Shoe Addicts Anonymous (24 page)

“What’s wrong?” Sandra asked, not questioning who was on the line.

It was nice that they’d become good enough friends that they didn’t have to announce who they were on the phone.

“I left Bart at a play date,” Joss whispered, getting as far from the door and bordering walls as she could get. “And I came home and there is some sort of raunchy sex going on in the Olivers’ bedroom.”

“Ick,” was Sandra’s first reaction. Then, “But I guess they’re entitled since it
is
their house and they thought you’d be taking the child out.”

“It’s not him,” Joss whispered urgently. “I heard a man who is
not
Mr. Oliver. I think she’s having an affair. And, as much as I’d like to humiliate her by catching her, I’d much much
much
rather get out of here and pretend I have no idea what’s going on.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Sandra said. “The way she’s been treating you…you do know this could be to your benefit.”

“I know, but—” Joss shuddered. “—no way. So what do I do?”

“In that case,” Sandra’s voice was strong and definitive, “you keep the phone on your ear and if someone comes in, start chatting like you’ve been listening to me, and not them, all along. I’ll wait on the line so the phone doesn’t ring in your ear unexpectedly.”

“Okay.” Joss took a steadying breath. “Okay. I’m opening the door….” She opened the door to her room. “And I’m stepping quietly into the hallway.”

“Oooh!”
came from the Olivers’ bedroom, just before the door burst open and a thin arrow of a man, with white-blond hair and a white-white goatee, flew into the hall, buck naked and sporting an almost comically large hard-on. “Come and get me, big boy,” he said, clearly unaware of Joss’s presence, “if you dare.”

“If I dare!” The voice, shockingly, was not that of Deena Oliver.

It was Kurt Oliver.

Joss knew it because he leapt into the hall after the blond, equally naked, equally hard, but not nearly so big.

All Joss could think, as she backed frantically back into her room, was that she’d seen too much.

Way too much.

“Joss?” Sandra was calling over the phone. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Joss rasped, trying to catch her breath, although at this point it was surprise, in addition to panic, that had gotten a hold of her. “But it’s
Mr.
Oliver.”

“Oh, Mr. Oliver is with Mrs. Oliver?” Sandra questioned.

“No,” Joss whispered. This was too weird. Things like this never happened in Felling. Or, if they did, people kept it well hidden. “It’s Mr. Oliver and some other guy.”

“Oh!” That got Sandra’s attention. “Then, for God’s sake, get some pictures with your phone.”

“
Pictures!
God, you want to
see
this?”

“No, they’re for
you
. Keep them, just in case you need them later, as evidence, or blackmail, or something.”

“But—”

“—but, nothing. This might be your best defense against Deena Oliver if she accuses you of anything else. Seriously, Joss, I know you don’t want to, but get out there and take some picures. You don’t
have
to use them, but if you need to, at least you’ll have them.”

“I
can’t
. I don’t even want to
look!
”

“You don’t have to look, just hold up the phone. Trust me,” Sandra urged, “you’ve
got
to do this. For your own protection.”

“Okay, okay, but then how the heck am I going to get out of here without them noticing me?”

Sandra laughed. “Honey, from what you tell me, they’re not that interested in what’s going on around them.”

It was true. After Joss hung up the phone, she peered around the corner from the door, and the two men obviously had no interest in anything but each other. So she drew back quickly, closed her eyes against the image that was now burned into her gray matter, and held her camera phone out to take two pictures.

The noises didn’t stop, so she gathered she had managed to go undetected. However, given the fact that they were in the hallway, she doubted she could manage to leave without being noticed.

She had to wait until they were finished. Or until they moved. Fortunately, the hall led to two different stairways in two different parts of the house. Unfortunately, the men were currently in between both.

So she leaned back against the wall, hiding, waiting, and—so ironic—hoping
she
wouldn’t get caught.

It felt like hours, but in reality it was more like ten minutes before they went downstairs to the kitchen.

Joss crept stealthily down the stars like a child on Christmas Eve trying to catch a glimpse of Santa Claus, only in her case, she was trying to
avoid
the odd bearded man in the house.

She opened the front door and looked into the surprised eyes of Deena Oliver.

They must have mirrored the surprise in her own eyes. Or at least some of it. Given what Deena was about to walk in on, though, she had more shock coming.

“What are
you
doing here?” Deena demanded. “You were supposed to take Bart to a play date.”

Joss wondered frantically if she should talk loud, to warn the men someone was coming, or if she was better off pretending she knew nothing.

She decided this was
not
something she wanted to get in the middle of.

“I took Bart over, but Gus’s nanny had things under control, so I came back here to take—” She couldn’t admit she’d come to take a nap; Deena would have her head. “—
get
something.”

