Have to Have It Page 15

  Grace had shown Kiley her room, which turned out to be an homage to the world's greatest art museums. There were posters from the Louvre, the new Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Prado in Madrid, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, plus some others that Kiley didn't recognize. Grace had explained her love of sculpture, and there were reproductions of works by Michelangelo and Giacometti, plus an original Alexander Calder mobile that hung from the ceiling above Grace's single bed. Grace had explained that her parents were just finishing an art studio for her at the far end of the property and that she couldn't wait for it to be done.

  Kiley was so excited when she left the big house that she'd immediately called Lydia—it was so amazing that she was going to live just houses away from one of her two best friends. Lydia somehow managed to beg a half hour off; the Paulsons lived close enough for her to walk over.

  “As soon as I was coming right over, the Paulsons stocked the fridge,” Kiley told Lydia. “Sort of a welcome-to-our-house thing. You want anything?”

  Lydia shook her head. “Nah. I just had a double wheatgrass-and-tofu milk shake, of which I had to drink the whole thing under the watchful eye of the Merry Matron of Moscow. Have you ever tasted that shit? I mean, seriously, it tastes like ass.”

  Kiley laughed. Her cell phone rang and she trotted into the living room where she'd left it. “Hello?”

  “Kiley. It's Tom.”

  Kiley's legs felt weak. “Hi.”

  “How are you?”

  “Okay.” Lydia wandered in and watched Kiley, leaning against the wall. Kiley mouthed that it was Tom.

  “So, look, I know I haven't called you,” Tom went on. “I just—I figured you didn't want me to. I mean, you made it pretty clear you want to cool things with me. So if it's friendship you want, then—”

  “Wait, wait,” Kiley interrupted. “I didn't say I wanted to be friends!” Across the room, Lydia rolled her eyes.

  “You kind of did,” Tom pointed out. “Not in so many words, maybe, but—”

  “No, I …” It was now or never. “The truth is, I got scared. That's all. I definitely want more from you than friendship. I figured you never wanted to see me again—”

  Tom laughed. “Man, we are two idiots, huh?”

  “Well, that's a big yes on my end,” Kiley replied giddily.

  “So when can I see you?”

  His low, throaty voice sent shivers down her spine. Even though she'd just arrived at the Paulsons', she reminded herself that they'd insisted she wouldn't start working until the next afternoon. She was absolutely free for the evening. And the morning.

  She told him to come over and gave him her new address. When she hung up the phone, she jumped up and hugged Lydia as hard as she could. “He's coming over!”

  “Sex with a Supermodel is back on?” Lydia queried.

  “Yes,” Kiley affirmed. “Screw Marym. Tom Chappelle is mine!”

  “That's the spirit!” Lydia glanced at her watch. “I've been here for exactly ten minutes.”

  “So?” Kiley bounced onto the buttery soft gray Italian leather couch, buoyant with happiness.

  “So it took me six to get here, walking downhill. I have a half hour for a break. I suck at math, but I think that leaves me fourteen minutes to slog back to the gulag.”

  “Well, that sucks.” Kiley rose and hugged her friend. “Thanks for coming over to see my new digs.”

  “You're welcome, even if I am terminally jealous. I'll see you at the club tomorrow?”

  “I don't know yet. I have to find out what they want me to do.”

  “I hope Esme gets back soon,” Lydia moaned. “I really need someone to bitch with and you're way too happy.”

  They said their goodbyes and Lydia departed, after which Kiley flew around the guesthouse getting ready for Tom. Did she have time to shower? She couldn't risk it. She wet an embroidered washcloth that she found in a stack on the white wicker shelf in the bathroom and gave herself a quick onceover. What to wear with a boy who was about to undress you? She decided on her white Gap V-neck tee that hinted at the faintest of cleavage, and her usual jeans. This was her, and, she finally believed, it was her whom Tom wanted. But… a little perfume couldn't hurt. She fished the sample vial of Clinique Happy she'd found in her bathroom at Evelyn's out of her purse and applied some to the pulse points on her wrists and neck. Happy indeed.

  Fifteen minutes later, he was knocking on the front door. As soon as he walked in, she was in his arms, his lips on hers. “Kiley,” he whispered.

