be staying with my friend, Jane Elliott,” she volunteered brightly—as if he really cared or needed to know.
“Jane. The mayor’s daughter, right?”
The Elliotts were the closest thing New Venice had to an aristocracy. Jane’s father was a judge, like his father before him.
“No,” Celia said. “It’s Jane’s uncle, J. T., who’s the mayor.”
A half smile lifted one side of that wonderful, sculpted mouth of his—though he never took his eyes off his computer screen. “J. T. Elliott. Her uncle. Got it.”
J. T. Elliott had once been the county sheriff. If Celia remembered right, he’d locked Aaron up in his jail more than once in the distant past. Or if not Aaron, then surely his baby brother, Cade, who was the wildest of the three bad Bravo boys.
“So it’s all right, then, if I go?”
“Of course. Have a good time.”
Somehow, it felt worse that he didn’t seem to care she was leaving than if he’d been a jerk and demanded she cancel her plans and remain at his beck and call the whole weekend through.
Celia told herself to snap out of it. She was getting what she’d asked for and she would take it and be happy about it.
She worked until two-thirty and she was on that plane, flying to Reno, by a little after five that evening.
It was the second bottle of Chianti that did it. Celia probably could have kept her mouth shut if they’d stuck with just one.
But it was such a perfect evening. The three of them—friends since the first day of kindergarten, bosom buddies all through high school—together again, like in the old days.
Jane had cooked. Italian. Something with angel-hair pasta and lots of garlic and sun-dried tomatoes. After the meal, the three of them kicked off their shoes and gathered around the big fireplace in the front parlor. Jane had the stereo on low, set to Random, playing a mix of everything from Tony Bennett to Natalie Imbruglia.
Jillian raised her glass. “Triple Threat.” That was the three of them, the Triple Threat. Though, of course, they really hadn’t been much of a threat to anyone.
They were three nice girls from a small town, girls who studied hard in school and got good grades and didn’t get breasts as early as they would have liked—well, not Celia and Jillian, anyway. At the age of twelve, Jane had suddenly sprouted a pair of breasts that instantly became the envy of even the most popular girls at Mark Twain Middle School, eighth-graders included.
They were all well behaved. Yep. Jane and Jillian and Celia were good girls to the core, their transgressions so minor they generally went unremarked. They only dreamed of rebellions—at least until their senior year, when Jane ran off to Reno and married Rusty Jenkins.
That had been a real mess, Jane’s marriage to Rusty. He was trouble, capital T, that Rusty. He’d ended up getting himself killed three years later. Jane had scrupulously avoided all forms of rebellion ever since.
Jillian had tried marriage, too, when she was twenty-two. Her husband had a problem with monogamy—a problem he never bothered to reveal before the wedding. But it turned out that Benny Simmerson found being faithful way too limiting. That marriage had lasted a little over a year.
“Triple Threat,” echoed Jane. Celia said it, too. The three of them clinked glasses and drank.
Jillian grabbed a sapphire-blue chenille pillow from the end of the couch, propped it against the front of an easy chair and used it for a backrest. “So, how’s construction going next door?”
About six months ago, Cade Bravo had bought the house next to Jane’s. Since then, he’d been remodeling it.
Jane sipped more wine. “Who knows? He’ll probably never move in.”
“Why do you say that?” prodded Jillian. “What? He’s never there?”
“He’s there. Now and then. You can see he’s got the new roof on and the exterior painted. And I do hear hammering inside every once in a while. I’d say construction is moving along.”
“The question,” said Jillian, “is why? Why buy a house here? I heard he’s got a huge place in Vegas. And one in Tahoe, too, right? What’s New Venice got to offer that he can’t get in Vegas or Tahoe? And why an old house? Cade Bravo is not the fixer-upper type.”
“A hungering for the home he never really had?” Jane suggested. “A yearning for a simpler, gentler kind of life?”
Jillian pretended to choke on her wine. “Oh, right. Cade Bravo. Not.”
Jane shrugged. “It’s only a guess.”
“And speaking of Bravos…” Jillian wiggled her eyebrows. “Rumor has it Caitlin’s got a new boyfriend.”
“Could be,” said Jane.
Jillian giggled, a very naughty sound. “Janey. Come on. Who is he? What’s he like?”
“Hans is his name. I’ve seen him tooling around town in that black Trans Am of Caitlin’s.” Caitlin had owned the Trans Am for as long as Celia could remember. She kept it in perfect condition. It looked just like the one Burt Reynolds drove in that old seventies classic, Smokey and the Bandit. Jane added, “Hans has come in the bookstore once or twice.”
“And…?”
“Sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Looks like him, too. At least from the neck down. Arnold meets Fabio. Remember Fabio? Long blond hair, major muscles. That’s Hans. Buys books on body culture and vitamin therapy.”
“A health nut.”
“Could be.”
“How old?”
Jane tried to look disapproving. “Honestly, Jilly. You’re practically salivating.”
Jillian let out a long, crowing laugh. “Boytoy! Admit it. I’ve got it right.”
Jane shrugged. “She always did like them young.”
“And vigorous.” Jillian giggled some more.
Jane gathered her legs up under her and stood. “I’ll get that other bottle.”
Celia looked down into her almost-empty glass, thinking of Aaron again, feeling disgustingly sorry for herself. There was no escape, really, from thinking of Aaron. Reminders were everywhere. She worked for him, they came from the same hometown where everybody loved nothing so much as to gossip about his mother. And now his brother was moving in next door to her best friend….
Jillian said, “What’s with you, Celia Louise?”
Celia looked up from her wine glass. “Huh?”
“I said, what’s with you?”
She made an effort to sit straighter and tried to sound perky. “Oh, nothing much. Working, as always.”
Jillian