Deena raked a hostile gaze over her. “You left my child in the care of some stranger?”

Well, why not? That’s what Deena herself did, ten minutes after meeting Joss. “She’s the nanny, she’s absolutely capable of taking care of Gus and Bart.”

Deena put a hand on her hip. “What was it that was so important you had to come back here for it, hmm?”

Joss thought fast. “My phone. I thought I should have it in case of an emergency.”

“Well, this is absolutely inexcusable.” Deena shook her head, looking as disgusted as if Joss had just puked on her shoes.

“I’ll go back right away,” Joss said, starting toward the car.

“Wait a minute,” Deena barked.

Joss turned back. “What is it?”

Deena narrowed her eyes to lizardlike slits. “You’re acting awfully jittery.”

Ironically, it was the first time Deena had ever been perceptive about Joss’s feelings.

“I’m not jittery,” Joss lied. “It’s just that you’re obviously not comfortable with Bart being over at Gus’s without me, so I’m just—”

“Wait right here,” Deena snapped. “I’m going to call Maryanne and make sure Bart is being looked after until you get there.” She rolled her eyes. “I cannot
believe
I have to bother with this, with everything else I have to do.”

“Look, I’ll just go back there, it’s only a fifteen-minute drive—”

“You’ll
wait here
because
that’s what I told you to do,
” Deena snapped viciously before turning and going in.

Good lord, Joss did
not
want to be part of this. She did
not
want to stand here and wait for the fireworks to go off. How long was she supposed to wait? Because this was obviously going to take some time—

Deena was back within minutes, looking pale and shaken.

For a moment, Joss felt sorry for her, but only for a moment.

That’s all it took before she started in on Joss. “Your boyfriend is in there,” she said. “Now I know why you came back, for a little midday tryst.”

Joss was stunned. “Mrs. Oliver, you know that’s not true, don’t you?”

“I know what I saw,” she said, her voice wavering.

Joss knew what she saw, too.

“One more infraction like this,” Deena went on, seeming to come back to life with every angry word, “and you will be fired so fast, your head will spin. And I’ll take you to court, don’t think I won’t.”

It occurred to Joss that Sandra had probably been right about taking those pictures to protect herself. But she couldn’t imagine taking them out in court. Eventually word would get out, and the boys would be the ones to pay the highest price.

She couldn’t do that to them.

M
s. Rafferty.” Holden Bennington looked surprised to see Lorna.

“I didn’t think you were having any account problems.”

“I’m not here about account problems,” she said, then added in a stage whisper, “And you might want to be a little more discreet when addressing your customers in the lobby.”

Holden looked around. “There’s no one here but employees,” he pointed out.

She could have argued with him about whether all of them knew about her account issues, but she decided against it. “I’m here to talk to you about a loan.”

He laughed out loud. Sincerely. Then, noticing she wasn’t laughing, looked at her, sobered, and said, “You can’t be serious.”

She held her head high. “I’m completely serious.” Then, before he could dismiss her out of hand, she added, “I was hoping to get your advice. Please.”

He considered her for a moment, then took a breath and said, “Sure. Okay. But I’m going to need some coffee for this, I think. Want some?”

“Sure. Black is great, thanks.”

He nodded. “Go ahead to my office. I’ll meet you there in a minute.”

She went into his office and sat down on the uncomfortable chair. There was a picture of a kid in a baseball uniform framed on the desk, and Lorna wondered if it could possibly be his own. That would put a whole new, unexpected twist on her perception of him, though it would explain why he was so damn didactic.

“Sorry it took so long.” Holden entered and set a Styrofoam cup of coffee on the desk in front of Lorna, sloshing the obviously creamed coffee up over the edge and onto the desk. He cursed and started to reach for a tissue from the box on his desk, but Lorna stopped him.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got it.”

“The machine was off, so I had to start a new pot.”

She nodded, and took a sip of the thick liquid.

“You asked for black, didn’t you?” Holden thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Man, I’m sorry. Let me go get you another one.”

“No, no, this is good. This is fine.” She took another sip. “Though I’ve got to say I think we’ve found something
I
know more about than
you
do.”

He shrugged. “I’m lost in the kitchen.”

“Maybe you can teach me how to get a start-up loan for a business, and I can teach you to make a decent cup of coffee.”

“Deal.” He took a sip of his own coffee and made a face.

“Is that your son?” Lorna asked, pointing to the picture. Suddenly she hoped it wasn’t.

She was in luck. He shook his head. “It’s my nephew. I don’t have kids. Or a wife.”

Why did that make her glad?

“Me neither,” she said unnecessarily.

He laughed. “Finally, we have something in common.” As soon as he said it, though, he looked like he regretted getting personal, even in that small capacity. “Now, what is this business you wanted to talk about? Something you’re actually planning or is this theoretical?”

