CardsNeverLie (19 page)

“So you just want to fuck me.”

“Why not?” she grinned. “Isn’t that what you want too?”

“Not without knowing we care about each other.”

Melanie stopped walking and put her hand on his arm. “I do
care, Rob.”

“Fine.” He said. “We’ll go on another date.”

“But—”

He put his finger on her lips. “When you’re sure and I’m
sure you’re sure, we’ll go to bed. I’m through with crazy gestures like that
night in Vegas. It’s not me.”

“It’s not really me either,” Melanie admitted. “But I
thought it might be fun to be wild for a while.”

“Too bad. You met me.”

Melanie laughed, hiding her disappointment and maybe just a
little sense of relief. “So when do I get my next chance? Monday?”

Rob sighed. “My monthly dinner with Jack O’Brien. He’s an
old friend and also a vice president at LeatherWorks.”

“Tuesday?”

Rob’s face brightened. “That will work. Our second date. How
about the third?”

“Do we have to plan it now?”

“It’s taking my mind off the smell coming off my legs.”

Melanie laughed. “The third date, huh. You sure are
confident.”

“How often do I meet a nice girl? At least one that’s
usually a nice girl.” Rob corrected himself as Melanie punched him in the
shoulder.

“I’m as nice as they come. Married at eighteen, divorced at
twenty-eight, sadly faithful until the last. So third date.” She thought for a
second. “How about Lake Crescent Lodge? We can hike in the Olympic National
Park. It’s supposed to stay muggy and hot all week. It will be nice to wander
in a cool forest.”

“That sounds like a weekend together,” he said doubtfully.

“Third date,” she reminded him, “There was a wild and crazy
time when you tried to get a weekend away to be our first date, you know.” But
by the next weekend, they would have known each other nearly a month, a
reasonable amount of time, even by his conservative standards, to wait before
making love the first time.

“Fab-ul-ous.” The way Rob drawled out to the word made
Melanie’s toes curl.

“It’s what, a three-hour drive from here? Can you leave
Friday night?”

“You bet,” Rob promised. “Our first weekend together. I
can’t wait.”

“Me either,” Melanie said. “I’ll print off some information
and a map on the internet and bring it to Date Number Two on Tuesday.”

“Great!” They reached their cars. Rob faced Melanie and
rubbed his hands down her arms in little circles. She shivered even though he
was careful to avoid touching her below the hips.

“I want more of this,” she moaned as he leaned forward and
kissed her. Melanie couldn’t resist wrapping her arms around his waist as she
smelled that wonderful cranberry, cinnamon musk.

“Ewww,” she moaned against his lips as she came too close
and felt his clammy leg against hers. “You haven’t warmed up at all!”

“Sorry.” He stepped back and glanced at his BMW.

At his disgruntled expression she asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Oh just my upholstery. I really don’t want to transfer
whatever’s on my legs to my leather seats.”

“Hold on.” Melanie pulled out her keys and unlocked her
trunk. She rummaged through a bag of clothes meant for Goodwill and pulled out
a Budweiser towel.

She handed it to Rob. “Here you go. It was a giveaway.”

“Thanks!” Rob grinned and kissed her on the cheek. “Does it
come with a beer?”

“Not anymore. I drank it.”

Rob raised an eyebrow. “Saucy, I see. I’ll get with you
Tuesday for some behavior modification.”

Melanie stuck out her tongue at him and turned back to her
car. This caution stuff was the pits. She’d much rather be driving back to
Rob’s house and washing that gunk off his sexy legs herself. She bit her lip,
hesitating, then turned back to Rob’s car. Unfortunately, he was already inside
and turning his keys in the ignition. Oh well, it was for the best. She didn’t
want to move so fast that she scared her soul mate off. Rob seemed happy the
way things were. But next weekend would be different. All the stops were coming
out.

* * * * *

“You what?” Brisa cried into the line. Melanie moved her ear
away from the phone and winced. The Worst Monday Ever had her fighting a
Headache From Hell.

“You heard me. I got fired. Sacrificed, just like my tarot
reading said.”

“Oh my God,” Brisa said slowly. “I can’t believe this.
You’re home, right?”

“Yeah.” Where else would a jobless person be?

“Don’t go anywhere,” Brisa commanded. “I’m on my way. Ethan
is at a friend’s until five o’clock.”