  “I'm so glad you're here,” she whispered back. He wore a Ben Sherman striped polo and darkly tinted jeans, and looked incredibly hot. This was it. This was finally, finally it. Boldly, she led him into her bedroom.

  He sat on the edge of her pillow-strewn bed. “I don't know. I think you'd better call your mother first.”

  What? “You've got to be kidding. Do you want her to call out the National Guard?”

  Tom laughed, pulled Kiley down onto the bed, and tickled her. “To tell her that you're not working for Evelyn Bowers anymore.”

  She bopped him with a down-pillow “Oh, you think you're soooo funny.”

  “So do you.”

  Then his lips were on hers again, and she couldn't think of anything except him.

  Lydia ran her hand over the hood of Luis's new Toyota Spyder, which was parked on the street in front of his rented house, a cute Craftsman-style bungalow on Twenty-third Avenue in Santa Monica. On the ride back to his place after he had picked her up at the moms' house, Luis had explained that he shared this house with another golf pro, a guy named Jeff who taught at the Riviera Country Club.

  “Great car,” she murmured. “Nice engine. You gonna let me take her for a drive?”

  Luis smiled. “I have something else in mind. Follow me.”

  “If you think we're going to have sex, think again,” Lydia told him, but followed him up the short driveway to the detached garage just to the north of the house. “I only have sex when I want to have sex, and bribes don't work.”

  He looked at her curiously. “How often do you want to?”

  “Well, actually, to date I've had sex zero times,” she admitted in her usual forthright manner, as she noticed a For Sale sign on the small front lawn. “But that is beside the point. Hey, how much are they asking for this place?”

  The home was no great shakes—just a little bigger than her guesthouse at the moms', and not in particularly good condition either. The white paint was peeling, the asphalt driveway was cracked and worn, and as they approached the garage, Lydia saw that the wooden garage door was rotting badly.

  “Three bedrooms, one bathroom,” Luis recited. “Sixteen hundred square feet. Built in 1955. Needs a new furnace. Only three of the burners work on the stove, and the oven not at all. The backyard floods when it rains, and you can't run the microwave and an iron at the same time or else the fuses blow out.”

  “So how much?” Lydia asked again as Luis lifted up the garage door. It creaked uneasily on its track as he did. “A hundred fifty thousand?”

  “Try a million two.” Luis smiled thinly. “Kind of out of my price range. Which is why I'm thinking about moving to south Florida.”

  “That's a lot of money,” Lydia commented when the garage door was up.

  Luis flipped on a light. There, parked in the garage, was a gorgeous orange two-seater sports car. It had an open cockpit, just two doors, a metal luggage rack of some kind on the trunk, wheels with chrome hubs, and sparkling chrome front and rear bumpers.

  “Nineteen seventy-five Triumph Spitfire,” Luis proclaimed. “Fifteen-hundred-cc engine, wood-grain dashboard, hundred and twelve thousand miles on it. Four-speed manual transmission. Top speed of a hundred and twenty.”

  “Is this yours?” Lydia breathed, picturing herself behind the wheel of this beauty, tooling down Sunset Boulevard at twilight, waving to the cute guys she passed.

  “Yup. It needs some work. I don't think the clutch will last more t
han another few thousand miles. Ditto the tires. Take a look.”

  Lydia looked, though what she knew about automobile tires was negligible.

  “See?” Luis pointed. “Tread's almost gone. But you can take it home if you want it. It runs.”

  What?

  Something in her eyes must have said yes, because a set of car keys was soaring through the air toward her, courtesy of an easy toss from Luis. She reached up and caught them.

  Well. Here was a set of wheels, handed to her on a silver platter. She didn't have to pay for them either. “You're sure you don't expect sexual favors in return?”

  Luis laughed. “Only if you insist. It's on loan for as long as you need it. Just make sure it comes back to me in one piece. Driveable. I'm going to sell it eventually.”

  Okay, so the boy was funny. She wasn't that concerned about how the Spitfire would require significant repairs in a month or two, or how she would explain the acquisition of this vehicle to Billy. It didn't matter that she didn't officially have a driver's license, or that she barely knew the guy who was lending her the car. What mattered was that she now had a way to get from point A to point B—almost the price of admission to Los Angeles.

