Drift (Lengths) (23 page)

What I get is Sandberg’s completely non-surprised sigh.

What. The. Hell?

“Look, I know this is hard, Lydia. I do. And Richard has had his own...struggles…”

“Obviously! His work ethic sucks and his fact-checking sucks harder!” I say, standing up, shaky and furious. Sandberg knew all along and let me hang like that? “You knew?”

“You never make mistakes like that,” Sandberg admits.

“But you let me swing anyway,” I accuse, eyes narrowed.

“The case comes first, Lydia!” He stands up, smoothes his tie, and sits back down. “Let’s get this back on track
—”

“Oh, hell no.” I tilt my head back and laugh. “Your firm, this job, and all the bullshit that comes with it can take a long walk off a fucking short dock. I’m
done
!”

Sandberg pinches the bridge of his nose. “Lydia, I didn’t go about this the right way. Don’t leave. The truth is, this case has been falling apart since you left. We need you back. I wanted to bring you in a few weeks ago, but things were complicated. Like I said, the human element in this can be the worst aspect.” He sighs. “If you can work out of the limelight, I’m willing to offer you several incentives. On your terms.”

I rear back to get a better look at him. Why this? Why now? Why did he bring me in to benevolently give me my job back only to get on his knees and beg me when I said no? Because he’s in way too deep. I think back to Richard’s comment about Sandberg reeling in a catch he couldn’t handle.

Things with the case must be in the tank. The case that was supposed to make this law firm could just as easily break it if we lose.

But why wait so long to bring be back in?

I stalk across the room and look out the huge, plate glass windows, staring at the LA skyline and wondering what piece of
this
puzzle I’m missing.

The door opens and a familiar voice coos, “Sal, honey, are you ready for
—”

“Tanya, I’m in a meeting,” Mr. Sandberg hisses.

Tanya, wearing a short trench coat, fishnets, and heels, clutches her coat tight as she whirls around and looks at me.

“You’re still here?” She turns to Mr. Sandberg and asks, lowly, “How long does it take to fire someone anyway?”

“Tanya, please leave
now
,” Sandberg says, getting up and hustling Tanya to the door.

He shuts it behind her and swallows. Hard.

I walk across the room and sit down in his big leather desk chair, folding my hands, and smiling so wide, it hurts my face. “The human element, huh? So she did move on up from Richard. Funny. I thought you’d have more sense than that.” I whirl around in the chair, tilt my head back, and laugh. “It must feel pretty incestuous around here lately. And you must be pretty damn desperate to risk your new lover’s fury by bringing me back.”

Sandberg blanches. “Look, Lydia, I know this seems messy right now
—”

“Incredibly so,” I say cheerfully. I lean back, loving how tall I feel sitting down. Damn, I
need
one of these chairs.

“But we can smooth it all out. Time will pass, old wounds will heal, and we’ll get back on track.” His voice is flat and he sweats. Visible sweat, all over his forehead.

I chuckle again. “Wow. You are in deeper shit than I thought. You know what, Sal? I think you’d better take a seat.” I gesture to the chair in front of his desk, where I sat just praying he’d take me back ten minutes ago.

“Lydia, this is very
—” he begins curtly.

“Here’s the thing,
Sal.
I have a hunch you need me way more than I need you. I have a hunch you know I might be the one to make or break this case. This case that means
everything
right now. I think I may be your last and only hope.” I raise one eyebrow at him. “If I’m wrong, you can stand up and walk out of here, call security on me. If I’m right? Well, I guess you should take seat and grab a notepad. Because I’m about to make you an offer you’re in no damn position to refuse.”

I feel the pump of adrenaline, the old, sweet rush, as I wait to see what Sandberg will do. I watch his nostrils flare and his skin turn beet red before he grips the back of the chair, turns it so he can sit, and snatches a legal pad and pen from his desk.

I lean back and breathe deep. “Let’s get a move on. We have a lot of work to do, and I need to be done with this place as soon as humanly possible.”

I start to lay out my plan, scribbling sketchy notes on a
manila folder as I dictate to Sandberg. And I don’t even try to hide the little hearts I doodle on the edges of my brilliant master plan. The hearts that have the initials
IO
and
LR
in them.

Because Lydia “Pitbull” Rodriguez is in love, and she doesn’t care who knows it.

2
4  ISAAC

They’re gone.

I tear through the apartment, searching like a maniac, even though there is no logical reason to do so. I’m not going to find a set of huge canvases under my couch or in my sock drawer. It doesn’t stop me from turning the furniture over and ripping the drawer out.

“
Fuck
,” I whisper, looking around my trashed room. I sink to the floor, holding my head in my hands.

