This Life: A Novel (9 page)

Chapter Ten

March 28

New York
,
New York

Not long ago, the
Marquee nightclub was the sort of place Brett Skeet could only dream about what
the inside might be like. Tonight, with cash withdrawn from the business Visa
that Blake left with him in case any expenses related to the Wishman Spears
came up while she was in
Florida
, Brett was in with the in crowd. The doorman giving priority
admittance to VIPs was happy to promote Brett to that status for the night.

Just inside the door
Brett halted and looked around, impressed with the decor. Blue light
illuminated the whole club, and hanging over the central dance floor was a
double-helix strobe light. Pictures and patterns of light projected onto all
four walls were reminiscent of Japanese anime. Surrounding the dance floor were
padded benches fronted by small candlelit tables. There was a single long,
sleek oak bar, but an absence of bar stools ensured that all patrons would have
easy access to the bartenders. Staircases led up to railed catwalks where
exhibitionist dancers could put on a show for their fellow customers.

Brett claimed a table,
because as a VIP he was entitled to table service. Seeing the badge the doorman
had given him, a perky little blonde bartender hurried to his table and
chirped, “What will you have tonight, sir?”

“Give me a Cherry Bitch.”
He struggled to refrain from grinning.

“I’ll be back in a few
minutes with that for you, sir.” The perky blonde dashed back to the bar and
assembled ingredients: black currant tea, gin, lime juice, apple juice, syrup,
fresh cherries. Brett listened to the music and people-watched, and in about
ten minutes the bartender brought him an iced glass of liquid sin.

Some of the most
flamboyant customers were already on the catwalks, shimmying for all to see. A
tall, curvy redhead with hair down to her waist was doing a fair imitation of
Shakira’s belly-dancing moves, and she kept throwing glances at Brett. He
raised his glass to her and grinned. She beckoned to him to join her, but he
shook his head and ran his tongue along the rim of the glass, keeping his gaze
fixed on her. Watching her watching him.

She danced down the
stairs and approached him, glancing from her own rolling hips to Brett and back
again. He drained his glass when she reached his table. When she put out her
hands for his, he let her coax him out of his seat and onto the dance floor.

Her hips undulating
against him were as intoxicating as a thousand Cherry Bitch cocktails. She
smelled of liquor and sweat and a sweet smokiness he belatedly recognized as
marijuana. Turning her back to him, she commenced grinding her firm buttocks
into his crotch. He yearned to lay her out on the dance floor and explore every
inch of her in full view of everyone, but the Marquee wasn’t that kind of club.

Instead he danced with
her, his hip-hop moves somehow blending with her own exotic, sinuous motions.
They were soon the center of attention, many of their fellow customers gathering
around to watch them. Dance song after dance song they shook and stamped and
weaved together, two strangers bound by a glue of sexual chemistry.

At long last, his
muscles jittery from exertion, he clasped her hand in his and led her back to
his table. “I’ve got to have a drink and catch my breath. You’re too much woman
for any man to handle all night without a break, girl.”

She laughed, and he
waved the perky bartender back to wait on them. He ordered another Cherry Bitch
and she, intrigued, decided to try one herself. While they waited for their
drinks, he gasped between breaths, “I’m Brett, by the way.”

“
Savannah
,” she told him, and
held out her hand to shake his. Instead he kissed hers, giving each fingertip a
teasing little suckle. She giggled and moaned, both at the same time.

They danced and drank
until the Marquee’s closing time. Out on the sidewalk she told him, “I don’t
want this night to end.”

“Me either.”
That
bitch Blake is happy to let me run errands for her, but she won’t take me on
trips with her or even tell me why she’s going away. Probably fucking some dude
she knows in
Miami
. Well, two can play that game.

Savannah
stood on her tiptoes
and grabbed his head to pull his lips against hers. They kissed on the sidewalk
as though their lives depended on the eroticism of their performance, and when
at last they stepped apart she whispered, “My place or yours?”

“Mine.” He hailed a
passing taxi, and they felt each other up in the backseat all the way to Blake’s
apartment.

Inside, Matt sat
cross-legged on the sofa, watching late-night television. He wore only a pair
of jeans, and
Savannah
eyed his well-defined
abs and biceps with obvious appreciation.

“Who’s this?” Matt
asked, eyeing the redhead with a different sentiment entirely.

“A guest,” said Brett,
and escorted
Savannah
inside,

Matt put his hands up. “Hate
to be the cock blocker, but that ain’t happening.”

Brett stuck his chest
out in defiance. “Or you’ll do what?”

Savannah
looked on in amusement.

“I’ll tell Blake,” Matt
said coolly.

