The Cottage (18 page)

They left on a Friday night, and the hotel was even more beautiful than he had promised her it would be. They had connecting rooms, and an enormous living
room and patio, their own pool, and a little private beach just beyond it. They never saw anyone, except when they wanted to. And in the late afternoon, they went into town, wandered into shops, and sat at outdoor cafes drinking margaritas. It felt like a honeymoon, and on the second night, just as he had hoped she would, she seduced him. She wasn't even drunk when she did it. She wanted to. She was falling in love with him. No man had ever been as kind to her, as thoughtful, or as gentle. He was not only a wonderful companion, and a great friend, but the perfect lover. Cooper Winslow knew his way around women. He knew what they wanted, what they liked to do, and how they liked to be treated, as well as what they needed. She had never enjoyed shopping with anyone as much as she did with Coop, she had never talked as easily to anyone, never laughed as much, had never been as spoiled. She had never known anyone like him.

She was also surprised by how many autographs he signed, and how many people stopped him to take his photograph. It seemed like the whole world knew him. But none as well as she did. Or at least that was what it felt like to her. He seemed surprisingly willing to share not only his life and his history, but his innermost secrets with her. And she reciprocated easily. She was entirely open with him.

“What are your parents going to think about us?” Coop asked after they made love for the first time. It had been a memorable experience. And they sat in their private pool afterwards, naked in the moonlight, with music in the distance. It had been the most romantic night of her life.

“God knows,” she said, looking pensive. “My father's never liked anyone in his life, man or woman, including his children and my mother. He's suspicious of everyone. But it's hard to imagine him not liking you, Coop. You're respectable, you're well born, you're polite, intelligent, charming, successful. What's to object to?”

“He may not like the difference in our ages.” For a start.

“That's possible. But some days you look younger than I do.” She smiled at him in the moonlight, and they kissed again. He hadn't told her that there was also a difference in their circumstances, that she was solvent, and he wasn't. It pained him to admit it. It wasn't a reality he faced often. But it was nice knowing she wasn't financially dependent on him. That had always been an issue for him. He had never wanted to take on a wife, when his own circumstances weren't stable, and most of the time, they weren't. Even when he had money, it slipped right through his hands. He didn't need help spending it, and most of the women he had known had been fearfully expensive. Alex wasn't, and she had her own anyway, so it wasn't an issue. For the first time in his life, he was actually thinking about marriage. In a vague, distant way of course, but it no longer terrified him to the same degree. Much to his own amazement, he could actually contemplate settling down with her, without wanting Dr. Kevorkian to officiate at the wedding. He had always thought he would have preferred suicide to marriage. The two had always seemed equally lethal, and synonymous to some degree. But with Alex, everything was different.
And he said so, in the magical Mexican night, as he kissed her.

“I'm not there yet, Coop,” she said softly, always honest with him. She loved him, but didn't want to mislead him. She was by no means ready for marriage, both because of her medical career, and her previous brush with disaster as she approached the altar. She didn't want another disappointment, but Coop seemed like the one man who wouldn't do that to her.

“I'm not there yet either,” he whispered. “But at least it doesn't give me shingles when I think about it. For me, that's an improvement.” She liked the fact that they were both cautious about marriage. So much so, that he had never done it before. When she'd asked him about it, he had said that he'd never found the right girl. But now he was beginning to think he finally had. Alex was a woman worth having for a lifetime.

The weekend they shared was magical, and when they flew back to LA, they were both starry-eyed and sorry to leave each other.

“Do you want to stay at the house with me?” he asked as he drove her home from the airport, and she looked pensive as she thought about it.

“Want to, yes. But probably shouldn't.” She still wanted to move slowly. She was afraid to get used to it, and then have something go wrong that would spoil it. “I'm going to miss you tonight though.”

