Bending the Rules (11 page)

“Hey,” she said softly as she wove through the remaining collections that still crowded the room. “I’m glad you suggested meeting here. I’ve been so busy lately I haven’t been able to stop by.”

“Tell me about it, stranger.” Jane smiled at her. “I haven’t seen you in, like, forever.”

“I know. It’s been a good week or two since we’ve had any decent girl-time.” Out of all the vases on the table, a tall green one grabbed her attention. She picked it up, turning it in her hands to admire the beautiful long-trunked rose tree etched and enameled on it. Something—its beauty, its lines—spoke to her. “This is gorgeous. I don’t remember seeing it before.”

“It’s a Lamartine.”

“It really is lovely. Don’t you think it would look great on my sideboard?”

Jane studied it a moment and nodded. “It would—it’d look perfect there.”

“Maybe I can buy it from my share of the estate. What would something like this cost?”

“Somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-five hundred to three thousand dollars.”

Poppy bobbled it, her heart pounding as she caught the vase against her stomach before it could hit the floor. Returning it to the table, she carefully placed it well back from the edge.

“Ho-ly Mary, mother of—” Blowing out a breath, she turned to discover her friend grinning at her. She pressed both hands over her still madly tripping heart. “Janie, you gotta tell me to step away from stuff that valuable. Don’t let me pick it up, for God’s sake—I damn near dropped the thing!”

Ava breezed into the room, a small white baker’s box in her hands. “Hello, my sister hoods,” she said, shedding jacket, flowing scarf and her Kate Spade handbag onto the settee. “I come bearing gifts.” She opened the lid on the box to show them a golden-crusted wheel with a cranberry chutney nestled in the center of its top. “A brie was left over from a new client’s party last night.”

“Wow, you’ve got honest employees,” Poppy said, pinching a small hunk of what looked like pineapple off the golden top. “I would’ve eaten it so fast you’d never even have known there was a leftover.”

Ava grinned. “Somehow my assistant double-booked me so I couldn’t be there myself, and the party was just large enough that I had to hire extra waitstaff instead of making do with my usual extras. I’m pretty sure the newbies were all set to dive into it themselves until I spoiled the fun by dropping by to check on how the party had gone.”

“Where was this one?” Jane asked, then grinned. “Not that I really care. The important thing is you’ve got food and I’m starving. Let’s take it to the dining room. The guys hooked up the appliances in there while they’re working on the kitchen, and there’s some pop and sparkling water in the fridge.”

“Is there anything stronger?” Poppy demanded. “It’s been a day—I could stand a glass of wine.”

“I’ll check.”

Poppy hooked an arm through Ava’s as they trooped down the hall. “I’m not as hungry as Janie, so I’d be interested in hearing where the new client’s party was.”

“In a fabulous house near Volunteer Park.”

“And you were just passing by that neighborhood at what I’m assuming was a fairly late hour why?”

“It was the first function I put on for them and I’d told the client I’d check in when it was over to make sure she was satisfied with how smoothly it had been handled. Besides I was on my way home from the other event. One where I was an actual guest instead of the concierge making it happen.”

Jane shot Ava a glance over her shoulder. “You attended a party in a strictly social capacity? That’s kinda unusual for you these days.”

Ava shrugged a cashmere-clad shoulder. “They’re never strictly social anymore—and it was at one of my biggest clients’ house, which is why I felt compelled to go. Plus, I network whether I want to or not, since someone invariably brings up what I do. People in the set I grew up in are fascinated by my profession for some reason. A few, like my parents, find it embarrassing that I work in a service industry, while others seem to think it’s pretty cool.” She flashed her dimpled shark’s smile. “But all of them like the idea of ‘one of their own’ handling their affairs…which is what keeps my business building.

“But enough about me.” Ava handed off the pastry box to Jane as they entered the dining room and headed straight for the sideboard. Squatting, she stuck her head in its cupboard and emerged a moment later with a bottle of wine in her hands. Rising to her feet, she displayed it to Poppy like a four-star sommelier, then ruined the impression by wagging her eyebrows. “Eh? Eh?”

