The Dom Project (22 page)

“And all this time I was wondering what you were doing with them! You—you—” She hugged him fiercely. He circled her with his arms and rocked back and forth, swaying to the faint music from the other end of the hall.

“You magnificent bastard? Is that what you were about to say?” He looked down into her joyful eyes and grinned like he thought a magnificent bastard might grin. For the first time, it struck him just how lucky he was, to have someone he was absolutely crazy about, in his bed, by his side, everywhere. Well, except his job, but that was for the best; having her there would be way too distracting.

A very old woman coughed pointedly at them.

“Sorry,” Robin giggled, and moved to the side so that the woman could pass them.

“Sorry,” John echoed, moving along with her. A chandelier made of deer horns stabbed the back of his head. “Ouch! Fuck! Sorry!”

“Well, that was embarrassing. Let’s go to the tearoom and get a coffee so we can talk where you have some headroom, okay?”

The quaintly named “tearoom” was in fact an ordinary eat-in cafeteria with a glass dessert case and eight or nine mismatched sets of tables and chairs. It was an oasis of light among the gloom of the past, and offered sausage sandwiches. John stuck with the coffee. “So how’s the Irina Mareau buy coming along?” he asked as they sat.

“It’s going smoother than I’d hoped on the budgeting and payment side, but I’m a little worried about the appraiser. I can’t reach him anymore. His emails are bouncing and his phone is disconnected.”

“Maybe he joined a cult or went into rehab.”

“Well, we haven’t paid him yet. That’s the weird part.” She sighed and twisted in her seat, but then she smiled, and it took his breath away how amazing she looked, even under the harsh fluorescent light. “In better news, I do have an interesting lead on something that’s
not
in the collection. I couldn’t read all the letters, but I did read part of one where Irina mentioned a memento—whatever she means by that—that she couldn’t
bear to destroy
.” She cocked her head back at the last phrase, assuming the mannered affectation of an older era. “She mentioned she’d given it to her old patron for safekeeping, and said not to bother to ask for it, because
he naturally despises you
.”

“Hmm. So she’s writing to her photographer ex-lover, telling him he’s not going to get this ‘memento’ back ever. Damn, that’s cold.”

“She was a very intense woman. She definitely went to both temperature extremes.”

“What do you think the memento might be?”

“Jewelry?” Robin hummed. “More letters? Could be anything, really. Could be significant, could be something that’s only valuable to them.”

“Well, if we find out who this patron was, we could find out what it is!”

“We? This is
my
buy. Hands off, grabby.”

He showed her his empty palms. “Do I look like a rival university? I’m Saylor A/V through and through, baby. Loyal to the bone. Seriously, if you want me to talk to Al about it, I’ll do it.”

“That would be nice,” Robin said, dropping her playful spikiness. “I’ll think about it, okay? Thanks for offering.”

“You know I’ll do anything for vintage porn. Or you.”

She tried to do the Hollywood diva head toss again, but ended up blushing like an ingénue.

When he showed her the photos tonight, he wondered which woman he’d get. It hardly mattered. They both delighted him.

Just as he was drifting off into a pleasant erotic daydream, the first bar of “Tainted Love” rang from his phone.

* * *

“I can’t really beg out of this one,” John explained. His fingers were tight on the wheel as he turned on to Ventura Boulevard. “My older brother’s in town and Dad wants me to come. He’s having a tough time lately—I mean, Dad. He’s been talking divorce again.”

“It’s all right.” And it was true—she felt totally at peace about any potential Sun family drama. Maybe it was a high from their flirting at the antique mall, still rose-tinting the world and softening the edges.

“If anything gets hairy, we can always cut out. Make up an emergency and you can drive my car home.”

“How about—there’s some meat in the trunk and I’ve got to get it into the fridge?”

“Meat in the trunk. That’s
perfect
.”

“I wasn’t being serious.” Robin shook her head and laughed. “Isn’t that the restaurant?” She pointed at a neon sign on the right that read Pearl Palace.

“Hell, maybe it’s the expensive stuff. Kobe beef or something. Yeah, we’ll park up there.”

