Authors: Mae McCall
Suddenly, Cleo was exhausted. Nearly murdering a man, and
then being accosted in her own apartment, took a lot out of a girl. She ended
up in a super-soft purple t-shirt that came to slightly below mid-thigh, and
tube socks with bright blue stripes. No makeup. She towel-dried her hair and
left it hanging down, not caring that it still held enough moisture to make
damp places on her shirt.
***
Her apartment smelled good. Really good. Walking silently to
the kitchen, she stopped to stare at Jackson as he deftly jerked a small
skillet, flipping a pancake in the air. There was a pile of crisp bacon strips
draining on a paper towel. He dumped the pancake onto a steaming platter of
fluffy, brown wondrousness, and dropped in a huge knob of butter before
cracking five eggs in quick succession, one handed, and whisking them in a
bowl. Cleo’s mouth watered so suddenly that she nearly drooled on her shirt.
Jackson spotted her and gave a quick grin as he poured the
yellow glob from the bowl into the skillet. “Almost done,” he said as he turned
down the heat and began slowly stirring the eggs, almost massaging them with
his spatula. He had loosened his necktie, and the sleeves of his blue dress
shirt were rolled up to his elbows.
Cleo sat on a stool, squealing involuntarily as the cold,
chrome seat met the backs of her legs. Jackson looked at her sharply to see
what was wrong, and she just smiled and muttered, “Fucking cold.”
Within two minutes, Jackson was presenting her with a huge
plate of food: fluffy, golden eggs, a pile of bacon, and a huge stack of
perfectly matched pancakes. It looked so good that she was instantly annoyed.
“What, no syrup?” she said sarcastically. Without a word, he reached for a
heavy glass bottle that had been sitting in a pot of hot water, wiping off the
condensation with a towel before presenting her with a perfectly warmed pool of
Vermont’s finest.
He slid a stool around to the opposite side of the island
and pulled his plate so that he could sit directly across from her. For some
reason, this made her nervous. The jitters got worse when he opened a cabinet,
pulled out two glasses, and from who-knows-where suddenly had a pitcher in his
hand. She took a huge bite of pancake while he poured for them both, and then
nearly choked when she tossed back what she thought was plain orange juice, but
was in fact an expertly crafted screwdriver. Instead of pounding her on the
back like a normal man would have done, Jackson just laughed while she coughed
up her lungs, and then topped off her glass. Taking the second sip more slowly,
she decided it was delicious. In fact, the whole meal was freaking perfect.
“I didn’t think I had all this food in the house,” she said
as she bit a piece of bacon.
“You didn’t,” said Jackson. “Your refrigerator is full of
Chinese takeout in various stages of decomposition. Some of them have eyes.” He
sampled his own bacon before adding, “I had one of my employees go shopping.”
“I don’t remember owning a frying pan, either,” she said,
dragging her bacon through the warm maple syrup and catching an errant drop
with the tip of her tongue before cramming the entire piece in her mouth.
Jackson took a sip of his screwdriver. “I made sure to
include that, and several other items, on the shopping list,” he said, smiling
briefly before once again attacking his food.
“I don’t cook,” she replied, shrugging and focusing intently
on her pancakes. For some reason, she felt slightly embarrassed.
“I know,” was his simple reply, and as they ate in silence
for several more minutes, Cleo started to wonder
how
he knew that.
“I was only in the shower for fifteen minutes. That must
have been a pretty fast shopping trip,” she said finally. He didn’t answer her,
suddenly very interested in his food.
“Jackson, how long have you been in my apartment?” she
asked. She didn’t think he was going to answer her, but finally, he cleared his
throat and said, “I arrived about half an hour before you did.”
“And in that time, you decided that you were going to cook
me breakfast, so you searched my kitchen and you called someone, and they went
shopping for everything that you would possibly need, and they got it here
before I even showed up? I know they couldn’t have come while I was in the
shower, because it probably took you most of that time to cook it all.” She
stared at him. He didn’t make eye contact as he once again cleared his throat
and drank more of his screwdriver.
“Jackson, you’ve been in my apartment before, haven’t you?”
she asked. “How many times?”
“Just once,” he said gruffly. “Before today. When I knew
that I was coming over here, I had my driver stop to pick up some things on the
way. I remembered that you didn’t have any pots or pans, and I assumed that you
wouldn’t have any edible food, because you didn’t last time.”
