Force of Nature (38 page)

He was willing to do it—to do like Ric and explode his arbitrary personal rules—especially the one that made him insist that he would not have a relationship with a man who was not out and open about who he was. He’d already come to the realization that, at least where Robin was concerned, he was willing to sacrifice that which he’d always considered his prime relationship directive—the ability to walk in the sunlight.

But how about this one:
I will not give up my career for you.
Was he willing to toss out that rule, too?

Or:
My partner will be faithful to me at all times, under all circumstances.

Except when blind drunk and completely out of control?

How many YouTube videos would Jules need to watch, before he couldn’t take anymore? That number was somewhat less arbitrary.

But the answer, obviously, was more than one.

Robin put the pay-per-view movie—a real charmer with Rupert Everett and Kathy Bates—on pause when Annie’s cell phone rang.

“Hey,” she said as she answered it, glancing at Robin, who clearly knew it was Ric on the other end.

“Hey,” Ric said back. “I’m just calling to check in. We won’t get any action from Junior until morning. Apparently, he’s tied up until around ten.”

“Junior’s busy until ten
A.M.
,” Annie reported to Robin. The frustration on his face surely mirrored her own. But then he checked his own phone, as if hoping he’d somehow missed Jules’s call. And she knew that, as far as frustration levels went, if this were a contest, Robin would win.

“Our flight leaves at noon,” she told Ric. “We weren’t able to get anything earlier.”

Robin stood up and headed into the hotel suite’s master bedroom, to give her privacy, as Ric said, “Make sure Robin knows that we’ve set a shoot date—this Wednesday morning—for the tape with GBJ Productions.”

“You mean, the sex tape?” she said, and Robin turned back to look at her questioningly.

“It’s been scheduled for Wednesday morning,” she told him, and she could see that he knew, instantly, what she was just realizing. Gordie Junior had given Jules and Ric a date by which GBJ Productions would have a major chunk of money—which they both hoped and feared was his payment for smuggling that nasty-ass terrorist into the country. It also meant that things were probably going to get hairy for the good guys, really fast. She could read Robin’s worry for Jules in his eyes.

“Jesus, I need a drink,” he said.

“No, you don’t,” Annie said. She spoke into the phone. “Will you please ask Jules to—”

“No, don’t,” Robin said. “He needs to focus. I don’t want to make it harder for him.”

Ric no doubt could hear Robin’s voice through her phone, because he said, “Genius should have thought of that last night.”

“Just…tell Jules we’re thinking about him,” Annie said with an “Is that all right?” face at Robin.

He sighed and shook his head—it was hard to tell if it was a yes-shake or a no—as he went into his bedroom. She heard him close his bathroom door behind him.

“It wouldn’t hurt if Jules could call him,” she told Ric, sotto voce.

“Jules asked me to convey this info,” Ric responded. “I’ve got to assume it was because he didn’t want to talk to Robin.”

Okay. And here she’d been thinking that Ric had called because he wanted to talk to her.

“Your mother called me,” she reported.

“Ah, great,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, that was so much fun,” Annie said. “She wanted us to have lunch next Friday. It was easier to just say yes.” She’d figured she’d just let Ric call his mom. Let him deal with the fallout after Annie was in California.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’ll call her and cancel.”

“And explain?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll tell her…everything.”

“Your dad seems to be doing well.”

“He is,” Ric agreed. “Look, will you tell Robin that we’re going to be buying a plane ticket for him to get back to Sarasota on Tuesday night,” he informed her. “Under no circumstances should he use it, but…We’ve got to assume Junior has connections to someone in the travel industry. If he’s at all suspicious over these next few days…”

“Why would he be suspicious?” Annie asked.

“We’re just dotting all our
I
’s,” Ric said. “Jules is pretty thorough.”

“Then maybe you better buy a second ticket for me,” she countered. “Aren’t I supposed to be Robin’s co-star in this video?”

“Yeah, right. Over my dead body,” Ric said.

“Since I’m not going to be having sex with you,” Annie pointed out, “I might as well have sex with
some
one.”

He didn’t laugh, as she’d hoped. But he did say, “That was the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. The us-not-having-sex thing.”

“Hah,” she said, her heart in her throat. “I knew you’d regret not going for that quickie.”