“So will I,” he said, and meant it. He felt like a new man. He insisted on carrying her bag up to her apartment. He had never seen it, and he was shocked when he did. He was stunned by the stacks of discarded hospital scrub suits, lying in piles, the medical books
stacked sky high on the floor, the bathroom with no frills and no amenities. All she had was soap, toilet paper, and towels. She hardly had any furniture, no curtains, no rugs, no decor. “For God's sake, Alex, it looks like a barracks.” She had never bothered to decorate it. She didn't have time, and she didn't care. All she did was sleep there. “If anyone sees this, they're going to condemn it.” All he could do was laugh at the way she lived. She was so exquisite and so delicate, but all she had cared about for years was being a doctor. He had seen gas stations that were more inviting. “I think you should throw a match into this place and move in with me immediately.” But he knew she wouldn't. She was far too cautious and independent to do that. Not for a while at least. But in spite of the unmade bed and the grim decor, he spent the night with her, and got up with her when she left for work at six o'clock the next morning. And when he got back to The Cottage, he truly missed her. He had never felt that way before about any woman.

Paloma came in later that morning, and when she saw the look on his face, she was intrigued. She was beginning to think he really was in love with the young doctor. It almost made her like him better. Maybe he had a heart after all.

He was out at a series of appointments all afternoon, and posed for the cover of
GQ.
It was six o'clock when he got home, and he knew Alex was still working. She was going to be at the hospital until the next morning. She had to pay her dues for the trip to Mexico. She was going to have to work for several
days to pay people back for the shifts they had taken for her.

He had just settled down in the library with a glass of champagne, and put some music on, when he heard a terrifying sound at the front door. It sounded like a machine gun, or a series of explosions, as though part of the house were falling down, and he got up to look out the window. At first he didn't see anything, and then he caught a glimpse of a young boy, and Coop's eyes opened wide with amazement. The little hooligan was riding a skateboard down the marble steps, and using it to do exotic jumps, and land on the marble that stretched out around it. He did it again and again, and with a few quick strides, Coop reached the front door and yanked it open with a look of fury. The marble had been there since 1918, unblemished, and the juvenile delinquent skateboarding on it was going to destroy it.

“What the hell do you think you're doing? I'm going to call the police if you don't get out of here in the next three seconds. How did you get on this property?” The alarms should have gone off when he climbed over the gate, and hadn't. Coop couldn't imagine any other way for him to get there. The boy stood staring up at him in terror and amazement.

All he could think of to say was, “My father lives here,” in a strangled voice as he clutched his skateboard to his chest. He had never contemplated for an instant the damage he might do to the marble. It just looked like a good place to practice jumps, and he'd been having a great time doing it, until Coop opened
the door and shouted at him, threatening to have him arrested.

“What do you mean your father lives here? I live here, and thank God, I'm not your father!” Coop said, still in a fury. “Who are you?”

“I'm Jason Friedman.” The boy looked like he was shaking, and he dropped the skateboard with a clatter, which made them both jump. “My father lives in the guest wing.” He had arrived the night before from New York, with his sister. And he loved the place. He had spent all afternoon exploring it, after he got back from school. The night before, Mark had introduced him and Jessica to Jimmy, and they'd had dinner with him. Jason had only heard about Coop from his father. And Coop was in Mexico for the weekend when they arrived. And to add insult to injury, Jason looked at him, and added, “And now I live here too, and so does my sister. We got here yesterday, from New York.” All the boy wanted was not to get arrested. He was willing to offer name, rank, and serial number, and any information Coop wanted to prevent that from happening.

“What do you mean, you ‘live’ here? How long are you staying?” He wanted to know how long he had to endure the presence of the enemy within his borders. He vaguely remembered Liz telling him that Mark had children who would come to visit from New York occasionally, but only for a few days and very rarely.

“We left our mom in New York, and we came to live with our dad. We hated her boyfriend.” It was more information than Jason would have offered normally, but Coop was more than a little daunting.

“I'm sure he hated you too, if you took a skateboard
to his marble steps. If you ever do that again, I will personally whip you.”