She let it sink in. “So, you broke into my apartment before
today, and you plundered through my kitchen cabinets, and judged my food, and
you didn’t leave any message that you were even alive? Why did you bother to
show up today? Why reveal yourself to me now? For all you know, I might have
shot you as soon as I got a chance.”
He stared at her for several seconds, his expression
unreadable. Then, he stood up, dropped his napkin on his plate, and walked
around to her side of the island. Taking her hand, he pulled her up from her
own stool and walked her to her bedroom. As they crossed the threshold, she
tried not to dig in her heels and resist the gentle tug on her wrist. He
smirked a little, as though he knew what was going through her mind, and then
he pulled her to the center of the room and turned so that they were both
facing the wall above her doorway, with their backs to her bed. There, in even
rows, fedoras hung on nails, their colorful stripes and plaids in contrast
against the blue-green wall. There were twenty-seven in all, every single one
containing a tag that read
T. Knight & Sons; Custom Hatters, San Fran.
CA
. Just to the left of the doorway, within easy reach, was a familiar
green and black houndstooth hat.
“For some reason, I thought you might want to see me again,”
said Jackson.
They went out to the living room, where he ushered her to
the sofa before heading to the kitchen for the pitcher and glasses. He handed
her a fresh drink, topped off his own, and sat in the gray Adrian Pearsall
wingback chair that Cleo had found at a local antique store. For a moment,
neither of them said anything, choosing to focus on sipping their screwdrivers
and looking out the window. Finally the silence became too much for Cleo, so
she tried to lighten the mood. “Are you trying to get me drunk?” she asked
playfully.
He looked at her, one side of his face in shadow. “Yes,” he
said simply, before putting his glass on a leather coaster on the red coffee
table. He studied her for a moment, and she defiantly took another sip of her
cocktail. Fine. Let him get her drunk. She wasn’t afraid of Jackson.
Again, the silence became too much. “Why?” she finally
asked.
“Tell me what happened,” he said, leaning back in the chair
and clasping his hands just above his belt buckle.
She drank a little more, suddenly embarrassed about what had
gone on with the therapist, and angry at herself for feeling that way. For some
reason, this was not a conversation that she wanted to have with Jackson. So, she tried to change the subject. “You know I’m underage, right? You shouldn’t
be serving me alcohol.”
Jackson smiled and stood up very suddenly, causing her to
flinch and lean back instinctively. He picked up the pitcher, took the hand
that was holding her glass, and pulled her close enough to refill it. “Cleo,
you’ve never been underage for anything. You’ve also never been apologetic
about your life, so why start now? Tell me what happened.” Jackson put the
pitcher on its own coaster and sat back down, slouching in the chair.
So, she told him about the Nob Hill house, and the judge who
ordered her to get therapy, and the evolution of Dr. Davis’ interest in her as
a patient. He listened, stone-faced right up until the part where Cleo agreed
to screw her therapist in exchange for a free pass. It might have been the
shadows—the only light source was the city glow coming through the windows—but
Cleo thought he might be gritting his teeth while she described her liaison-turned-sour
from this evening, although he did chuckle at her total lack of remorse when it
came to recapping the actual moments of violence (ending with “so I brained the
bastard”).
“Oedipus, huh?” he said. “What did you do with the statue?”
“I dropped it in my purse on the way out,” she said as she
tipped up her glass to drain the dregs of her cocktail. “It’s over there
somewhere.” She wiggled her hand in the general direction of the front door.
Jackson burst out laughing, a full, deep belly laugh that
warmed Cleo to her toes (although the alcohol certainly helped). “Cleopatra,
you’re one in a million,” he said as he reached into his pants pocket and
pulled out a cell phone. Cleo was buzzed enough that she didn’t care when he
called someone and said, “The statue is here. Is everything clean? What about
the guy? Right. Keep me posted,” and then hung up. When he looked at her, she
was trying to lick the inside of her glass.
“Please, sir. Can I have some more?” she said, extending the
empty vessel toward him and giggling like an idiot. He filled it halfway and
took another sip of his own.
“Tell me what happened after I left,” he said. “At Harper
Valley.”
She scowled and drank a little more. “Asshole,” she said
venomously.
