A Body to Die For (18 page)

“Jack, you’re being honest with me, so I’ll be the same with you,” I said, calmer now. “You’ve thrown me for a total loop.
Maybe I didn’t have both feet in the water with you, but on the other hand I was pretty crazy about you. I’ve spent the last
weeks doing my best not to even think about you. And I’m not sure how I’m feeling at this exact moment.”

“So are you seeing someone?” he asked, probably more urgently than he wished.

“I’ve been dating,” I said. It wasn’t true, of course, but I felt if I admitted that I hadn’t been, then
that
would be dishonest. Because there were those wild, crazy feelings I’d been experiencing for Beck. “A bit here and there.
It’s not that so much as, well—this is all coming out of left field for me.”

Jack set down his brandy snifter and rose slowly from the couch. His crisp white shirt pulled against him, and I could see
the rough outline of his smooth, broad chest. What was he doing? I wondered. He leaned over and picked up his jacket from
the couch and laid it over his arm. He was on the move.

“It was pretty stupid of me to come here tonight and just surprise you with all of this,” he said. “I’m sorry about that.
As I said, I wish we could see each other again—but maybe the timing isn’t ever going to be right for us.”

“Jack,” I said, getting out of my armchair, nervous suddenly about his departure. “I’m not sorry you came here tonight. I
wish I knew exactly what was in my heart right now, but I don’t. But I also know that I don’t like the thought of never seeing
you again. Would you—when are you coming up from Washington again?”

“Why?”

“What if we had dinner? Or dinners. We could spend some time together and see what happens. I’d be game for that if you would.”

“Yes, I’m game,” he said, smiling. “What about Saturday night? I’m going to be up most weekends. I’ve got this project I’m
involved in. I ended up taking a sublet.”

“You’re going to keep a place in New York?” I said, surprised.

“I am. I still have every intention of living here.”

“Well, Saturday’s good,” I said. I took a few steps toward him, planning to walk him to the door, but he didn’t move.

“That’s great.”

“You know,” I said, “maybe if I had slept with you that night at your place, none of this would have happened. There would
have been a stronger connection between us.”

“Well, let’s promise not to make another mistake like that if the moment ever occurs again.”

He leaned forward then and kissed me on the mouth. It was a soft kiss, a good-bye kiss for the night, nothing more, because
it wouldn’t be like Jack to push the situation. Yet when I tasted his mouth I felt a big, fast rush of desire going through
me from tip to toe. I kissed him back harder, leaning into him, and then his tongue was in my mouth and mine was in his.

There was just one brief second when I thought, Shit, I knew I shouldn’t have had that brandy, but then I wasn’t thinking
anything at all, just feeling his mouth and how good he tasted and how good he smelled. He slid his hand behind my neck and
kissed me harder, deeper. I murmured in pleasure. He pressed closer, and when I felt his erection I pressed back hard. His
hand slid from my neck to my right breast, fondling it, finding the nipple with the tips of his fingers.

“Do you want to stay, Jack?” I asked. Was I insane? I wondered as soon as the words were out of my mouth, but I didn’t take
it back. Admittedly, I was hampered by near toxic levels of horniness, but I didn’t just want sex, I realized—I wanted sex
with Jack. Perhaps I should have played hard to get, made him practically beg for it over the next weeks like a dog for a
piece of bacon, but if I was ever going to find out whether it could work with Jack, I’d have to make both a physical and
an emotional leap. If I decided to wait until this weekend—or some later date—to do it, I could easily lose my nerve.

“Yes,” he said, “as long as I still get the dinner Saturday night.”

He tossed his jacket onto an armchair and kissed me again, more urgently. As I ran my hands across the front of his crisp
white shirt, he reached for the edges of my sweater and pulled it over my head, taking his mouth off mine for only the second
it required to get the sweater off. He fondled my breasts through my bra, gently, and when I moaned he reached behind and
unsnapped my bra, dragging it to my waist. My whole body ached with lust. As far as I knew, half the West Village was watching
us through my window, so I muttered a suggestion that we retreat to the bedroom.

