Skygods (Hydraulic #2) (52 page)

I couldn’t argue with both Danita and Gran. Wordlessly, I slipped on the dark blue dress, fastened a pretty turquoise necklace, and grabbed a jacket on the way out. The temps had cooled as Boston slid firmly into a golden autumn. Just as I shoved on a pair of sunglasses and walked out of the Wyndham, a flurry of camera flashes blinded me.

“Kaye, are you on your way to see Samuel?”

Crud. Tweedledee and Tweedledum had camped outside the hotel since stupid
HollywoodDays
leaked Samuel’s location. I tried not to scratch my nose, or sniff, or trip, or kick them in the balls.

“Hey, Neelie Nixie, do you straddle him in that hospital bed?”

“Morning, guys. Hope you get hit by a car.”

I couldn’t believe I once gave those jerks blueberry muffins.

Tweedledee and Tweedledum trailed me until I reached Mass General. They didn’t follow me in, because several days ago, one of their cronies got brave and ended up behind bars when the front desk receptionist called security. “We frequently have celebs here,” she explained, “so the paps tag along. Once, someone even pulled a fire alarm when a celeb’s wife was having a baby, trying to force the poor guy onto the street. It was crazy.”

A gaggle of diehard Neelie fans also camped outside the hospital, clasping bunches of helium balloons and Red Sox gear (clearly his readers now knew he was a baseball fan). For security purposes, the hospital wouldn’t let them loiter in the lobby. Each morning, they pressed gifts on me and begged me to carry them up to Samuel, making me feel like the pope on his way to say intercessions. Security told me to leave the stuff at the front desk.

But this morning was different. I could only attribute the dark glares and hisses to the garbage the tabs churned out. I wove through the small crowd, absently accepting their presents, skirting their questions and dodging spiteful elbows until I zipped through the rotating door. The receptionist waved me over. I dropped an armload of teddy bears and collapsed, breathless, over the desk. She held up a bear wearing a tiny
Deep in the Heart of Nixie
T-shirt and pursed her lips.

“Keep it, if you want,” I told her.

All chubby cheeks and giddiness, she tucked it next to her computer monitor. “Lean over here, honey.”

Confused, I did as she asked. She pulled a tissue from a box and dug something from my hair, then held it out for me to see. A chewed pink blob of bubble gum. I grimaced. “Disgusting.”

“They’re turning on you. Best call someone to escort you home when you’re ready.” I nodded my thanks as she pitched the tissue in the garbage. “I’m not supposed to do this,” she whispered, “but I have a huge favor to ask. Can you ask Mr. Cabral to sign my copy of
The Last Other
?”

I started to protest, but remembered this gal all but broke a photog over her knee for me. I took the book.

My palms were a clammy mess when I reached the psych unit. I wiped them on my dress and followed the nurse. A Red Sox game on a mounted television in the lobby quietly buzzed. Could Samuel hear it? The only other occupant in the room was an old woman, tangled white hair all askew and her lipstick even more so. She wrung her leathery hands as she watched the game, but I didn’t think she actually followed it.

The nurse knocked on the third door down.

“Mr. Cabral?”

She pushed the door open. There he was, and my heart pounded.

His skin was chalky. That was the very first thing I noticed—how stark his brown eyebrows and eyelashes were against his pale face. His lips were cracked and as bloodless as the rest of him. Books were stacked on a table next to his bed, all of them new and untouched. His eyes were closed, head resting on a pile of pillows. Six days’ worth of stubble covered his jaw and chin, and it hit me that I’d never seen him wear a beard before, even in our Boulder days.

“No razors?” I whispered to the nurse. She gave a shake of her head. “What if I brought an electric one?”

“Not even that. No cords allowed, not unless an orderly watches him and Mr. Cabral has been adamantly against that.”

I could only imagine.

“I’ll leave you to your visit.” She patted my shoulder and left.

He looked so, so tired. Lifeless, like one of those tagged corpses in thriller movies. I reminded myself he was heavily medicated and probably battling off a post-manic crash, but seeing his death-like pallor scared the crap out of me, and I focused on the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

Then those beautiful blue eyes met mine. They were dull and foggy, but damn it, he was still alive and I was grateful for it.

“How do you feel?” I hung back, near the door.

“Like I just woke up, all the time.” His voice was coarse, slurred. “I can’t shake the fuzziness.”

“It’s the antipsychotic. They’ll put you back on Depakote, but even then, you’ll feel sluggish for a while. And you’ll have to exercise like an Olympian to keep that pretty form.”

“I know. I’ve had to before.” He gave me a lazy smile. “Would you still love me if I was fat?”

The corners of my mouth curled in spite of myself. “I suppose it would give me leeway to pack on a few pounds. We could be one of those happy, pudgy couples that hold hands in the park.”

“We’ll laugh about this someday.”

“Definitely a funny story to tell the grandkids.” But I wasn’t laughing. Still, Samuel ran with it.

“Oh no, Kaye. The grandkids will never hear a word of it.”

“Sure they will. The minute little Samuel the Third does a school report on Grandpa, the whole sordid Fenway affair will spill out.”

We let the fantasy linger in the air, reluctant to admit that’s what it was—a fantasy. Right now, children seemed as unlikely as a hurricane hitting Lyons.

“You look so beautiful.” He motioned me closer. “What do you have there?”

I pushed the book into his hands. “The paparazzi slayer in the lobby would like you to sign this as payment for my safe passage.”

