Ten minutes later, they were in a borrowed truck, rattling away from the airport.
Cole held up a hand against the sun, which blared in at an uncomfortable angle. The window was open, the dirty, hot air sweeping in and over him, and he reached to raise it, chuckling a little at the foreign feel of an actual window crank in his hand.
DeLuca held the phone away from his mouth. “I’m tracking down the local Envision contact now.” They rounded a tight turn, and Cole gripped the handle firmly, looking around for a seatbelt. Nothing.
“Bennington Payne?” DeLuca barked into the phone. “Where are you right now?”
CHAPTER 24
When Ben answered the phone, I relaxed my arms, lying fully back in the kiddie pool, my head propped up against the edge, a folded towel acting as a pillow.
Ben’s linen pants wandered my way, his cell against his ear, the other hand pressed against his free ear, as if he were in a rock concert and not the middle of nowhere. He was probably getting poor reception. I closed one eye and half-squinted his way, the nosy half of me eavesdropping.
“Ummm… Quincy?” He said the city as if it was a question.
“I’m sorry, who is this?”
I opened both eyes when he did the frantic snapping waving thing at me. I sat up and raised my eyebrows, waiting for more.
“Yes sir. But… now? I thought that—okay. Yes sir.” I wondered how many ‘yes sirs’ this conversation was going to involve. Wondered how I was supposed to piece any of this together when all I had were half sentences full of Ben stammering.
“What’s your address?” That question was aimed at me, a loud whisper further soundproofed by his hand atop the receiver.
I told him, this change in the conversation certainly taking a turn toward Interesting. Ben repeated it into the phone, then—with a final ‘yes sir’—ended the call.
I didn’t think a man could be paler than my sweet vampire, but oh… oh… one can. I watched his face lose all color, the push of his cell into his pants pocket a fumbling, awkward movement.
“What’s happening?” I demanded, making the effort to stand, my bathing suit leaking thin streams down my legs.
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing dramatically. He looked at me, my worn black bathing suit, then down at the kiddie pool, as if some answer lay in its bright blue depths, then back at the house, his rental car parked at an odd angle underneath the dogwood tree, then back at me.
“Cole Masten is here.”
“Where?” Here was a very particular location. And I knew, for a fact, that he wasn’t here here. Yet, with an almost sinking certainty, my address just blindly passed over, I suddenly realized that here here was an eminent possibility, and I stepped out of the kiddie pool quickly, crossing the dry grass, until I stood right in front of Ben.
“Where?” I repeated with enough aggression for him to start.
“In Quincy. Just left the airport. That was his attorney. He wanted to know where I was, is bringing Cole here now, said something about his assistant being in the hospital.” The words came out in a mad rush, as if they wouldn’t be true if spoken fast enough, and I stepped back a step just to get away from their stench. “How far away is the airport?”
I closed my eyes, tried to think. “Five. Maybe ten minutes. Holy shit.” I glanced back down at my bathing suit, thought about my house, the dirty dishes in the sink, my tampon box on top of the toilet, the remnants of Ben’s and my mani-pedi party still on the coffee table, mail scattered on the table… this was bad. I took off running, the white-linen-panted gay close on my water-pruned heels.
“See, the Thompson family is one of the original forty-three. That was really the root of the problem. Summer is a sweet girl and all, but she just doesn’t have the family background, the rearing to handle difficult times with grace. That was the problem. You know the girl has no father. That should tell you something right there.”
“Marilyn, she has a father. He lives in Connecticut, that’s what Betty Anne says. He has some flesh-eating disorder where he can’t be around other people. That’s why they moved here.”
“That has got to be the most idiotic thing you have ever said. No, she doesn’t have a father. He ran off when Francis was pregnant with Summer; that’s the real story.”
CHAPTER 25
It turned out that the window didn’t roll all the way up. It was broken. Which was just as well since it was too hot to be in a truck with no air conditioning and no airflow. Brad DeLuca chuckled; Cole rolled the window back down, and took the phone that Brad passed him.
“The guy said he’s at 4 Darrow Lane. Do me a favor and look it up on my GPS.”
Cole opened the maps app and found the address. “It’s two miles away. Keep straight for a bit.”
The attorney nodded, and they continued on for a moment in silence, Cole spreading his feet and bracing out against the rock of the truck.
“I haven’t driven a truck in years.” Brad commented. “I’ve missed the stick.”
Cole laughed. “Yeah. I miss my Ferrari’s stick right now.” Maybe they could trailer it over. The truck hit a large pothole, and his hands found the dash and held on. Maybe not. His car wouldn’t last its first trip down a dirt road. He glanced over at the man, his fierce profile different in the light of the afternoon sun, his strong hands loose and relaxed on the wheel, his body as comfortable in the old truck as it had been at the Beverly Hills restaurant. Maybe DeLuca wasn’t such an asshole. Maybe he was exactly what Cole needed—someone who wouldn’t kiss his ass—someone who would give it to him straight, without the expensive bullshit that everyone in Hollywood sprinkled on their gluten-free parfaits every morning.