Sex in a Sidecar (23 page)

I went to recheck the sliding doors, feeling nervous and edgy. Locked tight. As I turned back to the room, a specter detached itself from the potted palms at the end of the bar.

I damn near wet myself.

The shadow became a person, became a face, familiar body, arms and hands, familiar and known. “Sherri, it's me.”

“What are you doing here?” Terror still held me. I backed away from him.

He raised his hands to reassure me. “Take it easy.” He came towards me. The man moved like a cat, smooth and lithe and with a sexual grace.

“What are you doing here?” I repeated, still sliding away.

“I came in a half-hour ago and waited 'til everyone had gone.”

“How did you get past the guardhouse?”

“You just need someone to leave your name at the gate,” Clay said. “I called Roger. He's a member.”

His face was gaunt and hard as if not enough fat lay between skin and bone, giving him a lean and hungry look. His face showed no emotion, not pleasure at seeing me, nor desire.

“Why?”

Now he grinned at me, a rather boyish grin and for a moment his hard-edged features softened. “Why do you think?”

I backed up slightly. “Why didn't you tell me you were coming?” Fear gone, I was playing a new game now.

“I just decided.” He made a wry face, embarrassed by his need.

“Decided? What did you decide?” I asked.

His lips curved up. “I decided I needed…,” he paused and whispered, “a little R and R.”

I laughed. “You're sure it isn't a little S and S you need?” He reached out for me, grabbing me and pulling me towards him. “S and S?”

I slid my hands over his shoulders. “Sex and Sherri.”

Maybe he wasn't the Kevlar Man after all. There was definitely a warm hard response.

Clay tried to talk me into going back to the condo with him. I had a better idea. I gathered up a long white tablecloth and we went out past the pool to the dunes. The full moon laid a golden path across the water to a spot among the high-banked sand and tufted grasses. The air freshened our overheated bodies and night birds called.

In the languid afterglow, we swam in the pool. Playing and kissing and pleasuring each other.

With my legs and arms twined around him, the water up to his chest, I whispered, “Let's go upstairs.” “I can't,” he said between kisses. I pushed back from him. “Why?”

“I can't stay,” he told me.

“Why?”

“I have to leave for Cedar Key at five in the morning. I'll just go home and grab a couple hours' sleep and a change of clothes. If I'm late tomorrow the tradesmen will be standing around wasting time.”

“We wouldn't want that to happen,” I said. Pushing away from him, I splashed from the water, outraged and hurt that I'd come in second once again to his work. I got us towels from the cabana and after dressing in silence we took the elevator up to the main floor and went out the front of the building.

As we went down the front steps to the parking lot, he reached out and took my hand. “Don't start liking it here too much.”

“As if. I can't wait to get back to the Sunset.”

“Oh, yes,” he freed my hand, “The Sunset.”

“Clay, Brian and Peter were telling me the worst news.” I told him about Jerry Ellington's problems. “Won't his insurance make it right?”

“Maybe not. An act of God, no one insures you for those.”

“I just want things to be the way they used to be.”

He took me in his arms and rubbed my back. “What is it about you and that damn place?”

“It's my job.”

“More than that.”

“Yeah, maybe.” I put my hands on his chest and arched back to look up at him. “It feels like home to me.”

He pulled me close to him, held me for a minute and then said quietly, “Okay.”

I could have just given Clay the code to the lift barrier but I wanted to be with him as long as possible so I went down the lane with him.

When we were parked in front of the barrier saying goodbye, he wrapped me in his arms and whispered, “Come with me.”

“And do what?” I stretched back against the leather seat, taking him along, holding him, smoothing his cheek with mine and drinking in the scent of his cologne.

“Is being bored the worst thing that could happen to you?” he asked.

“No.” I stroked his back and kissed along his jaw. “Losing you is the worst thing that could happen to me.”

He pushed away from me. Braced on straight arms he looked down into my face. Then he pulled away and put both hands on the steering wheel. “I have to go.” He stared straight ahead. “Five will come early.”

I sat up, feeling foolish and not knowing what I'd said wrong.

He leaned across in front of me and opened the door. “I'll call.”

I walked back up the twisting road cursing softly. The man was crazy. I only had to slip and say the least thing personal and he ran like the hounds of hell were after him. Miserable and lonely already, I hunched my shoulders and wrapped my arms around my chest, unaware of my surroundings until I got to the second to last turn in the road. I stopped and listened. I wasn't alone. It could be a coon or a possum; the jungle out there would be full of them. There were also bobcats and still the odd Florida panther lurking about.

Or it could be Clay coming back. “Yeah, right,” my brain said, “or it could be none of the above.”

Branches parted. A form moved in the moonlight. It was human. I didn't wait to see what human. The star of the high school track team took off and for the second time that night I was sixteen again.

I slammed the door and slid the steel locking bar into its channel. Then a chilling thought grabbed me. What if he got to the door ahead me? What if I was now locked inside with him?

Terror froze me in place, moving was more frightening than standing there perfectly still as if I could shrink unseen into the wainscoting. Slowly I turned and looked over my shoulder, expecting to find a grinning apparition.

Was I safer inside or out? The keys to my car were in my bedroom upstairs. I wasn't going anywhere without a vehicle and there were no neighbors to run to, no cars still traveling on Beach Road at this time of night. I would be alone out there in acres of thick underbrush, of dense green palmetto thick with thorns and hidden creatures. Screw that!

