Bravo Unwrapped (14 page)

Carefully, she inched over until she could ease out of the bed and onto her feet, one hand weighting the blankets, to keep any pesky draft from waking him. She tiptoed over to the chair where she'd thrown her clothes and quickly began putting them on. She was almost dressed, sitting in the chair to pull on her socks, when he spoke sleepily from the bed.

“Wha's up?”

She whispered, “Go back to sleep. I need an Oreo.”

“Oreo?”

“I'll be back….” She wouldn't. But he didn't have to know until morning—hopefully after she'd done the daily hurl.

“Wan' me to come?”

“No. Go back to sleep.”

He made a muffled, sighing sound, turned over and lay still. Good. She finished putting on her socks and shoes, grabbed her coat and bag and got the heck outta there—on tiptoe, very quietly.

In the hall, Chastity kept the lights in the wall sconces turned on low, so B.J. didn't have stumble around in the dark. She stopped in at her own room first, to drop off her coat and bag, then she headed downstairs.

In the lower hall, she turned for the back of the house. The kitchen door was right across from the one to Glory's rooms. B.J. put her hand on the kitchen
doorknob—and heard muffled sobbing coming from the other side.

Poor Glory.

B.J. turned the knob and pushed the door inward. “Hey,” she said softly, “Need a shoulder to…?”

It wasn't Glory.

Buck's mother sat at the table, clutching a waddedup tissue in one hand and the phone in the other. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“O
ops. Sorry.” B.J. started to duck back out the kitchen door.

Chastity waved her soggy tissue and mouthed, “Wait.” She sniffed and spoke into the phone. “Caitlin. All right. I
will
think about it, I promise. Right now, I have to go… Yes. Buck's girlfriend…”

Buck's
girlfriend?
Wait a minute…B.J. automatically opened her mouth to deliver a correction—and shut it before saying a word.

After all, she'd just crawled out of Buck's bed following a night of extremely satisfying lovemaking. And she fully expected to spend tomorrow night in his bed, too. This was more than a hook-up, a lot more. At least for the next several days, B.J. realized, if someone called her Buck's girlfriend, she'd be in no position to argue the point.

“Bye.” Chastity punched the off button, tossed her
used tissue on the table atop a drifting white pile of them, yanked a fresh one from the box at her elbow—and set the phone down. “What's up?” She dabbed at her eyes.

“I, um, got a little hungry and I thought maybe…”

Chastity signaled her forward. “Come on in. Shut the door. No need to wake the whole house.”

B.J. stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind her. “I didn't mean to interrupt anything.”

“You didn't, don't worry.” Chastity honked into her tissue and then wiped her nose. “What can I get you?”

“You wouldn't happen to have some Oreos around here, would you?”

Another tissue hit the pile. “You know, I just might.” Chastity pushed herself to her feet.

B.J. protested, “You don't have to wait on me. Let me—”

“Sit. I'm happy to get you whatever you'd like.” So B.J. took a chair and watched as Chastity bustled about, washing her hands, pulling open a cupboard and producing a fresh, crisp bag of Oreos. She transferred several of the dark-chocolate goodies to a small plate and set them on the table in front of B.J. “Let me guess. A big glass of cold milk.”

“You're a mind-reader.”

“That I am.” Chastity poured the milk and provided a napkin.

B.J. dug in. “Um. Perfect.”

Chastity retied the sash on her celadon-green chenille robe and took her chair again. She watched, wearing a tiny smile and a faraway look in her stillmoist eyes, as B.J. polished off three cookies in quick succession and drank half of her milk. “I like a woman with an appetite.”

“I've got that, all right.” B.J. spoke around a mouthful of cookie. She ate another and another after that. By then, with the edge off her hunger, she found she couldn't resist asking, “Was that Caitlin Bravo on the phone?”

Chastity sat back. “Buck mentioned Caitlin?”

“Yeah—her and her three sons. I think we're leaving for Las Vegas tomorrow, where I'll get to meet her oldest, Aaron.”

“Well. In answer to your question, yes. That was Aaron's mother on the phone just now. Caitlin's my best friend.”

“I see,” said B.J., kind of taking that in.

Chastity sniffed. “You're surprised—that I would be friends with one of Blake's other wives?”

“Well. Yeah. I guess I am…”

“We met a couple of years ago, Caitlin and me—after the truth about Blake came out in the papers, along with the news that he was finally, truly dead. Caitlin raised her boys barely a hundred miles from here, in New Venice, Nevada.”