This time he did laugh. “Yeah, well, you got that right. Although, really, it wouldn’t’ve made much of a difference. I’d still have wanted you again, a few minutes later.”

“So what are you saying?” Annie asked. “I’m like the Chinese food of sexual partners?”

Another laugh. This one low, sexy. “That’s not how I’d put it, but there are definitely some similarities. I love eating Chinese food, too.”

“Oh,” Annie said at his insinuation. She hadn’t meant to say anything, but the sound just kind of came out of her.

“Yeah,” Ric said. “So now you know what I’ve been thinking about for most of the day.” He laughed, the sound a soft rumble in her ear. “That—and the fact that I’m an idiot. You want a year or two? You want an entire decade? Okay. You got it. I’m not going anywhere, and sooner or later, you’ll have to believe me when I tell you that I love you.”

Oh, God.

But Ric wasn’t done. “You want to pretend we’re friends with benefits until then, well, that’s fine, too—as long as I’m the only friend you’re…benefiting.”

He paused then, as if he wanted her to say something, but her mouth was dry and she couldn’t speak.

“Are we clear on that?” he asked, in his take-no-shit voice.

“Yes,” she managed. But the argumentative side of her couldn’t keep from blurting, “But it has to go both ways.”

Ric laughed again. “What part of
Will you marry me?
makes you believe that I have even the
slightest
interest in fooling around with anyone else—except of course you
don’t
believe me, so, yeah, okay. You have my word. You’ll be my only fuck buddy, too.”

“Oh,
that’s
nice,” she said. “God, Ric—”

“I’m just calling it what it is,” he countered, his temper obviously flaring. “If you don’t like the name for it, maybe you shouldn’t be—” He cut himself off and exhaled hard. “Look, for the record?” He lowered his voice. “When I’m inside of you, when I’m moving the way I know you love for me to move? I’m
making love
to you. That’s what
I
call it. So why don’t you pack
that
in your bag and think about it while you’re in California? Of course, if that concept’s too intense for you, maybe you should just focus on all the ways I’m going to make you come, next time we’re alone together.”

She was silent for such a long time that he asked, “You still there?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Good,” he said. “I’m going to call Martell, have him drop by to check on you in the morning, okay?”

“Yeah,” Annie said again.

“I love you, Annie,” Ric said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

She took a deep breath. “Ric—”

But with a click, he was gone.

Great. Now
she
needed a drink.

She and Robin were quite the pair.

Martell stopped by Ric’s on his way home from work.

The forensics nightmare was still set up in Ric’s office, but Ric and Jules were nowhere in sight.

He followed the sound of the TV upstairs to the living room—where they were sitting side by side on the sofa, playing Grand Theft Auto.

“No,” Jules was saying, shifting to keep Ric from taking the joystick out of his hands. “No, no, no—I play this game differently from you. Check this out. Look, okay, okay…
here
we go…”

On Ric’s flat-screen TV, the perp that Jules controlled with his joystick got out of the sports car and ran toward the fire truck that had skidded to a stop. The driver’s-side door opened, and the computer-image person who’d been driving the truck was tossed to the ground. Jules’s perp climbed behind the wheel.

“Yeah, baby!” he said as the fire truck rumbled away.

“What the fuck are you doing in the fire truck?” Martell asked from the doorway. “You can’t get up any real speed in that thing.”

Both men glanced at him.

“Nice to know your security system works,” Jules said to Ric.

“He has a key.” Ric’s attention was back on the TV, where Jules was running over both people and cars in the ultraviolent computer game, gaining more and more speed.

Boom!
He just plowed through a police road block set up to stop him.

“Okay,” Martell said. “Maybe that’s what you’re doing in the fire truck. Ric, you want to update me—”

“No, no,” Jules said. “Full attention on the TV, gentlemen…Wait for it, wait for it…”

He was moving at a pace that Martell wouldn’t have dared, not even in one of the smaller cars, sliding the fire truck onto the ramp up to the highway, but whoa! Instead of driving on the road, he was on the grass between the on-and off-ramps, dodging trees with a lightness of hand that was fucking amazing.

The grass turned to a concrete ramp and the truck went up it, still gaining speed and—

“Yeah!” Ric shouted as the concrete ended abruptly and the fire truck launched into midair.

