Exclusively Yours (8 page)

Letting the princess rest, Terry threw herself into helping Lisa make supper for the crowd. Family members trickled in and at some point she looked up to find Keri in deep conversation with Danny. Mike’s twelve-year-old was nodding solemnly at every word she said, as though she were some kind of damn oracle.

“Think you can help with salads, Keri, or you afraid you’ll break a nail?” Everybody turned to look at her, and she wasn’t surprised. That had come across a little bitchier than she’d intended. “They’re in Ma’s fridge.”

“All you had to do was tell me you needed a hand,” Keri said calmly, which, of course, made Terry look even more irrational. “I was getting ready to offer, anyway. Just wanted to finish my conversation with Danny.”

“Won’t be long, then, since you ditch friendships like dirty socks.”

Keri froze for a second, and then her eyes narrowed. “Oh, that’s it! I call bullsh…crap, Theresa Kowalski.”

“Porter,” Steph chimed.

“Don’t even try to deny it, Keri Daniels. Once Whatsherface with the blonde hair and big boobs let you sit at her lunch table, that was the end of our friendship.”

“That was Keri,” Kevin interrupted.

“What?” they asked together.

“Keri had the blonde hair and big boobs. Whatsherface was a brunette.”

“Whatever,” Terry snapped before turning back to Keri. “The point is, you dropped me like a flaming bag of dog shit for a girl whose name we can’t even remember.”

“Courtney Carlson,” Kevin said.

“That’s right.” Keri frowned at him. “How do you remember that? You were behind us in school.”

“Her yearbook photos, especially the cheerleading candids. Sometimes I’d—” he paused, obviously remembering Steph’s presence, “—have them nearby while checking myself for ticks.”

Terry gave him a quelling look of death before turning back to the blonde in question.

“I tried,” Keri said. “I’d call you to invite you somewhere and you always got bitchy. Said you were busy and I should have fun with my
new
friends. Eventually I quit trying.”

Heat climbed Terry’s neck and knowing they could see it pissed her off even more. “You chose them over me.”

“They were fun and you had a hair across your ass so at some point, yeah, hanging out with them instead of you was inevitable, don’t you think?”

“
Girls!
Enough.”

Once Mary Kowalski said something was enough, that something was over, so everybody went back to doing what they were doing, except Keri, who managed to surreptitiously flip her the bird before heading off to Ma’s camper.

The laugh that bubbled up surprised Terry, and she squashed it the best she could. She could remember back when they were young, Terry had been the first to dare the gesture. Privately, of course. Just practicing. It took a while for Keri to work up the courage, and she’d had the misfortune to be near a mirror. Joe caught sight of Keri’s finger and yelled for Ma, who let them know unequivocally that was enough of
that
.

They’d had so many good times together. Most of her childhood memories included Keri, the two of them giggling and playing with Barbie dolls and tormenting Joe.

But she could also remember how much it hurt seeing Keri hanging out with new friends. And, yes, maybe she’d driven her away before she could dump her, thinking it would hurt less. Or maybe the friendship had simply run its natural course.

Terry was shy, though, and losing her best friend had hurt, no matter whose fault it was. Keri sitting with the in-crowd at lunch, with her awesome hair and clothes that hadn’t come from K-mart had seemed like an unforgivable sin.

Almost twenty years ago. Even she had to admit Keri hadn’t done anything to merit being treated like crap since she’d arrived. Joe had told Terry that she was upfront about what she was looking for, and that she’d agreed to every one of his stipulations. As for the kiss, Joe was the one doing the pursuing. Her brother was an attractive guy and she couldn’t really blame Keri for not trying too hard to get away, past history or no.

Which meant,
crap
, she owed Keri an apology.

Maybe later, when she didn’t have an audience. Of course, if it had been Stephanie, she would have made her apologize in front of everybody. You do the crime in public, you do the time in public.

But one of the few benefits to being the adult was the freedom to break your own rules.

Terry managed to keep her mouth shut through supper, even once Stephanie did the math and came up with Keri Daniels plus
Spotlight Magazine
equaled first-hand knowledge of celebrity gossip. Have you ever met “fill in the blank” became the question of the evening, and the number of yeses turned her daughter into as big a fan of Keri as Joe was.

“Ohmigod, Mom, did you hear that?” Steph exclaimed when Keri was done telling her the story of having wine spilled on her by one of the hottest leading men in Hollywood.

“Yup. That’s funny. And at least he could afford the dry cleaning bill,” she said lightly, and she could almost feel the tension pop like a balloon. Her mother’s look of maternal approval took care of any doubt they’d been expecting her to say something nasty.

It hadn’t been easy, though. Stephanie had been a bundle of preteen angst and attitude lately and seeing her drinking up Keri’s company made her feel like she was sitting alone at the wrong lunch table again.

Keri launched into another tale of celebrity embarrassment and Terry tuned her out, as well as Stephanie’s totally enraptured responses.

She turned her attention instead to Mike and Lisa, who were barely managing to hide the fact they weren’t really speaking to each other a whole lot. If possible, there seemed to be even more tension between them than between her and Keri.

The family grapevine had clued her in to the fact Lisa had responded to Mike’s suggestion he was ready to face a vasectomy with the suggestion they think about having another baby first. Not surprisingly, Mike hadn’t reacted well.

Depression settled over Terry like a fog. They all seemed to be falling apart. Even Kevin was nursing the heartbreak of a divorce, though he refused to talk about it. Now Mike and Lisa, the seemingly perfect couple, had hit a rocky patch, and there was nothing Terry could do to help them through it.

Hell, she couldn’t even save her own marriage. What made her think she had a chance in hell of helping anybody else?