Brett turned to
Savannah
and spoke in a forced,
formal tone. “We’ll have to reschedule our meeting another time. Sorry about
the inconvenience.”

Matt rolled his eyes.

Savannah
spun around on heels,
flipped her finger to both men, and marched to the elevator.

Brett walked in and Matt
went back to watching television.

#

March 28

Tampa
,
Florida

Blake sat in the surgery
waiting room, watching the minutes crawl by on the wall clock. Suki paced like
a caged tiger, and occasionally growled like one too.

Edith must have
Henry’s wife on a plane by now. What the hell am I going to tell her?

At that moment Blake’s
BlackBerry rocked out a chorus of “Big Time.” Vickie, her new publicist, was
calling. Blake considered letting it go to voicemail, but she didn’t really
have anything else to do except wait for the surgeon to come out and announce
Henry’s prognosis.

“This is Blake,” she
said, her words seeming to crawl like the wall clock’s minute hand.

“I know who I called,”
snapped Vickie. “What I don’t know is what the hell you were thinking.”

“If you’re going to
swear at me, I can just hang up on you.”

“Seems to me you already
have. It’s all over the news that you went to some high school band concert
today, and—”

“What?”

“You heard me. Don’t
try to change the subject.”

“I’m not. Are you
telling me I was in the news by name? Blake Bertrand?”

“What other name would
you be called in the news? The—”

“I flew to
Miami
using a false name and
ID.”

That got Vickie’s
attention. For at least five merciful seconds the line was utterly silent.

“Why?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Well, I’ll tell you
something that
does
matter. The producers of that reality TV show who
wanted you as their host are going to hear about this, that you blew them off
to go to a stupid fucking school band concert. You don’t even have a niece or
nephew, let alone a child of your own. It’s going to be a miracle if they still
want you when they hear about this.”

“That’s fine.”

“Oh, no it isn’t!
Listen, Blake, I’ve always said there’s no such thing as bad publicity. But I
think you just proved me wrong. When being in the news means you’re
unpredictable and disrespectful, that’s bad, and the best publicist in the
world can’t save you from that kind of reputation.”

“I’m not asking you to
do anything about this. I’ll talk to you when I get back to
New York
.”

She pressed the End
Call button, and watched the crawling of the wall clock’s minute hand.

Chapter Eleven

March 31

New York
,
New York

At about the same time
the Delta began descending for its landing, Blake received a text message from
Connor Stafford, the New York–based project director she’d hired to supervise
her Wishman Spears operations: Bertrand, but I’ve got to ask you to come to my office today. We’ve got a
problem to discuss.>

“Oh, that’s just
fantastic,” Blake muttered.

Suki, trying to get a
nap during the flight because she hadn’t slept since they found Henry beaten
nearly to death, cracked one eye open. “What’s gone wrong this time, Boss?”

“I know you’re
exhausted, but I’ve got to run a business errand before we go back to my
apartment.”

“Hoo-fucking-ray,” Suki
agreed, and opened her other eye and breezed down the aisle to visit the
bathroom before passengers were instructed to buckle their seat belts. While
her bodyguard answered nature’s call, Blake phoned for a taxi to meet them at
the airport.

Connor
Stafford
’s office was located in
Queens
. Their cabdriver was a
wily lifelong resident of
New York
, however, and delivered them to the office in half the time
Blake would normally expect. She paid him to wait, hoping for an equally speedy
trip home.

More than anything
else in the world, at the moment, I want a long hot soak in the bathtub and
some soothing jazz. I may even go to bed after my bath and sleep through
dinnertime, through the night, and barely wake up in time for a late brunch.

She was expected, so
the receptionist waved her back to her boss’s office immediately. Blake knocked
on the door, eased it open, and found Connor on a phone call. She took a seat
in one of the two chairs across from his desk, and Suki slumped into the other.

“I’m going to need to
call you back,” he said after a moment. “I’ve got something urgent to tend to.
Talk to you again before I close up shop for the day.” He placed the phone on
its cradle and announced, without preliminary greetings, “We’ve got a zoning
fight on our hands, Blake.”

“But we were expecting
that, weren’t we?” She wished the chair wasn’t so comfortable. Her eyes were
trying to close against her will.

“Yes, but you know it’s
no good to delay addressing this sort of thing. A public meeting has been scheduled,
and already there’s almost twenty ‘concerned citizens’ signed up to speak
against your plans for the Wishman. They complain that traffic is certain to
more than double in the area.”

“I’m sure it will, but
the influx of new business—”

“It’s not me you’ve got
to convince, it’s local residents. You or your architect or both will need to
attend the meeting and give a presentation on why the economic benefits
outweigh the traffic inconveniences.”