“My father wouldn't let you,” Jason said fiercely. He had decided the man was crazy. He knew he was a movie star, but first he had threatened to have him arrested, and now he was threatening to whip him. “You'd end up in jail. But anyway,” he backed down slightly, “I'm sorry. I didn't hurt them.”

“You could have. Have you actually moved here?” That was the most horrifying piece of information he'd had so far, and he hoped the boy was lying. But he had a gnawing terror that he wasn't. “Your father didn't tell me you were moving in.”

“It was kind of a last-minute decision, because of the boyfriend. We just got here yesterday, and we started back at our old school today. My sister's in high school.”

“I don't find that reassuring,” Coop said, looking at him with anguish. This couldn't be happening to him. These two children couldn't have come to live in his guest wing. He was going to have to evict them. As quickly as possible before they burned the place to the ground, or damaged something. He was going to call his lawyer. “I'll speak to your father,” he said menacingly, “and give me that,” he said, reaching for the skateboard, but Jason took a big step back from him, unwilling to give it up. It was his prize possession, and he'd brought it with him from New York.

“I said I was sorry,” Jason reminded him.

“You said a great many things, mostly about your mother's boyfriend.” Coop was all aristocratic grandeur as he looked down at him from the top step. He
was a tall man, and Jason was standing on the marble which led to the steps. From where he stood, Coop looked like a giant.

“He's an asshole. We hate him,” Jason volunteered about the boyfriend.

“That's very unfortunate. But that doesn't mean you can come to live in my house. Not by a long shot,” he said, glowering at him. “Tell your father I'll speak to him in the morning.” And with that, he walked back into the main house and slammed the door, as Jason skated hell-for-leather back to the guest wing, and recounted a modified version of the encounter to his father.

“You shouldn't have skated on the steps, Jase. It's an old house, and you could have damaged them.”

“I told him I was sorry. He was a real shithead.”

“He's a nice guy actually. He's just not used to having kids here. We have to go a little easy on him.”

“Can he make us leave?”

“I don't think so. That would be discrimination, unless you do something awful and give him reasonable cause. Do me a favor, try not to.” Both kids had loved the place when they saw it. And Mark was thrilled to have them with him. They had been beside themselves with joy when they saw their old friends at school. Jessica was already on the phone, with everyone she knew. And Mark had been cooking dinner. They had met Paloma in the courtyard that afternoon, and she loved them. But her employer was significantly less enchanted. He still didn't know that Paloma occasionally did laundry and some minor housekeeping for Mark in her spare time.

Coop had poured himself a stiff drink the minute he slammed the door, and sat down to page Alex. She called him five minutes later. She could hear in his voice that something terrible had happened.

“My house has been taken over by aliens,” he said in a voice that was so shaken it didn't sound like him.

“Are you all right?” She sounded worried.

“No, I'm not. Mark's children have moved in. I've only met one of them, but he's a juvenile delinquent. I'm going to start eviction proceedings immediately. But I may have a nervous breakdown in the meantime. The boy was skateboarding on my front steps, doing jumps off the marble.” She laughed when he said it, and was relieved that it was nothing serious. But Coop sounded as though the house had fallen in.

“I don't think you can evict them. There are all kinds of laws to protect people with children,” she said sensibly, amused by how upset he was. He truly hated kids, just as he'd said he did.

“I need laws to protect me. You know how I hate children.”

“I guess that means we won't be having any, huh?” She was teasing him, but it occurred to him that that could be a major obstacle for her. He hadn't thought about it, but she was young enough to want children. And he was in no mood to think about it now.

“We can certainly discuss it,” he said reasonably. “Your children would be civilized at least. Mark's aren't. Or at least not this one. He says his sister is in high school. She probably smokes crack and deals drugs at her school.”

“It may not be quite as bad as all that, Coop. How long will they be there?”

“It sounds like forever. Tomorrow would be too long. I'm going to call him in the morning and inquire.”

“Well, try not to get yourself in a state over it.” But she could hear that he already was.