Kiss the Girl (38 page)

“True.”
 
A sneaky rip tide of relief rippled in her veins, so Sloan
lifted the
bottle of water
to her lips and took a tiny sip
. 
She’d spent her morning committing all manner of minor sins in the hopes of avoiding a truly ugly one.  In spite of her best efforts, it was still a very real possibility that she’d have to steal yet another of Nixie’s boyfriends, and her stomach went sour with shame. 
“
Karl? 
Do we real
ly need Nixie for this one
?  If she’s dead set on staying here, can’t we
--”

“Nixie’s the key, Sloan.  You know that.  We need her.”

She shrugged her acquiescence.  Karl was rarely wrong.  If he said they needed Nixie, they needed Nixie. 

“So what are we going to do?” she asked.

“I have an idea,” he said, reaching for his cell phone.  “Let me take it from here.”  He ran a critical eye over her face.  “Why don’t you go rest or something?  You look tired.”

I feel dirty
, she wanted to say, but she only smoothed her
skirt and stood
.  A small twinge of panic tightened her stomach, and she touched the lines between her brows that formed whenever she frowned.  She had to be more careful.  She wasn’t young anymore, and she needed to take scrupulous care of herself if she wanted to maintain the fiction that age hadn’t touched her.
  That none of the cruel, countless sacrifices she’d made over the years had touched her. 

“Maybe I’ll go have a shower.”

Half an hour later, she
rifled through the explosion of lingerie that had taken over half her suitcase.  White satin, black silk, jade green lace.  Filmy, slinky, expensive.  She shoved it all aside and dug deeper.  She didn’t want any of it.  Not today. 

Her curls, carefully conditioned and combed, stuck wetly to her cheeks as she cursed and shoved both arms into the suitcase to lift away the mountain of
underthings
. 

“Ha!”  She reached into the last corner and
fished out a pair of
white cotton bikinis.  The elastic was warped, the material worn and soft, and
an improbable
herd of ladybugs formed a heart on the derriere. 
They were the last thing Archer had ever given her and she lived in fear that one day she would wear them out.

She
stepped carefully into them,
smoothed t
he simple, serv
iceable cotton against her skin
.  F
or an instant, it seemed to
smooth
something in
side
her
as well
.  S
omething
raw and
broken and dirty. 

She shook her head and
dropped her towel to clip on the matching bra.  She
yanked on a
white t-shirt from BCBG
. 
God
, she was morose today. 
What did she have to
whine about
?
  Fate had been obscenely good to her.  It had granted her the face and figure to earn everything she needed in the world
, and then
, for
eight
precious years
--
an administrative mistake on
God
’s part most likely
--
it had given her
Archer Brace
as well
.
 

It was an embarrassment of riches by any standard, one she’d gobbled up with her trademark appetite.  By the time the mistake was sorted out and Archer whisked away
--
private plane crash, so sad, world in mourning
--
she was already irretrievably spoiled. 

She’d gotten used to being loved. 

She’d had
a
man who snapped photos of her with two weeks of camp dirt cementing her ha
ir to her head, insisting she’d never been more
beautiful.  He’d worshipped her body, of course, but
what she remembered most was his hand on her belly as Nixie moved
--
serene, purposeful and
determined
--
inside her, a foreshadowing of the woman their child would become.  She remembered his fingers
stroking
Nixie’s fuzzy head as she nursed, remembered the astonishing fact that her exposed breast never
even
registered.  Archer had loved her. 
Her
. 

She would never have that again, and she didn’t want it.  She’d barely survived the first time.
 
What she wanted now was something comfortable, routine and expected.  It didn’t have to touch her heart.  She didn’t have one left to touch anyway.  She’d buried it with Archer. 

What she had was a face
that, with proper care and excellent lighting, could still sell magazines.  She had
a figure that, with the
right
foundational garments, could wear couture fo
r another few years yet.  And she had Karl,
Archer’s best friend and fellow dreamer
, who’d loved Archer as much as she had, who’d dedicated his life to the same causes and who valued most in her what Archer had valued least
--
her face, her figure and her wil
lingness to exploit them both. 
She figured she owed the univers
e a whopping tab for those eight
precious years, and
God
had left her Karl to make sure she paid.

