The Guy Next Door - By Lori Foster, S Donovan, V Dahl Page 0,74
man. What’s going on?”
“Your boys home yet?”
“Oh, shit. What’d they do now?”
Jesse laughed. “Nothing. I just have a favor to ask you. Are you awake enough for this conversation?”
“Hold up, man.”
Jesse heard him rustle out of bed and take the phone in another room so he wouldn’t wake his wife.
“Okay. What’s goin’ on?”
Jesse took a breath. “Listen, I know this is going to sound strange, but hear me out. I need you to take down the ‘Dark Blue’ series display for a few days, and put my books in the back room where no one can see them.”
The phone went quiet for a moment. “Say what?”
“Please.”
“What the hell for, man?”
“As a personal favor to me.”
Chago laughed. “Sure. No problem. That’ll leave me with Pat the Bunny and the cookbooks. I’ll have to beat the customers away with a stick.”
Jesse felt horrible, but he pressed on. “Please, Chago.”
“Look, you’ll have to tell me what this is about, because you and I both know that J. D. Batista is the only marketing hook I got. That new chain store on Roosevelt is killing me, man.”
“I know. And I’m sorry.”
“So what’s this got to do with my boys?”
Jesse gave him a basic summary of the situation, describing Gail in only the most general terms, explaining that he was asking only that Nestor and Luis not mention anything about his writing career to the girls. Jesse emphasized that he wasn’t asking them to lie, but he would appreciate it if they didn’t bring up the topic in conversation.
Chago said nothing at first, then Jesse heard him chuckling into the phone. “Okay. Sure. I’ll tell the boys,” he said. The chuckling started up again.
“Thanks.”
“You sure about this, man?”
Jesse sighed. The truth was, he’d never attempted anything like this charade. He’d never needed to, but Cammy’s con game had made him damn near paranoid. “Look, I can see something happening with Gail, okay? She’s that great. I just need a couple days before I tell her everything.”
“This is about Cammy, isn’t it?”
“In a roundabout way, yes.”
“So you’re testing her, is that it? You want to make sure she’s not gonna sell your ass to The National Enquirer? Is that what’s going on?”
“Yeah.”
Chago whistled low and soft. “Whatever you say, man, but I think you’re making a mistake. If this Gail is as great as you say she is, she’s not gonna like it when she finds out you’ve been lying to her. I don’t know too many women who’d stand for that kind of shit.”
“I’m not lying. I’m postponing.”
“Right,” Chago said. “So that’s it? You just want me to move my only moneymaker to the stockroom? You sure I can’t interest you in a quart of my blood? My bone marrow? My fuckin’ kidney?”
Jesse laughed. “You’re a good friend, man. I appreciate it. It’s just for a few days.”
“Consider it done,” Chago said. “I guess it’s the least I can do. You’ve single-handedly kept me in business all these years.”
“I appreciate it.”
“I just hope you know what you’re doing, man. From where I sit, it looks like a train wreck in the making.”
NOT THAT GAIL WAS AN OLD hand at this sort of thing, but she recognized what was happening with Jesse. She was being swept away. The hours in his company were running together in a blur of sunshine, ocean, laughter, discovery and pleasure. She treasured every moment of it, too, even as a tiny ball of panic began to form in her stomach, warning her that it was all temporary, an illusion, and that it was building up to nothing but a wistful memory.
And she let it happen anyway.
On Monday, Jesse took Gail out on his sailboat to where the dolphins played. Since Jesse was a friend of a marine biologist who’d studied Key West dolphins for over a decade, he got a heads-up on where to find them. Jesse followed his friend’s directions to a spot about six miles from land, where currents had swept schools of fish that were attracting one of the dolphin pods for feeding.
Gail gasped when she saw her first two bottlenose dolphins, so graceful and shiny in the water. She and Jesse lay down on their bellies on deck to watch. That first dolphin couple was soon followed by another, then at least a dozen more animals. They swooped, dived, circled and talked to each other in clicks and chirps. One couple even jumped out of the water with fish in their mouths, as if showing off.
Gail was