“Oh, bless you, my child!”

Jane lifted the wheel of brie from the box. “What do I do with this? Throw it in the micro?”

“Good God, no!” Ava regarded her with horror. “Put it in the oven at three-fifty for about seven minutes. It’s already been baked, so we’re just reheating it.”

“So I ask again—why not simply microwave it? It’s faster and we don’t really have an oven oven—just the toaster variety while the kitchen’s out of commission.”

“How did I come to be bosom buds with such a philistine? You’ve obviously been hanging out with construction guys too long. Microwaving turns the pastry to rubber.”

“Well, eee-ow,” Jane said in a bad Cockney accent, tipping her nose ceilingward with a fingertip. “I ain’t a foine lydee such as yerself, Duchess.” But she cranked on the toaster oven, placed the wheel on its little pan and slid it in.

Poppy smiled as she extracted the cork from the wine bottle and poured a glass each for herself and Ava. Having grown up in a household with chronic drinkers, Janie rarely touched alcohol, so Poppy fetched her a diet cola from the fridge, poured it in a glass and added ice. She transported everything to the long dining-room table. This was exactly what the doctor’d ordered—a dose of friendship, the Rx of champions.

As if reading her mind, Jane leaned against the sideboard and looked at her. “So what’s up? On the phone you sounded a tad desperate. Your new kiddies giving you grief?”

“More than I expected, which is my own fault for not giving the dynamics of this group more thought. I didn’t take into consideration that the kids in my other groups are in my program because they want to be. This is a first, having teens who have to be there. So, it is a little different. But sooner or later I’ll win them over. I don’t mind doing the tough-love thing until I do.”

“So if it’s not your new group,” Ava said, propping her chin in her palm and her elbow on the gleaming tabletop, fixing Poppy with her undivided attention, “then wha—Oh. Detective Shei—Uh, Bastard Rat.” Her eyes went cool and narrow. “Is he giving you a hard time?”

“Not precisely.” She hesitated, not sure if she really wanted to get into this. But the wine she’d sipped had dissipated the defenses she’d slapped in place in an attempt to convince herself Jason’s kiss had left her unaffected. Plus these were her two closest friends in the world and if she couldn’t talk to them, she was in more trouble than she already feared. “Would you consider me a pretty confident woman when it comes to men?”

“Absolutely,” Janie said.

“Hell, yeah,” Ava agreed.

“I always thought I was, too,” she said glumly. “But with de Sanges…” Making a face, she gave an impatient wave of her hand. “Don’t get me wrong, I can hold my own with the man. But he drives me crazy. He doesn’t interact with the kids at all unless it’s to say something intimidating.”

“Uh-oh. That’s iron-clad guaranteed to put him on your bad side,” Jane said.

“Damn tootin’.” And if part of her insisted on drifting to the fact that he’d got it when she’d accused him of being like Boss Godfrey with the kids, she firmly brought it back on track. Because, please. Big deal.

“I’ve never met anyone so rigid and serious. I doubt he has the first clue how to have fun.” Okay, so he’d displayed a hint of a sense of humor. Clearly it was an aberration and she hardly felt compelled to throw that into the mix. It would only confuse her friends the way it had her.

“I only met him that one time,” Ava agreed, “but I remember that he never once smiled.”

Oh, but when he does unbend he’s got a seriously killer smile.

“That’s the thing, though,” Poppy said, disgusted with her thoughts. “I find myself suddenly making all kinds of excuses for him. All because I lost it when he kissed me.” Boy, had she lost it!

“He kissed you?” both friends exclaimed in unison.

They leaned forward, all alert eyes and bristling curiosity, but Ava beat Jane to the punch when she demanded, “And you didn’t lead off with that the minute the three of us were in one room? Why the hell did you let me go on and on about the stupid brie?”

“Hey, it wasn’t as if it was much of a kiss,” she said defensively. “The thing was so brief I’m not even sure it qualifies.”

