Wired (19 page)

He failed to rise to the bait. “Hello, Roxanne. How are you feeling?”

“How am I feeling? Numb, pissed off, pissed off some more, pissed off more than that.” And sad. But I didn't say that. I figured he could hear my voice quavering anyway.

“I understand,” Leonardo said quietly.

Did he? Did he really care? I'd thought Mason cared. I'd wanted him to, but in the end . . . well, if Mason hadn't cared about me any more than he did Naveed's daughter, Leo certainly wouldn't. I already knew Leo had a price when it came to getting what he wanted; I'd had a taste of it in Mason's car. When it came down to it, anything that happened to me could be written off as collateral damage. I was just like Naveed's daughter; either man could happily make me disappear.

I had so many questions that Mason couldn't or hadn't answered. Maybe Leonardo could and would. He'd been more upfront in the past.

“I'd like to take you out tonight, Roxanne,” he repeated.

“Yeah?”

“If I might. It's a formal event. I think you'll enjoy it.”

So like a man. He was moving on as if nothing had happened.

Of course, Kitty had said there was food. I was hungry, and in all fairness, bad news or a breakup had never had the least impact whatsoever on my appetite. The errant thought,
Did Mason and I just have a breakup?
floated through my mind, and out of a twisted respect for Mason, or maybe for myself, I said, “Listen, buddy, I'm grieving here.”

“Pity. Are you quite sure?”

Was I? I had been wandering around the house telling myself I was the kind of girl who went to parties. If I was going to actually be that girl, I needed
get my ass to that gala and prove it to myself and everybody else. You are what you do.

I looked at Kitty. She mouthed, “Please.”

“One sec,” I said into the phone. I covered the speaker with my hand. The only evening wear I owned was apparently in the closet of a different layer of my reality.

“I don't have a thing to wear,” I whispered. “Will you help me? I need a dress, and I have absolutely no idea . . .”

Kitty turned pale and clutched melodramatically at her heart. “Shopping? Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting to hear you say that?”

I took my hand off the speaker. “Okay. I'll go.”

“Excellent. I'll fetch you at seven o'clock.”

“I'll see you then.”

Leonardo hung up without further ado. I listened to the disconnect tone drone on in his wake, then handed the phone back to Kitty with a, “Thanks.”

She had a huge grin on her face. “I'm really proud of you, Rox! You're really putting yourself out there. I mean, when you decide to come out of your shell, you just do it cold turkey, don't you?”

“I guess so.”

“Well?”

“Well, what?” I asked.

“Don't just stand there. Grab your wallet. We're going shopping!”

Kitty acted like we'd never been shopping before in our lives. Maybe we hadn't. Or at least, maybe over the last four years, everything I'd bought, everything
that was in the closet, I'd bought online. I thought maybe I remembered that.

I looked around Nordstrom's, totally overwhelmed with the prospect of decking myself out for a formal party. Luckily, Kitty was more than happy to act as my personal shopper. She loaded up my arms with dresses until I could barely stand, then sent me into a dressing room with instructions that I was to start working my way through them, and anything that didn't sag or refuse to zip was to be put on the short list for her personal consultation when she returned from Shoes and Hosiery.

At first I was the living embodiment of the eye roll, but then, as I began to work my way through the dresses, it was as if I were peeling off one skin, one personality, and replacing it with a new one—and then a new one, and then a new one.

Going to a “gala” with Leonardo Kaysar, professional sophisticate, was something I couldn't have predicted in any reality, on any wire. I was sure Kitty was simply too happy to see me going out to realize that we weren't the most perfect match. I knew what she
was
thinking, and it wasn't true—he certainly
didn't
remind me of my father, which would just be gross. But I guess Leonardo Kaysar did speak to something in me. It was his cool certainty about things that was attractive. That he had things covered, that he always had things under control. I didn't get that feeling with Mason. With Mason . . . I'd felt more on the same level in a lot of ways. Like we were evenly matched. Leonardo was over my head. He was impenetrable. And if I was trying to be someone new and self-actualized, shouldn't I allow
myself to explore that? If Leonardo was my James Bond, then why not be his Bond Girl? At least for a night.

