The Girl of Sand & Fog (36 page)

“No, not telling you.” He stands up and reaches
into the closet for a jacket. He pulls it on, then turns to lock his gorgeous
green eyes on me. “You either trust me or you don’t, Kaley. That part of us I’m
not doing again.”

My face heats with a burn. “I hardly think
wanting to know why you are leaving me at 2 a.m. is a trust issue between us.”

“It’s not. I’ve always trusted you. It’s your
issue, Kaley.”

The heat on my cheeks grows more intense. He goes
to the dresser for his keys and wallet.

“What the heck is that supposed to mean?”

His eyes lock on mine, direct and unwavering.
“Every problem we had before comes from you having difficulty trusting. Even
Graham Carson.”

Oh shit, not now. Not that part of our history
when I’m not prepared or expecting it.

I bite my lower lip and struggle for words. “That
was a mistake caused by too much alcohol and too much fighting. It was never
about trust or not loving you.”

The pleasant lines of his face relax into an
expression of patience. “I know it wasn’t about not loving me, but it was about
lack of trust. You don’t trust me. You don’t trust anyone completely. You need
to control everything because you don’t trust.”

My entire body grows cold. This observation is
something Bobby has never said to me before and I don’t know how to handle it,
let alone analyze it to figure out why he’d say that to me now.

I turn my face so I’m no longer looking at him
directly. I feel a displacement of air and know he’s moving toward me. He
crouches down in front of me, his hands on my thighs, the heat of his gaze
hitting my face and making me look back to him.

His hands lift and his fingers spread on my jaw,
lightly caressing it.

“I understand, Kaley,” he whispers. “I’ve always
known what the real issue between us is. It’s not me. And it isn’t you, not the
inner you, the you I love. Your dad did a terrible thing not being there for
you as a child or wanting to know the truth that you were his daughter. But
that’s your parents’ shit and they’re happy and married. You’ve come to terms
with your dad, now let what your dad did stop hurting you and stop hurting me.
I love you. Trust that and we’ll be OK.”

A light trickle of tears spills down my cheeks
and I brush at them furiously. How did we fall so quickly from the glorious
heights of loving each other into this: my messed up childhood and our bits of
unhappy history?

I want nothing more than to sink into his chest
and have him hold me. For some reason, I can’t make myself do it.

We sit together like this, neither of us saying
anything, for a couple of moments and then Bobby eases back.

“So that’s it? You’re leaving?” I ask.

He smiles, a sort of tender and tolerant twisting
of lips, and continues toward the door.

“I love you. I’ll be back in a few hours. Sleep.
I want you here. You are the only girl I want or ever will want.”

I make a face. “I’d have an easier time believing
that if you weren’t leaving.”

He shakes his head and chuckles. At the door, he
stops to wink. “If you don’t believe it after last night, there isn’t anything
that’s going to convince you.”

Hunger
drags me from sleep and I wake alone. The most perfect night of my life ended
with me alone in Bobby’s bed and waking up without him. I don’t even know why
he left me.

I climb from the blankets and get my phone from
my purse. I power it on. Shit, the screen fills with notifications. A half
dozen from work, four missed calls and messages, but nothing from Bobby. Not a
call or a text.

Now I’m not just hungry, I’m pissed and feeling
wretchedly suspicious again. I don’t want to be jealous. I don’t want bad
thoughts but, hell, what do I really know about how Bobby spent the last two
years? There could be someone else, maybe not serious, but maybe not over
either.

He’s too cute a guy, too wonderful and hot, not
to have some girl somewhere interested in him. He also has a more than healthy
appetite for sex. Sex was never one of our issues. He couldn’t have passed his
nights alone here with the dogs living like a monk. No matter how much the
thought of that pleases me, I don’t really wish for that to have been and I’m
not really angry if it wasn’t.

Maybe I’m just irritated because I can’t stand
not knowing the details of things, and definitely not of something that took my
guy away from me.

I smile. My guy. I hope wherever he is, he is
that.

Listening to my phone messages, I start to make
my way down the hall toward the kitchen. In the living room, I find Tiki
sitting obediently in her cage looking as if she’s waiting to be released.

I crouch down in front of her, checking to see if
there is food and water. Those soulful dog eyes fix on me. I smile but I’m not
about to release her.

“Sorry, girl,” I whisper, slowly slipping my
fingers through the cage to lightly scratch her ear. “You’re going to have to
wait for your dad to come home. I’m not ready to trust you yet.”

As if she understands my human rambles, a look
flashes in her eyes as if to say
I’m not ready to trust you either.

I laugh. Leave it to Bobby to find a dog like me.
My humor leaves me. Is she like me? Is that part of what Bobby said true?

Shaking my head, I stand back up and continue
into the kitchen. I open the fridge and hang on the door trying to figure out
if there is anything to eat here. Nope, Bobby was right. There is definitely
nothing worth cooking in the fridge.

I slam the door shut and find instant coffee on
the counter. I rummage through the cabinets, find a cup, fill it with water and
put it in the microwave to heat.

I hit call back for the office, then the speaker
button.

“KKK Productions,” Veronica says pleasantly.

“Good morning, Veronica. Got your urgent
messages. What’s up?”

I take the cup from the microwave and stir in the
instant coffee.

“Are you all right?” she asks anxiously.

“I’m great. Why?”

“You missed your afternoon meetings, and when I
left work last night your car was still in the parking lot. Justin said he
hadn’t heard from you. That’s when I started worrying.”

I scrunch up my face. “Family emergency. Nothing
is wrong. Just everything got so hectic I forgot to call.”

“Are you coming in today?”

“I’ll be there in about two hours.” I look in the
pantry. Not even bread. “Justin wanted to meet at ten. Tell him that works for
me.”

