Flawless (62 page)

“Thanks,” he smiled sheepishly. “I might do that.”

But Kiki Gillette knew perfectly well that he wouldn’t.

A few minutes later Danny was back behind the wheel of Jake’s car, cruising aimlessly along Pacific Coast Highway. Jake had loaned Danny the girly white Porsche for making house calls, figuring that he could easily walk to and from Flawless and that the business could ill afford a second set of wheels. Danny agreed, although he hated the car even more than Jake did. What kind of a prize idiot must he look, running around town in a Barbie-mobile? If any of his mates from London or New York saw him in it he’d never live it down.

He was due to meet Jake for a late lunch at three in Beverly Hills. But it was still only one o’clock, and he had no more clients to see that day. Turning left on a whim up Topanga Canyon, he followed the winding hairpin road as it climbed the sides of a deep, mud-sided ravine. He was only a few minutes from the highway, yet he felt like he’d stumbled into the Wild West. On either side of him the steep hills were covered with boulders and the occasional hardy fir tree. As he drove farther up the canyon, rustic wooden huts and caravans began appearing in clusters by the roadside, eventually morphing into the “town” of Topanga itself: a tiny commercial square consisting mostly of antique
shops and yoga studios, with one raw food café, a tarot reader, and a couple of other similarly hippie-themed stores.

Pulling into the half-empty parking lot, he got out of the car. The sound of wind chimes was almost deafening. Suddenly hungry—he’d been so keyed up about the Kiki Gillette meeting he’d been unable to eat breakfast—he strolled up to the raw food café, but quickly thought better of it. Smoked tofu and mung bean salad? Jesus Christ. He’d rather starve.

With nothing better to do, he wandered into the real estate agency on the far northeast corner of the square.

“Can I help you?”

The woman behind the desk wore a dark suit and trendy black glasses. She was in her midthirties and looked corporate and completely out of place in this hick little backwater.

“Probably not. I was just passing,” said Danny. “I guess I was curious to see what sort of property you had for sale up here.” He picked up a glossy brochure from the desk and began flipping idly through it.

“What’s your price range?”

Zero
, thought Danny.

“Up to five hundred thousand,” he heard himself saying.

The woman’s face brightened. “We actually have a lot of one- and two-bedroom places on our books right now in the midfours.” Tapping something into her computer, she smiled at Danny warmly as the color printer behind her began spitting out property details like bullets.

“Here.” Before he could protest, she picked up the sheaf of particulars and thrust them into his hand along with her business card. “Take these with you. They should give you a feel for what’s out there.”

Two minutes later, Danny was sitting on a bench in the sunshine, reading over the advertisements.

Stunning duplex, prime Topanga! 360-degree canyon views!
proclaimed one, underneath a picture of a dilapidated, rotting
wooden shack that looked like it had been lifted from the set of
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
piece by piece.
$499,995. Must see.

Must see a fucking psychiatrist at that price
, thought Danny.

Rustic charmer
, read the next ad.
Perfect writer’s retreat!
That one was at least pretty, but barely big enough for a typewriter, never mind the human being that went with it. At $385,000 it was about the same price per square foot as East Hampton. Ridiculous.

A couple of minutes later, however, he found himself staring at a picture of a farmhouse and inexplicably grinning from ear to ear. It was whitewashed, wooden, he guessed a relic from the 1920s or perhaps even earlier. Perched on top of a precipitous wooded escarpment, it looked like a cross between Hansel and Gretel’s cottage and the Amityville house of horror.

The copy was short, to the point, and easy on the exclamation marks.

Teardown, upper Topanga. 2-acre lot, partially flat. $465,000.

Scrunching the rest of the advertisements into a ball and dumping them in the nearest bin, Jake carefully folded the picture of the farmhouse and put it in his pocket. He had no idea why. He didn’t have four dollars, never mind four hundred and sixty-five thousand. The place would cost a fortune to renovate—if, by some miracle, he were ever to buy it he wouldn’t dream of tearing it down. And anyway, who lived in Topanga, in a farmhouse, by themselves? Serial killers, that was who. Certainly not a sad, single, homesick New Yorker.

Climbing back into Jake’s ridiculous car, Danny fired up the engine and headed back toward civilization.

At Urth Caffé on Melrose, Jake sipped his iced water anxiously.

It was unlike Danny to be late. He knew he’d been out to Malibu to see Kiki Gillette this morning and prayed fervently
that he’d been able to woo her back to the Solomon Stones fold. A few years ago, old man Gillette had been good for a minimum fifty grand’s worth of business. Kiki’s order alone could mean the difference between surviving another year and going under.

He’d put three calls in to Danny’s cell, but it went straight to voice mail, meaning he’d either switched it off or had no reception, a common problem in the Malibu Colony. With any luck he’d been sealing the deal with Kiki in the marital bed, which would explain his unexpected no-show. Jake hoped so, for Danny’s sake as much as his own. His brother could use some cheering up. If memory served, Kiki Gillette had always left Jake with a smile on his face…

“Sorry I’m late.” Danny was all smiles as he weaved his way through the tables of gossiping women toward his brother. “I lost track of time a bit, I’m afraid. Have you ordered?”

