “So what is it that you do? With this colleague?”
“Consult.” He took the glass. “He told me he could show me how to double my money and instead he tripled it,” Davy went on as he poured. “His name is Ronald Abbott. Unaffectionately known as Rabbit for his ability to burrow into other people’s accounts. I was grateful and I got careless.”
It still didn’t sound right to Tilda. “How could he get into your accounts?”
“Rabbit is a genius with money,” Davy said. “Bank accounts are like toy boxes to him. He likes to open them and play with their insides. I cannot pretend to know the things he knows, I can only tell you that I made money in the market when I did what he told me to.”
“I can see where that would lead you to trust him,” Tilda said, sitting down again so Steve would calm down. “I guess. I mean, most financial managers aren’t crooks, right?”
“Actually, Rabbit has a record,” Davy said. “Guys who make a lot of money usually cut corners someplace.”
“He had a record,” Tilda said, incredulous. “You trusted somebody you knew was crooked?”
“Everybody’s crooked,” Davy said. “The trick is to find out how they’re bent. Then you make sure the consequences are so great they stay straight anyway.”
“Oh,” Tilda said, trying to look unbent. “Which clearly didn’t work with Rabbit.”
“Oh, it worked,” Davy said. “Until somebody came along with a bigger carrot than my stick.”
“That big,” Tilda said. “Imagine. Do I know this person? Can I get to know him?”
“Clea,” Davy said, nodding toward the gallery where Clea was smiling at Mason.
“Oh,” Tilda said, following his eyes. “Well. Yes. She does have a big carrot.”
Davy frowned. “You know, the visuals I’m getting on this are-”
“So why not call the police?” Tilda said.
“Good idea,” Davy said. “You call them about the Scarlet first.”
Tilda wanted to say,
So there is something crooked here
, but that would mean admitting that the Scarlets were bent, so she dropped that one. “Or have Rabbit steal it back. He took it-”
“Yeah,” Davy said. “That’s what I want, to get trapped in a conspiracy charge with Rabbit Because he’s got so much backbone, he’d never rat me out. No.”
“You have a problem,” Tilda said.
“I have many. But I’m working on the money first.”
Tilda nodded and took another drink. “Good choice. The money will probably solve all the other problems. It sure as hell would solve all of mine.”
“No it wouldn’t,” Davy said.
Tilda looked through the door to the gallery again, to where Clea was now dragging an unhappy Mason to the door. “Why you?”
“What?” Davy said, putting the bottle back in the cabinet.
“Why did Clea send him after you?”
“I had money.”
“Lots of people have money,” she said, the skepticism heavy in her voice.
“And some history with Clea,” Davy said, watching the mini-drama through the door. “And some history with Rabbit.”
“You slept with Rabbit, too?” Tilda said, feeling bitchy.
“No, I disagreed with Rabbit once,” Davy said. “We’d made another killing in tech stocks, and I watched the numbers and said, ‘This is too good to be true.’ And that made me think of my dad.”
“Your dad,” Tilda said. “The one in sales.”
“Michael Dempsey,” Davy said, turning back to her. He saluted the air with his glass. “God bless him, wherever he is now, as long as he’s not with me.” He considered that. “Or my sisters. He has many faults, but stupidity is not one of them. He always says, ‘If it looks too good to be true, get out.’”
“Your dad sounds a lot like you.”
“No,” Davy said flatly. “He is nothing like me. And I am nothing like him.”
“Oh-kay,” Tilda said, and took another drink.
Davy nodded. “So I said, ‘Rabbit, get me out of there.’ And he argued, but in the end he put me in blue chips and bonds. And then he sneered at me for six months while the market boomed and he made millions.”
“Wow,” Tilda said.
“Yeah, and then the tech market crashed and he lost everything and I still pretty much had it all.” Davy sighed. “He never really forgave me for that.”
“So he embezzled it.”
“And gave it to Clea, which is why I turned to theft for the one and only time in my otherwise blameless life,” Davy said.
So he really wasn’t a crook. Tilda found that depressing. “Did you get your money back tonight?”
“No. I found your painting and ran.”
“And now she’s seen you. She knows you’re here after the money.”
“Yes.”
Tilda leaned back, suddenly exhausted. “So we’ve completely screwed up your life.”
He looked down at her, and he didn’t look upset. “No, I’d pretty much done that before I met you, Vilma.”
Some of the warmth she’d felt for him in the closet began to ease back, or maybe it was vodka and relief. Whatever it was, it was a huge improvement over panic and guilt, and she drank some more to celebrate.