She grabbed a T-shirt and comb Joe’d left on the bed and tossed them over to the bottom bunk. Then she stretched out on her back, managing to take up the entire bed.

“Comfy?”

Joe didn’t sound nearly as thrilled about the new sleeping arrangement as she was. “Very, thank you.”

“Gonna take your shoes off?”

“Maybe.” Later. She was exhausted and, for right now, she wasn’t moving.

The plywood groaned as Joe tested his weight on it. “I should have left you at the bottom of the hill and made you walk up.”

“Be quiet. I’m trying to go to sleep before I have to pee again.”

“You haven’t asked me a question yet.”

“What are you—oh!” Shit! How could she have forgotten the interview? She blamed the marinated steak tips. And Mary’s potato salad. And the best corn on the cob ever. She was in a food stupor even her killer ambition couldn’t penetrate, and it was a good thing Tina couldn’t see her.

Cursing her boss and that second helping of potato salad, Keri rolled herself to her side and sat up on the edge of the bed. Joe was stretched out on the bunk, his hands tucked behind his head and his feet flat against the footboard. He was a tight fit and she wondered whether or not she should feel guilty, but payback went both ways.

Just to get it over with so she could sleep, Keri grabbed a bottle of water and her steno pad. She wouldn’t drink a lot because that could lead to a middle of the night sprint through the dark, but it was dry in the cabin.

Sitting on the side of the big, comfy bed, she opened the notebook to her first question. “So how did a nice guy like you end up writing sick, twisted thrillers?”

He turned his head to frown at her. “What the hell kind of question is that?”

“A legitimate one.”

“You called me sick and twisted.”

“No, I called your books sick and twisted.”

“But I write them.”

“Hence the question. What kind of demented muse comes up with stories like that?”

He looked back at the bottom of the top bunk. “Actually, this girl I once knew is my muse. We were in love, and I had this dream of writing profound literary works that earned critical acclaim and fancy prizes. Then the girl ripped my heart out of my chest and stuck a
California or bust
sign through it.”

Keri rolled her eyes and tapped the eraser of her mechanical pencil against her steno pad. “Oh please.”

“So I got drunk and wrote a book about a chick named Carrie Danielson who’s tormented by a revenge demon summoned by her devastated ex-boyfriend.”

“Yes, I read it. I wasn’t impressed.”

“That’s when I discovered sick and twisted was fun to write. Pays well, too.”

“Joe, I can’t print that.”

“Why? It’s the truth.”

“One, your mother would whack with me with her spoon. And two, people will go digging and find out who the so-called Carrie Danielson is.”

“Some women would be flattered to be the muse of a popular author.”

“Some women didn’t get to read themselves getting a machete manicure.”

The dimple on the cheek facing her popped into view. “Okay,
that
was a little harsh.”

“And the scene where the revenge demon possesses the
hero
’s car and chases her until she jumps off the bridge into the freezing water to escape it?”

“One of my favorites, actually.”

“I would have burned the whole damn thing if I wasn’t fundamentally opposed to desecrating books. I bet your family got a real kick out of it, though.”

“Terry sure did.”

“Fine, but I still don’t want to print that. Do you really want your fans to know you wrote your first book drunk?”

“I wrote my first
four
books drunk. Your leaving hit me pretty hard, and there were a few years when whiskey, murder and mayhem were my world.”

“I haven’t seen you drink at all since we got here.”

“I quit when my family started liking me even less than I liked myself. That was a tough year. My third book hit the
New York Times
list and my fourth book had already been turned in, but my fifth was actually rejected. I had to learn to write without the booze.”

“Jesus, Joe, we were kids. Did you really think we were going to live happily ever after?”

“Yeah, babe. I really did.”

And so had she. Or she’d hoped, anyway. But Joe’s future consisted of staying close to his family and tapping away on his keyboard. Keri wanted her future to include travel and maybe some wealth, and definitely some killer shoes.

By the dawning of graduation day, she’d known two things. Joe wasn’t leaving New Hampshire and she was. Watching him give his valedictory speech, with its overwhelming theme of home and family, had cemented it.

“It wasn’t going to happen for us, Joe. You had everything you wanted already. I didn’t even
know
what I wanted yet.”

“I did have everything I wanted until you left.” The slow emergence of his naughty dimples made her melt, but only on the inside where he couldn’t see it. “But now you’re back.”

Oh boy, when he said it like that, it almost sounded like a good thing. Rather than risk going down that mental path, she clipped her pencil to the notepad and ignored his last comment. She had to focus on the job.

“Your turn, Kowalski. One question.” She cracked the cap on a bottle of water and took a long sip.

“Have you ever faked an orgasm?”

And she choked on the water. “What? You can’t ask me that!”

“You’re the one who negotiated the terms. Or rather,
didn’t
. Are you refusing to answer the question?”

She almost said yes. She wasn’t in the habit of discussing her orgasms, faux or otherwise, with anybody. She didn’t even keep a journal.

“You can refuse to answer, of course, but then you won’t get to ask me one tomorrow,” he reminded her, as if she’d forget.

It was almost worth it, but she was barely going to have enough usable content to get Tina off her ass as it was. “Yes, I have faked orgasms in the past.”

His eyes widened. “How far in the past? Did you ever fake with me?”

He looked so horrified at the idea, she had to laugh. That made him look even more stricken, which made her laugh harder.

“It’s not funny, Daniels. Did you ever fake an orgasm with me?”

“Your one question for the evening has been asked and answered, Kowalski. Feel free to save that for tomorrow.” She set the bottle on the nightstand and crawled under the covers. “If you’re sure you
really
want to know.”