I’d always had a hunch what kind of lover Jack would be, and I was right. He was generous, one of those guys with a slow,
sure hand who seems to find pleasing you the most erotic thing in the world. We made love once, for what seemed like an hour,
and then again later, after I had drifted off to sleep and woken to his fingers in me, moving, softly at first, then harder
and deeper. There was one last time in the morning, fast and furious at six, before he left to catch an early shuttle back
to Washington.

I took a long hot shower right after he’d gone, trying to rouse myself by using one of those pink nubby exfoliating gloves
I’d scarfed up at a
Gloss
beauty department giveaway. My head was a big jumble of thoughts, all at cross-purposes with one another—I was glad I had
finally taken the plunge with Jack; I was sorry I’d done it without being sure of what I wanted in the end; I was happy I
was alone so I could sort out my feelings; I wished Jack were here.

After dressing, I stuck a bagel in the toaster, made coffee, and ate my breakfast standing up while scanning the
Times.
At nine-fifteen I was out the door, headed for the subway and for
Gloss.
As the train tore through the tunnel, I realized that in the heat, so to speak, of the moment last night, I’d never called
Danny as I’d planned. Jack had taken my mind temporarily off the murder, but I was eager for an update. I would try to reach
her after my appointment with Cat.

Typically, things at
Gloss
don’t get humming until ten, so when I stepped off the elevator at nine-fifty, I wasn’t surprised to hear only a faint murmur
of activity. I strode down the white corridor toward my office, glimpsing a few early bird editors as they slipped out of
coats or pretended to enjoy their Zone power bars. After tossing my stuff onto the straight-backed chair against the wall
and checking my mail from the previous week, I poured myself a cup of coffee at the small food station. Then I headed directly
to Cat’s office.

Her assistant was nowhere in sight, but I spotted Cat through the glass wall of her office, perched on the front of her desk
and talking animatedly on the phone. She was dressed all in black, in a long full skirt, high-necked blouse, cropped jacket,
and tight, pointy boots—sort of
Horses and Hounds Monthly
meets Bram Stoker’s
Dracula.
Her long blond hair was pulled back into the sloppy style that
Gloss
had dubbed “the après-booty bun.”

She spotted me and indicated with her index finger that she would be just one minute. The person on the other end of the phone
must be someone she wanted something from—her boss, perhaps, or a celeb publicist—because even through the glass I could tell
the Cat Jones charm was working at full throttle. Cat exerted a force field—positive or negative, depending on the situation.
If she was pleased with you she could make you feel like God’s gift to the universe. If you’d pissed her off, you had better
adhere to the advice offered for an encounter with a wild animal: Back away slowly and betray no fear.

I turned away so I wasn’t staring at her, but I didn’t move from my spot. Someone could easily usurp my place if I wasn’t
careful. And sure enough, within two minutes
Gloss
’s new entertainment editor, whose name I had yet to commit to memory, came strutting over. She glanced determinedly into
Cat’s office and then looked at me.

“Are you waiting to see her?” she asked impatiently.

“Yeah, I have an appointment,” I said.

She let out a big sigh, as if I’d just told her she’d have to fly coach instead of business.

“I’d appreciate it if you gave her an important message for me, then,” she said. “You won’t know what this means, but tell
her the Reese Witherspoon movie is going
wide
in February. Okay? It’s important that she know that.”

As soon as she strolled away, Cat was waving me in.

“Sit,” she said, pointing to the brown Ultrasuede love seat. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages.”

I was there to pitch story ideas, but first she wanted to know what I’d been up to. Though Cat was my boss, the one who’d
created the great gig for me at
Gloss,
she was also my friend in a weird sort of way and had been for seven years, since we’d met while working on a small magazine
downtown. I ran through an abbreviated version of finding Anna dead in the Mylar paper.

