Breaking the Rules (22 page)

This way, though, they didn’t have to hunt her down. This way, they’d be watching and waiting for her to return.

“What if they don’t tell us?” Eden asked as they sat in front of the neighbor’s house so as to be not quite so obvious, the motor running to power the air-conditioning. She looked at Izzy. “You know. Where Ben is.”

He looked back at her, his dark eyes colorless in the deepening twilight. “Our Plan B is to call Greg’s church tomorrow.” He put his hand to his ear in the international symbol for talking on a cell phone, and said in voice that sounded a lot like Stewie from
Family Guy
, “Hello, is this the Church of Hatred and Intolerance? Yes, my name is Bob Muncher and I think I’ve come to the right place for this kind of help. Our son, Dickie, has been singing Elton John songs, in French, in the shower, and
everyone
knows that means he’s in there having gay sex with himself, so if you could recommend one of those places where we could send him so that we don’t have to face any actual scientific and medical truths about homosexuality …”

Eden had to laugh, but it came out sounding more like a sob. “I want him back tonight. I don’t want to have to wait until tomorrow.”

“I know,” Izzy said quietly as a car slowly drove past them. But it went past Greg and Ivette’s house, too, turning the corner at the end of the street. “But, Eed, he’ll be okay. He’s a pretty tough kid. Wherever he is right now, he knows you’re looking for him. He knows you’ll find him and get him out of there as soon as you can.”

She wasn’t so sure about that. Ben knew, firsthand, that she was a screwup when it came to saving the day.

“And he also knows that you’ve been talking to Dan,” Izzy pointed out. “And that the cavalry’s on its way.” He cleared his throat. “What time are he and Jenn getting in tomorrow?”

“Danny didn’t tell me,” Eden said. She turned to look at him. “Dick Muncher?”

Izzy smiled back at her. “You just got that now, huh?”

The last rays from the setting sun threw shadows that emphasized the sharp angles of his lean face. He was not a handsome man by most women’s definitions, but Eden had always found him heart-stoppingly attractive. He was so … alive. His outrageous sense of humor and keen intelligence radiated from him, and sparkled and danced in his eyes.

“Of course, I should talk,” he added, looking out at the street, eyes back on their target—the house. “I feel like I’m on a comprehension time delay, too. I’m running everything through the what-the-fuck filter, you know?”

“Yeah,” she said. She did know. Being here, with him, like this, was surreal and more than a little awkward—and it was just like him to bring that up. Still, she was enormously grateful for his presence. She took a deep breath. “I can’t thank you enough for helping me like this.”

“I’m happy to,” he said. “This is … beyond weird, it’s true. But you know me, I’m okay with weird.”

“If I were you, I’d hate me. I’d run away from me, screaming.”

“I don’t,” he said, glancing over at her again. “Hate you. I wish things had, um, ended differently between us. There were things I wanted to say.”

“I couldn’t stay,” Eden told him.

“I get that,” Izzy said. “I really do understand. Probably more than you think and—Heads up. Is that your mother’s car?”

Sure enough, someone in a newer-model SUV was pulling up in front the house. “I seriously doubt it,” Eden said. “Unless she’s started, like, selling drugs or hooking.”

Izzy looked at her.

“I’m kidding,” she said. “And no, I don’t let anyone do more than look, and screw you for thinking that I would.”

“I wasn’t—” he started to say as both the driver’s and front passenger’s doors opened, and two men climbed out into the street. “Okay,
maybe I
was
wondering, because, as long as we’re talking about this, hooking doesn’t seem—to me—to be that big a step away from stripping.”

“It is,” Eden said. “It’s a huge step.”

He didn’t say anything, but it wasn’t because he didn’t disagree. He was just focusing again on the two men in the street.

The taller guy was bald, and apparently driving had given him a wedgie, because he took a moment to do some serious adjustments to his balls before following the other guy to the front door. To be fair, though, he clearly didn’t know they were sitting here, watching.

“Who are they?” Eden wondered aloud.

“They’re not part of the team who kidnapped Ben?”

“No.”

“They’re both carrying,” Izzy said. “Shoulder holsters. You can tell from the way they hold their arms.”