  She couldn't wait to see how shocked Anya would be. That would be fun.

  Uh-oh. There was one problem.

  “Umm … this car has a standard transmission?” Lydia asked.

  “Yup.”

  “I… can't say I've ever driven one before.” She didn't add the more salient detail, that she'd spent exactly two hours behind any kind of wheel at all. She might be outspoken, but she chose her spots. “Is it fun?”

  Luis laughed. “It is. Start 'er up. I'll show you how it's done. You definitely look like you can handle a stick.”

  Oh yeah.

  As it turned out, Lydia could very well handle it. Luis took her back to the parking lot at Santa Monica College, which was only a mile or so from his house. There, he gave her the world's quickest lesson on how to handle a clutch and the gearshift. It took Lydia only about fifteen minutes to figure out which foot should go on which pedal. Though she stalled out a few times, and Luis warned her about the challenges of starting a stick-shift car from a dead stop while going uphill, he quickly decided that she was competent enough to take the Spitfire out on the Pacific Coast Highway.

  Of course, Lydia didn't bother to volunteer that she could measure the time that she'd been driving in hours instead of in days, and that she merely had a learner's permit. It was a don't-ask, don't-tell policy. Luis didn't ask, and Lydia didn't tell.

  The Pacific Coast Highway was clear; it was a perfect moonlit evening. With Luis urging her on, Lydia raced through the gears as they sped north through Santa Monica and Malibu. It was only when Lydia reached eighty-five miles an hour on a straightaway that Luis suggested she use some caution.

  “Not that I'm opposed to driving fast,” he told her. “It's just that this is a famous speed trap.”

  They stopped for a drink at a bar that Luis knew in Malibu— the bartender was only too happy to spike Lydia's Coke with a healthy shot of vodka—where they toasted Lydia's newfound prowess behind the wheel. Luis drank only non-fortified orange juice, so Lydia felt free enough to have another spiked Coke, and then another. They danced to the tunes wailing from the jukebox, Lydia snaking her arms around his neck sexily as they did.

  There were various herbal highs available in the Amazon, and Lydia had tried most of them. But alcohol was new to her. She had no idea how much would make her tipsy, drunk, or utterly smashed. And frankly, she didn't feel like thinking about it because she was having way too much fun.

  “Ready to take me for a ride, Mr. Pro?” Lydia whispered. Because what the hell. It was only flirting. And it wasn't as if she was married. It also wasn't as if flirting with Billy got her anywhere.

  “Definitely,” Luis told her.

  The drive back to Santa Monica took only about twenty minutes, Luis pointedly racing through the speed trap on the PCH, to Lydia's delight. To celebrate, she whipped off her heather gray cutoff sweatshirt, whirled it overhead, and then flung it into the night. The wind caught it and it took off behind them for parts unknown, leaving her clad only in her recently acquired secondhand Rock & Republic jeans (which she cinched with a gray ribbon since they were far too large) and a silvery Cosabella bra shot through with inky embroidery. It was one she had taken from her aunt's stash days before, but you couldn't very well return worn underwear.

  “I've had that sweatshirt since I was thirteen,” Lydia chortled. She realized that she was more than a little bit toasted, but she was having such a great time that she didn't really care.

  Luis eyed Lydia's flimsily covered breasts with appreciation. “You look better without it.”

  She leaned against him, her head swimming. “You say the sweetest things.”

  Luis draped an arm casually around the back of Lydia's seat. Then Yellowcard's “Ocean Avenue” came on the CD player, and Luis turned it up loud enough that it blasted through the Triumph's open cockpit.

  “You know this song?” Luis shouted.

  “No way! I lived in the rain forest for eight years! No radio, no nothing!” she screamed into the wind.

  “For real? Cool!”

  “No, hot!” Lydia joked, and decided she was perhaps the funniest person she knew. She turned to Luis. Or rather, both Luises. Huh. Doubles. That was definitely an alcohol thing. How much had she ended up drinking, anyway? A lot. A lot a lot.