I slipped a couple of candidates that didn't sag or refuse to zip onto the far silver hook and slung the discards over the dressing room door.

“You decent?” Kitty asked from the other side.

“Sure.” I popped the door open, but she only stuck her face through the crack.

“Brace yourself,” she said.

I arched my eyebrow.

“Are you ready?”

“Um . . .”

“Because I've found it. I've found the one. And some kick-ass shoes to match.”

“Let's see,” I said eagerly.

She flung open the door and presented me with a black dress with red detailing and a pair of satin high-heeled party shoes guaranteed to put me in traction. It was
the
dress.
The
shoes.

“Are you okay?”

I couldn't form even one audible word.

“You hate it,” she said, disappointment written all over her face. “Huh. I just really thought you'd like it. I mean, it's your taste, right? More or less?”

I nodded and took one shoe from the box, half expecting to find the gun or at least a stray bullet somewhere in the tissue. The box was empty, of course, save for the other shoe.

“Do you look like that because you feel sick, or because you hate them?”

“I love them,” I finally managed to say. “I guess it's just so perfect . . . I'm in shock.”

She beamed. “Then you're gonna love this!”

A pink negligee flew straight into my face. I peeled the too familiar nightgown off and shook it out.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “You have nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's not that expensive. What if things go really well with Leonardo?”

A gargling sound came from my throat. It was all I could manage.

“Well, put the dress on and we'll see if it fits,” Kitty said.

“Something tells me it's gonna fit,” I mumbled, stepping into the garment.

Kitty clasped her hands together. “It's perfect.”

I slipped my feet into the shoes.

“How do they feel?”

“Perfect,” I said in a complete monotone. “And don't ask me to try on the pink thing. I'll buy it, okay?”

She raised her arms in victory. “Yes! Okay, so here are some stockings, and you can borrow one of my purses. And here's some other stuff.” She held out a palm and counted off the inventory. “Dress, check. Shoes, check. Hose, check. Bra and panties, check. Purse, check . . .” She paused.

“Makeup,” I said into the gap as I started putting my regular clothes back on.

“You're joking, right? You have four years of wishful thinking in the bathroom.”

“Wishful thinking?”

She laughed and opened her mouth to explain, but I swear she cut herself off before she said what she really had on her mind. “I suppose you were wishing
for an event like this one, with a guy like this,” she said.

I was pretty sure she was being kind with her vague choice of words.

“This one's different, isn't he?”

You have no idea.

“Come on, fess up. You really like this guy.”

I almost said yes even before I realized she was still talking about Leonardo. Wasn't that who I was talking about? “What makes you say that?”

“You're in much better shape than I thought. You've been working out in that little Bat Cave of yours, haven't you?”

I looked down at my body and smoothed the fabric against my stomach. I hadn't really thought about it. And, of course, I wasn't entirely sure what other me I should be comparing myself to. But Kitty seemed certain. “You've toned up. You've lost a little weight.”

“Maybe,” I said.
Running around the city with two men on your heels will do that to you
.

Kitty took the dress and I picked up the shoe box, following her out of the dressing room. “Kitty?”

She looked at me over her shoulder. “Yeah?”

“Is there stuff you're not telling me?”

We stared at each other for a moment, and I studied her face for clues.

“Fine,” she finally said. “I admit it.”

I held my breath.

“Those jeans totally make your butt look big.”

We both burst out in hysterical laughter and were still giggling when we reached the sales counter. I
fished out my credit card and asked for the damage.

“This is a great outfit,” the saleswoman said with a smile. “But because of the way the dress is cut, you'll have panty lines. You should just go with the garter belt and stockings and bra.”