“I’m actually planning it.”

He lifted his brows. “Oh.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I am.”

She couldn’t believe he was so blunt. He didn’t even try to disguise his amazement. “Don’t sugarcoat things for me.”

He leaned back and folded his arms in front of him. “You’re not the kind of woman who likes things sugarcoated.”

He was right. “Except chocolate,” she agreed. “So let’s cut to the chase. Say I want to start a business with several other people and we need a loan to get things started. What do I do?”

“What kind of business is it?”

“Importing. Sort of. Importing and distributing.”

“Why don’t you tell me exactly what you have in mind?”

“Okay, I have a friend who has a very powerful friend, someone whose name you’d recognize but I can’t mention, and her nephew is an Italian shoe designer. A really good one. And, believe me, I know shoes.”

Holden nodded seriously. “That I believe.”

Of course. He’d seen all the charges at Ormond’s, Nordstrom, Zappos, DSW, and the like. “All right, so this guy makes beautiful shoes, and we want to import them. Be the sole distributor. No pun intended.”

Then something amazing happened. Holden Bennington III actually laughed. And he actually looked good doing it. “All right, so do you have a business plan?”

“Apart from what I just told you?”

“Something formal. A written description of the proposed business, projected costs, possible profit, and so on.”

“Yes. Joss, one of my—” She hesitated. “—business partners is working on that.”

“Good. Have you thought about venture capitalists?”

Her time in college hadn’t been a complete waste. “Getting people to invest, you mean?”

“Yeah. Now, a lot of people think that means going to big, established companies to get investors and that’s where they go wrong. Big, established companies don’t
need
to invest in upstarts. You need to talk to successful new companies, maybe three to five years old.”

“And bypass a bank loan altogether?”

“Not altogether. But investors essentially give you equity. That makes you more attractive to banks.”

She was liking Holden right now.

He went on, enthusiastically telling her all the creative ways she might go about getting financing, and finding investors. He suggested a collateral loan might be the way to get the balance of the start-up costs if Lorna or any of her partners had something of value to put up, like real estate. Turned out business was his real love, but he needed the work, so when the bank had come knocking, he couldn’t refuse.

After nearly an hour had passed, Holden looked at his watch and said, “Shoot. I’ve got a meeting to go to.” He looked up at Lorna, and seeming surprised at his own question, asked, “Would you like to go to dinner? We could discuss this some more.”

She was certainly surprised at her own answer. “I’d love to.”

She walked home with more of a bounce in her step than she’d ever had leaving the bank.

Holden Bennington.

She was going to dinner with Holden Bennington. It was hard to believe. Then again, most of what had happened in her life lately was hard to believe. Not the least surprising was Sandra’s revelation that she was a phone-sex operator. Lorna would never, ever have pegged her as one.

It just went to show how little you could tell about people, even if you thought you were an expert at reading them after years in the bar business.

Later, Lorna could barely remember the dinner they had at Clyde’s.

What happened after dinner blew it all out of her mind.

They went back to Lorna’s place, and she offered Holden a beer.

“Sure,” he said. “But you stay put, I can get it. You don’t have to serve me.”

“I don’t mind,” she said, thinking of all the embarrassing things he might spot in her fridge—cartons of half-eaten Chinese food, peanut butter pie in a takeaway container from Jico, almost every kind of cheese in existence, and cans of Slim-Fast that were so old, they had the company’s previous logo on them.

Turned out it didn’t matter, because they both stood at the same time and took a step toward the kitchen, knocked into each other in the small space, and then—how it happened, Lorna couldn’t quite figure out—ended up in each other’s arms, locked in a kiss so hot, it could have melted wax lips.

Holden was artful, knowing exactly what moves to make to rachet her passion up to high in the shortest amount of time.

Two weeks ago, she would never have believed she would even
think
about having sex with him. Now she couldn’t wait one more second to rip his clothes off.

Which was crazy.

She wasn’t supposed to be so impulsive anymore.

She pulled back and said, breathlessly, “What are we doing? Maybe we should consider this a little before we go any further.”

He gave a short laugh, and she couldn’t help but notice the way his gorgeous blue eyes crinkled in the corner when he smiled. “I’ve wanted to do this since I met you,” he said, then kissed her again.

“But—” She drew back.
Consequences,
she reminded herself. She was supposed to think before acting.

“Shut up,” he said with a smile, then crushed his mouth onto hers again, twirling her insides into whipped cream.

“Wait a minute.” She drew back again. This wasn’t right. She should ask what it meant, how they could possibly have a future. If things worked out, would he be one of those guys who put her on an allowance—? “The hell with it,” she said, realizing now was
not
a good time for her to start thinking about consequences before acting.

There would be time for that later.

