Fast & Loose (4 page)

Vivid, he immediately saw. Literally every color of the rainbow, and then some, met his eyes as he scanned the interior of the closet, which was crowded to capacity, doubtless because his hostess had condensed two closets into one to make room for her guest. But where he had anticipated suits and business wear—since what else would anyone have in their closet?—what he found instead were garments that were gauzy, sparkly, and velvety, and in no way suitable for business attire. The floor below them was completely obscured by shoes—all of which, he noted right away, fell into three categories: functional, quirky, and comfortable. The shelf above was filled with hatboxes in a million colors and textures. The interior of the closet was such a stark contrast to the pale furnishings of the room, as if someone had exploded a color bomb inside it whose power they had greatly underestimated.

There was no telling what was in those boxes, Cole thought as he pushed the door closed again. What was strange was that he actually felt a twinge of curiosity about what their contents might be. What difference did that make? he asked himself. Who cared? The only thing he should be curious about at the moment was where he was going to stow his underwear.

As he clicked the closet door shut, his gaze lit on the dresser, and he was surprised to realize he was looking for another note. He smiled when he saw it, on the bottom right-hand drawer, and immediately went to see what it said.

“
Right makes might,
” it read in the same angular lettering as the one on the closet. Then, in parentheses below, “
It also makes room.
”

Pulling the drawer open, Cole found it empty—and perfectly sized for the rest of his belongings, including his underwear. Naturally, that made him think that at least one of the other drawers contained
her
underwear. But that, he thought,
would
be a violation of privacy. So he refrained from prying. Nevertheless, he felt another surprising flutter of curiosity about what her underwear might look like. Probably like the things in her closet, full of rich color and lush textures. He was already forming an impression of his hostess as something of a hedonist.

As he stood again—forgetting about the ceiling and bonking his head again—he noted a framed photograph on the dresser. Five women stood ankle-deep in water a fair distance from the camera, water that was clear enough and calm enough that Cole was reasonably certain it was the Caribbean. One of them, he wagered, was his hostess, and he studied each in turn. Four of the five wore swimsuits revealing enough to make him like what he saw. The fifth wore a T-shirt that fell down over her thighs, but it was wet enough to mold some truly luscious curves. All of the women seemed attractive, though the one in the T-shirt was squinting into the sunlight, her face obscured even more than the others’ by the shadow of the baseball cap she wore.

The blonde in the white string bikini, he would wager, was breathtaking. Cole wondered if she was the owner of the house. Then he wondered why he was wondering that. He
should
be wondering if Silk Purse had been settled at Susannah’s friends’ farm by now.

Collecting his toiletry kit, he made his way back downstairs and unpacked his things in the bathroom. A note affixed to the mirror informed him that the hot water sometimes took time to actually
be
hot water and that
cold
was sometimes a relative term. It ended with the philosophical observation that “
Patience is a virtue—not to mention very cool.
”

Cole smiled as he tugged the Post-it note from the glass and started to wad it up. But he stopped before completing the action and smoothed the scrap of paper out again. Then he stuck it back on the mirror. Hey, he might need to be reminded of the water’s idiosyncrasies later.

It had nothing to do with the idiosyncrasies of the note writer.

HE SPENT THE REST OF THE DAY EXPLORING HIS
surroundings, trying to get acclimated to his new digs and figure out where everything was. But as familiar as he became with the house during that foray, he got to know his hostess even better. In her linen closet, he found an assortment of lotions with exotic fragrances like Tahitian Gardenia and Moroccan Mint. There were a half-dozen bottles of nail polish with colors like Basque in the Sun and Days of Wine and Roses. A little basket held what looked like hundreds of eye shadows and lip glosses with glitter and sparkles and God knew what else.

The wine rack in her kitchen held only two bottles of wine—one red, one white—both excellent, inexpensive vintages that told Cole she knew her wine, even if she didn’t drink it much. Her pantry didn’t hold a lot, but what was there told him she didn’t shop at the grocery store, but at boutique delis and health food stores. On one shelf, neatly aligned, was a row of cooking spices like cumin, turmeric, and paprika, the sort of spices used in international cuisine. He knew that, because he liked to eat international cuisine. Her bookcases held a variety of literature, everything from paperback romances to gritty thrillers to historical maritime novels to biographies of world leaders. Her CD collection, too, was varied and extensive, the majority of artists people Cole had never heard of before. As he pulled one CD after another from the shelf, he realized a good many of them were imports from places like India, Algeria, Portugal, and Saudi Arabia.