“I thought they’d never leave,” Gwen said, coming in from the gallery. “If Clea hadn’t thrown a fit, they wouldn’t have. That man was fascinated with-” She saw Davy and stopped. “Oh, good, you’re back. Tilda was so worried.”
“Were you?” Davy said, looking down at Tilda.
“Not at all.” Tilda toasted him with her glass and a weak smile. “I’d have felt no guilt at all if you’d been sent up the river for saving my butt. Again.” She sighed. “Oh, God, never again.”
“Did you get-” Gwen began, and Tilda gestured to the paper-wrapped square on the table.
“He got what we needed,” she said. “He didn’t get what he needed.”
“The night’s young yet,” Davy said, his eyes still on her.
“You’re not going back there,” Gwen told him. “We’ll help you get whatever it is you need, but you are not going back there tonight. They’ll be home any minute.”
Davy patted her shoulder. “Relax. I’m fine.”
“Oh, well,
good for you
!” Gwen picked up her puzzle book. “I’ve had a terrible evening. That man was absolutely rabid about this damn place and he wants to come back. I don’t think I can stand that again. I’m going to bed with a Double-Crostic and forget any of this happened.”
“Good plan,” Tilda said, keeping a wary eye on Davy, who was pretty chipper for somebody who was still broke. A little vodka and he was back to his old self. That couldn’t be good.
When the door had closed behind Gwen, Davy sat down on the couch beside Tilda and took her glass. “How much of this have you had?”
“I don’t remember,” Tilda said. “I think two. Why?”
“Are you drunk?”
“No,” Tilda said. “I know how-”
“Good.” Davy put the glass on the table.
“-to drink-”
“Bully for you.” Davy slid his arm around her.
“-and…” Tilda’s voice trailed off as he leaned closer. “Okay, if this is about the closet-”
And then he kissed her.
D
AVY’S KISS TASTED LIKE VODKA
and disaster, and even while she kissed him back, Tilda thought,
I’m never going into a closet with this man again
. He slipped his hand under her T-shirt, and she said, “You know,” as his hand slid up to her breast, but the only thing left to say was,
I’m not that kind of girl
, and of course she was.
She felt his thumb slide under her bra and thought,
Louise would love this guy
, and it occurred to her that maybe if she faked being Louise, she’d finally have the wild, screaming, carnal, criminal sex that Louise always had.
Call me Scarlet
.
He dropped his head, his mouth hot on her neck.
No, that wasn’t right.
Call me Louise
.
His hands slid around to her back and pulled her closer as he eased her T-shirt up and she nestled into his arms, feeling warm because somebody was holding her close.
And if she was pretending to be Louise, maybe she wouldn’t lose her mind and scream out, “I painted the Scarlets,” when she came.
He bit her neck gently, and she drew in a short, shuddery breath.
Because if she said anything, Davy was the kind of guy who’d notice. And remember.
He began to press her back against the arm of the couch.
Louise never screamed out, “I’m Eve.” It could work.
Steve jumped off the couch onto the rug and looked at them with what might have been contempt.
Yeah, I’m appalled, too
, Tilda thought, and then Davy kissed her again, another deep, warm kiss, and she cuddled closer, but the wildness wasn’t there, she missed the closet, if they’d only done it in the closet…
He pressed her back against the arm of the couch and she shifted a little as he kissed her stomach, trying to fit her butt into the space between the cushions as she drifted back from the warmth, thinking,
This isn‘t going to work
.
Not unless he wanted to neck all night. Maybe he-
His hand slid between her thighs, and she thought,
Nope, doesn‘t want to neck
.
At least he hadn’t made it inside her bra yet. Maybe she could say yes just to keep him holding her but convince him to do it fully clothed-
He unsnapped her bra -one-handed, too, she gave him points for dexterity- and began to lick his way up her rib cage, clearly headed north to her breasts.
No,
she thought,
this isn’t working,
and pulled her T-shirt down, connecting her fist smartly with the top of his head.
“Ouch?” he said.
“I was thinking,” she began.
“Well, stop,” he said and kissed her again, and she remembered how she’d ended up on the couch in the first place. The man had an excellent mouth.
Oh, just do it, Louise
, she told herself.
You could use this
.
He moved his hand under her bra, and she considered a moan, which was better than heavy breathing because if she breathed too heavy, she’d end up in an asthma attack, and that would be the end: topless geekdom. She pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. Definitely moaning.
Then his mouth moved to her breast, gentle and hot, and she clutched at him and said, “
Oh
!” for real, a lot louder than she’d meant to.
He lifted his head and met her eyes. “Sorry,” she said, and felt a blush start.
Davy smiled at her, the smile of a man about to have sex. “Not a problem.” He stretched over her head and pounded at random on the buttons on the jukebox. The music started as he slid back down to her. “What is this, anyway?”