“You just want an excuse to jump to your feet and yell ‘meat in the trunk’.”

“For full effect, I’d have to do it in Mandarin too.” He parked the car on the curbside, then looked right into her eyes, turning off the humor like a light switch, totally focused, intense. She couldn’t help taking a deep breath. “Do you want to walk in there as my friend or my girlfriend?”

He waited for her answer, and his patience touched her deeply. Underneath all his layers, there was a vast reserve of calm strength. She thought hard, wanting to make this right for both of them, but also knowing they had
time
. Thank God, they had time. “As your friend. And it’s because they already know me that way, and you’re worried the dinner might go off the rails. But next time. Next time I’ll be ready, if you are. If that’s what we want to do.”

They bent toward each other so that their foreheads touched. She didn’t know who’d moved first. She thought of ghostly timelines touching and crossing here, where the fault lines met. Irina Mareau, born Irina Solvyova, who’d come to Los Angeles from Yekaterinburg, via Shanghai. The Suns, circling the Pacific from North China to Taiwan and ending up in the same place, only to fall apart.

She wanted what they had to last.

“I won’t touch you, then,” he said. She nodded back at him. Yes, that was what she wanted.

And then her hands flew to his shoulders and he was on top of her, above her, pressing her into the seat, kissing her deep and slow like he wanted to make it count.

“We’ll be friends to them, but we’ll know better, right? That’s what matters. What we know for ourselves.” He prodded her on the sternum with the tip of one finger.
In our hearts
, that gesture said, in John’s brash, physical way.

She nodded, and licked her lips, remembering the taste of him.

“If this wasn’t such a small car...” He made a wry face.

By the time they wriggled out of the Honda Civic del Sol, Robin’s heart was racing. She touched the back of her hand to one cheek, then the other, trying to cool down. John stayed carefully apart from her, to her side.

This might be a lot harder than she’d expected.

Entering the restaurant helped a lot on the cooling down front, at least. The Pearl Palace was cool and dim. Tanks full of doomed fish and crabs lined the lobby.

“They’re in one of the side rooms to the back,” John said, looking down at his phone.

The main dining area was packed with huge round tables, all full with families fighting and chatting and talking grimly in a dull roar mixture of English, Mandarin and Cantonese. At the very back of the restaurant, diagonal to the entrance, there were several side rooms for private parties, and John strode toward one of those as Robin fell in behind him.

“Robin!” John’s dad waved at her enthusiastically. Kevin Sun was a blocky, gray-haired man—he’d given John those broad shoulders, but none of the height. That came from Shirley, tall and angular and as absolutely stunning as a 1950s movie star with her black bob and neat pantsuit. And she was glowering at John.

Robin, forcing herself to ignore whatever was simmering below the surface—
not his girlfriend
,
it’s none of your concern
—walked around the table, waving and greeting, noticing John was going the opposite direction, counterclockwise to her clockwise. John’s older brother Jack was there—God, she wondered how his parents had ever kept their English names straight—the respectable, normal brother who’d fled to New York and was even an honest-to-God brain surgeon. And
his
nuclear family, and assorted relatives and friends, enough so that it felt like forever before Robin and John finished their rotations and fell into the last two empty seats.

“John,” Robin whispered sweetly through the corner of her mouth as she dropped her napkin onto her lap. “Just how late are we, exactly?”

She’d thought they were on time, arriving at right before seven, but now she had to wonder.

“Um...fifteen minutes? A half hour? Forty...five minutes?” He flashed her a grin, although at least he had the good sense to look ashamed as he did so.

“You told me seven.”

“I may have lied. Didn’t want you getting stressed out. You know how you get when you’re running late.” John looked over to his dad and caught his attention. “Is Jim late?”

Robin stifled an amused grin. John had always told her he’d gotten away with a hell of a lot as a teenager simply because Jim was always,
always
worse.

“No,” Kevin Sun said, and twisted his lips as if his teeth had suddenly turned toxic. “He went to the bathroom. He’s been there for a
very
long time.”

