Resurgence (36 page)
“Should I have the New York office contact a mortuary?”
“No, I took care of that. Nate wanted to, but I left word I was making it my responsibility.”
An associate comes in and leaves the documents asked for on one corner of the desk. Laurel approves both copies and stores them in her bag.
“That seems to be everything,” she says and gets up to leave.
He extends a restraining hand. “No it isn’t. I’m free for another hour and I’d like to hear about your new life. Fill me in about the boys, the adapting you’ve had to do, the surprises, the disappointments. All of it.”
“Are you sure?”
Good lord, does she hear wistfulness in his request? Nostalgia?
“Yes, very sure,” David says. “It’s been too long . . . way too long.”
“But you did omit mention of Aurora’s head, as was agreed upon before I bailed on you last night.” Nate grimaces as grapefruit juice slides down his inflamed gullet into an acid stomach.
“I did
not
tell Laurel the true circumstances of Aurora’s decapitation because, as was agreed, it would not have served any real purpose other than to gross her out. I told her everything else, though, and I wish you’d stop saying you bailed on me.” Amanda takes a piece of toast from the rack on the kitchen breakfast table. “You didn’t let me down, you know.”
“Then you didn’t mind that we didn’t get it on last night.”
“Under the circumstances . . . no, I didn’t, and before you take that the wrong way, I could have been insulted that you preferred getting drunk to diddling me, but—”
“
Didd
-ling! Jesus, I haven’t heard that expression in I don’t know when. But that’s what’s so charming and quaint about—”
“Don’t try to butter me up. As I was saying, I could have been upset about being neglected if it hadn’t been so obvious you needed escape more than . . . umm . . . release.”
“You don’t have to be so damn understanding. I wasn’t that bad off then, and I’m not so bad off now. No headache to speak of, just thirst and a little awareness in my gut.”
“Good, because when you hear what I have to say you may want to get drunk again.”
“What now? You have to go back to London unfucked?”
“When you talk like that I could believe you’re still drunk.”
“Trust me, I’m not, so go ahead, hit me with it.”
“Laurel has forbidden access to the coke residue you found in her house.”
“What? Say
what
?” He squints across the table at her as though a narrowed view would improve comprehension.
“We are not to tamper with it in any way.”
“Why, for chrissake?”
“On one hand, I’d say because she can’t be sure her siblings aren’t responsible, and on the other hand, I’d say because she doesn’t believe it.
Any
of it, I mean. I’m gonna say she doesn’t
want
to believe it,” Amanda says.
“Shit.”
“Yes. Shit.”
“I give the fuck up.” He half rises from his chair. “That’s it. I can’t help these people if they won’t allow themselves to be helped.” He sits back down. “I’m calling off Newblatt and I might as well tell Brownie he can cool his jets.” He slugs down more juice as though to further punish himself.
“Dammit
, Amanda, I saw myself meeting today with one law enforcement agency or another—maybe even the cop who took my statement yesterday—and finally making progress with this. And now . . .”
“Nate . . . please don’t—”
“Don’t tell me not to give up. Without Laurel’s cooperation, this isn’t going
anywhere
.”
“Can you really be so sure?”
“You bet your ass I can.” He gets up to pour coffee, spills some, blots it with a piece of toast.
Amanda follows his actions like she’s watching a vertical tennis match. “Before I forget,” she says once he’s settled down, “Laurel said she’d be taking care of the old lady’s funeral arrangements.”
“And there’s yet
another
way of telling me to butt out.”
Amanda spreads plum conserve on her toast, then scrapes most of it off. “Can I ask you something?” she says, her hazel eyes as close to green as he’s ever seen them.
“I’m waiting.”
“Do you hope to manage Colin again someday?”
“No. Absolutely not. Not under
any
circumstances. And you wouldn’t ask that if you didn’t think my current efforts were headed in that direction.”
“No such thing!”
“Bullshit! And you’re probably sitting there looking adorable as hell in my pajamas thinking that I’m courting you to further that ambition. Well you’re wrong!
Dead
wrong, as Colin would say.”
“Fine! Then what
are
you courting me for?”
“Is that what this is about, my declaring my intentions?”
“It’s what you’re making it about. All I did was ask a question I felt sure I knew the answer to. I asked to be certain-sure, that’s all.”
“It’s never crossed your mind that I could have an agenda where you’re concerned?”
“Of course it has. We’ve been all over this before. Before, when we first met, I never for a minute thought you weren’t attempting to use me. Laurel and I laughed about it—you know that—but things were different then. Now the thought wouldn’t have entered my mind if you hadn’t just accused me of harboring it.”
He swills down lukewarm coffee and squints at her again. “I
love
you, goddammit. Don’t you know that? Can’t you see that? I’m not courting you for anything but to be with me, to stay by my side. I don’t give a shit if you work for me or not. Just work with me. Okay?”
She doesn’t say anything. Just looks at him with those wonderful greentinged eyes that were so bright and focused a minute ago and are now dulled and blurred with tears.
“What? Don’t tell me I fucked that up too.”
