Have to Have It (3 page)

“So … Mom! Good to hear from you,” Kiley cried, trying to sound as cheerful and carefree as possible. It came off false and she knew it. “What's up?”

“What's up?” Jeanne McCann cried. “What's
up?
Your boss got arrested for drugs and they took her kids away. It was all over
The Today Show
this morning!”

“Really?”
Kiley played dumb.

“Stop that right now, Kiley. I was not born yesterday. When were you planning to tell us?” her mother demanded.

“I just wrote you a letter about it.” Kiley tried to keep her voice calm, and unconsciously crossed her fingers before adding a lie. “You don't have to worry, Mom. It's a big publicity stunt.”

“Kiley” Kiley winced. She could hear the disappointment in her mother's voice. “They made her house a crime scene.”

Think, Kiley, think.

Kiley tried, but someone turned up the radio station on the sound system. She had to raise her voice over the music.

“Uh … I bet it was really exaggerated on TV, Mom.”

“Where are you right now, Kiley?” her mother demanded. “And what is that
crazy music?”

“I'm … in a coffee shop. Having … coffee.” She nibbled nervously on her lower lip. Across the table, Jorge offered a sympathetic look. “I stayed with one of my friends last night.”

“Which friend?”

“Another nanny. But don't worry,” Kiley assured her mother. “I'll be back at Platinum's in a couple of days.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course, Mom. Really, there is totally nothing to worry about.”

Her mother sighed. “It looked really bad on TV, Kiley. Three of my friends have called me because they saw it too. Everyone knows you were working for that crazy woman.”

“I'm
still
working for her,” Kiley insisted. “This whole thing will blow over.”

“What will you do if it doesn't? Where will you live? Who is going to look out for you? Kiley? Are you there?
Are you there?”
Her mother's voice rose with each question.

“Breathe, Mom,” Kiley counseled. “In, out, in, out. I promise you, I'm fine.”

Kiley could hear her mother panting for air through the phone. She was hit by a pang of guilt. Her father was too distracted by the local tavern to pay much attention to what was going on with her mom and her panic attacks. He wasn't the most nurturing of people, even in the best of circumstances, claiming it was his wife's own fault for refusing to take any kind
of medication for her “nervous condition.” Kiley's mom had been raised a Christian Scientist, and didn't believe in pharmaceutical intervention. Sometimes kava root and passionflower herbs helped her, and sometimes they didn't. Kiley knew she was the only one who could consistently talk her mom down when her panic spiraled out of control. Kiley also knew that this particular downward spiral was all her fault.

“I'm really sorry, Mom,” Kiley said softly. “I should have called you.”

“Yes, you should have,” her mother said. “I let you stay in California by yourself because I trusted you. To see this on TV before I heard it from you—it's terrible, Kiley.”

Kiley flushed, ashamed. “I knew you'd worry—”

“When I get my break at the diner I'm walking down to La Crosse Travel and buying you a plane ticket home.”

Now it was Kiley's turn to panic. “No! Mom, you can't!”

“Home
, Kiley,” her mother insisted. “I'll call and tell you which flight.”

“But—”

“But nothing. It's time you faced reality, Kiley. It's over.”

Esme went to her chest of drawers—eighty years old, it had been purchased by Cary Grant when he'd owned the estate—and threw on a black long-sleeved tee from an outlet mall (it had a couple of holes, but whatever) and a faded pair of Blue Asphalt jeans from ninth grade, along with a battered pair of black Old Navy flip-flops. No makeup, no lip gloss, no nothing.

I'm the nanny
, she reasoned.
My job is to look after the kids, not to look good. All the Wet 'n Wild lip gloss in the world isn't going to change whether or not they fire me.

Esme sent up a little prayer: Por favor,
don't let that happen.

She'd been so ambivalent about taking the job. But now, after two weeks, she felt panicky at the idea of losing it. She'd been offered the gig when Diane had come back from a charity trip to Colombia with an unanticipated gift for her husband— identical twin girls she'd adopted in Cali. Their real names were
Isabella and Juana, but Diane had renamed them Easton and Weston, and they were identical except for a heart-shaped beauty mark on Weston's cheek. Diane didn't speak Spanish, nor did the girls speak English. Since Esme's mom and dad worked off the books as the Goldhagens' housekeeper and groundskeeper, Diane had turned to Esme's mother for help. Mrs. Castaneda had suggested Esme. That had been good enough for Diane to offer Esme a trial employment period as her nanny.

“Esme? You in here?”