“Bring ice cream,” Melanie advised. She knew eating was a
bad idea in a crisis, but she didn’t have any better ideas now that she had called
her cousin.

“I’ve got strawberry Haagen-Daz in the freezer.”

“Get chocolate,” Melanie ordered. If she was going to
imperil her thighs, it might as well be with the strongest medicine available.

“Sure, cuz. Anything you want. I’ll be there in under thirty
minutes.”

“Thanks.” Melanie hung up the phone, suddenly feeling the
urge to fight back tears for the first time since coming back from lunch and
finding Al in her office. At one o’clock today, her life as she knew it had
ended.

How could this be happening? How was she going to pay her
mortgage? Why hadn’t she taken more from the divorce? Because she wanted to be
independent, she reminded herself. Of course, she’d thought her six-year career
at Professional Massage was stable at the time. How had it all fallen apart in
only three weeks? She kicked the refrigerator.

Bad idea. Melanie winced as pain spread from her big toe to
her shin. She opened the freezer door and grabbed an ice tray then limped over
to her plastic bag drawer and dumped the ice into an old Safeway bag.

In the living room, she collapsed onto the couch and dropped
the bag of ice onto her toe. Melanie banged her head against the back of the
couch when she realized she could have grabbed a bottle of white zinfandel when
she was in the refrigerator. Well, she wasn’t moving now. She channel-flipped
until she found a music video channel playing the top one hundred love songs of
all times and settled in for a good, solid depression. If only she and Rob had
progressed to the point where she could turn to him for support. Of course,
Gerald had never offered any. She needed to rely on herself. And chocolate.

Twenty minutes later, Brisa walked in with her bag of
assorted ice cream and found Melanie in tears on the couch.

“What’s that doing there?” she asked, pointing to the bag of
ice on Melanie’s toe.

Melanie sniffed. “I stubbed it.”

Brisa sat down next to her. “I don’t believe you. You kicked
something, didn’t you?”

“What’s it to you?” Melanie kept her eyes on Tupac Shakur
rapping something unintelligible on the screen. Tupac was young, pretty and
dead. It was very depressing.

Brisa opened her bag and tossed Melanie a pint of Ben &
Jerry’s chocolate fudge brownie ice cream and a plastic spoon. “Eat this,” she
advised. “It’s medicine.”

Melanie pulled off the top and the annoying plastic wrapper
inside and started spooning the ice cream into her mouth on automatic. About a
fourth of the way into the container, she felt slightly anesthetized. The song
playing now was aBeatles love song, which she liked. But John and
George were dead. It was very depressing. And speaking of pretty men…

“You know what really sucks?” she said.

“What?” Brisa asked, around a mouthful of Chunky Monkey.

“I was taking Rob to a lodge for the weekend. Now I’m going
to have to cancel. I can’t possibly afford it now.”

“Why do you have to pay?”

Melanie found a napkin on the table and blew into it
noisily. “I invited him.”

Brisa took another bite of ice cream and hit the mute button
on the TV remote. “I’m sure he’d rather pay than lose out on a nookie weekend.”

“I don’t think I’m in the mood.”

“You’ve got to work on your priorities,” Brisa advised. “Do
you want to tell me how it happened?”

“I think I need more ice cream first.”

Brisa shrugged and turned up the sound on the TV again.

“I really hate Lionel Ritchie,” Melanie said a while later.
Her ice cream container was now three-quarters empty.

Brisa smiled and turned off the TV. “What happened?”

Melanie rubbed at her eye. “I’m not really sure. They said I
was incompetent, which I’m not. Then they said I did material damage to
Professional Massage by telling LeatherWorks that Professional Massage couldn’t
afford to buy them.”

“Did you do that?”

“Sort of.” She considered. “Not really. I told Rob that we
didn’t have the cash right now, but in a few months we should.”

Brisa tapped her spoon on her three-quarters-full container
of ice cream. “I think the real issue is how your management found out what you
said.”

They looked at each other and said together, “Rob.”

“I can’t believe he’d get you in trouble,” Brisa said
quickly. “He’s a stand-up guy. At least I thought so.”

Brisa grabbed the portable phone and started dialing. “We’re
going to straighten this out.”