I have no idea what that great outfit cost. I was too busy trying not to let on to Kitty that those words had scared me out of my mind. Luckily, she assumed I was just dehydrated.

Sitting at an angle from Leonardo in a limousine that I was sure had Kitty in paroxysms of delight back home, I was reminded again of Mason, if only because of the contrast. Leonardo might lack Mason's sunny charm, but he had plenty of his own appeal. He had what could only be described as
mystère
.
Mystère
, and a hint of soulfulness underneath the ruthlessness of which he was so clearly proud. It was what had washed over me that first day in the agency.

He was textbook in his suave, smooth appeal, and it would have been fair to say that I wouldn't have had the guts to even desire Leonardo when I was younger. Of course, I felt exponentially older than I used to, just weeks earlier. Or maybe not older. Maybe . . . seasoned. I never used to be the girl who drove muscle cars at warp speed or fucked my guy against a wall after a party, either.

My guy. Dammit, Rox. Dammit.

I wanted to hate Leo's guts. I felt beyond bitter that he'd revealed Mason to be a fraud. Ridiculous, of course, since Mason being a liar and willing to
shoot me certainly wasn't Leonardo Kaysar's fault. I suppose most women who'd been saved from evil clutches by a guy like Leo would have been on their knees thanking him in one way or another, but I definitely wanted to hate him. More than that, I wanted to be immune to him. But I wasn't.

The limo slowed. Leo slipped his suit jacket on and the door opened. I forgot to look at the driver. Not that I would have expected the driver to be anybody particularly useful to this mystery I was living, but I'd made a resolution, a point of consciously recording as many details about my surroundings as I could.

Leo led me forward with his hand on the small of my back. I was only about three steps in when I realized where we were: the office building Mason had taken me to on the last wire. A party was still a party, even when you had a fancy Brit calling it a gala, and this was the same party Mason had made me dress up for. The same party. The same dress and same shoes. The same building. The same damn moment in time I'd already lived through. “We're backwards,” I said in a sudden panic.

Leo's hand massaged my shoulder, undoubtedly as much to prevent my escape as provide comfort. “It's all right,” he crooned.

I turned on him with narrowed eyes. “Don't tell me it's all right. It's not all right. It hasn't been all right in some time. I'm not a total idiot. Did we or did we not go backward in time? Didn't this party happen already?”

I knew before he even spoke that the real answer was:
It depends
.

“It depends,” Leonardo said. “I did make a very small splice. Technically we are parallel to the prior wire, but we are also slightly behind in time.”

His willingness to admit that was almost more of a shock than the situation itself. I had to give him credit for not giving me a fuzzy answer like Mason would, but it was no small splice he'd made, at least not by my standards. Kitty's reappearance in my life and the new unimproved Mason were big, big things, and who knew what else had changed by tripping to this new wire.

“Let's not dwell. We should try to enjoy a bit of the party,” Leo said.

According to Kitty, the way my life was going, Hell would freeze over before I got another opportunity like this. If I was trying to make the version of me I wanted, I was exactly where I needed to be.

Leo read my acquiescence and ushered me onto the scene with a graceful wave of his hand. I stepped into the stream of traffic flowing through the offices, but the minute I joined the partygoers, a wave of anxiety hit me just as it had with Mason. I made one of my famous U-turns and headed for the exit. I thought the space might close in on me. There were too many people, too many crowding bodies.

“I'm not running away, it's just . . . too much,” I gasped, trying to plow my way back to the doors. But Leonardo was by my side, one hand at my waist, one on my back, steering me around. “Let's get you a drink. It will help you relax.”

I concentrated on not freaking the hell out in public while Leonardo retrieved two flutes of champagne. I downed mine in one decidedly unladylike
guzzle, then reached for Leonardo's partially finished glass.

“Perhaps later,” he said, moving the flute out of reach.

I glowered at him. “You're a bad man.” Craning my neck, I made a big show of looking for a champagne server.