“Cleo, I had to leave. I had to get away. It would have been
pointless to find the file and then hang around and wait for Virginia to find
out about it. You’ve got to understand that I had to go,” he said, exasperation
heavy in his voice.
She knew he was right. She had always known. But he had been
her friend, and he left her, and she was still mad about it. And drunk. So, she
gave him the silent treatment, all the while telling him about how she was
giving him the silent treatment. “I’m not talking to Jackson anymore,” she
said, hiccupping once. “I’m giving him the silent treatment. Shhh! Don’t tell Jackson.”
“I looked for you,” he said finally. “About a year later,
after I had settled some things in my life, I sent someone to check on you at
the school, but you weren’t there anymore.”
“I graduated,” she said proudly, before her face fell and
she added, “But nobody came. Especially not my parents. Especially not my
sister. Especially not my good buddy Jackson.” She lay back on the sofa,
unaware that her t-shirt had crept up to hip level, and she wasn’t wearing
shorts. Jackson grabbed a blanket from the other wing chair and draped it over
her. She sighed at the sensation of soft cashmere over her bare legs. “That
feels so good,” she mumbled, stretching like a cat and then promptly falling
asleep. He barely managed to catch her glass before it tumbled to the floor.
31
There was a bulldozer in her apartment. That was the only
possible explanation for the horrendously loud sounds shredding her eardrums.
And, it was sitting on top of her, which was clearly why she couldn’t move her
legs. And the driver was shining a spotlight, or maybe thirty spotlights, right
at her face. Oh, God. She was dying.
Cleo experimentally opened one eye, afraid that opening both
of them would split her skull in half. There was a moment of disorientation as
she tried to figure out where she was without killing too many brain cells. She
was in her bedroom, in her very own bed. Which was weird, because the last thing
she remembered was talking to Jackson in the living room. She raised her head
to look at her legs, noticing that the blankets and sheets had gotten wrapped
tightly around them, binding her ankles together. One tube sock was balled up
under her cheek, leaving a red, wrinkled impression on her skin. The other was
still mostly on her foot.
She rolled over and squinted one eye to look at the rest of
her bed. She was the only occupant, but there was a yellow piece of paper
wrapped around something heavy. Reaching for it, she missed twice before
finally cupping her hand and scooping the package closer to her face. When she
unfolded the letter, the switchblade fell out.
“Not again, you asshole!” she growled, sitting up so fast
that she wailed in pain and had to use both hands to keep her head attached to
her body. Once the spinning had stopped, she read the note.
C.—
Here’s your knife back. I left breakfast on the counter
for you. I’ll be back around noon. Don’t go anywhere.
J.
p.s. Try not to maim anybody before I get back.
p.p.s. Nice bed, Cleopatra.
“If I maim anybody, it’ll be you, jerk,” she muttered as she
very carefully got out of bed. But she couldn’t quite tame the smile that
tugged at the corner of her mouth as she limped to the bathroom to brush her
teeth and figure out her wardrobe.
Half an hour later, looking much better than she felt, Cleo
walked barefoot into her kitchen to examine this so-called breakfast that Jackson
had left. Expecting mushy leftover pancakes, Cleo was pleasantly surprised to
discover a bakery box of chocolate filled croissants, a bowl of fresh pineapple
chunks, and a note that said “juice in refrigerator—really juice this time.”
Beside the fruit bowl, he had also left a bottle of fancy water and a full
bottle of pain reliever pills.
Unsure of her stomach’s reliability, Cleo ate a couple of
pineapple pieces and half of a croissant, and washed it down with the entire
bottle of water and four of the pills. It was 10am, and Jackson claimed that he
would be back by lunchtime. He had told her not to leave, but since when was he
her boss? She put on her favorite black and white striped sneakers, grabbed a
pair of sunglasses and the green and black fedora, and shoved a credit card and
some cash in the front pocket of her jeans. Cleo needed to go shopping.
***
When she got back at three o’clock, Jackson was in her
apartment, and he was pissed. Cleo nonchalantly dropped her shopping bags and
hat on the sofa and pushed her sunglasses up on her head. “Well, howdy
stranger,” she said, winking as she went to her bedroom for no reason
whatsoever. After silently counting to twenty, she strolled back into the
living room, where Jackson was grinding his teeth so hard she could hear it
from across the room. “Looks like somebody finally learned to pick locks.”