“What?” Tilda said, panicking that he’d realized something was wrong with her.
“This song,” he said, as the surf rolled on the jukebox.
Tilda listened. “ ‘Wonderful Summer,’” she said as Robin Ward started to sing. “It’s one of my favorites.”
“Never heard of it,” Davy said, and Tilda felt annoyed. Then his mouth was on hers again, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and tried to coax herself back into all that heat she’d felt in the closet. But no matter how she tried as the minutes passed, she couldn’t get beyond conflicted warmth. Then Davy’s hand was on her zipper, and that was dangerous. She had too much to lose to let somebody like Davy Dempsey in.
Robin belted out the last line about the most wonderful
summer
of her
life
, and the surf rolled, and the room was silent again, and the sound of her zipper reverberated everywhere.
“Hold that thought,” Davy said, as he moved back up to the jukebox, and Tilda thought,
You don’t want me to hold my thought. You want me to hold the one you ‘re having
.
He reached over her head and smacked half a dozen buttons at random. The Essex kicked in the opening bars of “Easier Said Than Done,” and Tilda said, “You know-”
“Later,” Davy said and slid his fingers into her jeans.
“Oh. Hey.” Tilda closed her eyes and decided to push him away in a couple of minutes. Or maybe not at all. If he kept doing that for about half an hour, she’d even take off some clothes.
Davy pushed up her T-shirt, narrowly missing her chin, and she yanked it back down again as he pulled her hips down to his. The pressure there was nice as long as she kept her eyes closed and thought,
LouiseLouiseLouise
. Then he stopped kissing her long enough to strip off her jeans and slide between her legs.
Maybe not
, she thought, as he shoved off his jeans.
Birth control, we didn‘t
-
“Wait,” she said, opening her eyes, careful not to look down. “I don’t have-”
He held up a condom and went for her mouth again, and she thought,
If I say no, he’ll stop, and then we’ll have to
talk
about it, and that’ll be terrible
, and he did feel good, if she could just get her head straight-
Come on
, she told herself, and tried to work herself into the mood, concentrating on how solid his arms were around her, how wonderful it was to be held, how good his mouth felt, finally generating enough heat that when he pulled her hips to his and she felt him hard against her and then hard inside her, it didn’t hurt-
there’s a recommendation for you
, she thought:
it didn’t hurt
.
She moaned for effect, more surprised he was inside her than shocked-this is what happened when you didn’t pay attention, they got ahead of you, and there you were-and it wasn’t that she wasn’t ready, exactly, it was more that Louise would have felt more. There would have been gasping with Louise, she was sure of it.
Of course, Louise wasn’t asthmatic.
She began to move with him, trying to pick up his rhythm, which was hard because she kept slipping down the couch.
Oh, hell
, she thought, and moved her hand to brace herself on the back of the couch and caught him across the nose.
Don’t have a nosebleed
, she thought,
please don’t have a nosebleed
, but he just said, “Ouch,” and kept going.
Single-minded
, she thought.
Okay, there is no Louise, Louise is like the Easter Bunny, so just breathe heavy and get this over with and never go near this man again
.
She took deep breaths, not even trying to match his because they were never going to be in sync, and once she stopped trying and started breathing, things got better. He picked up speed, and Tilda tried to imagine the tightening of her muscles and did a damn good job with those moans as the minutes passed and her pulse picked up. Then he shifted against her and hit something good, and she sucked in her breath and thought,
Wait a minute, this could
-but even as she had the thought, he shuddered in her arms and that was it.
Just hell
, she thought, and finished off with an oh-my-god-that-was-good moan-sigh combo.
So much for channeling her inner Louise. He was semi-mindless on top of her now, so she held him, patting him on the back while he caught his breath and Pippy Shannon sang “I Pretend” on the jukebox.
Our song
, Tilda thought.
Steve dozed on the rug beside the couch, oblivious to both of them. He had the right idea. She should have taken a nap instead.
Then Davy pushed himself up on one arm and looked in her eyes, nose to nose. “So what was that?” he said, still breathing hard, looking mad. “A fake or a forgery?”
“Hey.” She tried to sit up, and he shook his head.
“You’re a terrible actress,” he said, and collapsed on top of her again.
“Your foreplay was okay,” she said crushingly to the top of his head. “Your afterplay sucks.”
“Sorry,” he said, clearly not, and eased away from her, and she looked at the ceiling as she pulled up her jeans, and he got rid of the condom and got dressed.
“Well, gee, I can’t thank you enough,” she said when they were both clothed again. She made her eyes wide. “What a good time.”