  Whatever. She was having too much fun to worry about it, zooming down the highway with a cute boy rock and roll blaring on the sound system and the Pacific Ocean just yards away. This was what she had dreamed of in Amazonia when she'd thought about coming to California and being a nanny. The only things missing were five or six credit cards in a mink-pelted Coach hobo bag over her shoulder. Even that would be remedied soon enough, she decided. She was cute, smart, and unstoppable.

  If there were any other traits necessary to thrive in Hollywood, she didn't know what they were.

  “Tom,” Kiley sighed.

  “Kiley”

  Kiley sighed again. It was going to be perfect this time. The stars had finally lined up the way they were supposed to for her. Now, they were together in her bed, in her darkened bedroom, in her guesthouse, at her new home in Beverly Hills, on the property of people who were shaping up to be the best employers any nanny could ask for.

  Of course, she hadn't called her mother, because neither she nor Tom wanted to stop what they were doing. And yet, even after all the buildup, Tom insisted on going slowly. She was still in her white bikini panties and her T-shirt was still firmly over her bra; Tom was giving Kiley a back rub with almond lotion that was part of a welcome basket of toiletries she had found in the master bath. The back rub seemed to go on for an hour; it was so relaxing that Kiley felt like purring. Then he got up and found some L'Occitane lavender candles, which he lit and placed around Kiley's bedroom. He flipped through the radio stations, finally settling on some classical music.

  Tom kissed her. It was heavenly. She got on her knees and tugged his T-shirt over his head, then ran her fingers down his chiseled abs. What had she been so nervous about? This was fantastic. She wound her arms around his neck and kissed him. His hands traveled under her T-shirt and up her back, still slick and almond-scented from his massage. She pulled the T-shirt over her head and felt his large fingers unhooking the back of her cottony bra.

  Whap-whap. Whap-whap.

  The sounds were coming from the home gym next door.

  “What the hell was that?” Tom leaned on one elbow, listening intently.

  Whap-whap. Whap-whap.

  “I have no idea,” Kiley replied, brushing back the hair that had fallen onto her face.

  Whap-whap. Whap-whap.

  The noise continued, loud and rhythmic.

  “What's back there?” Tom asked.

  “Their gym,” Kiley reported. “Beth and Dirk told me they like to work out. Mayb
e they wait until Grace is asleep.”

  She checked the clock on her nightstand. Eleven o'clock. Surely Grace was asleep. Yes, that had to be it.

  The commotion from the gym got louder. Now, faint rock and roll was trickling through the wall, along with the rhythmic thumping. It certainly interfered with the mellow ambiance of the flickering lights and sensuous classical music.

  Well, they didn't have to let it ruin their evening, Kiley decided. She leaned forward and kissed Tom. Everything was going great again, when whoever was working out next door turned up the AC/DC. The vase on the dresser actually started to vibrate.

  “Jeez,” Tom groused. “They could have a little consideration.”

  “Oh, come on,” Kiley said playfully. “How long can their workout be?”

  “I don't—”

  The wall behind the headboard of Kiley's bed actually started shaking. Hard. Then they heard the sounds of people cheering.

  Cheering?

  “How many people could possibly be in there?” Kiley wondered aloud.

  Tom got to his feet and started scrounging around for his clothes.

  “Where are you going?” Kiley asked.

  “To check it out.” He slipped his Calvin Klein—of course— jeans on. Kiley decided to go with him. She wiggled into her jeans and pulled her T-shirt back on. Then the two of them, barefoot in the warm evening, picked their way around the guesthouse in the dark toward the home gym in the back. It wasn't so hard to see, because every light in that gym was blazing, illuminating the stone path that led there from Kiley's front door. There was an auditory trail to follow too, because loud classic rock and roll—Kiley now recognized the Rolling Stones—blared through windows that she hoped were open. Otherwise, the volume inside the gym had to be earsplitting.

  They reached the first exterior window of the home gym, a structure nearly as big as Kiley's guesthouse but built all on one floor. The window was indeed wide open. They peered inside.

  Kiley's jaw dropped. Dirk and Beth were indeed “working out”—right up against the gym wall that was also the wall behind Kiley's bedroom. So were ten or fifteen other naked couples, in various combinations of men, women, and gym equipment used in ways that Kiley never had even imagined. Everyone was so preoccupied that no one noticed Kiley and Tom gaping at the window.