Cheating at Solitaire (22 page)

Richard laughed. "That's a good one." His gaze dropped again, and he began flipping through the dog-eared pages. "That woman of yours is very ingenious. In fact, I've got some buddies who'd probably love . . . "

"I came for the manuscript," Lance said. He heard his own voice ripple with tension. "I'm not leaving without it."

"Now, that sounds like love talking to me," Richard said, eyebrows raised. "Did you know there is a whole other level of parts I can get for you if you really love her—some honey stuff?"

"I came for the manuscript," Lance said again, growing stronger in his resolve.

"You want this, do you?" the little man asked, holding the pages away from Lance's reach.

"Well, I don't think I'm going to give it to you." He went to the dresser, picked up a handful of scripts, and tossed them onto the bed in front of Lance, where they landed, splayed like a deck of cards. "Your stock has already started to fall. So, no, I don't think I'll be giving you this manuscript today. I think the world might need to hear about the
true
adventures of Philippe and Isabella. Or," Richard said, drawing one hand to his lips, "should I say Lance and Julia?" He turned back to the manuscript. "Page one-fifty-seven alone should—"

"You don't need the manuscript," Lance said.

"Oh, yes I do," Richard cried.

"No, you don't."

"Why?" Richard asked, tempting Lance to trump his hand.

Lance straightened. His voice was clear and steady as he said, "Because I'm willing to make a trade."

Then he sat down on the bed and gathered the scripts and told Richard Stone what he had spent five years hoping no one would ever find out.

WAY #97: Choose very careful y the bridges you burn.

One of the chal enges of being single is making major decisions without a sounding board. No
matter how certain you are that you're doing the right thing, realize that sometimes you're
going to need to turn around.

—from 701 Ways to Cheat at
Solitaire

Good-bye chapter seven!" Julia cried as she tossed the pages into the fireplace and watched the flames lick at their edges, reducing
Tomorrow's Temptation
to dust. "Tell me how you got it again," she asked, pulling her legs beneath her, curling up like a child in front of the fire.

"I bribed a maid into letting me into his hotel room," Lance answered. "He was in the shower, so I grabbed the manuscript and got out."

"But not before you . . . " she prompted.

"Took all his clothes," Lance obliged, biting back a smile.

"And . . . "

"All the towels."

"And then you . . . "

"Threw them in the swimming pool."

Julia threw both arms skyward, signaling
touchdown
with her hands, then fed another handful of pages to the flames. "The swimming pool part is my favorite. Nina's very proud."

"It felt very
Nina
when I was doing it. You know who else would have approved? The Georgias."

Julia agreed. "The Georgias would have loved every second."

"And Ro-Ro," Lance offered.

But Julia was shaking her head. "Ro-Ro would have taken the sheets, too."

Lance laughed. "I could learn a lot from Ro-Ro."

The light from the fire mixed with the sound of his laughter and seemed to wash over her old house. She held the next set of pages out to Lance. "Chapter eight?" she offered, but he shook his head.

"Count Sebastian rides into town in chapter eight. Without him, Isabella wouldn't have realized her true love for Philippe. Now, do you really want to do that to Count Sebastian?"

"You bet your life I do. He was a little vagrant. Burn, baby, burn!" she said, tossing the pages into the fire and watching the flames dance with fresh fuel. Julia rose to her knees and yelled at the top of her lungs, knowing there wasn't a soul for five miles in any direction to hear her,

"Veronica White is retired! Veronica White is dead!"

She turned to him, prepared to laugh, but he was staring. Julia felt burned herself beneath his gaze, and her cheeks flushed. She felt bare, without any of the defenses she had spent years mastering.

"You're not really burning her, you know," Lance said. "You're still her."

"But no one can prove it," she said, praying it was true. He moved closer and said, "I can."

She looked at him, and things grew very quiet, the only sound the sparking of the fire. He grasped the loose pages of the manuscript. "A real woman wrote this," he said. "A
person,
not a made-up name and a black-and-white picture. It has your fingerprints all over it, Julia. You said that yourself. Don't pretend that Veronica's dead." He moved closer.

"Lance," she started, but the feel of his hands around her waist made her stop.

"Tell me I can kiss you," he said, moving his hands to the sides of her face. "Tell me I can do this.

Tell me you can feel it."

But Julia's mind was completely blank, her body numb, until Lance tilted his head and moved closer and everything came back in a flood of emotion and thought. Her mind went from empty to overflowing. She got to her feet, almost stumbling under the weight of her own body. She knew she had to get away. She had to run. She had to flee this man before she dissolved completely and forgot her own name.

He grabbed her wrist. "Stop, Julia," he said. "Just stop."

Stop what? Stop running? Stop being myself?

"Talk to me," Lance pleaded. "Tell me what happened to you. Tell me what I have to do to fix it!"

Fix what?
Julia wanted to proclaim.
I'm not broken!
But as she looked down at Lance, and at the last shreds of Veronica White that lay scattered around him like last fall's leaves, words failed her. She knew how quickly everything you know .can turn to ash. She couldn't meet his gaze.

"Goodnight," she said. She pulled away and started for the stairs. "And thank you. For everything."

The next morning, Julia peeked down the stairs. She snuck into the kitchen, her sights set on a box of granola bars and a carton of orange juice, wondering how long she could survive on that alone, thinking she might grab some crackers while she was at it.

She'd made it to the pantry door when a voice cut through the early-morning stillness of the kitchen. "I called New York."

Julia stopped dead in her tracks, frozen mid-creep, terrified of turning around.
How am I
supposed to look at him?

"Things are starting to cool down there." Lance said simply. "I think I can leave."