I click off my cell and take my coffee back to
Bobby’s bedroom. I stare at the bed, wishing he was here to spoon with all day,
and feel a prick of unkind emotion that I don’t want as I wonder why he’s not
here. I toss my phone onto the bed and go into the bathroom.

After turning on the shower, I begin to absently
rummage in the cabinets. I don’t know why I’m doing it. The fresh towels are
neatly stacked on an open shelf right where I can see them. I look in the
vanity drawer: a first aid kit, allergy pills.

I go to the medicine cabinet: electric razor,
shaving cream, cologne…

I twist open the bottle and take a sniff. Thank
goodness he wasn’t wearing that last night. It must have been a gift from his
mother. Linda has unusual taste.

Linda. I need to call her. Bobby is right about
that. Without looking, I shove the bottle back into the medicine cabinet and a
box falls out. Every man’s little gold best friend. Shit, I wish I hadn’t seen
these. The condoms don’t surprise me, but the internal nerve pricks have just
gotten worse.

I lift the lid. The box looks almost completely
full. It doesn’t mean anything. Could be new. I set it back on the shelf and
close the cabinet door.

I take a shower in record time, finger scrunch
the dampness from my curls, pull on yesterday’s clothes and grab my purse. I
check my phone. Still no message from Bobby. I pull free my keys and then
freeze.

Shit, I don’t have a car. How am I going to get
to the downtown from here? I spot a set of keys still on the dresser. Maybe
Bobby has another vehicle as well as Bertha.

I go out onto the porch and find Bertha still in
the driveway. So Bobby didn’t take the heap truck last night wherever he went.
I’m hit with another internal nerve prick that I don’t want.

I lock the front door, then close it behind me. I
debate with myself whether to shoot Bobby a text but, hell, the guy should have
texted me.

An 8 a.m. commute on the 101 means a two-hour
drive from Simi Valley into the downtown. If Bobby and I get back together,
we’re going to have to figure out something so that I don’t have to do this
commute.

Back together. How would that work? Our living
situations are incompatible now that he lives in Simi. Finally we are at
perfect guy, perfect time and now there is geography ruining it.

Oh well, he’s just nearly perfect at the moment.
He’d be perfect if he’d text me so this rampant flashing suspicion would end.
He’s doing nothing wrong. Bobby is an all-in or all-out kind of guy. I know
that. Why is not knowing where he is driving me crazy?

I park Bertha next to my shiny black Lexus. I
laugh, wondering what everyone will think of me arriving to work in an old
truck still dressed in yesterday’s clothing.

I hurry through the double glass doors and
Veronica’s face shoots up to greet me.

She comes around her desk. In a whisper, she
says, “Justin has had me on lookout duty for an hour. You’re late.”

I frown, shaking my head. “What’s the big deal?
He just wanted to meet and discuss a few things.”

Veronica’s eyes widen. “He didn’t text you?”

“Text me what?”

“He did another cut of the documentary yesterday.
Without you. The team voted on a new title. He pushed up the meeting with the
distributor to today. They are doing the pitch today.”

I freeze. “He did what?”

Veronica makes a shush face. “We got a call from
IGSB. We’re behind schedule. They were thinking of pulling out. The team worked
all through the night, Kaley. IGSB wanted the meeting today. They’re scheduled
to be here in two hours.”

Oh crap. I scramble toward my office, feeling
panicky, betrayed and irritated as hell. The one day I take my eyes off
everything Justin can’t work things out with IGSB, he does a new cut of the
documentary solo without my permission, and he’s about to show it without my
approval.

I dump my purse on my desk, hit the lights and
then power up my computer. I look at myself in the wall mirror. Great, I have
wind-dried hair and I look like a girl wearing yesterday’s outfit.
Crud.

I rush down the hall to the conference room, swing
open the door, and the entire team turns at once and stares at me.

“Justin? Can I speak with you for a moment?
Privately.”

I don’t wait for him to answer. I hurry down the
hall to my office and settle on the edge of my desk feeling ready to pounce on
him.

“Why didn’t you delay the meeting with IGSB? They
just want to keep track of our progress. Why take the meeting now?”

Justin steps in and closes the door. “Rafe said
they were going to pull the plug.”

Rafe, my USC buddy and hotshot independent documentary
distributer. Like hell he would have pulled the plug.

“Why didn’t you call me? I know how to manage
Rafe. Instead you did another cut, rushed, all without me. And then you take a
meeting that, if it goes the wrong way, could bankrupt me. You do understand I
need this project to succeed?”

Justin stiffens, but his manner remains calm. “I
couldn’t reach you. I made a decision. The one I thought was in the interest of
the company. There was no point losing valuable production time because you
weren’t here.” He checks his watch. “I’ve got enough time to run the cut for
you before the meeting. You can decide after if you want to risk another delay
with IGSB.”

Justin’s calm infuriates me.

“I specifically said I wanted to be there through
the next round of cutting. I specifically said we don’t screen this unless I
give it my OK.”

“Kaley, you’re the director. You shoot the film.
But I’m the editor. I turn it into a story. We’re a creative partnership. We’re
not working against each other. The process would work a lot better if this was
the process you’d commit to.”

My cheeks burn. “Are you telling me how to do my
job?”

“No. I’m telling you how I do mine. If you don’t
like the latest cut we can try to delay the meeting and start over this
afternoon. We all have our talents, Kaley. You have vision. An eye.
Determination. My talent is making the most of your vision.”

I shake my head. I probably would have fired him
yesterday for that, and yet something in what he said reminds me of where I
messed up with Bobby, pricks at my conscience, and holds me at bay.

“Let’s go look at the latest cut,” I announce and
move quickly ahead of him out of the office.