And then there was the glass.

It was in every room in some form or another. The panes of the window over the kitchen sink were each a different color, each poured by hand complete with tiny bubbles. The big bay window in the living room boasted a wide border of stained glass over each section that was decorated with some kind of fat yellow flower. There were coiled plates, braided bowls, and twisted vases. There were abstract pieces he couldn’t begin to identify. All of it wrought from the richest colors he’d ever seen, colors that seemed to transform, shift, and come alive as the sunlight tumbling through the windows changed and stretched. Clearly the house’s owner was not just an art collector, but someone who liked to enjoy on a daily basis the art she amassed.

Whoever his hostess was, she wasn’t like any other woman Cole knew. The brightly colored clothes and shoes in the closet suggested someone of a Bohemian nature. The cosmetics in the closet were more suited to a girly-girl fashionista. The health foods made him think more of an organic type. The good wine was characteristic of a sophisticate. The world beat music, an aesthete. The literary selections—many of them, anyway—an academic.

Just who was the owner of this house?

He remembered the photograph in the bedroom of the five women on the beach. He’d seen the same five women in other photographs around the house, too, in different poses, clearly still on vacation. One magnetted to the refrigerator had them all sitting on the deck of an open-air bar with a different beach behind them, all of them laughing and wearing sunglasses and/or floppy hats. The white string bikini had been wearing shorts and a different bikini top in that photo, the other women shorts and T-shirts.

The picture on the mantelpiece in the living room showed all five women standing in front of Tiffany’s on Fifth Avenue in New York. Each of them wore a rhinestone tiara and long black gloves, and each struck a Holly Golightly pose. It was that photo that Cole looked at now, studying each of the women in turn as he tried again to guess which was the owner of the house. This photograph, too, had been taken from a distance, so it was hard to make out each of the women’s features. The white string bikini he knew right away, because the long blond hair cascaded over one shoulder. He thought he could make out the baggy T-shirt one, as well, because, as in all the other pictures, she looked slightly uncomfortable. Her hair was pulled severely back in this picture, and she was squinting into the camera again, two facts that only added to her appearance of discontent.

There was no way she could be the house’s owner, he decided. No way had glitter eye shadow or ruby red nail polish ever touched that woman’s person. His money was still on the string bikini.

Strangely, though, it was the uncomfortable one to which his gaze kept straying. Why, he couldn’t imagine. But there was something about her…maybe even something kind of familiar….

His cell phone rang then, scattering his thoughts. He pulled it from his pocket and saw Susannah’s number, so he flipped it open.

“Hey, Suz,” he said as he settled the photograph back on the mantel.

“All settled in?” she asked without preamble.

“As settled as I can be.”

“You don’t sound very settled. Is the house awful?”

“No,” he replied quickly. “It’s actually kind of nice. In a Bohemian, girly-girl, organic, sophisticated, aesthete, academic kind of way.”

There was a slight pause at the other end, then, “Yeah, okay, whatever. Look, I just wanted to let you know that Silk Purse is loving the bluegrass here at the farm and cavorting about with glee. Jason’s already got her back in her routine, so all is well there. Denny and Faye told me to invite you to dinner tonight, so come whenever you’re ready and you can check everything out.”

“Sounds good.”

She started to give him directions, but he told her to stop until he could locate a pencil and paper. He moved to a credenza in the corner of the room and opened drawers until he found both in one, alongside an address book, a roll of stamps, and a sketchpad upon which someone had sketched a design of overlapping, amorphous shapes.

Quickly, he jotted down Susannah’s instructions and folded his phone closed. Then, unable to help himself, he withdrew the sketchpad and flipped through it. There were other designs on other pages, some of them similar to the glass pieces in the house. So his hostess wasn’t just a collector of art, he thought. She was also a creator. These were doubtless her own pieces decorating the place.

Although he would have thought he’d have pretty conventional taste when it came to art—not that he ever gave that any thought—he liked his hostess’s work. He liked the way the colors blended and melded, and he liked how something as fragile as glass could look so powerful and audacious.