"Oh," Julia said, turning, despite her best efforts otherwise.

"The heat's off," he said as if the night before hadn't happened at all. "You're probably ready to have me out of your hair anyway." He looked at her from the corner of his eye as he rinsed a cereal bowl and slid it into the dishwasher.

"You're leaving?" she asked.

"Well," Lance said coolly, "there's not much reason to stay. We got the manuscript back. The press has cooled off. I don't want to outstay my welcome."

"Fine," Julia snapped without meaning to.

"Hey." He stepped forward. "What's wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me?" she asked, stalling while she thought,
What
is
wrong with me?
"I'll tell you what's wrong with me. . . . "

The phone began to ring. She picked up and said hello.

"Julia, it's your mother. I've got bad news."

WAY #70: Be honest with yourself.

There wil be times when you won't be happy with your life, and you'l start looking for
people to blame. Don't. The choices we make are our own. That's both the blessing and the
curse of being single: We have only ourselves to thank or ft blame for our decisions.

—from 701 Ways to Cheat at
Solitaire

hen Julia walked into the Fitzgerald Wing of Mercy General Hospital, she noticed that someone had been very skilled at spending Ro-Ro's money. Even Nina would have approved of the beautiful-yet-comfortable chairs. But no matter how lavish its furnishings, the place still smelled like death. She wondered if Lance could smell it, too.

When they got into an elevator and waited for the doors to close, Lance pushed the button for the eighth floor, then eased his arm around Julia's shoulders. The weight of his arm felt good, so she sank into him, grateful for someone to lean on.

"I think it's going to take a lot more than a fall to hurt Ro-Ro," Lance said, as if he knew she needed to hear it. But Julia couldn't forget the tone of her mother's voice on the phone. She'd had sixty miles to process, sixty miles to think but standing in that elevator with Lance's arm around her shoulders, Julia still struggled with the realization that the impossible had happened—that Ro-Ro, after all, was human.

"Fitzgerald was husband number . . . " Lance prompted.

"Four," Julia answered. "The doctor-slash-medical-researcher."

Lance nodded as if it was something he had known but forgotten. "So, what does a twenty-million-dollar donation buy you in health care today, besides the chance to wield those really big scissors at the ribbon-cutting ceremony?" he asked, and Julia had to smile.

The doors opened and she said, "I guess we'll find out."

They started down the hall but couldn't see any uniformed footmen standing outside room 862

to take coats and introduce guests. There wasn't a gold placard on the wall, proclaiming that to be the Fitzgerald Suite. In fact, when Julia peeked inside, all she saw was an ordinary hospital room, complete with bad linens, uncomfortable chairs, and a plastic water pitcher on the bedside table. When they entered the room, it was so dim that Julia could barely see the frail woman beneath the sheets, covered with IV tubes and hospital bracelets and, of course, the four largest diamonds Julia had ever seen.

"Hi, Aunt Rosemary," she whispered, half out of respect and somber purpose, half out of nerves. "How are you feeling?"

"How do you think I'm feeling?" the old woman snapped, and with that, Julia's fears subsided.

Ro-Ro feels like bitching— all is right with the world!
"They brought me here in that horrible contraption with all those lights and sirens. They woke up the neighbors. The whole building saw me carried out like an invalid! I'll never be able to show my face there again."

Miss Georgia will be glad to hear it,
Julia thought.

She inched closer to the bed and looked at the massive cast that surrounded Ro-Ro's left leg.

She wanted to ask her if it hurt, or take the felt-tip pen she kept in her bag for autographing books and sign Ro-Ro's pristine bandages. But before she could do any such thing, Ro-Ro looked behind Julia and spoke to Lance. "You're still here I see."

Lance inched forward and said, "Yes, ma'am. I'm here for a little while longer."

"Nonsense," Ro-Ro dismissed him.

Julia looked between Lance and Ro-Ro and wondered why her aunt would say such a thing.

Then Julia's mother came floating into the room and whispered, "They have her on d-r-u-g-s."

"I broke my leg, not my ears, Madelyn," Ro-Ro lorded over them from the bed.

Madelyn ignored her like a pro. She hugged Lance and crooned, "Oh, I'm so glad you're here."

Then she swept toward her aunt and eldest daughter. "Julia, dear, thank you so much for coming."

Julia's blood went cold—Madelyn was using her "death voice"—the one she used while thanking someone for a Bundt cake and telling them when the funeral would be. Julia looked at Ro-Ro, so tiny on the bed, so frail, and she pulled her mother out into the hallway. "What's really wrong with her?" she asked once they'd closed the door behind them.

"She broke her leg while climbing out of the bathtub. I told you that on the phone."

"No, Mother, I want the whole story."

Madelyn looked down at her hands as if trying to find the balance between honesty and gossip.

"She's an old woman, Julia. We're not even sure how old. She tells everyone she's eighty-six, but you can only stay eight-six for so long. I know a fact she's over ninety."

Julia stole a glance back at Ro-Ro through the slim window in the door.

"Legs don't mend too well when you're over ninety," Madelyn went on. "Plus, she was in the bathroom when the maid found her." Madelyn grew nervous. She looked around to make sure no one could hear. "She was
naked,"
Madelyn whispered, emphasizing the scandalous word at the sentence's end. "I'm surprised she hasn't had those poor paramedics' eyes gouged out yet.

That's where your father is right now, meeting with the hospital heads, trying to save those poor boys' jobs."

Julia couldn't help herself. She laughed out loud.

"Julia!" her mother cried in disgrace. "Of course they covered her up before they brought her outside. But with her leg being in such bad shape, they weren't able to, you know, put on any
underwear,"
she whispered. "Ro-Ro's going commando?"