“I told you not to go anywhere,” he growled.
“And you’re not the boss of me, so I went shopping,” she
retorted, detouring to the kitchen to pour herself some juice. She came back
into the living room and dropped to the floor, spreading her legs out on the soft
rug and resting her back against the seat of the empty Pearsall chair.
Jackson closed his eyes and forced himself to take a deep
breath. “And I told you I’d be back at noon, and you’re three hours late.”
Cleo rolled her eyes, just to piss him off, and replied,
“Right, like I have a reason to trust that you’re coming back.” In truth, she
had gotten tired of shopping in plenty of time, but had told the taxi driver to
circle the city for an hour just to make Jackson wait.
He stood up quickly and started to pace. For the first time,
Cleo really looked at him. Eight years would make him thirty-three now, but he
didn’t look it. He was the same old Jackson, the same buzzed hair and beautiful
blue eyes, but he seemed…different. A little more muscular. A little more steel
in his expression. Harder. More confident (which she hadn’t thought was
possible). He had neatly folded his suit coat over the back of the chair and
rolled up his sleeves, and she could see cords of tension in his forearms as he
put his hands on his hips and turned to face her.
“Cleo, do you remember almost killing a guy last night? Do
you remember coming home with blood on your dress? What possessed you to go
shopping fourteen hours later like nothing had happened? You know, like the
police find a guy with his skull caved in, and think ‘hey, maybe we should
track down that chick who was here last night’, the one who has the bloody
weapon in her purse?” he snapped.
Cleo pouted. “But you said you’d take care of everything,”
she said, shrugging one shoulder like it was the simplest thing in the world.
He stared at her for several seconds, and then visibly
relaxed, the hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I did, didn’t
I?” he said, walking toward her with his hands in his pockets. When he stood
close enough that she had to look up to make eye contact, he added, “What was
that about you not trusting me? You know, just a few minutes ago? I tell you
I’ll be back at lunchtime, and you refuse to believe me. But I say that I’ll
take care of a bloody near-murder for you and you just accept it as fact?” He
squatted down so that his face was even with hers. “So, which is it? Do you
trust me, Cleo?”
She hadn’t really thought about it, which meant that she did
trust him. When he had promised to take care of Dr. Davis, she had believed him
so absolutely that she hadn’t wasted any more time thinking about the doctor.
The realization was slightly overwhelming. “Yes,” she said softly, before
taking a quick sip of juice and changing the subject. “You said near-murder,”
she said, clearing her throat. “So, I take it Dr. Davis made it?”
“You clocked him hard,” said Jackson, settling on the rug to
face her, with his back against the coffee table and his legs stretched out
beside hers. “He’s still unconscious, but he’s not dead.”
“When can I expect the police to knock on my door?” she
asked.
Jackson smiled. “I told you I’d take care of everything,
didn’t I? There’s nothing for you to worry about. I had my people clean it up,
get the doctor to an alternate location with medical assistance, straighten up
the office like you were never even there. The only problem was that they
couldn’t find your weapon, but when you told me it was in your purse, I had one
of my guys…lose it. Permanently. So, like I said, there’s nothing for you to
worry about.”
She let that sink in. Then, another thought occurred to her.
“Wait—how did you know what even happened? The phone started ringing while the
blood was still wet,” she said.
His gaze drifted to the window. “One of my employees was
watching you from across the street.”
She sat up a little straighter. “Why?” she demanded. He
refused to look at her, so she poked him in the thigh. Hard. “Jackson, why were
you having me watched? It wasn’t the first time, was it?” Still no response. “And
whoever it was called you and said “we’ve got a problem,” and you immediately
jumped in the car, picked my locks, and waited for your guy to deliver me like
a package.”
He cleared his throat. “Actually, I have a key.”
“You have a key to my apartment,” she said flatly, crossing
her arms over her chest.
He had the grace to blush. “Yeah, I…acquired it from your
realtor when you bought the place.”
The silence was deafening. Cleo stood up to walk away, but
he reached out and grabbed her ankle, squeezing it slightly to make her look
down at him. “I just wanted to be able to check on you from time to time.” She
kicked backwards to release her ankle from his grip and stormed into her bedroom,
slamming the door.