Eden couldn’t tell, but she believed him. “Maybe they’re from Greg’s neo-Nazi prayer group.”

As they watched, Greg opened the front door a crack, peering out at the two men. There was a conversation in which the wedgie-free bald guy did most of the talking and …

“Okay,” Izzy said. “That was definitely meant to look like a police-badge flash, but it seemed kinda short to me—like
Don’t look too closely at this ID I picked up from the Halloween Shop, along with my beat-cop costume …
How stupid is Greg, exactly?”

“Exactly?” she asked. “Somewhere between Wile E. Coyote and Homer Simpson.”

Izzy laughed. “I’d almost forgotten why I—” He stopped himself, his smile gone, but then finished the sentence. “Loved you.” He was careful to make sure she heard that
ed
that made it past tense.

Eden couldn’t look at him. And he, too, was now focused on the front steps of the house, where Greg opened the door wider, but didn’t invite the two men inside. He turned on the porch light—amazing that it actually had a bulb that worked—and pushed open the screen
so that he could take a piece of paper being handed to him. Again, it was the bald guy’s mouth that did most of the moving.

Meanwhile, Izzy had fished his cell phone from his pants pocket—he was still wearing those completely-out-of-character khakis, although he’d torn the knee keeping her from her second attempt at putting that pickax through the window—and was snapping photos. Of the men talking to Greg. And of the SUV with its Nevada plates.

“These aren’t the men who took Ben,” Eden said, making sure he understood.

“I get it, Obi-Wan, but it’s kinda suspicious, them showing up like this, right after Ben was taken.” He checked to make sure he got the plate number, zooming in on the digital photo, and then snapping his phone shut, when he saw that he had. “I’m just being thorough.”

Greg was squinting at whatever was on that paper—some kind of picture—and shaking his head.

“Maybe they really are cops,” Eden said. “This whole awful thing started when Ben got stopped by the police, at the mall. He told me that the detectives were looking for a friend of his. This little Asian girl who ran away from home. He said they showed him a picture of her.”

Greg handed the paper back, and pulled the screen door shut. But then he opened it again, and took something smaller from the bald guy. It looked like a business card. And this time, after latching the screen, he closed the front door, too.

The two men—maybe cops, maybe not—were moving down the steps, taking a look at the yard, the broken glass from that window Eden had trashed nearly a year ago glittering in the porch light. They didn’t miss the pickax, either. It still lay where she had thrown it, beneath the living-room window.

The place looked exactly like what it was. The home of desperate people who not only lived hand to mouth, but made bad decisions about which bills to pay first.

Izzy rolled down his window slightly, turning off the a/c fans so they could—maybe—hear what the two men said to each other as they
headed for their SUV. And sure enough, they’d raised their voices to converse over the roof.

“… could offer a reward,” the man with the hat was saying. “Doesn’t have to be much. Ten thousand dollars.”

The bald man was heading for the driver’s-side door, which put him into the middle of the road, closest to Izzy’s cracked window. “For ten K,” he agreed as he opened the door, “he’d get his kid home from that camp and make him suck both our cocks at the same time. And claim he was doing it for Jesus.”

The other man laughed and said something as he opened the passenger door, but Eden missed it, because the bald guy had already closed his door and started the engine with a roar.

Which is when Izzy said, “Oh,
shit.
”

He grabbed her, wrapping his right arm around her and pulling her close so swiftly, she slammed up against him. He was so solid, she nearly had the wind knocked out of her and she looked up at him in stunned surprise.

“What—” she said, but then she couldn’t say more, because just like that, he covered her mouth with his and was kissing her.

It was as sudden as the body-slam embrace, and it was a very high-octane kiss, with exactly zero acceleration to get to that place. On a passion scale from one to ten, it started at around six hundred, just
bam
, with his tongue in her mouth and his hand on her breast, and she gasped her surprise.

But before she could react in any way whatsoever, the headlights of the SUV went on, like spotlights in their faces, and she understood.

They could either be fully lit, in plain sight of the two men in the SUV while they were suspiciously sitting and watching Greg and Ivette’s house, or they could be fully lit while they were innocently sitting in Izzy’s car, making out.