“You’ll have to ask the nurse for a pen. They won’t let me have one.”

“It’s just a precaution, Samuel.”

He rolled his eyes. I jogged out to the nurses’ station, asked for a pen, then handed it to him while an orderly hovered behind me. Samuel scowled as he signed the inside flap. “Offing myself was never my intention, you know.”

“I
didn’t
know. Thanks, though I would have preferred that clarification a week earlier.” He may have been doped up, but he still heard the bitterness in my tone, and he paused mid-signature. I continued, “The city’s going to let you off with community service, which can be served in any state. Ace is a miracle worker.”

“I’m running out of chances, aren’t I?” He snapped the book shut.

“If something happens again, you might have to do time.”

His dry lips pressed into a thin line as the thought of prison hung between us. He capped the pen and returned it to the orderly, glaring at the man’s back until he was gone. Then he held out a hand, trembling from the meds. I took it, and he pulled me onto his bed, burying his face in the folds of my jacket.

“I didn’t want this life for you.”

“It was never your choice.”

His hands tenderly clasped my hips. “Do you know what my biggest regret is, about that night? Not telling you how lovely you looked on your birthday.”

My fingers combed through his soft, thick hair until his body sagged against me. Kissing the top of his head, I left him so he could grasp at much-needed sleep.

When I returned to Central Command, Justin thrust another printout from the
HollywoodDays
blog in my face.

“‘Ex-Wife Singing for
Sirens
Author’s Fortune,’” I read aloud. Peachy. I grabbed the article from Justin and skimmed.

“I liked the bit about your enlistment of a top Boston Law Firm to fight for conservatorship. Oh, and the speculation about Ace and me entering and exiting your hotel room. That was particularly seedy. Other gossip mags are starting to parrot
HollywoodDays
, too.”

I crumpled the paper. “This has got to stop, Justin. They have someone on the inside, and I think you know as well as I do who it is.”

“Who has the most to gain by painting you as the bad guy?”

Who had the most to gain by painting me as a bad guy?
I silently repeated. My status as Samuel’s publicist didn’t affect Caroline anymore, but it mattered to The Buitre Group.

“You’re makin’ enemies, Kaye. That means you’ve reached the big time. You want me to release a statement?”

“What would be the point? They’ll just twist it into a lie.” Would Jerome stoop that low? Dish dirt on Samuel’s illness—his own client—to gossip mags? You bet he would. I punched in Jaime’s number.

“Have you found anything new on the
HollywoodDays
source?” I asked.

“Give me some time, Trilby,” she grumbled. “You can’t rush weasel-fucking.”

I cringed. That was a resounding no.

I visited Samuel every morning for the next three days. Each visit, he seemed a little less tired, a little more together. He was able to jog on a treadmill. He read. Went to therapy. Soon, he permitted his family to visit.

Switching from the role of devoted lover to that of publicist soon gave me a Jekyll-and-Hyde complex. I wanted to wear each hat as well as I could, but I balanced a stack of hats on my head all at once, and that stack soon began to teeter. Each time I returned to the hotel Command Center from Mass General, I strained to detach my heart from the business calls I made.

When I arrived at the hospital one morning, the chaplain was in the room with Samuel, immersed in soft conversation.

“He’s visited several times since Mr. Cabral was admitted,” the nurse next to me whispered.

In fact, he’d been the
first
visitor allowed access by their celebrated patient. I tried not to feel hurt by this new information. Samuel’s grapple with God was nothing new. With a sigh, I let it go. If I couldn’t keep Samuel grounded, the Almighty was the only one for the job.

The chaplain shook Samuel’s hand and rose, greeting me as he exited the sterile room. When Samuel saw me, his entire face glowed brighter than a Colorado sunset, and it burned away my petty jealousy.

“How are things?” he asked.

I awkwardly swung our arms, not sure if he was asking his lover or his publicist. “Busy. We’ve canceled your appointments and released a statement—”

“Kaye.”

“—and Nat, Justin, and Patrick are running interference, at least until you can decide what you want to do—”

“Kaye.” He tugged my hand. “That’s not what I meant. I guess…I want to talk about us. Not work.”

“Oh.”

“First of all, is there still an ‘us?’”

I nervously twisted the aluminum rails of his bed as if they were jail bars. “I’m up for it if you are.”

He frowned, not liking my flippancy. “Please be—”

“—serious, I know. Sorry. Yes, there is still an ‘us.’ I refuse to believe our window is gone for good.”

“I want to fight for us, too,” he said, his voice brightening. “I will always fight for you. I know the selfless thing to do would be to encourage you to get the hell away from me, but I’m not willing to do that. Do you understand why I couldn’t see you right away?”

“I think so. You were angry and needed time. Samuel, I’m very sorry for not telling you I was in contact with Mr. Avant Garde.” He raised an eyebrow and I waved my hand. “The scarf you punched. If I had known it would drive you away…”

He sighed and beckoned me onto the bed with him. “Firecracker, this isn’t your fault. It wasn’t rational anger. But it was still anger, and some part of me, through the haze of mania and meds, recognized I loved you too much to expose you to that sort of abuse.”

I relaxed against him, weariness seeping from my muscles. I liked this new honesty between us. He brushed a long finger over my knuckles, white from clutching the bed railing.

“I’ll find a way to make this easier for you,” he said. “What questions do you have?”