“You didn’t fuck anything up.” She sniffs and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “Last weekend I talked a little about you with Laurel. I confess to having expressed some worry and confusion about our relationship and she made me see how silly I was. She said she experienced something similar when reality caught up with her and everything seemed too good to be true. She was right, that
was
what was bothering me—everything seemed
way
too good to be true.”
“Do you still feel that way?”
“Yes, more than ever.”
“Does that mean you love me?”
“Yes, more than ever.”
“One thing . . .
You
are too good to be true.” He leans across the table and kisses her the way he should of that time in the London pub when he first brought her to tears, and all the other times she might have been wondering exactly where she fit in.
As though nothing earthshaking had taken place in the last five minutes—or last half hour, for that matter—they clear away the breakfast things and return to the bedroom. Time is meaningless now that they have nowhere to go and nothing to prove today beyond their feelings for each other.
When he wakes at noon there’s no sign of Amanda. He’s on the leading edge of alarmed until he finds the note she left for him in the bathroom.
Nate
,
I’ve gone home to get some clothes. I’ll call when I start back. I sense that you don’t want to talk about the sore subject just yet, but I want you to know I haven’t given up. Not hardly. However, I feel the way you must have that day when you assembled all the elements you thought would best serve your client and he blew you off. I guess this is my turn because I now view Laurel as a client more than a friend
.
I love you
,
Amanda
Straight from a long rehearsal session in the studio and an extra long workout to compensate for yesterday’s lost opportunity, Colin delays showering to stop by his office and see what’s new.
No publications advertising his maturity are in prominence, just the usual bills and a few updates regarding the European tour. Of the latter, only one catches his eye. Something to do with security requirements; something new handed down from on high. Or so it appears at first glance. At second glance, the new rule looks more like the work of someone close to him who would have him routinely surrounded by bodyguards. A well-placed phone call should have that sorted in a matter of minutes.
He gets through to the chief toff at Ultimate Productions and learns, as expected, that the addendum to the standard contract did not originate with that office.
“Not that it isn’t a jolly good idea, lad,” the older man says, “but I’d no more try enforcing that than tell you how to tog yourself out. Know you too well. Futile, that.”
Colin rings off, snatches up the bogus directive and slams out of the office, his drying sweat be damned. “Nice try, love,” he mutters and takes the back stairs to the kitchen, where someone should be able to tell him where Laurel and the children are.
In the kitchen, Gemma Earle looks up from a task at the sink. “Tea party in the attic,” she says. “Thorne girls in attendance. In full regalia, they are, with entertainment scheduled after the refreshments.”
That’s more information than he needs, actually, and four flights of stairs is a greater distance than he’d like to cover just now. He’ll have worked up another sweat by the time he confronts Laurel. If he didn’t feel so bloody fucking insulted by this madly transparent attempt to control him, he might be able to wait till later, go at it like the coolheaded chap the American writer has him down for; he might be able to reason this out in a calm, mature fashion, like the cooperative bloke his management people say he is. But none of those attributes want to stick as he hits the first flight of stairs at a run, feeling like the poster boy for volatile behavior.
He’s not precisely dragging when he reaches the final flight—the enclosed stairs to the attic—but he has slowed down. There are children up there, after all. And not all of them are his to subject to an outburst of bad temper. Now he’s pure caution and consideration as he moves towards the top. Before his head clears the trapdoor-like opening at attic floor level, he realizes he can remain unseen and witness the goings-on by way of the tall mirrors no one’s thought to retire.
He stops to do just that and is immediately captivated by what he sees. Laurel is seated on the floor, wearing a hat fit for the Royal Enclosure at Ascot. Except it’s all a burlesque, as is the rest of her costume.
The hat is of the common straw gardening variety festooned with beekeeper’s netting, peacock plumes, pheasant feathers, and loops of garish beads that remind of Mardi Gras. Her frock, a floppy-sleeved, full-skirted affair that just may have been contrived of old curtains in the manner of Scarlett O’Hara, is ornamented with real roses that are starting to wilt. Her elbowlength fingerless gloves turn out to be athletic wear—altered tube socks, they are—and the lorgnette she’s waving about like an aristocrat, is fashioned of bent plastic drinking straws.
If that’s not enough to make him fall about laughing, the children’s costumes will. The three Thorne girls—Calliope, Cassiopeia, and Chrysanthemum—are decked out in mad combinations of Disney Princess and ballet costumes that make them look like nothing so much as fluffed-up insects. Simon and Anthony look more like pirates than the refined gentlemen their drawn-on mustaches, walking sticks, improvised cravats, and waistcoats make them out to be.
The children settle down as the entertainment begins with Laurel’s recitation of one of his old and nearly forgotten nonsense verses.
“Jeremiah Barely-There,”
Laurel starts off in a whispery voice that enchants everyone. Including him.
“
Happy chap without a care
,” she says, executing an appropriately dimwitted grin.
“Lives in a folly on Goosemud Road, shares his pudding with a Calico Toad.”
She ends the stanza with an exaggerated what-do-you-think-of-that? expression and the younger members of the audience openmouthed and wanting more.