Pretending to make out.

Problem was, pretending felt an awful lot like the real thing.

Still, she kissed Izzy back, looping her arm around his neck and hitting him with the same level of passion that he was dishing out, running
her fingers through the decadent softness of his hair as she tried her best to eat him alive without going so far as to throw her leg across him, to straddle him right there in the front seat of the car.

Even though—God help her—she wanted to.

Pretending. This was only pretending. But Lord, it felt so good—the ardent way he was kissing her—and Eden knew with a flash of certainty that he
wasn’t
pretending. He’d always wanted her, and he obviously still did, even though she’d hurt him as badly as she had.

And didn’t
that
give her the ultimate power?

Except for the fact that she was powerless when it came to her feelings for this man. Her heart had leaped at the sight of him, when she’d realized he’d come zooming, once again, to her rescue. She’d almost kissed him like this right there, in the dust of the front yard, after he’d pulled her down behind his car.

But she
did
have the power, because it was now clear that—if she
had
kissed him? He would have kissed her back, exactly the way he was kissing her now.

He’d always tried to bury it—his lust for her. He’d tried to hide it or dress it up, disguising it as something loftier—as love. And he’d probably even fooled himself. A lot of men did.
I love you
really only meant
I want to get with you
.

Seeing him again—sitting here and talking to him—was … devastating. It was heartbreaking. It was soul shaking. It had pulled Eden back, hard, into that crazy place of longing and wanting. Longing for something she knew she’d never have. Wanting to believe words she knew couldn’t be true.
I love you
 …

But
I want to get with you …

That she could handle. And as long as she knew what she was doing, as long as she stayed in control …

The SUV was pulling past them, heading down the street, and Eden broke free from that kiss, turning her head away as if she’d suddenly become aware of the light, hiding her face against the wide expanse of Izzy’s shoulder, as the too-bright headlights slid past their car.

And then there they were, sitting in the dark again, both breathing hard.

“Sorry.” Izzy’s voice was raspy, his breath hot against the side of her face as he exhaled hard, as he moved his hand from her boob but still continued to hold her in his arms. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“No,” she whispered as she, too, kept her arms around his neck. “It’s okay. If they were cops, I didn’t want to have to answer their questions.”

“The cops are the good guys,” Izzy said, still not releasing her.

“Not always,” she said. “But you are. You’re always the hero. Coming to my rescue.” She lifted her head to look at him, and the look in his eyes was one that she’d remember on her deathbed. It was desire, pure and sweet.

“Eed,” he breathed, “I think I might be on the verge of really screwing this up—our new friendship, our impending amicable divorce—”

She didn’t let him finish. She just kissed him.

And on a scale from one to ten, it was completely off the charts.

Eden kissed him as if the world were ending.

Izzy saw it coming, and even though he saw it telegraphed in her eyes, in the way her tongue briefly moistened her lips, he still couldn’t quite believe it. And he certainly didn’t do anything to stop it.

But then, as she kept kissing him, he
could
believe it, because this was Eden, and she wasn’t just kissing him, she’d actually thrown her leg across him and straddled him—which was possible only because he’d adjusted the seat as far back as it could go and had reclined it quite a bit, too.

And it was very, very clear that she, too, was hell-bent on screwing up their impending amicable divorce. Or maybe she wasn’t. Maybe this was her crazy-ass definition of being amicable.

Either way, it was obvious that they were both extremely willing passengers aboard this particular bad-idea bus. And as she reached between
them to verify that that was, indeed, him in all his glory and not the gearshift, he knew that, this time? He wasn’t going to be the one to stop them.

He was done with that.

He’d spent nearly his entire premarriage relationship with Eden slowing her down to an absolute stop, and look at where that had gotten him. Decidedly unfucked for all of his gallant efforts, except for their very brief wedding night. Oh yeah, and except for the ultimate fucking she’d given him shortly thereafter, by walking away.

Now, however, hoh
jay
-sus, she was simultaneously reaching into his pants even as she pressed and rubbed herself against him, all the while kissing the shit out of him.