Esme's heart raced when she heard Jonathan call her from the front door. A young actor who'd gotten excellent reviews in a well-received if not well-attended independent feature called
Tiger Eyes
, he'd taken an immediate liking to Esme. More than a liking. Though she'd fought it, she'd taken more than a liking to him too. He was amazing-looking: short brown hair, startling blue eyes, and the rangy build of a born athlete. Easily six foot one, he had charm, manners, and a graceful ease about him, as well as a sensitivity that Esme had never encountered in the macho guys of Echo Park. If she drew a circle that was Jonathan, and then drew another circle that was Junior, her ex-gang-leader boyfriend from the Echo, those circles wouldn't intersect at all. They were
that
different from each other.

No, that wasn't entirely true, Esme realized. They were both good people. In fact, maybe Junior was even a
better
person. At least he had been tested in his life. Jonathan had always had it easy.

“I'll be out in a minute!” she called back to him.

She peeked out of her bedroom door and caught his eye.
He'd evidently come straight from the tennis court, since he wore a tennis shirt, warm-up pants, and carried three Head racquets under his right arm.

Two minutes later, Esme stepped outside, having rebrushed her hair into glossy perfection and traded in her ratty T-shirt for a blue one she'd found at a really trendy thrift store in Hollywood. It fitted her just so, and she left the first three buttons unbuttoned to hint at her curves. She had her pride, after all. She found him sitting on the stone bench by the far end of Esme's parking area—an area that doubled as the estate's basketball court.

“I have to go meet your parents,” she told him as she took a seat. “Diane called.”

“Ah yes, the royal summons,” he mocked, then brushed a lock of hair from her cheek. “And she's not my parent.”

Esme checked her Timex. She had ten minutes. “Well, whatever she is, she hired me and I'd prefer not to be late when she fires me.”

“I've got some information that I think you'll appreciate,” he reported.

“I'll take anything.” She rubbed her burning eyes, musing on the night before. First, Diane had caught her and Jonathan in her guesthouse. Esme had been sure that she'd be fired on the spot. But Jonathan had stuck up for her and Diane had retreated, warning that she would consult with Steven and discuss the entire matter with Esme the next day.

Then Esme had gotten a call from her friend Lydia Chandler—another nanny whom she'd met at the Brentwood Hills Country Club—with the news about Kiley and Platinum. The two of them had rushed to help Kiley; Esme had had the
sudden brainstorm to enlist her good friend Jorge in the effort to keep Kiley from going straight back to Wisconsin. That effort had been successful, and Jorge had immediately invited Kiley to sleep in his brother's empty bedroom at his family's Echo Park bungalow. Esme hadn't gotten back to the guesthouse until five and hadn't gotten to sleep until six. That sleep had been fitful. Though Diane hadn't fired her the night before, there was a good chance that the guillotine would drop that morning.

God, what would her parents say if that happened? Even worse, would spiteful Diane fire them, too, for what their daughter had done?

“Your job is safe. I talked to my dad at breakfast.”

Esme grabbed his hand. “Really?”

He nodded. “Before Diane came down.”

Esme felt her body sag with relief. “I was so worried. …”

“I know.” He put a comforting arm around her. “I should warn you, though. You're about to get clocked with some pretty strict rules.”

“Such as?”

He moved his arm and ran his hand impatiently through his hair. “Like middle school shit. Here on the sacred family grounds, you and I are strictly friends. No public displays of affection. Definitely no visits to your guesthouse.”

Esme swept her damp hair off her face. It wasn't as if this was a shock. After all, those were a stricter variation on the rules she'd shattered in the first place.

“To quote my father,” Jonathan continued, “‘What you do in the outside world is your own business, Jonathan. But I'd feel more comfortable if the two of you weren't alone on the property. And I
know
you want to make me comfortable.’”

“Right,” Esme agreed. What else could she do? A ruby-throated hummingbird flitted down from the tulip tree behind them and hovered motionless in the air not five feet from them, outlined perfectly against the crystalline blue sky. Esme realized how quiet it was—so quiet that she could hear the flitting of the bird's wings.

“It's never this quiet in the Echo,” she said softly, once the bird had flown off in search of more nectar. Esme had read about hummingbirds. They had to eat and eat and eat, because of how much energy they consumed in flight. Sometimes she felt as if she had to run and run, just to stay ahead of her past, maybe even ahead of her destiny.

It was so easy for someone like Jonathan. It would never, ever be easy for her.

“So, what do you think?” he pressed. “Can you live with that?”

“Sure,” she replied, forcing a coolness that she didn't feel.

Evidently he could live with it, or he wouldn't be presenting it to her now. So what if there was this electricity between them? If he could keep his hands off her, she could damn well keep her hands off him. He was just a
guy.

I am such a fraud
, she thought. Even at that very moment, it was everything she could do to keep her hands off him, her lips away from his. Could she trust herself to live by her boss's rules, or would it just be too much torture? What about Junior? Where did he fit into the scheme of things?