“Not yet.” Jake grabbed a passing waiter. “Two Cobb salads and two Cokes please, one diet, one regular. So.” He grinned at Danny. “How was Kiki?”

“She was fine,” said Danny, absently. “Have you ever been up to Topanga?”

Jake frowned. “Not for years. What’s Topanga got to do with anything?”

“Nothing,” said Danny. “I thought it was charming, that’s all. I went up there for a drive this morning and—”

“Hold on.” Jake’s frown deepened. “I thought you’d spent the morning in bed with Kiki Gillette?”

“What made you think that?” Danny looked puzzled. Their Cokes arrived and he took a long, cooling sip of his.

“You were late,” said Jake simply. “You’re never late. So you didn’t sleep with Kiki?”

“No!” Danny laughed. “Jesus, don’t look so crestfallen. I’m ninety percent sure I’ve reeled her back in. I had to leave the daisy-chain necklace with her.”

“You
what
?” Jake spluttered, sending Coca-Cola bubbles up his nose. “For fuck’s sake, Dan. We’re not insured!”

“I know,” said Danny. “It was a calculated risk.”

“Scarlett’ll go ballistic.”

“Only if we tell her,” said Danny reasonably. “Anyway, I think Kiki’s gonna buy it. I offered it to her at cost,” he added, in an almost inaudible mumble.

Jake felt his chest tightening.

“Sorry, bruv, I think I must have misheard you. You didn’t just say ‘cost,’ did you?”

Their Cobb salads arrived.

“You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs,” Danny said cheerfully. “Do you want the Gillettes back on our customer list or don’t you?”

Jake did. Desperately. He just wondered how he was going to explain yet another at-cost sale to Scarlett. She’d been gone for almost three months now, stuck in Scotland at her parents’ castle like Rapunzel. Now that he had Danny here to work on Solomon Stones, he was finally able to focus all his attention on Flawless. The combination of Jake’s sales skills and Perry’s expertise had been enough to keep business strong. But the store desperately needed new designs, not to mention Scarlett’s physical presence, the missing ingredient that gave Flawless its magic and that had made the store’s first year such a runaway success. Jake wasn’t the only one pining for Scarlett. Her customers missed her too.

“What do you think of this?” Danny pulled the picture of the decrepit Topanga farmhouse out of his jeans pocket.

“Looks like the house that the spooky-old-man-bad-guy from
Scooby-Doo
would live in,” said Jake.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Danny’s eyes lit up.

“That wasn’t a compliment,” said Jake. “What are you doing looking at houses anyway? You haven’t got any savings and you hate LA.”

Danny shrugged and put the picture away.

“I know,” he said. “I was just looking. Topanga’s cute.”

“It’s a fucking hippie commune,” said Jake, shoveling down the remains of his salad. Ever since they were boys, Jake had attacked every meal as if he might never eat again. Danny was barely halfway through his own plate. “Listen, I should get back to the store. When do you think you might close the deal with Kiki?”

“Friday, I hope,” said Danny. “She wanted a couple of days to work on her old man.”

“You should have let her work on you,” said Jake, getting to his feet and dropping his napkin on the table. “I assume she was willing?”

“Very,” said Danny. “I just wasn’t in the mood.”

Jake shook his head pityingly. “You should get yourself to a doctor, mate. Score a few little blue pills.”

“Fuck off!” said Danny. “I don’t need Viagra.”
I need Diana
, he thought. But he didn’t say anything.

“If you say so,” said Jake. “By the way, I’m meeting Ruth for a drink after work tonight, so I probably won’t get home until nine-ish.”

“Oh?” Danny raised an eyebrow. That was two dates in one week. “Are things getting more serious with you two?”

“Maybe.” Jake shrugged. “We’ll see.”

He liked Ruth. She was sexy, with her sleek, dark bob, tiny waist, and mischievous smile. He liked the fact that she was physically very different from Scarlett, petite and curvy versus Scarlett’s willowy and ethereal. She was smart and funny, and she had her own life—she ran a thriving veterinary practice in Hancock Park—that had nothing to do with the jaded, starry West Hollywood scene.

He knew he was still in love with Scarlett. But love hadn’t been enough to keep them together, and now she was farther away from him than ever. He wasn’t ready to throw in the towel yet, like Danny seemed to have done. Sex was not an activity that Jake had ever considered optional.

It was only after Jake had left that Danny realized he’d stuck him with the bill.

Again.

“Cheeky bastard,” he muttered under his breath.

By the time Danny pulled into the driveway of Jake’s apartment, it was almost six. After finishing his lunch at a leisurely pace, some masochistic impulse had prompted him to walk down Robertson and look in the windows of the various baby stores. Diana’s baby—his baby—was due in a matter of weeks. He wanted to start by buying the baby something practical; maybe a stroller? But he realized with a pang that he wasn’t even sure what hospital the baby would be born in and so had no idea where the gift should be shipped. Besides which, Brogan would probably already have gotten the kid a gold-plated Bugaboo.