“Dude!” Martell shouted. The hang time was amazing. The giant motherfucker just soared. Jules added glitter to the visual by spraying water out of the fire truck’s hose. It was beautiful.

But what went up must come down…

Except Jules managed to land the truck with amazing grace on the parking area of a nearby roof, again working that joystick like a pro to keep it from flipping on its side and plowing through the flimsy guardrail.

“Insane stunt bonus,” Jules announced, even as his words flashed on the screen. His score skyrocketed.

“Dude!” Martell said again.

Jules took the fire truck down the parking-lot ramp, all the way to the street below.

“And that,” he announced as he handed the joystick to Ric, “is the
only
way to play Grand Theft Auto.”

“Shit!” Ric immediately crashed the fire truck as Martell high-fived Jules.

“You awe and inspire me, my gay brother,” Martell told him.

“My personal life may be turning to shit, but I am,” Jules agreed, “the king of the insane stunt bonus.”

“So what’s going on?” Martell asked, sitting beside them.

“There’s Chinese takeout in the kitchen if you’re hungry,” Ric told him, turning off the TV.

“I’m assuming that’s not the reason I got three missed calls from you on my cell,” Martell said.

“I was hoping you’d have time to check in on Robin and Annie in the morning,” Ric said. “Their flight out doesn’t leave until noon.”

Martell had to be in court first thing in the morning, arguing a case against an assistant DA named Bob Andersen. They were appearing in front of a grim-faced man he and Ric had nicknamed Judge Doom, back when they were on the police force. Doom had a propensity for bringing in guilty verdicts.

Martell knew exactly—almost word for word—what his morning would be like. Bob would greet him by saying,
Mr. Griffin. Back for more punishment today, are we?

Judge Doom would bang his gavel and Martell would argue the case, using Damien Johnson’s lame-ass excuse that he’d held up the Circle K while under the influence of sleeping pills that he’d taken by mistake, thinking they were aspirin. He was sleepwalking.

Right.

The Doomster wouldn’t buy that shit any more than Martell had. The jury wouldn’t, either, and Johnson would not pass “Go” before going directly to jail.

And Bob would smirk.
Mr. Griffin. Have I started showing up in your nightmares?

Like it had been some great contest of skill that Martell had failed, instead of an exercise in necessary futility, since a trial by jury was a constitutional right of all citizens—including each and every lame-ass who insisted he or she was innocent.

And Martell wouldn’t say,
Actually, Bob, I run when I see you coming because you bore me to tears.

But he’d want to.

“Sure, I can stop in, but it’ll be early,” he told Ric now.

“Thanks,” Ric said.

Jules stood up. “I’m going to bed.”

Was he serious? “The king can’t go to bed at eight-thirty,” Martell protested.

“The king is tired,” Jules said. He looked at Ric. “Wake me if Junior calls to say he’s coming any earlier than ten.”

“Yeah,” Ric said. “Hey.”

Jules stopped in the doorway.

“You know, Annie was thinking you might want to call Robin,” Ric said, adding, “Or not. She’s just…you know…being Annie, so…”

Jules just nodded, but Martell could see the intense exhaustion in the man’s eyes along with a little something extra. He’d seen that look before—in the eyes of people who were grieving a loss. He didn’t respond, except to say a quiet “good night.”

They sat there then, in silence, as his footsteps receded down the hallway, as he gently closed the door to Annie’s room behind him.

“He okay?” Martell asked.

“Yeah,” Ric said. “He’ll be fine.”

“So that’s what gay guys do, huh? Sit around racking up insane stunt bonuses on Grand Theft Auto,” Martell mused. “Who knew? I expected to find him redecorating your kitchen.”

“I got Colt 45s in the fridge,” Ric said. “Want one?”

Martell laughed. “Zing.”

“He’s a lot like us,” Ric said. “He just…has sex with…men.”

Martell turned his head to look at him.

“I know,” Ric said. “It’s kind of weird, but then again…
You
had sex with the lieutenant.”

God Almighty, Enrique was never going to let Martell live that one down. Their former boss had been temporarily separated from her husband, and Martell had just left the force to start law school. They’d both been drinking and…Crazy shit happened. So to speak.