She was definitely an interesting person, his hostess. It was too bad he’d have to return to California without ever making her acquaintance.

BREE’S APARTMENT WAS BARELY A MILE AWAY FROM
Lulu’s house, but where Lulu lived on a quiet, tree-lined, seldom-traveled little byway, Bree lived right on Bardstown Road, at the very hub of Highlands action, above a bar—
nightclub
was just too uppity a term for Deke’s—whose claim to fame was launching local bands. As a result, rarely did an evening at Bree’s pass without the steady accompaniment of
thumpa-thumpa-thumpa
from the drums of whoever was the featured act below. By Monday night, Lulu had been slammed by the all-girl punk ensemble WMD (Women of Mass Destruction), twanged by the southern fried rock band Finger Pickin’ Good, and rapped by the hip-hop group Da Streetz. Never let it be said that Deke’s taste in music was anything but eclectic. Needless to say, her sleep every night had been cluttered by raucous dreams, everything from the banjo-picking mutant in
Deliverance
to overweening low-riders to marauding giant tampons.

But Monday night, thankfully, Lulu lucked out, because the band shooting into orbit that night was a jazzy combo called Smuuth, which, Bree told her, was supposed to be pronounced “smooth,” but no one got that and used the short
u
sound instead, making them, well, Smuth.

Smuth, however, was indeed a very smooth band, so there was hope for pleasant dreams this evening. In fact, Smuth was so smooth that the two women decided to brush their hair, tuck their T-shirts into their jeans—Lulu’s was white, Bree’s was yellow—slip their bare feet into their sandals and go down to enjoy them live. They took their usual seats at the bar and ordered their usual beer, greeting and/or waving at all the regulars. As always, the television above the bar was turned on with the volume lowered, tuned to a local channel that was, at the moment, airing a network cop show. So Lulu and Bree did what they usually did on such nights out—those when Bree wasn’t pulling a bartending shift at the bar in the Ambassador Hotel—and enjoyed the music, chatted with friends, and danced on the few occasions when the mood took them.

Until the local news came on as Lulu took the first sip of her recently refreshed beer, and her attention was suddenly snagged by a face that flashed by on the screen above the bar.

“Hey!” she exclaimed before she could stop herself, pointing up at the television set.

“What?” Bree replied, surprise mingling with alarm on her face at Lulu’s tone. “What’s wrong?” She turned to look at the TV, too, but by then the image had switched over to one of the news anchors, so she turned to look at Lulu again, her expression now puzzled.

“That guy,” Lulu said, pointing more adamantly at the TV screen.

“Who? Scott Reynolds? What about him? Besides the fact that his hair, as always, looks fabulous?”

“No, not him. The other guy that was up there a second ago.”

“Sorry, Lu. Missed him. Who was it?”

Lulu shook her head slowly, as if that might negate what she’d just seen. Impossible, she thought. There was no way she could have seen the guy from the realty office Friday afternoon on the local news. He’d just made such a big impression on her subconscious that she was seeing him in places he couldn’t possibly be. After all, hadn’t he crept into her thoughts more than once over the weekend? And not just because she’d been reflecting on what a big jerk he was, either. In fact, that hadn’t been one of her reflections about him at all, since most of her reflections about him had had him dressed in a Speedo and passing a piña colada to her from the neighboring beach towel. And the rest of her reflections about him had sort of been lacking the Speedo altogether.

But she wasn’t concerned about the errancy…errantness…errantularity…waywardness of her thoughts tonight. She wasn’t. Really. Honest. She
wasn’t.
Thinking about the guy from the realty office in a Speedo just meant she’d gone way too long without a beach vacation, that was all. And “beach vacation” wasn’t any kind of metaphor for anything sexual in nature. It wasn’t. Really. Honest. It
wasn’t
.

Um, where was she?

Oh, right. The man at the realty place in a Speedo. No! The man at the realty place on TV. Which he wasn’t. Was he?

But no sooner did that question erupt in her head again than his face did indeed flash on the screen. She knew it was him, because there wasn’t a man alive who had a smile that oozed sex and charm and made women’s thoughts go all errantular the way his did.

“That guy,” Lulu said again, wagging her finger at the TV once more. Before Bree had a chance to respond, Lulu grabbed Doug the bartender by the sleeve and said, “Turn up the TV, quick.”