What the fuck happened? This makes no sense. The door was locked when I came home. The windows are all still closed, and the only ones big enough to fit a single canvas through were locked too. There’s no note, no sign of foul play, but the paintings of Lydia are gone.

I run my hands through my hair and groan in the warm quiet of my place. Lydia went to meet with her boss this morning. It’s now late evening. She never came to class. She never called or texted. And now the fucking paintings are gone.

I glare at the statue of St. Ignatius my grandmother gave me after my first Communion, the one I’ve always considered a good luck charm. “I’m fucked, aren’t I?” I ask. He smiles his saintly smile.

I think of myself as an almost stupidly optimistic person, but this is
bad
. This is all the bad I ever feared crashing over my head at the same time in a single night. And the worst—the piece I’ll never recover from—is losing Lydia before I told her exactly what she meant to me.

Losing her in every way
—to her old life, because of this betrayal of trust I had nothing to do with, because I pushed too hard for more than she was ready to deal with—feels disgusting. I stalk across on the apartment, on a mission. I find the whiskey my father sent me as a belated birthday gift buried in the back of my freezer. I open it up and drink right from the bottle. The warmth of the room makes the frost on the glass melt. It slides in my hands, and I almost drop it.

The buzz of my phone makes me put it down.

It’s Lydia.

Meet me at the gallery.

I head out without hesitation. The gallery is only a few blocks from my apartment, so I decide to walk in the quiet night, chilly from the last rays of an early sunset that marks the passage of fall into winter. It feels like I just arrived, but my time at the university will be over with soon.

I have options. Not as many as I’d like since I spurned Cumberland and earned Nina’s ire. But I can get work at a gallery. They may need me as a more full-term adjunct. Cody mentioned some contacts he made with a girl in the Spanish department. They’re looking for someone to do a cultural class, and I could help with that.

I walk faster, the cool air filling my lungs, and realize I don’t want to be here, no matter how gorgeous and welcoming it’s been, if she’s not with me. I have a very bad feeling she wanted to meet at the gallery because it’s a neutral space. She promised to help me set up my cathedral series. The show is next week, and, no matter how I placed them or set the lights or tweaked them, I was left unsatisfied.

It will be fitting if she lets me know we’ve failed in that gallery where I will fail as an artist in a week’s time. There’s a beautiful, symbolic irony to it that isn’t lost on me.

The place looks dark, and I remember that she doesn’t have a key. A quick look outside tells me she’s not around, and there’s a nervous part of me that begins to worry. Her car, freshly washed and detailed, is parked on the street outside, but she’s not in it. I fumble with the keys and push the door open, running through the dark space.

“Lydia?” She’s set up a table with a white linen cloth and a dinner spread. There’s a record player in the corner. “Jose Alredo Jimenez?” I nod at the record spinning slowly, too nervous to let her know just how nervous I was...just how nervous I
am
.

“You know Jose Alredo Jimenez?” Lydia’s smile is sexy and slow. She gets up and walks toward me. I realize that can’t be what she wore to the office. It’s tight and shimmers. She wore this for me.

I reach out to touch her, but don’t move forward. I’ll let her come to me if she wants to. I won’t try to force this at all. I have to tell her about the paintings, but, before I do, I want these last few moments with her, these last moments where I pretend it could have all worked out for us.

I swallow hard and make light talk, even as I feel my heart smashing inside my chest. “My mother used to love vacationing in Las Hadas. She would force me to take dance classes with her, and they were obsessed with Jimenez.” She stands in front of me, and I watch her eyes take me in. I let myself relax, just for a moment, and hope I’m wrong about all of this. It certainly doesn’t look like she lured me here to break anything off. It looks like she wants me.

Though lust and love are two very different things. Even if she wants me tonight, I don’t know that Lydia is going to give me what I ultimately need from her. And, frankly, anything less will kill me with excruciating slowness.

“Do you want to dance?” she asks.

I answer by pulling her into my arms and moving her around the room. She’s graceful and light on her feet, like I assumed she would be. But there’s something deeper about her tonight. Some happiness that buoys her in my arms.

Or maybe I’m just seeing what I want to see, knowing this might be the last night I have her this close, looking at me with those hungry eyes.

“You set up dinner here?” I ask, dipping her low. I kiss her neck before I pull her back up, and love the low, long moan that rushes from the back of her throat. “For us?”

“Nina dropped the keys by the office today.” She pulls me closer with her arm. “You didn’t even ask me how it went.”

I brush my lips over hers. “I’m a coward.”

She pulls away, laughing. “Why?” Her eyes are dancing, like she’s delighted.

I want to hold this, remember this moment. Because I know things are about to get ugly between us, and that breaks my fucking heart.

“I know you were worried. I know they’re assholes, even if you want to think the best of them.” I watch a smug smile curl over her lips.