In her anger, she forgot to lock it. (Actually, since she
lived alone, she had never locked the bedroom door, so it never occurred to
her.) She was pacing back and forth like an agitated tiger when Jackson quietly
came in. He leaned against the door and watched her warily. Finally, he started
talking.
“You probably don’t remember, because you were drunk, but
last night I told you that I looked for you at Harper Valley once I had figured
things out, but you weren’t there. I didn’t know if your parents let you leave,
or you got expelled, or what. I still don’t know how you managed to graduate
when you did, but we’ll talk about that later.” She still paced, but he could
tell that she was listening, so he continued. “A few years after that, I heard
through the grapevine that Virginia Adams was on the warpath because something
had gone missing, and for some reason, she thought it had to do with me. My
source told me that she was planning to track you down, because she thought for
some reason that you knew where I was. So, I arranged, as an anonymous third
party, to pay her off to calm her down, so that she would leave us both alone.
I had one of my people keep tabs on you, just to make sure you were okay. You
know, just check in on you every few months—like an older brother. When your
parents died, I called the house, but the housekeeper wouldn’t tell me
anything, and I decided to back off.” He noticed that she had stopped pacing
and was standing on the other side of the room with her back to him, listening.
Finding a small amount of hope in that, Jackson straightened and walked across
the room, until he was standing directly behind her.
“So, imagine my surprise when I get a call from Tom at the
hat shop telling me that a very strange girl had shown up and ordered three
fedoras, the same size as the one she was wearing. And that the girl, who Tom
said was very beautiful, had told him that she had decided to move to San Francisco. He thought it was noteworthy, because the girl was wearing a hat made from a
custom fabric that he had only ever sold to me. Naturally, I decided to look
into it, being the sort of man who has had to look over his shoulder once or
twice. I found out you were looking at this place, and I persuaded the realtor
to make it as easy as possible for you to buy it. I had him give me a spare
key—I don’t know why. I told myself it was just in case you had an emergency,
because you don’t have anyone else. Maybe that was the reason, maybe not. What
I do know is that Tom tells me the beautiful girl comes once a month to order
hats, and she always acts like she’s looking for someone. I started to think
that maybe it was me.”
They stood there, not moving, for a solid minute. Finally,
she turned around to face him. “You were my shadow, weren’t you? Following me
in the city at night?”
He smiled slightly. “Sort of. I wanted to make sure nothing
happened to you, because, by the way, it’s stupid for a beautiful girl to go
wandering through the city alone in the dark. Sometimes, it was me. Sometimes,
I had one of my guys look after you. I instructed them not to interfere, not to
make themselves known to you, for any reason unless you were in danger. Which
is why you got caught at Nob Hill. If it had been me that night, I would have
handled it, but my guy thought he was doing the right thing. But then I
figured—hey, therapy’s better than jail. The girl’s okay. It was just strange
that you had to keep going over and over again, so I posted a guy across the
street. That Davis guy’s got a reputation, and it made me suspicious.” He
reached out and tugged the sleeve of her shirt until she reluctantly turned to
face him.
After a few seconds, she spoke. “So, I get why you came here
last night, Mr. White Knight Jackson saving the damsel in distress. But why did
you break in the time before, when I wasn’t in trouble, and you clearly had no
intention of ever letting me know you were around?”
He cleared his throat and looked at the floor. “I don’t
know. I just—needed to see your place. See the things you picked out for
yourself. Following you at night was…interesting. And fun. But being here,
without you knowing, just made me feel like I was…more a part of your life.
More…I don’t know,” he said, running a hand over his hair and looking
flustered.
“Connected,” said Cleo, and he looked up at her and nodded
warily, as though he expected her to flip out. But really, Cleo knew exactly
what he meant. She had been doing it to strangers for years, but the revelation
that Jackson was curious about her was intriguing. Thinking about what he might
have done without her knowledge—feeling her clothes, smelling her shampoo,
sitting on her furniture—was kind of exciting. The more she thought about it,
the more her heart pounded. Knowing that Jackson had been in her apartment was
more intoxicating than any of her own journeys into the homes of others.
Her sudden, brilliant smile instantly made him suspicious.
He took a cautious step backward, and wondered where she had concealed the
switchblade on her person. But instead of attacking him, all she said was, “How
much did you pay to keep Virginia off our backs?”