“He’s got stomach thing,” Shirley said. “Why you draw attention to it?” She hissed like a steam kettle and stabbed at a dumpling.

That pulled Shirley and Kevin into a low-muttered argument.
Other people’s problems
.
Not yours.
Just smile and pretend it’s not happening
,
like everyone else is.

Thank God she didn’t speak Mandarin.

“A stomach thing.
Right
.” John whispered to her sarcastically, and made a quick hand motion in front of his mouth, probably meant to represent crack-smoking.

More dishes came, and tea, and beer, and John’s adorably gawky eight-year-old nephew came over and asked John about camera lenses, then listened intently to the rundown. Robin made some small talk with the boy’s mother—Los Angeles versus New York City was always a conversational gold mine. She began to relax and enjoy herself, more or less, especially since the food was excellent. Much better than the food at the—

—Oh God. The private party. That was the last time they’d eaten with so many people.

She took a deep breath and blinked.
Boundaries
. Everyone here had private lives.

“You took my seat,” someone said behind her. She turned.

Jim
. He was dressed more sanely today, but one of his shirttails was hanging out, and his eyes were bloodshot under spasmodically twitching eyelids.

“I’m sorry. Let’s get another seat, okay? There’s plenty of space.” She began to scoot her chair over, closer to John, to back up her words. A warning voice in her head told her this probably wasn’t such a good idea, that maybe it was time to yell
meat in the trunk
and make for the door, but her instinct for politeness won out. She worked in a university. She was used to handling eccentrics.

“Oh, so you’re gonna act like you didn’t see me where you saw me.” Jim’s voice was way too loud to be meant for her alone. “That’s the way it’s gonna be, huh?”

That grinding sound next to her came from John, who’d shot to his feet, towering above the other seated guests.

“First they—they—they destroy my love! And then they literally take my seat at the motherfucking
table
!” Jim shrieked. “Replacing me in my own family now, is that it? Just because you’re more ‘respectable’ and you and my brother are—”

“Out.
Now
,” John barked at his brother, already crowding him toward the exit.

Jim poked his head around the riot shield of John’s advancing body. “She’s a
whoooore
! Google The Picky Submissive! Google it now!”

Robin’s chest seized, and she grabbed the edge of the table, desperately trying to keep herself from puking onto her plate of fried geoduck. All their planning for a hasty exit suddenly didn’t seem so funny at all, especially not the meat in the trunk excuse.
Lock it down
. But she couldn’t do it in front of everyone.
Think fast.
Lock it down
,
lock it down
.

“Let him go!” Shirley yelled at John’s back.

“Stop making excuses for him!” Kevin yelled at Shirley.

“Jesus, and I thought you were exaggerating,” muttered John’s sister-in-law to her husband.

“I’ve got to go,” Robin said, fumbling for her phone and hoping no one else was doing the same. She fled out the other exit, the one that led to the bathroom, and burst out the emergency exit door, not caring where it led.

Oh—next to a Dumpster dripping with rancid grease. Not that it mattered, as long as she was
alone
. She leaned against the wall and frantically thumb-typed.
Private?
Yes.
Settings—Apply
.
Invite?
None.

No one. She couldn’t trust anyone. Even John. All that show of safeguarding her privacy, the stupid little lock and key on the photo book—it didn’t mean a goddamn thing. He’d either told Jim, or left a trail that he could follow.

She couldn’t look any of them in the eye again.

Get home.
Lock the door.
Thank God she’d had the presence of mind to swing her purse over her shoulder in her rush to leave the restaurant. She hugged it to herself, reassuring herself of its presence, then stormed around the restaurant parking lot until she’d made it around the front of the building again. Standing under the pink light of the buzzing sign, she pulled out her phone and dialed for a cab.

Get home.
Get home.
Get home
, she recited until the dispatcher came on the line.

The neon sign loomed down on her in judgment. It might as well be spelling out
Whore
.

“I’m going to be two blocks west of The Pearl Palace,” she told them, and started running. She wouldn’t be standing in the parking lot when John eventually came looking for her, that was for sure.