Mind-boggling. “Blake Bravo must have had one giant pair of
cojones
on him, to keep two separate families that close together.”

Chastity chuckled under her breath. “He certainly did. But he was careful, in his own diabolical way. He and Caitlin were together before he faked his own death. Once he supposedly died, she never saw him again. I met him later. I had no idea at first that he was
the
Blake Bravo—not for years, if you want the truth.” She began gathering up her pile of tissues.

“I just don't get it. What goes through the mind of a man like that?”

“We'll never know and, truthfully, I don't think I
want
to know.”

B.J. sipped her milk. “So. You and Caitlin finally met up…”

“That's right. When our sons found each other, she called me and said she'd like to meet me. I was nervous about that, about us getting together. But she was insistent. I ended up inviting her here. She stayed overnight.” Chastity rose and put the tissues in the trash under the sink. Firmly, she shut the sink cabinet door and straightened. “We talked that whole night, never even went to bed. It felt as though I'd known her my whole life. And you know, maybe that's not so surprising. After all, we do have a lot in common. Blake Bravo took both of us for quite a ride—and gave each of us our beautiful boys.” She leaned back against the counter and patted her hair, though it looked painfully tidy already. “I never for a minute expected that we would get on so well. We
are
very different. Caitlin's quite the seductive one. Men flock to her.”

“So I've heard.”

“She's a fine person.” The twin lines between Chastity's brows deepened even more with her warning frown.

“That wasn't a criticism. Honestly.” B.J. peeled apart an Oreo and licked the sweet, white center.

Chastity pursed up her mouth. “Well, people do judge her. Her men friends come and go—and they tend to be much younger than she is.”

“Are they all over eighteen?”

“Of course. But some are as young as their middle twenties. Caitlin's in her late fifties now.”

“You should meet my father. He's sixty. The current love of his life is twenty-three.”

Chastity made a humphing sound. “It's funny, isn't it? When a man takes a lover young enough to be his
daughter, people may talk, but it's mostly about what a big stud the old guy is. Let a woman try that, though…”

“Exactly. And as far as I'm concerned, what goes on between single consenting adults is just not my business.” B.J. licked off the rest of the white icing, then popped the cookie in her mouth.

“More milk?”

B.J. beamed Buck's mom a grateful smile. “Please.” Chastity provided a refill and then returned to her seat. “Thanks.” B.J. gulped another sip, set down the glass and leaned across the table, pitching her voice to a level suitable for sharing secrets. “And speaking of things that are none of my business…”

Chastity sighed, but it was a good-natured kind of sigh. “Yes?”

“What made you cry just now?”

Buck's mom waved a hand. “Oh, well. I'm a little confused, that's all.”

“About?”

“It's…man trouble, I guess you could say.”

Man trouble. Chastity? More intriguing by the minute. “And you called Caitlin for advice?”

“I know it's late, but Caitlin runs a combination restaurant, bar and gaming parlor over there in New Venice. She's up at all hours—and, as I mentioned, she does know a lot about men.” Chastity tapped her fingertips on the table. “I think I'd like a nice cup of tea. How about you?”

“I'll pass.” B.J. chose another Oreo.

Chastity rose and set the kettle on to boil, then got down a china teapot, a tea ball and a cozy. She took a canister of tea from a cupboard. B.J., enjoying herself immensely, watched the older woman as she bustled
about. It was nice, sitting there in Chastity's warm kitchen in the middle of the night, eating Oreos and getting more dirt on the notorious Blake Bravo and his wives.

Plus, with a little more careful coaxing, B.J. just knew she could get Buck's mom to come clean on that “man trouble” remark of a minute ago.

“The truth is,” Chastity said with a quick, rueful glance over her shoulder at B.J., “I loved Blake Bravo. I loved him more than anyone will ever know. He was all I ever wanted—and I know what you're thinking.”

“Well. The man
was
a kidnapper, a murderer and a bigamist several times over.”

Chastity spooned tea leaves into the tea ball. “I was so young when I met him, barely eighteen, starry-eyed and innocent. We ran off to Vegas together and got married the first weekend we met. Of course, I hadn't a clue then that he already had more than one wife. If someone had dared to try and tell me he was already married—several times over—I would have cursed them for a liar and spit on their shoes. Never would I have believed that my darling Blake could betray me.”

“Wow.”

“Oh, yes. I was
his,
completely—and proud to be so.”

“You met him here, in the Flat?”