“If you lost it, then I’m guessing it qualified,” Jane said.

Ava nodded. “Yes, tell us about that. I need a definition, because my idea of ‘lost it’ and yours could be two different things. Or I can just go out on a limb here and speculate it means he made you feel—”

“Like he was lightning and I was the tallest tree on the prairie? Oh, yeah.”

Both her friends grinned and Ava wiggled in her chair. “Ooh. Tell us more and don’t stint on the details. It’s been a long dry spell for me, so I have to live vicariously.”

“It’s embarrassing.”

“Even better,” Jane said, giving her a lopsided smile. “You’re the girl who always skated when it came to those embarrassing man/woman situations that knock the rest of us on our butts. You were due.”

“Oh, nice, Janie. I may have been dumped less often than some—but the pain when I am is still my pain. You’re dreaming if you think anyone skates entirely when it comes to this kind of crap.”

“Oh, kiddo, I know.” Jane reached across the table to rub the back of her hand. “That didn’t come out right. I didn’t mean you’ve never been hurt, just that you never seem to be embarrassed by anything. You’re usually so at ease with men and I used to be so awkward that I just had one of those mean it-was-bound-to-catch-up-withyou-sooner-or-later moments.”

“Bitch,” she said without heat, then added morosely, “I would’ve voted for later. But I have a feeling hanging around de Sanges for any length of time—which I can hardly avoid, given the terms of the kids’ deal with the city and the merchants—is going to end up being one big kick in the head for me.”

“By your own account, Poppy, it was merely a brief kiss,” Ava pointed out gently.

“Yeah, but that’s the thing, Av. It was so short it obviously meant nothing to him. Yet to me there was nothing merely about it. He barely grazed my lips and I was all over him like hot fudge on ice cream. I went from a reasonably intelligent woman to a crazed sex machine in one-point-two seconds. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it.”

“Yowsa. And this is bad why?”

“Because he shoved me back like I was pumping nuclear waste all over his jazzy shoes and said—” she deepened her voice in an attempt to approximate his “‘—My apologies, Ms. Calloway.’”

All amusement fled her friends’ faces. Ava gaped at her. “He told you kissing you was a mistake?”

She nodded. See, they got it—it wasn’t for nothing they were her BFFs.

Ava glowered. “Why, that low-down, dirty, rotten—”

“Pig,” Jane spat.

And suddenly Poppy felt a measure of her usual confidence return. Yes, she was still mortified and less than thrilled at the prospect of facing Studly Do-Right again. But she had the most loyal friends in the world. And that went a long way toward removing the sting from even the worst bites that life had to offer.

“Why the hell did the jerk kiss you in the first place?” Jane demanded.

Arrested, Poppy stared at her. “That’s a very good question,” she said slowly. And for the first time since Jason had pushed her away she thought about his actions: his hands guiding hers up to encircle his strong neck, the look in his dark eyes when he’d lowered his mouth to hers. Reflectively, she said, “He didn’t seem to like it when I told him it was hardly worth apologizing over.”

Ava and Jane snorted their amusement, but Poppy waved it aside. “So why did he kiss me?” she mused softly, reaching for the wine bottle to tip another splash into her and Ava’s glasses. “That brie ready yet? I think we’re going to need something to soak up this second glass.”

Then she leveled a look at her friends and came back to the important issue. “You know what? I just might have to ask him about that. Don’tcha think?”

Ava and Jane exchanged glances. Then they turned identical smiles on her.

And gave her the thumbs-up.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Man. I wouldn’t be a fourteen-year-old girl again for all the world. Cory just broke my heart.

E
MOTIONS BOILING
, Jase headed straight to the squad room, where he started making calls on a few open cases.

Why the hell did you kiss her? The question kept popping up in the back of his mind whenever he was put on hold and later as he studied the surveillance videos from the series of jewelry-store robberies. Of all the stupid, lamebrain impulses! After spending half his frigging life trying to avoid the base urges fueled by de Sanges genes, he’d gone and crowded a civilian he was supposed to be working with and laid a kiss on her?