A phone sat on a small console table. I tiptoed over to the phone — as if I could fool anyone hiding in the shadows by being quiet. Bizarre, but being perfectly silent seemed important. I lifted the handset from the cradle. I wanted Clay. The dial tone filled the air. I punched in the first two numbers. Then I put the phone down again.

Clay would come back, I could count on that no matter how upset he was with me, but he might not believe me, might see it as a ploy and he wasn't a man you played games with.

I bolted to the elevator and slid the glass door shut. Upstairs the hall was empty. I dashed for my bedroom and slammed the door behind me, locking myself in the room. Then I dragged a leather chair over in front of the door. I didn't care who the hell was out there, whoever it was they were welcome to the whole damn place. I was having no part of it. No matter what happened in the building in the heart of the night, I had no intention of leaving my room. Just to be sure I was alone I searched the room. Even under the bed. No thing.

But who was out there? Julian was too fat and lazy to walk around in the night. Clay had no reason to walk up the drive. Besides, wouldn't he have called out to me? Would I have heard him?

Perhaps it was Eric Schievner. I'd already decided he planned to murder someone and he seemed to have some interest in me. I climbed into bed with my clothes on, rolled over on my side and, pulling the bedcovers up over my head and huddling down in the fetal position, waited for morning and planned what I'd do then.

Clay's call woke me. We made up for our parting. I didn't tell him about the figure in the underbrush. No need to give him another reason to be upset with me. If we were really together, a couple, shouldn't I feel easy about telling him I was being stalked? Why was it something I needed to hide?

After we whispered our goodbyes, I pulled on a swimsuit and my gray sweats and went down to the beach.

I did my run and then swam in the ocean. Stretched out on my back, bobbing in the waves, I watched brown pelicans flap slowly by overhead and thought about the night before. I hadn't asked about security guys, maybe that's who'd been out there doing one more check before they left. Yeah, right.

Already the gulf was getting too cool for swimming. It wouldn't be really comfortable again until late March. Screw this. Scary Lester could ogle all he wanted, I wasn't going to die of hypothermia! Tomorrow I'd swim in the pool. I rolled over on my stomach and did a lazy crawl to the beach.

When I walked across the sand I saw Lester out by the latticework screen that hid the garbage bins, a cloud of seagulls hovering over him and the trash. He didn't see the birds. His eyes only saw me.

Isaak looked up from a small pot he was stirring on the range when I burst through the door. Unlike most chefs in checkered pants, Isaak was wearing khaki shorts, but he wore the traditional crisp white chef's jacket, bleached and ironed and a baseball cap on backwards. His face broke into a welcoming smile. “
Cherie
,” he sang out.

The room was full of the smell of the basil and parsley that pretty little Sarah Grekski was chopping. She looked up from her flashing blade and gave me a wide smile.

I poured myself a coffee and perched on a stool, asking a million questions while Isaak finished making vichyssoise for the luncheon special and Sarah got started on some mint.

“
Cherie
,” Isaak said, “I'm thinking it's not just my charm or my magnificent physic that has you spending all your free time in my kitchen. Are you planning on becoming a chef?”

“No. But I would like to learn to cook. I need a few dynamite recipes to impress people. I want to be good.”

He leaned towards me and whispered, “I'm sure you are good.”

“Yes, I am,” I whispered back. “But I'm talking about in the kitchen.”

“A woman like you doesn't have to be good in the kitchen.”

“Oh, but I want to be a keeper.” The words surprised me but I knew as soon as I said them they were true. What a Fruit Loop…I hadn't a clue what I really thought about anything until it popped out of my mouth.

“A keeper?”

“Yeah. Like when you go fishing, you only keep the best.”

“I thought it was the biggest.” His eyes went to my chest and a naughty mischievous grin spread across his face. “You're a keeper.”

The man was a devil. He oozed sex appeal and he knew it, knew he could get away with just about anything. I picked up a rolling pin, shaking it at him. He laughed, a big hearty belly laugh that made you think about climbing up on the pastry table and inviting him to join you.

He braced himself on the marble top of the pastry counter and leaned towards me. “Marry me and you'll never have to cook,” he promised.

“Teach me to cook and I'll take it under consideration. A girl likes to have options.”

He went to the fridge and took out a chocolate concoction that was to be the dessert for a banquet that evening and put it in front of me. It was heaven. I was halfway through it before I remembered what I wanted to ask him.

“What time did you get in last night?” I asked.

“Did you miss me,
Cherie
?” He was melting chocolate over a pan of water, whisking it briskly and didn't look up.

“I saw someone out on the drive. I thought it might be you.”

“I didn't get back 'til late.”

“Did you walk down the drive?”

“No.”

He removed the chocolate from the simmering water, still beating it and concentrating on its texture, lifting the whisk and watching it fall off the tines. Never once did he ask why I thought he'd be walking down the drive. I watched as he added vanilla and something alcoholic and went back to beating the chocolate. Perhaps he just wasn't curious or maybe he already knew who was out there.

He filled a spoon dripping with the chocolate sauce and held it out for me to taste. “Heaven,” I breathed.

He grinned at me and responded, “I know all kinds of heaven.”

“I just bet you do. How did you come to Jacaranda, yo uheavenly man?”

“I knew Julian up north. We worked together.”

“I don't know why you don't have your own place when you cook like this.”

“I thought I was going to, thought I had the money, but it fell through.” He frowned, the first dark side of him I'd seen.

“Was Bunny Lehre going to bankroll you?” Wild guess number one hundred and seventy-nine.

His eyebrows pulled together in a frown. “Why do you ask so many questions?”