“Yes, I did. Right here, at the Sierra Star. This place belonged to my parents then.” Chastity screwed the two pieces of the tea ball together, hung it in the pot and carried the pot, her cup and the cozy back to the table. “To this day, I don't know why he came to town.” She set down the tea stuff and claimed her chair again. “He never told me. And you know what? I really didn't care.

“Oh, he was so handsome.” She folded her hands on the tabletop and sent a glance across at B.J. Her eyes were shining. “Very dangerous, oh yes, with those exciting pale eyes of his. I was in love from the first moment I saw him. It took me years to start suspecting that he might actually be
the
Blake Bravo, the bad seed of the Los Angeles Bravos—a person who had beaten another man to death with his bare hands and was supposed to have died in an apartment fire.”

“How did you find out the truth?”

“I saw a picture of him—of
the
Blake Bravo—in a magazine article about the L.A. branch of the family. I couldn't believe it. The Blake in the picture was
my
Blake.”

“So you confronted him about it?”

“Confronted? Well, I wouldn't use such a strong word. I never confronted Blake about anything. He didn't come to me that often and I was always so thrilled just to see his handsome face, to look in those dangerous eyes…” Chastity shook her head. “Go ahead. Say it.”

“You said it for me a few minutes ago. The man took you for a ride.”

“Oh, yes he did.”

“You did talk with him about it, though, about the picture in the magazine?”

“I did. Even I, blinded by love as I was, couldn't help but be more than a little suspicious. The next time he came to me, I gently asked him about who he really was. I showed him the article. I said how much the Blake Bravo in the photograph looked like him, how he never had told me who his people were, or where he came from.”

“And?”

“He was so…tender. So sweet and understanding. He pointed out how the picture wasn't all that clear. He said no, of course not. He wasn't that terrible man in the article. Didn't the article say that the man in the picture had been dead for years? I couldn't meet those pale eyes of his. I remember I nodded. He said, ‘Look at me, Chas'—that was what he always called me, Chas—he said, ‘Chas, I'm not dead. I'm very, very much alive.' He kissed me and…oh, whenever he kissed me, I was a goner. As long as he kissed me, he could say anything and I would believe it.”

“Incredible.”

“Isn't it, though? I've heard from Marsh, Blake's son in Oklahoma, that Blake could be violent. He never was violent with me. Far from it. With me, he was always a gentleman, though he had that lovely air of risk and danger. Maybe that's why it took me so long to doubt him. Every time he came back to me, it was like falling in love all over again, so tender, so romantic, so absolutely beautiful.”

B.J. didn't really get it. She'd never have fallen for a psycho like Blake. But Chastity had been sheltered and innocent, a perfect target for an unscrupulous lover. “So. Though the evidence to the contrary was right there in front of you, he still managed to convince you he wasn't
that
Blake…”

“Yes. That's what he did.”

“And then?”

“He left. And I never saw him again.”

She remembered what Buck had told her. “He left you pregnant with Bowie….”

“He did.”

“What a bastard.”

“Yes. He was. And yet…” Chastity's voice trailed off on a sigh.

B.J. got the picture. It wasn't pretty. “EEEuu. You
still
love him.”

Chastity shrugged. “I suppose I do, though I know it's not who he really was that I love. God help me, I could never love a man like that. But…my
idea
of him, the way he was with me. That haunts me still.”

They sat quietly for a moment. B.J. pondered the things Chastity had told her. The kettle whistled. Chastity rose to pour the boiling water into her flowered china pot.

When she sat again, B.J. decided she'd waited long enough to get back to the subject of Chastity's current love life. “So…you mentioned a romantic problem.”

Chastity slid the quilted cozy over the steeping pot. “Mr. Pano—er, Alyosha…he asked me to dinner at the Nugget Saturday night. And then to the Harvest Ball afterward.”

Of course. The handyman. B.J. should have guessed. “You're crying because a nice man asked you out?”

“That never happens to me.”

“Nice men don't ask you out?”

“Men don't ask me out, period.”

“Seriously? None? Ever?”

“Blake was the only guy for me, the only man I've ever known in an…intimate way—and is that so strange? Even in New York City, there have to be
some
women who find their man early and stay true to him their whole lives through.”

“Well, I'm sure that there are.” Though B.J., personally, had never met one.

But then, how would she have? Though her father
had supposedly been true to her mother—or so he claimed—he'd been with countless women since, sometimes several at once. B.J. had spent her childhood getting to know L.T.'s girlfriends. As soon as she got used to one, the next one came along.