Apart from the fact that Sandra’s lawyer contact kept referring to Sandra as “Penelope,” the call Joss had with him went really well. He assured her that if she was being coerced into doing things that were not part of her job description, she did not have to stay on the job.

It would be considerate of her to give them notice, he said, or to stay on until they found someone new, but she wasn’t obliged to do any of it.

Still, Joss wasn’t all that confident when she went in search of Deena Oliver to give her the news.

Deena was doing her nails and watching an afternoon talk show on the TV.

“Mrs. Oliver.” Joss wished she could be more assertive, but she’d never had to quit a job because she didn’t like it before, only because she was leaving for school, and she wasn’t looking forward to it. “May I speak with you for a moment?”

Deena Oliver made a point of looking at the TV, then back at Joss. “I’m in the middle of a show.”

“Yes, but the boys aren’t here right now, and I really need to talk with you privately.”

With a huge sigh, Deena pointed a remote at the TV and froze the picture, then turned back to Joss with a hideous hardness in her eyes. How one human being could feel justified talking to another human being that way, Joss couldn’t understand.

“What is it?” Deena asked on a heavy sigh.

Joss noticed she didn’t ask her to sit. Par for the course. Good. That made it easier to leave the room when she was finished. “I need to talk to you about my work here.”

“What about it?” She filed her nails with a brisk grinding sound. “Apologies aren’t going to change anything, you know.”

Apologies? “I—I’m not satisfied with the work.” No, that sounded wrong.
Satisfied
was the wrong word. “I mean—”

Grind grind grind
. “What do you mean you’re not satisfied? Are you supposed to be
satisfied
?” Deena shook her head, answering her own question. “You’re a nanny, not some kind of superstar.”

Joss took a short breath. “Okay, what I mean is, I’m not—I don’t—I love the boys, but I don’t think I can help them anymore. Maybe I never could. “This wasn’t easy, and Mrs. Oliver’s pointed refusal to look at her just made it worse. “So I’m giving you my notice.”

Deena stopped working on her nails. She looked up at Joss, while somehow still managing to look down at her. “Notice? You have a one-year contract.”

“Well, yes, we had a contract.” She’d practiced this over and over in her room, but it was so much harder in real life. “But the terms were that if one party feels the other isn’t living up to the contract terms, they could give a reasonable notice and, well, I don’t feel like I’m doing the job I was hired to do.”

Deena snorted. “We agree on that.”

“I mean,” Joss said, getting a little angry, “that I think you’re asking me to do far more than the job description entailed.” There was an awkward, shivering silence, so Joss went on, despite her better judgment, “And that’s why I’m giving you notice. So you can find someone more suitable for your needs.”

“Fine.” Deena arched an eyebrow. “I consider nine more months’ reasonable notice, since that’s what I’ve been planning on.”

“That’s too long,” Joss said. “I was thinking two weeks or so.”

“Two weeks doesn’t help me one whit,” Deena spat. “I hired
you,
and by God, you’re going to stay on and do the job you signed on the dotted line for.”

Joss shook her head. “I can’t stay. I’m sorry.”

After a long scrutiny, Deena said, “You’re serious, aren’t you? Jesus H. Christ, after all we’ve done for you!”

“All you’ve—?”

Deena was instantly hysterical, tears and all. “We’ve given you a home, we entrusted you with our boys’ very lives, and this is the way you repay us!”

Joss really wanted to object, to point out all the extra things she’d done without complaint, all the extra hours she’d put in, but there was no point. Deena Oliver was the sort who would argue to the death, no matter how patently wrong she might be.

So instead of rebutting her, and pointing out her husband’s romp with the skinny Santa Claus look-alike and the fact that Deena had actually blamed
Joss
for it, Joss swallowed her pride and said, “I think if you would calm down and consider it, you’d understand some of the reasons I can’t stay.” It was pointed, and she hoped Deena would get the hint, but she couldn’t help softening it by adding, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry,” Deena echoed.

“Yes,” Joss said sincerely. “And if I could still see the boys and keep up with them a little, that would be so great—”

“You want to see the boys.” Deena laughed. “You don’t want to care for them, but you want to pop up occasionally in their lives and pretend you had an impact.” She gave a cold, humorless laugh. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh, please don’t say that, Mrs. Oliver. This isn’t about you or me or Mr. Oliver. Honestly, the boys need to know that they’re cared about and that none of this is their fault.”

“None of
what
?” Deena asked incredulously. “You’re quitting, despite your contract, and you’re making like it’s a big issue that all of us share?”

Joss had to bite her tongue to stop herself from saying the ugly things that Deena deserved to hear, about her life, her husband, and the thin veneer of perfection she seemed to believe was her life. “I want the boys to know I care about them,” she said instead. “I think it’s important that they know that.”