Over Her Dead Body (39 page)

“Oh really?” I said. It came out stupidly, as if he’d just told me he’d found a place where you could find good fresh mozzarella.

“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything before—but based on what you said that day in East Hampton, I thought you were looking for something with no strings attached.”

“Do you mind if I ask how serious it is?”

“Not very serious. She’s another filmmaker, and she travels a lot. For the time being, at least, she wants something fairly casual. And that works for me, too. The relationship I told you about the other night was fairly intense, and after she moved to London I promised myself I wasn’t going to get into anything serious for a while.”

“And so that’s what you want with me—just something casual?”

He laughed, tossing his head back. “I haven’t even had a chance to think about what I want with you. It feels like I got hit by a bus when I saw you in East Hampton. Then I found myself walking towards your apartment one day like someone out of
The Manchurian Candidate.
”

“Should I take that as a compliment?”

“Absolutely. But I’ll be honest. As attracted as I am, I guess I don’t feel ready for anything steady or serious. Or exclusive. I always thought you were on the same page.”

“I don’t want anything serious,” I said, my voice embarrassingly high. “And I’m not just saying that. When I broke up with someone in January, it was because he was ready to move in together and the mere thought of it gave me a panic attack. But the nonexclusive thing . . . Well, let me think about it, okay?”

“Of course.”

I glanced at my watch again. “Yikes,” I said, “I better dash.” I was trying to break into the light and breezy Bailey, but I felt as though my heart were being squeezed. I hobbled to the door in my busted slingback.

“So call me later, will you?” Beau said. “I want to know how you’re feeling—and what happens today with the police.”

“Sure. . . .” My voice trailed off as I gathered my thoughts.

“Listen, Beau. Maybe I’m being impetuous for saying this now and I should wait until my head wound heals, but . . . What I’m trying to say is that I don’t need to do any more thinking. True, I was looking for something very casual this summer. But I realize that that’s not what I want from
you.
I really like being with you, and though I’m not looking for some big commitment, I’d like to get to know you without always wondering how I measure up to the competition.”

I smiled, afraid I was sounding like some district attorney in her closing arguments.

“So you’re blowing me off, is that it?” he asked. There was a trace of bittersweet in his voice. As miserable as I felt, I found some reserve of cockiness before I opened my mouth again.

“Under the current conditions, yes.”

“Let me think about what you said,” he told me. “I don’t want it to just end right here and now.”

“All right,” I replied.

He started to smile, a rueful smile, perhaps, but before he could say anything else, I kissed him on the mouth and slipped out the door.

It took me forever to find a cab. In my wrinkled clothes and broken shoe, I probably looked like a hooker who’d been sideswiped by a car while working Ninth Avenue. Once I was finally settled in the backseat, I called Nash on his cell phone.

“God, Bailey, where the hell have you been?”

“Sorry, I went to a friend’s and turned my ringer off. I was just feeling miserable.”

“You’re okay, right?”

“Yeah. Slightly bloodied and bowed but basically fine.”

“I was still in the office last night when everything was happening, but the police wouldn’t let me go into the basement. The next thing I knew, you were gone. Tate filled me in on most of it. But you’ve got to come in and write this up. And I want you to do press as well. This thing is huge.”

“I’ll be there in about an hour,” I told him. “I’ll tell you everything then.”

I leaned back and pressed my hands to my forehead. My head was throbbing again, and I felt the beginning stages of a weird mental hangover—from the stress and guilt and fear and anger.

I would just have to suck it up and cope because I had a boatload of stuff to tackle today, not the least of which was my article on the arrest of Mona’s murderer and my own involvement in it. I needed to take Nash blow by blow through what had happened to me last night, as well as ask him what he meant by
press.
(Did he expect me to sit across from Larry King one night this week? Was I supposed to get my hair highlighted or anything?) It would be nice to be in Nash’s company and not be nursing those nasty suspicions about him (I just hoped the egg on my head wouldn’t be an excuse for him to paw me.)

I also couldn’t wait to talk to Jessie and thank her. Based on what Tate had told me, she’d still been around last night after all, and had directed my rescuers to me. I had even more respect for her nosiness now. I also wanted to sit down, face-to-face with Robby, now that he was totally in the clear. There would be other people to fill in, too—Landon and Cat, for instance. And I knew I had better touch base with my mother. I’d been less than forthcoming with her about my ups and downs through the case, but she was bound to hear something now.

And then there was Beau to think about. I didn’t regret my ultimatum to him. I’d read enough articles in
Gloss
to know that men liked them as much as they enjoyed hearing you talk about vaginal itch. But I also knew that I couldn’t go to bed with Beau again if he was sleeping with someone else. If he wasn’t interested in being exclusive, I would get over it sooner or later, but I knew it would be hard not to wince whenever I thought of him and how good it could have been. And I would probably have to have Landon make his famous blues-banishing brisket and spoon-feed it to me with half a bottle of Cabernet.

But for now I was going to remain optimistic. I could sense Beau’s strong attraction to me, and maybe that attraction would be enough to make him forgo his sometime girlfriend. I was just going to pray to the gods of love and lust that he couldn’t tell me no.