Lovers and Liars (35 page)

J
ack was dreaming.

He knew the dream—and hated it.

The goddamn neighborhood. The empty lot full of garbage. The broken chain fence. The slovenly cottages, the filthy streets, the rats. His house.

He didn’t want to be in the dream. He wanted to wake up.

He saw her standing there, on the porch. His mother.

Something was wrong. He knew his mother was dead.

Wake up!

He felt his heart lift in anticipation as he suddenly knew who was standing there, waving, waiting.

It wasn’t his mother.

Belinda
.

He started to run. His heart was going crazy now, with a kind of insane happiness, a desperate need, a kind of ecstatic feeling that didn’t belong in the dream. Belinda was so beautiful, and she was there waiting for him.

But it was wrong. She shouldn’t be there, not on his porch. Something was wrong.

He felt afraid.

And then he knew why: Because it was happening, and he had known it was going to happen all along. His house started moving away as he approached.

No!

Belinda!

He screamed, but no words came out. He tried to run, but his legs wouldn’t move.

The house was disappearing!

Belinda! Belinda! Belinda!

He couldn’t get his voice to work, and his legs were still paralyzed. The house was dropping over the horizon. It was just a speck now, and he started crying.

Jack gasped and sat up, fully awake.

What a dream.

His face was wet. He couldn’t believe it. And then he realized the other side of the bed was empty.

He leaned back against the pillows, his heart pounding, waiting for it to slow down, listening for Belinda in the bathroom. Why would he dream something like that? How insane!

He turned his head toward her side of the bed, touching the spot where she had lain, inhaling the heady smell of sex. The sheets were cool, and he frowned, sitting up. Looking down, surprised. He was growing.

He half smiled. All kinds of memories came spinning back to him. Jesus! Never had it been so good—last night
made every sexual encounter he had ever had seem embarrassingly poor! He laughed, a husky, smug sound.

They had made love on and off for most of the night, mostly on. He had always been proud of his stamina but hadn’t known it was quite this good.

Where was she? Just thinking about her was making him throb deliciously, demandingly. What hadn’t they done?

He had a sudden desire to give Belinda a bath. He smiled, visualizing how he would soap her entire body. He stood and walked into the bathroom.

She wasn’t there.

He walked back into the bedroom, hitting the lights. Scowling now. Her clothes—the gold top, the cowboy boots, the leather pants—were no longer on his floor.

No way. It wasn’t possible.

No woman walked out on him until he told her to leave.

Impossible.

His gaze settled on a note propped up on the bedside table, and he pounced on it:

Thanks, Jack. It was fun.

Belinda

He crumpled it in his hand, hurling it at the floor.

Fun? It was fun?

Who the hell was that little no-name screenwriter to leave him in the middle of the night and call their evening
fun!

He couldn’t believe she had just gotten up and left!

The no-good cunt.

It was then that he heard a crash in the living room and a hushed curse. Like a shot he was through the door.

64

B
elinda cursed again, this time to herself, carefully picking up the lamp and placing it on the side table she had knocked over. She couldn’t see a fucking thing. Then suddenly the entire room was illuminated—someone had hit the switch. She jumped a foot into the air.

“What a nice note,” Jack said. She had her boots in hand, and she looked guilty and furtive.

Belinda straightened, trying not to act like a crook, not to feel like one. After all, it was her right to leave whenever she damn well pleased. “I thought it was a nice note. What was I supposed to do, just leave without a good-bye?”

“You weren’t supposed to leave at all,” Jack snapped.

“The night is over,” Belinda said. “It was nice. Now it’s over. Look, I don’t have time for this.”

“You are one cold lady,” Jack said rigidly.

Belinda grabbed the door and swung it open. “Good-bye, Jack.”

He grabbed it, and his strength won. The door closed. “Let’s talk.”

Just who did he think he was? She wanted to go, and that was that. “I don’t want to talk, Jack. I want to go home, take a shower, have some coffee, and get dressed to go skiing.”

Jack’s scowl deepened.

Belinda shrugged.

“It’s insulting that you’re trying to leave like this.”

“I’m sure it is. All those mindless bimbos you fuck wouldn’t dare leave until you told them to, would they?”

“So now you want to fight?”