He shook his head and turned away from her. “Good night, Tilda. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Ouch
, she thought, and then he turned back and said, “Look, don’t fake. It’s lousy for everybody.”
“Gee,
you
sounded like you were having a pretty good time,” Tilda said, stung.
He started to say something and then shook his head again and headed for the door.
When he was gone, Steve jumped up on the couch again and Tilda patted him and tried to blame everything on Davy, but fairness got in the way. Okay, so it hadn’t been good. That was her fault. She wanted to be Louise and she wasn’t. She was a fake, she just wasn’t a hot fake.
Although she was sure as hell a
tense
fake, damn it.
And if he were any kind of a lover, he would have known something was wrong.
She punched buttons on the jukebox and decided to forget about Davy and concentrate on the comfort of music. She lay down on the couch and Steve climbed on top of her stomach and stretched out, his nose underneath her chin. “Lotta guys doing that tonight,” she told him and when he looked at her adoringly, she relented and patted him. “You’re a good man, Steve. Needy, but good.”
That was one thing Davy wasn’t. She had to give him that. Completely self-sufficient, didn’t need her for anything. Davy would never tell her she had to choose between him and her family. Of course, Davy would never propose, either. That was the problem with independence. It so rarely went well with commitment. Which she didn’t want anyway because she had enough people to take care of.
Maybe that’s why I don’t miss Scott
, she thought and then shoved Scott and Davy and uncompleted sex-not that that was bothering her-out of her mind and let the music fill the void until she heard Andrew and Louise come in the back door and hit the stairs. If they were home, it was past midnight.
She got up as the jukebox began to play “The Kind of Boy You Can’t Forget,” and picked up the painting from the table. “Well, let’s look at you,” she said. “You’re the one that started this mess.” She tore the paper off and then stopped, staring at the cupped yellow flowers that rioted under the checkerboard sky while the Raindrops burbled, “I ain’t got over it yet.”
Flowers
. Not houses,
flowers
. He’d stolen the wrong damn painting
again
. Her already tense system split down the seams, and she headed for the stairs.
She stomped on every tread as if it were Davy’s head as she climbed the three stories to his door, Steve trailing dutifully behind her. “
Open up
!” she said, pounding on it, not caring who heard.
After a minute he opened the door, wearing nothing but black boxers, looking sleepy and annoyed. “Look, if this is about the couch, I don’t want to hear-”
She shoved the canvas at him. “I said
a city
?” Snapping at him felt wonderful, really, she just wanted to rip him apart. “These
ate flowers
.”
He took it and shoved it back at her, pointing at the houses in the distance. “Those are
houses
. See? Those little red things?
That’s a city”
“Yes,
little”
Tilda spit back. “In the background. Everybody knows if you say
city
, it means a big city, it means what the picture is
about
.”
“That’s true,” Dorcas said from the doorway behind them as she peered at the painting from her doorway. “That’s a painting of flowers.”
“Thank you, Dorcas,” Tilda said. “
Go away
.”
“This is so like you,” Davy said, ignoring Dorcas. “It’s all about what you know and I don’t. I don’t know who Gene Pitney is, so it’s my fault.”
“ ‘Town Without Pity,’” Gwen said from below on the stairs. “What’s going on?”
Davy jerked his head back from Tilda. “Why are you here?” he asked, looking down the stairwell at Gwen.
“I live here,” Gwen said. “Why are you shouting about Gene Pitney?”
“ ‘True Love Never Runs Smooth,’” Louise said from behind her, her black china-doll wig swinging away from her stage makeup as she stretched to see the painting.
“‘Only Love Can Break a Heart,’” Andrew said, from behind Louise.
“ ‘One Fine Day,’” Dorcas said, from behind Tilda.
“That’s the
Chiffons
,” Tilda said to Dorcas, fed up with everybody. “Will you people please go back to bed?”
“I wasn’t the one screaming in the hall,” Dorcas said and shut her door.
“She has a point,” Gwen said. “What’s going on?”
“Did Davy say something bad about Gene Pitney?” Nadine said, from farthest down the stairs. “Because I think
he
has a point.”
“It’s not about Gene Pitney,” Davy said, fixing Tilda with cold eyes. “It’s about people who do not give other people the information they need to get the job done.”
“What job?” Louise said, her eyes dark behind black contacts. “Is that the painting?” Tilda turned it so she could see it. “Oh. No. It isn’t.”
“You got the wrong one
again
?” Gwen said.
“Hello,” Davy said, squinting at Louise in the dim hall with interest. Suddenly he wasn’t nearly as sleepy or annoyed, and Tilda wanted to kick him.