Doug arched an elegant dark brow at her, doing his best to ooze the kind of sex appeal that Realty Office Guy came by naturally…and coming in way under par. In fact, Doug’s rating on the sexy odometer hovered somewhere between Dwight Schrute and Larry the Cable Guy. Except he didn’t dress as well as either of them.

“Say please,” he purred to Lulu like a rusty jackhammer.

Instead, Lulu rolled her eyes and reached across the bar for the remote control herself, pointing it at the TV, and pushing the volume button. Hard. Fortunately, the band was taking a break, but there were still a few disgruntled grumbles from other bar patrons when the man on the screen’s voice usurped the canned music. Without hesitation, Lulu shushed all of them with a wave of her free hand and a hasty, “C’mon—it’s only for a second.”

The minute she heard the man’s voice, though, she knew without question it was him—not that she comprehended a word of what he said, because her thoughts were zinging in a million different directions by then. And not that she’d even needed to hear his voice to cement his identity to begin with. Or even the reminder of the curious green hue of his eyes. All she’d needed to confirm her suspicions was the zinginess of her thoughts and the warmth spreading throughout her midsection. That warmth turned to an explosion of embarrassment, however, when she saw letters scroll beneath his name, letters that her muzzy brain was just coherent enough to understand spelled out:
COLE EARLY, TRAINER OF DERBY ENTRY SILK PURSE
.

Then the remote control slipped from her numb fingers, and she muttered, “Oh. Hell.”

“What?” Bree said again, her gaze ricocheting from Lulu’s face to the TV screen.

Lulu held up a finger in the internationally recognized body language for “Hang on a sec.” Although Bree clearly wanted to ask more, she closed her mouth and, along with Lulu, watched and listened to the man on TV.

“Of course I’m confident,” he was saying in response to whatever question he’d been asked, sounding vaguely insulted by whatever it had been. “Silk Purse is not only going to win the Kentucky Derby, she’s going to win the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes, too. That filly’s taking home the Triple Crown, or my name isn’t Cole Early.”

Well, so much for that last futile hope that WAVE had scrolled the wrong letters under the man’s name. Or the more likely hope that Lulu was too addlebrained to have read them correctly. Well, okay, so the addlebrained part
wasn’t
in question, since she was clearly that, and had been since running into Cole Early, Trainer of Derby Entry Silk Purse.

The camera cut back to the interviewer, a young perky blonde Lulu recognized as a newly minted correspondent for the station, since the newscast was the one she watched nightly. For some reason, though, tonight the woman looked even younger, perkier, and blonder than usual. And although Lulu was by no means an expert on the subject, the correspondent also looked vaguely orgasmic at the moment. Then again, Lulu remembered well that shimmying-out-of-your-underwear effect that Realty Office Guy—no, Cole Early, she corrected herself—had on a woman.

“There you have it, Scott and Dawne,” she cooed into the camera, licking her lips as if trying to savor some leftover bit of cotton candy. Or, more likely, Lulu thought, she was picturing Cole Early in a Speedo, too. “The first trainer to officially arrive in Louisville for the Derby, even though his horse was the last entry for the race.” Something must have caught her eye over the camera operator’s shoulder, because she smiled and said, “Ronnie, can you get a shot of that?” after which the camera swung wildly in a one-eighty to reveal Cole Early standing at what looked like a very crowded bar, surrounded by young women thrusting pieces of paper at him.

Then the correspondent’s voiceover said, “And just like he is when he’s at home in southern California, he’s already surrounded by fans. All of whom, not too surprisingly, are female.” The camera swung back to her again, but instead of looking into it, the way any self-respecting, self-absorbed TV personality should, she was still gazing over the camera operator’s shoulder at Cole Early. She identified herself for the viewers, said she was reporting from Fourth Street Live, and, almost as an afterthought, concluded, “Back to you, Scott and Dawne.” She was already tossing someone her microphone and walking away before the camera shot cut back to the studio.

Then the news anchor was back on the screen, smiling his news anchor smile, which was pleasant, sunny, and safe, and nothing at all like Cole Early’s.

And Lulu repeated, “Oh. Hell.”

She turned to Bree, who was looking at her with no small amount of concern.