“Sloan?”  Karl knocked on her door.  “You about finished in there?”

“Almost.” 
She shimmied into a butter-soft p
air of Versace
capris
.  The ragged
cotton underwear was a secret for her alone.  An admission of weakness too shaming and destructive to claim
.

“I want you to see something
out here
.”

She caught sight of herself in the mirror and stuck out her tongue. 
God
, she might as well just rent a
mini van
and go pick some kids up from soccer practice.

“Be right there.”

She pulled off the t-shirt and yanked on a tank top instead.  It ended just below her navel, leaving an expanse of smooth skin exposed above the low-slung waist of her
capris
.  The word
lucky
stretched across her breasts, spelled out in tacky green rhinestones. 

Better.  She curled her mouth into its habitual surprise-me-baby-I-dare-you smile and padded barefoot into the common space to see what Karl needed from her now.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Erik left his mother’s apartment
the following Sunday
with his grandmother’s diamond in his pocket
.  He
t
ried not to wonder if Nixie was
at home across the hall.  He didn’t want to see her, he told himself.  He didn’t want to talk to her, or say something funny just to watch her laugh.

The next thing he said to her probably wouldn’t be very funny anyway.  It would most likely be about his and Mary Jane’s surprise engag
ement.  He punched the elevator
call button and frowned at the doors.  She’d congratulate him, of course.  Tell him she’d seen it coming.  But she wouldn’t have.  Why would she when he’d been kissing her instead of his fiancée?

He pushed the call button again.  Somebody else would probably tell her.  News traveled fast in Anacostia.  Surely he wouldn’t be the one to break the story?  Not that she’d be disappointed or anything. 
A woman like Nixie
didn’t have her romantic hopes pinned on a doctor.  But they were friends, weren’t they?  Good friends.  And if any friend of his got engaged without even mentioning the possibility, wouldn’t Erik be a little hurt? 

The
elevator binged
and the doors slid open, but Erik
cursed softly and let them close again.  He turned
and headed
toward Nixie’s door. 

He had to tell her.
  It was the right thing to do.  He punched her doorbell before he could think better of it.

The door swung open and Nixie was there, ho
lding a newspaper.
 

“Hey, Nixie.  I was in the neighborhood, and I thought I’d stop by.  I wanted to
talk to you about
something.”

“
Yeah?”  A smile curved her lips and she pressed
the newspaper
to her chest.  “Be still my heart.  I didn’t believe for an instant it could be true, but feel free to drop to one knee
.
”

He automatically clapped a hand
to the
ring
in his pocket
.  “Um, what?”

“You’re here to propose marriage, right?  To seal our families into a political dynasty for the ages so you can run for president and I can finally retire that ghastly china they trot out for state dinners?”
 

He felt his mouth open,
but no words came out.  He
stared at her, speechless, until she laughed and
tossed him
the newspaper
.  It was the Sunday Post
--
all twenty or so pounds of it
--
and it hit his chest with a dull
thunk
.  H
e scrambled to catch it before it did in his toes
as well as his sternum.
  Nixie stood back and opened the door.  “Come on in and read all about it.”

Erik followed her into the kitchen. 
He didn’t blame her for bypassing the living room.  The kitchen
,
with a chain of garlic bulbs dangling from the pot rack and a cheerful assembly of little clay pots on the window sill
,
looked more like a Nixie-inhabited space
.  He couldn’t tell a
daisy from a dandelion himself, but he’d bet good money t
hat everything on that sill was edible rather than ornamental.

“Go on,” she said, leaning back against a
mammoth stove, her arms folded across her chest.
  “Read.” 

He found the evidence of hi
s mother’s perfidy in bold face
type
at the top of the page
. 
Senator’s Doctor Son Gears up for Political Career with Proposal to Nixie Leighton-Brace
--
Will Grandma’s Ring Measure up for Heiress?