“Forgive me for
complaining, Connor, but I don’t see why there’s a problem that required me to
come here today. All you had to do was get me signed up to speak at the
meeting.”

“That’s exactly why I
needed to talk to you. Don’t you usually leave these things up to Charles? Some
guy Brett Skeet said he was in charge of any fee payments or signatures that
might be needed during your absence.”

“Yes. Charles is in
California
meeting with investors.
Brett volunteered to handle this.”

“Well, that’s fine,
except that I tried all weekend and all yesterday to get him on the phone. He
never accepted or returned my calls.”

A heat began to rise in
Blake’s gut. “When is the deadline to sign up to speak at the meeting?”

“
Four o’clock
this afternoon.”

She glanced at the time
on her BlackBerry’s display. It was
half past two
already. “I’m so sorry, Suki, but—”

“We need to run another
errand.” Suki pushed the words out even as she pushed herself out of the chair
and onto her feet.

“I apologize, Connor,”
Blake said before she followed Suki out of the office.

Chapter Twelve

March 31

New York
,
New York

It was a few minutes
after
five
o’clock
when Blake and Suki finally arrived at Blake’s penthouse apartment. Suki
immediately proceeded to run the shower in the bathroom adjoining her bedroom,
but Blake still had one item of business to attend to before her hot soak in
the bathtub and an early bedtime.

Unfortunately, Brett
Skeet was nowhere to be found. His luggage still sat next to her bedroom
closet, but the man himself was missing.

She sat on the bed and
texted him as she kicked off her ballet flats.

As she undressed, she
expected to hear the chorus of The Police’s “Message in a Bottle” signaling
that she’d received a text. Her BlackBerry lay silent on the bed covers,
however, as she stripped out of her black Versace slacks and ruffled blue
blouse.

She dialed his number,
gazing out the huge window at
New York
’s rush-hour traffic ten stories below. Her call went to his
voicemail.

“Brett, I need to
discuss something important with you. Please call me back.”

Finally she trudged
into the bathroom, mixed the hot and cold water to exactly the temperature she
wanted, and let the tub begin to fill. She dribbled some luxury bubble bath
into the water under the faucet’s flow.

Might as well brush
my teeth, since I’m planning to skip dinner and just go to bed.
She wet her
toothbrush at the sink, and glimpsed something out of the corner of one eye. A
splash of scarlet red protruding slightly from behind the toilet.

Blake crouched down and
reached for the spot of color that didn’t belong on the bathroom’s slate gray
floor. It was fabric. She pinched it between thumb and forefinger and held it
up for inspection.

A bra. Two cup sizes
larger than Blake wore.

She laid the foreign
garment out on the sink counter and shut her eyes.

#

“Get out of my face!”

That was Brett’s voice,
coming from just outside Blake’s closed bedroom door. Blake fumbled in the dark
for her BlackBerry, which she’d placed on the bedside table just before she
crawled under the covers and promptly fell asleep. She accidentally knocked
something off the table, but judging by the sound it wasn’t her phone. With
another grope she found the BlackBerry, tapped a key to light its display, and
checked the time:

11:40
P
.
M
.

Matt was speaking now,
but Blake couldn’t make out his words. She heard Brett clearly, however, when
he snarled, “Touch me again and I’ll knock you on your ass, white boy.”

Blake slid out of bed
and opened the door. Matt and Brett, confronting each other, both turned their
heads to look at her. She slept nude, and hadn’t taken the time to put on her
bathrobe before going to break up the fight.

“I apologize for not
having any clothes on, but both of you need to chill.” She moved over so that
most of her body was hidden by the door. “Now, tell me what this is about, one
at a time. Matt first.”

“Your friend here”—Matt
loaded the word
friend
with so much contempt that Brett actually took a
step backward—“brought a guest here for the weekend. I told him to tell you or
I would.”

“I already know about
that,” Blake told them, her voice hushed and even.

Matt and Brett both
stood staring at her, slack-jawed. After a few seconds Brett realized it was
his turn to speak and he’d better convince Blake that Matt was lying.

So, with great passion
but no originality, Brett shouted, “He’s lying!”

“I’ll be back in a
second.” Blake turned around, groped her way into the bathroom, snatched up the
bra too large for her, and returned to the door and dangled it in Brett’s face.
“This is too big for me. I’m a C cup, this is a DD. So, if it isn’t mine and
you didn’t entertain another woman in my apartment, I take it you’re a
cross-dresser?”

