Barely able to keep her eyes open, Marla flipped through other pages and each time she saw her father, something inside her recoiled, as if she were afraid of him, as if . . . as if whatever she’d done in her life, it wasn’t good enough for him.
“This is crazy,” she mumbled, blinking hard, but so damned tired she couldn’t stay awake a second longer. She shoved the albums aside and sank into the pillows. She’d just doze for a little while, and then when she was clearheaded again, she’d tackle the problems, but when she slipped into sleep she dreamed, and none of the people in the dream had any faces, they walked around her, spoke out of mouths connected to no eyes or noses, laughed and joked, never including her.
She was an outsider. Alone. Isolated. She heard voices, but couldn’t speak. It was as if she were invisible . . . somewhere far off a baby cried . . . and a voice, one she should recognize, saying, “I know, I know, but from now on, just jot down who called and I’ll give her the message. Don’t bring her the phone. It’s too soon and too embarrassing for her. She looks dreadful. The poor thing can barely speak with her mouth wired as it is. Really, it’s in her best interest.”
Marla wanted to protest . . . the woman was talking about her. The baby stopped crying and Marla, nestling into the bed, rolled onto her stomach. She was so tired, so blasted tired. When she woke up, then she’d fix things, the people would have faces again . . . when she woke up . . .
“So Tough Guy’s all right?” Nick asked, sitting on the edge of his hotel room bed and nudging off one shoe with the toe of the other. Cradling the phone between his ear and shoulder, he leaned back on the pillows and stared up at the tie-dyed canopy of his four-poster.
“Ye-up, as well as can be ’spected,” Ole said. “I’ve got him with me and he’s purty good, jes’ keeps lookin’ down the lane fer ya.”
“I thought I’d be back sooner,” Nick said. “Bit it might take longer.”
“It figures.”
Nick frowned as he thought how deeply he was getting ensnared in this Marla mess. But then, he supposed, his entanglement had been inevitable. As it always had been when it came to that woman. It was odd, though, seeing her in the hospital all battered and bruised, his bitterness at war with the pity he felt for her. Poor little rich girl. Or, more likely, Poor, wretched, rich bitch.
“Don’t ya worry about Tough Guy none,” Ole was saying. “I’m watchin’ him and the Notorious as if they was my own.”
“Thanks.” Stretching the phone cord, Nick walked in his stocking feet to the window overlooking Haight Street. “I’ll let you know when I’ll be back.”
“ ’Preciate it.” Ole hung up and Nick rubbed the crick from his neck. He’d been tense from the moment he’d seen Alex in the parking lot at the marina in Devil’s Cove. It had only increased with each passing day. He looked up the hill. Somewhere up there Marla was recuperating, hopefully starting to remember. His conscience twinged a bit for there were certain parts of his life that would best be forgotten. But they lingered, just under the surface where memories of dark corners, hot skin and the musky smell of sex was ever-present. Marla had been the most provocative woman he’d ever known.
The only one who had really gotten to him.
No matter what the circumstance, whenever they’d been together, passion had sizzled around the edges of their conversation, in the sultry glances she’d cast in his direction, in the butterfly soft touch of her fingers against his neck or chest. Never had any woman affected him so. Not before. Not after.
He’d been foolish enough to think that it wasn’t her, but them. The two of them with some kind of cosmic, unique chemistry. Of course, he’d been wrong. And he’d been old enough that he should have known better. Twenty-four wasn’t exactly a kid, but he’d lost all sense of sanity when he’d been around her.
“Shit,” he muttered under his breath as he returned the receiver to its cradle. He was supposed to go up to the house for dinner. Eugenia had issued one of her commands masked as an invitation. He plowed stiff fingers through his hair.
Knuckles rapped softly against his door.
Scowling, he crossed the room and yanked hard on the knob. On the other side of the threshold, a tiny fist raised to beat on the door again, stood Cherise. “Oh, good, I was afraid you might not be in,” she said, and without an invitation, breezed in on a cloud of some kind of perfume he’d smelled before—a long time before. She was nervous, though she tried to play it cool in her black leather jacket, jeans and matching sweater. Her blond hair was swept up and pinned on the back of her head with glittery clips and she wore more makeup than she needed. Gold eyes, rimmed in thick black eyelashes, stared at him. “I came here because I have something I want to talk to you about.”
“Wait a minute, how did you know where I was staying?” Nick asked, and she lifted a shoulder as she set a damp umbrella under the table.
“Monty found out somehow.”
“How would he know?”
“Beats me, but . . . he has connections.”
Whatever that meant. But then Montgomery Cahill had always been on the sneaky side. Uncle Fenton had been known to say that his son had a little snake oil in his blood. Nick believed it. He also thought everyone named Cahill had been blessed with that same genetic flaw. Nick let the comment slide as Cherise dropped into a chair near the window and glanced through the half-drawn curtains.
“You want a drink?”
“No . . . I . . . well, I gave that up when I accepted Jesus.” She shook her head vehemently and the little clips in her hair twinkled in the lamplight.
Fine. “But you won’t mind if I have one?”
“Suit yourself. I try not to judge.”
“Good idea,” he said, remembering her as a teenager and her affinity for marijuana, speed and LSD. Eventually she’d become a cocaine addict and between husbands two and three had gone through treatment. Now, it seemed, she’d found the Lord, through her latest husband. Nick opened the minibar and grabbed a can of beer. “You said you came here for a reason.” He popped open the tab and sat at the foot of the bed.
“It’s about Marla.” Cherise perched on the edge of the chair as if she expected to bolt at any second.
&nb