“You wouldn’t,” Melanie moaned around a mouthful of ice
cream. She coughed as it hit her throat the wrong way. “Don’t call him right
now!”

Brisa’s expression was stony as she sat with the phone
against her ear. “Rob, this is Brisa Vanderpool. Do you know you just lost
Melanie her job? How could you have told Professional Massage what she said
about her company’s financial position? You’d better make this right.” She
slammed the phone down.

Melanie dropped the ice cream container and twisted her
hands together. She sort of wanted to talk to Rob, but not in a
you-screwed-me-over-asshole way but in a hold-me-lover-I’m-scared kind of way.
“He wasn’t there?”

“No. I got his answering machine.” Brisa put the cap back on
her ice cream then took it off again.

Melanie considered the events of this Most Horrible Day. “I
don’t think he can make anything right.”

“Can you prove you’re not incompetent?”

Melanie made a face. “Well, yeah. We were in the final
stages of developing two new products. One that I came up with entirely on my
own and one that Al suggested but I still designed entirely.”

“On schedule, under budget and all?”

“As close as you can get with a moving target.”

“Have you got any proof here?”

Melanie nodded. “I’ve been working at home some, since I had
so much to do.” She reflected for a second. “You know, I think firing me was a
personal victory for Al. He looked positively happy to say the words. ‘Your
services are no longer needed here.’ Bastard.”

“Didn’t he accuse you of stealing ideas a couple of weeks
ago?”

Melanie nodded. “I still don’t know what that was about.”

“Maybe you were set up,” Brisa suggested.

A dim light bulb flashed in Melanie’s head. “He was
threatening me before I ever left for that trip.”

Brisa grimaced. “Maybe it’s for the best. It sounds like
Professional Massage is a sinking ship.”

Melanie leaned her head against the sofa. “There’s something
going on.”

“It’s not your problem anymore,” Brisa reminded her. “That’s
the first thing you have to learn when you leave a company. You don’t have to
care anymore.”

“You know what? You’re right. It isn’t my problem.” Melanie
tried that thought on for size as she said the words. But Professional Massage
had been her life, practically.

“Do you have savings?” Brisa asked.

Melanie tried to shift her brain into practical mode and
thought about her bank balance. “Not even a full mortgage payment.” She saw her
cousin’s expression. “Not good, huh. But I got the house in the divorce and
Gerald got the bank account. I was going to be okay on my new salary, but I
only got the raise a couple of months ago. I just paid my parents back for the
help they gave me right after the divorce. You know how it is.”

“And Uncle Mel retired in June, so you can’t ask them for
help again.” Brisa sighed. “You remember when we were kids? We always said we’d
live together when we grew up.”

“Who thought it would be in a homeless shelter?” Melanie
tried to quip.

“We’re not there yet.” Brisa stood up. “I think we need a
drink. I arranged for Ethan to spend the night with a friend so I can stay
late.”

Melanie latched onto this idea. “I’ve got a bottle of wine
chilling in the refrigerator!”

* * * * *

Fifteen hours after the bottle of wine had been opened,
Melanie heard a ringing next to her ear. After a bleary moment spent recalling
her name and reciting her Social Security number just to make sure she
remembered who she was, she picked up the phone and croaked, “Hello?”

“Melanie? Is that you?”

“Rob?”

“Yes.” There was a pause on the line. “You sound horrible.”

Melanie considered this. “I think I feel horrible too.”

“You aren’t sure?” Even through the fog in her brain, she heard
the laughter in his voice.

“Not yet.” She rested her head back on her pillow.

“Need me to come hold your head?”

She rewound through the events of the night before. “I
didn’t get that drunk.”

“Was Brisa’s message accurate?”

Melanie thought back. “Yep.”

“I’m so sorry.”

She sighed. She had no energy, therefore no anger. “Who did
you repeat my Professional Massage diatribe to?”

“Just my grandfather.”

“I owe him a knuckle sandwich then.” She had no strength for
deeper anger. Yet. Her security was gone and despite all the smart things Brisa
had said the night before, that was all that mattered. She needed a job now,
couldn’t function without one.

“I’ll talk to him, Melanie, but I can’t imagine he’d have
shared his source.” Rob paused. “I’ve watched him my whole life, you know. He’d
get more mileage out of being mysterious anyway.”