“God, and I thought bikini waxes were a bitch,” Cat said. “Is there an article in it?”

“N-o,” I exclaimed. “I could never do that to Danny. It would really bury her business.”

“Just let me know if you change your mind. And in the meantime, please be careful, will you? I pulled your hide out of the
fire once this year. I may not be there to do it again.”

I knew her morning was probably jammed, but I wanted to bounce the Jack episode off her. Cat was a master when it came to
men. I described Jack’s visit, his confession about the former girlfriend, and without mentioning the carnal coupling portion
of the evening, I asked her advice on the whole business.

“How do you really feel about him?” she asked bluntly.

“I’m very attracted to him. But I think I also feel some resentment.”

She sighed. “This may not be what you want to hear. And it almost sounds like I’m comparing this Jack guy to a pair of last
year’s Jimmy Choo shoes. But I’ve never been big on looking back, on focusing on something from the past, no matter how wonderful
it might have been at the time. I always want to be in forward motion.”

I nodded, as if impressed by her wisdom, but inside I felt sorry I’d asked. I think I’d been hoping she’d tell me to go for
it. I quickly ran through my story ideas, and she okayed two out of three. As we were wrapping up, her assistant stuck her
head through the door to announce a scheduled phone call and I said a fast good-bye. As I hurried back to my office, I realized
I’d forgotten to give her the entertainment editor’s message about Reese Witherspoon’s movie. Oops.

There was no other reason to hang at
Gloss
today, and I was anxious to split for home, where I would first call Danny and then attempt to wrestle my article to the
ground once and for all. As I grabbed my tote bag and jacket from the side chair, I noticed that the mail guy had stopped
by when I’d been ensconced in Cat’s office. There were two letters on my desk, sitting on top of a package. I tossed the letters
to the side and picked up the package, curious as to who would be sending me something at
Gloss.
It was a cardboard box, about two feet long and secured with tan masking tape. I gave a start when I saw that the postmark
read “Warren, Massachusetts,” but then I noticed that Danny’s home address was in the upper-left-hand corner.

It wasn’t Danny’s handwriting, though.

Using scissors, I cut open the end of the package and slid the contents onto my desk. It was a brown paper bag with something
inside. It felt soft and squishy when I touched it, and poking out from the opening was the edge of one of those plastic freezer
bags with the zippered tops. Holding the top of the plastic bag, I yanked it out. When I saw what was inside, I threw it on
my desk and screamed. It was a dead mouse, wrapped in Mylar paper with its snout and pale gray tail sticking out at the ends.

A
RE YOU ALL
right?”

One of the junior fashion assistants who worked across the hall was standing in the doorway, bug-eyed. I rolled my chair slightly
to the right so I blocked her view of the rotting vermin on my desk.

“Uh, yeah. I thought I saw a mouse.”

“A
mouse?
Omigod—should I get someone?”

“No, no. It was just my imagination.”

As soon as she’d trounced back to her office, I shoved the door shut and forced myself to look at the mouse again. My stomach
turned over, and I had to fight off the urge to hurl my breakfast. Whoever had sent it to me had wanted to freak me out, and
they’d succeeded. Was it the person who had followed me in the woods that day? Was it the killer, warning me away? Was it
someone involved in the dirty deeds at the spa who wanted to make sure I stopped poking around? Were they all one and the
same? Holding the brown paper bag upside down with a tissue from my drawer, I shook it to see if a note of some kind was stuffed
at the bottom. But there was nothing else inside—or in the box either. I glanced at the date on the postmark. The package
had been mailed from Warren yesterday.

Squeamishly, I picked up the freezer bag with the tissue, dropped it back in the paper bag, and shoved that into the box.
Then I called Danny. The phone rang five times and was finally answered by someone announcing, “Cedar Inn.” It sounded like
Natalie.