“Sure?”
Jonathan echoed, sounding hurt. “I don't understand you, Esme Castaneda. Last night, you told me you didn't want to skulk around in secret. I got right in my stepmother's face about you. I'm ready to go public, I told you that. We don't have to hide in the guesthouse. Wherever you want to go—
Viper Room, Geisha House, the Derby, goddamn Spago, even though no one in there is under fifty—if that's what you want, just tell
me. Just say where.
”

God, she was so confused. What if she said: “Let's hop in a Chaparral and go to House of Blues.” How would it work? During the day she'd be the hired help, and at night she'd be his girlfriend? She rubbed the tight spot between her eyes. She had no time to figure this out; she had to go meet Diane.

Why can't I be like Lydia? Lydia would say go for it, sleep with Jonathan and sleep with Junior, and keep your mouth shut about both of them. But I'm not like Lydia, and I never will be.

She checked her watch again: 10:43. If she was going to make it to the big house on time, she'd have to hurry.

She rose. “Right now, I've got to go talk to your dad and Diane.”

He got up too. “Yeah, whatever.”

Jonathan was obviously bummed, but he had to give her time. She wanted to do the right thing. But for the life of her, Esme couldn't figure out what that right thing was.

For all the time that Esme had been working for the Gold-hagens, she'd never once set foot in Steven's home office. To get to it, she had to enter the main house through the rear entrance; go through the ultramodern kitchen sporting a new five-hundred-dollar Gaggia Classic espresso machine; cross a game room with original arcade versions of Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, several Xbox 360s, and a professional British snooker table; and then continue through the meeting room, which featured a long teak table with a dozen high-backed black leather chairs, four white boards along the far wall for note-taking, six
Sony VAIO Notebooks, a video-conferencing PC, DVD players, and a huge Sony plasma monitor that hung on the north wall. Evidently, Steven didn't have to leave his estate in order to conduct his business, though Esme knew he had a suite of offices that triangulated perfectly between the Endeavor, William Morris, and CAA talent agency headquarters.

When she reached Steven's office, she knocked on the black glass double doors. An efficient beep was her signal to push the doors open; Steven and Diane were at the far end, huddled behind Steven's desk, eyes on a flat-screen computer monitor. Steven waved Esme to one of the black barstools that were set not far from his gunmetal desk.

With nothing else to do, Esme peered around the room. Everything—the triple-coated, hand-painted walls, the ostrich-skin sofa, the in-wall speakers, the ubermodern lighting fixtures— was a variation on a theme in black and white. The only things that weren't black and white were posters of Steven's various television shows over the years (all of them were in black onyx frames, though) and a black trophy case containing three shelves of gilded Golden Globe and Emmy awards.

The whole effect was intimidating, and Esme couldn't get comfortable on the barstool. She thought maybe that was the whole point—that if Steven's visitor was uncomfortable, it would give Steven the power position on anything that was being discussed.

Finally Steven looked up. “Thanks for coming, Esme.”

“Sure,” Esme ventured. He was her boss—it wasn't as if she had a choice.

“Diane and I wanted to thank you for all your work with the children during FAB,” he went on, putting his hands on his desk
and leaning toward her. Diane mirrored the gesture with her French-manicured hands, which gave Esme the distinctly uncomfortable sensation of being the subject of an interrogation.

“It was fun.”

“We've been talking this morning, and we've—I've—talked with Jonathan as well. Has he spoken with you?”

Esme decided this was no time for fibs. “Yes. Just a little while ago. He came down to the guesthouse.”

“For the last time,” Diane stated flatly. “Did he make that clear?”

“Yes, he did.”

Steven looked at her closely. “You need to give this some thought, Esme. We're very happy with your work. But I won't have your relationship with my son interfering with your duties to Easton and Weston.”

Esme's chin jutted upward slightly. “I would not let that happen, sir.”

“So we're all in agreement here?” Steven asked, folding his arms. He turned to his wife. “Diane?”

Diane nodded. “Just please understand that we are one hundred percent serious, Esme. If you break the rules again, we will have to let you go.”

Esme felt like smacking the smug look off Diane's face. But she forced herself to keep her voice even, and pleasant. “I understand.”

“Excellent.” Diane smiled. “The girls love you, and we would hate to lose you. And now …” Diane tented her fingers, eyes shining. “We have a surprise for you.”

Surprise? What surprise? Esme had had enough surprises in recent days to fill anyone's quota.

Diane came around the table, a sheaf of papers in her hand. She pushed them at Esme, who saw from the corny airplane-festooned logo that they were from some travel Web site. “We've decided that we're worn out by FAB,” Diane reported. “We could use a vacation. We're going to take the kids to Jamaica.”

“That's great!” Esme blurted. A few days of freedom from her job were exactly what she needed. “I'm sure you'll have a great time. I hear it's beautiful.”

Steven smiled. “It is. And you're going to get to see for yourself. Our flight leaves at eight tomorrow morning. Make sure the girls are packed, okay?”