“I don’t know you well enough to fight with you,” Belinda said, wishing his eyes weren’t so expressive and beautiful.
Wishing she had made it out the door without his catching her, then wishing he would make her stay.

“If those weren’t fighting words, then I don’t know what you’d call them.”

“Maybe it’s just that the truth is hard to take?”

“Don’t try and tell me again that you’re not trying to provoke me,” Jack said.

Belinda turned abruptly on her heel. Damn him, but he was right. She was angry, angry at herself and at him, but mostly at herself, for her feelings, and she was taking it out on him. She did want to fight.

Jack was suddenly there, suddenly had her in his arms, his breath against her cheek. “You’re not going,” he said in that silky tone of his. “You’re not going and we’re not fighting, Belinda. You can’t possibly walk away now. Not from me.”

She pushed him away so she could really look at him. The trouble was, she was melting under his charisma, and she didn’t want to go.
But she had to
.

“I want you to stay, Belinda. Just you and me. We’ll stay through the holiday, a whole week, just the two of us.” His tone was husky, seductive, urgent. It was his smile that decided her, so ripe with cocky promise. Imagine a week of this! But then what? To get thrown out on her ass and replaced by his next bimbo? “No, thanks.”

He was incredulous. “You’re refusing me? Leaving? Walking out on
me?
”

“Sorry.”

“Fine.” He stomped to the door of the bedroom and turned. “Just fine, Belinda, just fine!”

She stared, unsmiling.

“You do know what you’re missing?”

“I believe so,” she said.

“I won’t chase after you again,” Jack stated, eyes flashing angrily. “I never chase a broad.”

“And I never chase a stud,” Belinda said, opening the door.

“You’re the coldest bitch I’ve ever met.”

“You have an incredible head,” she said and then smiled coolly. “Meant both ways.”

“I’ve got millions of broads chasing me,” Jack shouted.

“Good! Go after them! I’m not your type anyway.”

“No. That you most certainly aren’t.”

It hurt. It really hurt. “You truly are nothing but a prick.”

“And you are nothing but a cunt,” Jack snarled. “Shit, I must have been crazy! I got pussy coming out of my ears! And I chase this?” He disappeared into his bedroom, stiff and volatile.

“Like I said,” Belinda called sweetly after him, “it really was fun.”

Jack slammed the door behind him.

Belinda stepped out into the frigid dawn and felt like crying.

I will not shed one damn tear over that son of a bitch, she vowed. I absolutely did the right thing.

She did not feel better.

65

J
anuary 15,1988

Mary was livid.

That bastard had lied. He had used her and lied.

Worse, after not having seen him since that one night they had spent together, she had gone running when he had called this morning and told her he was in town for the day, before heading back to New York. She had met him at his condo in Westwood, and without ceremony he had stripped her and spent a few hours fucking her. She had moaned and climaxed again and again. Really getting off on the fact that
she was fucking Abe Glassman now, today, while her bastard husband had been fucking his daughter last night.

Mary was no fool. Vince hadn’t even bothered to come home last night. She knew where he had been, the shit. After sex, she had asked Abe what he was doing about it.

And he had laughed. “Nothing,” he had said.

“What?”

“Nothing. The timing’s not right now, doll, but what does it matter? You have me.”

With a scream, Mary had risen to smack him across the face. Abe caught her hand, his eyes becoming black and deadly. He almost broke her wrist. “Don’t you dare,” he said, and he threw her back on the bed, hard, so hard that her head hit the headboard, and she was frightened. Then she saw his stiff, straining prick—they were both naked—and when she saw him climb on the bed, all kinds of jolts of desire surged through her. She hated him. He had lied, used her. But when he rammed that long, thick dick into her, she forgot everything. Everything.

Well, she was remembering now.

Remembering and steaming as she did line after line, guzzling white wine on the rocks, on the side.

When she had first been married, when Vince had loved and cherished her, he had insisted she learn to use a gun. Just an average, twenty-two caliber revolver. Now she pulled open the drawer where he kept it, in his nightstand, and she picked it up. It was black and cold and gleaming in her hand.

She shuddered and reached back into the drawer for the bullets.

   It was long and black, and it gleamed in the moonlight.