“Lu?” her friend said in a voice Lulu remembered well from their childhood. It was the one Bree had always used in Brownies or art class when they were doing a craft and Lulu glued something to her forehead without realizing it. She hadn’t heard her friend use it since the pufferfish girl incident. “What’s wrong?” Bree asked. “Why do I get the feeling you’re about to tell me something that’s going to make me say, ‘Oh, Lulu, what have you done?’ Again.”

Pointing at the television again, Lulu told her friend, “I met him the other day.”

“Scott Reynolds?” Bree asked, brightening. “Did his hair look as fabulous in person as it does on TV?”

Lulu shook her head. “No, not him. Cole Early. The guy they just interviewed.”

Bree’s dark eyebrows arched so high, they disappeared under her bangs. “You met Cole Early? Are you serious? Why didn’t you tell me? You know the entire goal of my life is to be the kept woman of a guy like that. If you’ve met him, it puts me within one degree of separation.”

It wasn’t hyperbole on Bree’s part. Her life’s goal really was to be the kept woman of some rich guy. Ever since kindergarten, where she and Lulu first met, she’d said she was going to grow up to marry one of the richest men in the world. By sixth grade, she had begun doing research and making graphs. By high school, she’d narrowed it down to where her ambition in the senior yearbook said: “To become Mrs. Bill Gates. Or Sra. Carlos Salinas. Or Sig.ra Silvio Berlusconi. Or Fr. Ingvar Kamprad. Or Princess Sabrina bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud.” Bree had always been an equal opportunity gold digger.

With the harsh reality that set in with college, however—the realization that there were very few billionaires walking down the streets of Louisville on any given day—Bree had become less adamant about the
Forbes
and
People
magazine lists, not to mention necessarily wanting to marry the guys. These days, all Bree wanted—and Lulu did mean
all
she wanted—was to find a guy who raked in at least a high seven figures a year and drove (choose as many as applied) a Ferrari, Maserati, Porsche, Lamborghini, Mercedes, Jaguar, or at least a really nice Lexus. During Derby time in Louisville when most people were trying to decide which horses had the most potential to win the race, Bree was trying to decide which out-of-towners had the most potential to array her in Prada.

It wasn’t because she was shallow that she’d developed such an ambition at such an early age, however. It was because she never knew her father and grew up watching her mother struggle for meager amounts of money, security, and self-confidence. Although Lulu didn’t necessarily agree with her friend’s certainty that money could not only buy happiness, but also security and some righteous self-esteem, she didn’t begrudge Bree her quest. Lulu’s own home life growing up hadn’t been the most stable in the world, and Bree had expenses these days that Lulu sure wouldn’t want to shoulder.

But neither did she have any desire to put her happiness and her future in someone else’s hands. Bree, however, couldn’t wait to unburden her burden onto someone else. Preferably someone with open table reservations at Spago and an account at Tiffany’s.

Lulu met her friend’s accusatory gaze sheepishly. “I didn’t tell you I met Cole Early because I didn’t know the guy I met was Cole Early. I thought he was just some jerk guy.”

Now Bree looked at Lulu as if she wanted to smack her forehead. Hard. And not Bree’s forehead, either. No, Bree looked like she wanted to smack
Lulu’s
forehead. Hard. “Okay, number one,” she began, “how could you
not
know Cole Early when he’s been in the paper like every day for the past two weeks?”

“Oh, the sports section,” Lulu said. “Who reads the sports section?”

Bree gaped at her. “In April? In Louisville? Oh, I don’t know, Lulu. Maybe
everybody?
’Cause how else are you going to know which horse to pick for the Derby?”

Lulu shrugged. “I usually just pick the jockey silks I like best.”

Bree closed her eyes, and judging by the almost imperceptible movement of her lips, Lulu was pretty sure she was counting slowly to ten.

“Or sometimes,” she added, “if the horse has a name I like, I go for that.”

Make that twenty Bree was counting to.

Finally, she opened her eyes. But she continued as if the break in conversation had never happened, “And number two, even if you didn’t know Cole Early, how could you possibly mistake that…that paragon of perfection, that ideal of impressiveness, that gem of juiciness, that nonpareil of numminess, that—”

“Bree?”

“What?”

“You’re starting to drool.”

Without missing a beat, Bree swiped the back of her hand across her lips, lifted her beer to enjoy a healthy swig, then concluded, “How could you mistake that…that hard copy of hunka hunka burnin’ love…”