Matt howled laughter,
waking Antonio and Suki. They appeared in the other two bedroom doors,
bleary-eyed and baffled. Blake pushed the bra into Brett’s hand and said, “You
can return that to your friend. It would be polite. Now get your luggage out of
my bedroom and your whoring ass out of my apartment.”

She turned around to go
crawl back into bed, but Brett called to her, “Wait.”

Without looking back,
Blake asked, “What do you want?”

“You said I’d get my
turn to explain.”

“Go on, then.”

“Please, Blake. Let me
talk to you in private.”

“Want me to show him
out, Boss?” Suki called to her.

“Not yet. Brett, this had
better be good.” She turned the knob to put the bedside lamp on its dimmest
setting, sat on the bed, and pulled the covers up to her shoulders.

Brett stepped inside
and looked her over with hungry eyes. Blake stared back at him.
Stay strong,
girl
, she reminded herself.
No matter how sweet he can be, the shit he
did while I was away is just unacceptable.

When Brett still hadn’t
spoken several seconds later, Blake told him, “If this is your idea of
explaining, you need to grab your luggage and get out, like I said before.”

“I’m sorry. Your body
makes a man’s head go empty.” He slide-stepped to the bed and sat on one
corner, his gaze on the swell of Blake’s breasts under the covers.

“True or not, that
doesn’t explain why you spent the weekend fucking another woman in a bed that I
paid for, or why you didn’t answer Connor Stafford’s phone calls after I asked
you to monitor developments with the Wishman Spears building while I was away.”

He rubbed her foot
through the covers. “I was hurt.”

“Don’t touch me.”

Brett moved his hand to
his lap. His eyes rested on her bare shoulders.

“What do you mean, you
were hurt?”

“I’m crazy for you,
Blake. You wouldn’t take me with you to
Florida
, and you wouldn’t even tell me why you were going there. I
couldn’t stop thinking you must be fucking some other man. It killed me to
think that, and all I wanted was to make you hurt as bad as I did.” He dropped
his gaze to his hands on his knees. “I know I was wrong. I heard about your
chauffeur. I’m sorry. I’ve wandered the city all day trying to think what to
say to you, but there’s nothing I can say that makes up for what I did.”

God, he looks like a
little boy whose favorite teacher just scolded him in front of his whole class.
Stay strong, Blake!
Finally she said, “That’s for damn sure.”

“Please just give me
another chance. I swear I’ll never doubt you again, Blake, and I’ll do
everything I can to make you happy.” He raised his eyes, brimming with tears,
to hers.

She watched his face,
trying to read whether he meant it or was only trying to hang on to a meal
ticket.
Lang was hanging on to a meal ticket. He beat the hell out of me so
I’d be afraid of what he’d do if I tried to leave him. Brett isn’t as bad as
Lang
, she reassured herself.

“All right.” She caught
herself touching the scar on her forehead, and moved her hand just before Brett
swept her up in a joyous hug. “Ugh, but you can’t sleep here tonight.”

“I’ll check in at the
Trump
Tower
.”

As Brett stood up, he
noticed something on the floor and picked it up: one of the pair of six-inch, black
velvet Alexander McQueen platform heels Blake kept on the bedside table, under
a framed photograph of herself wearing them years ago at a business convention
with Lang.

Blake put out her hand
for the shoe and said, “I’ll take that, thanks.”

“I don’t understand why
you keep a pair of stilettos on the bedside table, anyway. Why don’t you wear
them anymore? And if you don’t want to wear them, why not throw them away?”

She breathed a long
sigh. “That’s personal, Brett.”

Like air blasting out
of a punctured balloon.  “Okay, fine,” he said, and left.

  Blake set the shoe
next to its mate and stared at the photograph for a few seconds. “Never again,”
she whispered to herself. Then she slid out of bed again, pulled on her
bathrobe, and stepped out to talk to her bodyguards.

“I’m giving him one
more chance,” she told Matt, Suki, and Antonio, all three seated on the sofa
waiting to learn the outcome of her private talk with Brett.

None of the three
bodyguards said a word. They stared at her with mutinous expressions, until
finally Suki flowed onto her feet in the eerily graceful way she had about her.
“I’m still worn out, so I’m going back to bed. Good night again, all.” She
drifted back into her dark bedroom and shut the door.

“I better go back to
bed too,” murmured Antonio. “I’m back on duty in a few hours.” He vanished into
the bedroom he used by night and Matt used by day.

Matt folded his arms
across his chest and shook his head as he kept his gaze on Blake. “With all due
respect, Ms. Bertrand, I think you’ve lost your mind. Miranda would have my
skin for a rug if I did the kind of shit that dude did.”

What do I say to
that?

She didn’t know, but
felt like she needed a good hard scrub in the shower.