“Oh, they’re assholes, no doubt about that. They’re about to be very rich assholes, though.” She reaches her hand up and brushes it over my jaw. “Thanks to me.”

I’m proud of her, and I let her know. “Congratulations,
mi amor
. I never doubted they’d want you back. I’m so proud of you.”

“I’m not going back” she says, and we both stop in the middle of the floor, the music crescendoing around us. If only the goddamn paintings weren’t missing, this might be the best news I’ve ever heard in my life.

“You’re not going back? Are you working at another firm?”

She shakes her head, that smug smile turning impish. “I have a very nice severance package coming my way. It should give me plenty of time
to do what I want. I’ve been terrible about teasing Cohen and Deo for their adventure sailing, but I’ve always wanted to travel the world. Not just a vacation. I want to experience life in other places.”

I feel my guts turn. “That’s wonderful for you.”

She holds my face in her hands. “For us, Isaac. I want to tell you how I feel right now. I’ve been an idiot. A coward and an idiot. The truth is—”

“The paintings are gone, Lydia.”

Damnit, I wanted to hear her say she loved me before I broke the news, but I couldn’t do it.

There’s no way I could live with having heard her say those words once but not again. Better to live with the agony of never having heard them at all. “I have no idea. You have to believe I never gave permission for their use. I never allowed access to them. I have no idea how they wound up gone, but they are, and I understand if you need time to process. But let me apologize, even if I know how fucking useless those words are right
—”

I stop because she’s pressed her mouth to mine, kissing me hard, running her hands over my body. “Stop it,” she gasps. “There’s no reason to apologize.” She drags me to the main showroom and…

“How the hell did they get here?” I ask, my panic barely under control. I look around, and pictures of her, naked, gorgeous, evocative, hang on the walls and beckon to me with looks of perfect lust.

I’d be struck dumb all over again by their primal beauty if I wasn’t horrified by the fact that they’re hanging her without my permission.

This is a mess, but a containable one. There must have been crossed wires about what needed to be picked up from my place. It makes no sense right now, but I know I can get to the bottom of it. “Lydia, please know I had
nothing
to do with this. You have my word, these will be on fire the minute they come off these walls to prevent anything like this from happening again.”

She frowns. “That would be a shame. I mean, it took a lot of planning to get them here in the first place. I had to use two of Sandberg’s best assistants plus the company card to rent a van and set this all up. So, it would be kind of crazy if you just torched all my efforts at romance.”

I stare at the wildly beautiful woman saying things I’m not sure I can believe. “Romance?”

“I know, I know, I’m kind of crappy at it.” She tugs me to her by my shirt and licks her lips. Her eyes dart from side to side, and I can see now that, under the bravado, she’s trembling. “Here’s the thing. Today I had a chance to get back a life better than my old one. I realized that I had everything I’d ever wanted at my fingertips. And I also realized that I’ve been an ass.”

“Not an ass at all,” I counter. I kiss her, run my hands over her, not quite sure I can believe my good luck yet. Is she saying—

“What I’m saying is, I love you.” Her chest rises and falls with the hard breaths she’s pulling in. I hold her around the waist and run my fingers over her hair.

“Shh,
mi corazon
, be calm. I love you, too.” I’m keeping my emotions steady for her benefit, but my heart is trying to break through my ribs. I close my eyes and kiss the top her head, crushing her close. “I love you, Lydia.”

“Wait!” She pulls back and wipes the tears from her eyes with the back of her hands, laughing as she does. “Shit, I’m going to ruin my mascara. Okay, you have to hear me out. I want you to know that I love you, Isaac. So much. And I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want these paintings, the ones you made when we were falling in love, to launch your career. And our future. I want to be as brave as you are. I want to earn back your love, because it is the most awesome gift anyone has ever given me.” 

“You want—” My brain rushes through what she just said, working too slowly to put it all together.

“You. I want,” she yanks me close to her and kisses me hard on the lips, “
you
. All of you. Now. Not five years from now when you think the age difference will be more acceptable. To hell with what everyone may think. I want you.
Us.
Now.”

A wild need for her pumps through me, and, before I know it, she has me pushed back on one of the chairs, her legs straddling mine. I find the zipper in the back of her tiny dress and pull down. She stands up and the dress slithers to the floor, leaving her naked except for her heels.

“
Dios, ayudame
,” I say, tilting my head back as she lowers her perfect body over me.

“No one can help you now,” she says around a giggle. She kisses me softly, and then it deepens. My hands course over her body, pull her tight to me, only half-believing this is really happening. “What’s wrong?” she asks.

I realize I’ve stopped everything and am just holding her against me. “Not a damn thing,” I say, kissing her again. “
Bésame, mi vida
.”