Jack thought about how very fine it had felt, how incredible it had felt when she came and shuddered and quaked and he’d felt every quiver, tasted every moan out of her beautiful mouth, and slowly he nodded. “Yeah, I guess that’s about right.”
Mary Lisa smacked Jack’s arm. “Talk about unprofessional. Well, you hardly did anything that I noticed all that much. Well, maybe some things, but-so, what are you doing here, Pitty-John?”
“So he told you he calls me Pitty Pat?”
“Yeah, I did. I also told her you call me the Goon Leader.”
“I want to know what Pitty Pat means.”
John shook his head. “Not in this lifetime. I flew down here this afternoon for an overnighter, to see how you are, see what Jack here has accomplished. Apart from getting you on top of him on the beach, of course, and-well, never mind that. Your father sends his love, practically ordered me down here since you won’t let him come down himself.”
“That was very nice of you, John. I really should call my father. We have some good news for him. The guy’s gone, left L.A.”
Jack looked at her like she’d lost her mind.
“What?” Mary Lisa turned on him, hands on her hips. “Why are you looking at me like I’m the village idiot?”
Jack loooked her straight in the eye. “Stop trying to pretend everything’s okay now. You don’t really believe that guy’s gone any more than I do, any more than Daniel does. The tide’s coming in. I need to get my stuff before the water does. Then let’s go back to the house. John needs to hear what’s going on.”
John looked more bemused than pissed, Mary Lisa thought as they walked back to the house, which relieved her greatly. John said, “I’ve heard bits and pieces from Lou Lou and Daniel already, and this old guy, Carlo, offered to give me surfing lessons.”
Mary Lisa rolled her eyes. “You already met Lou Lou and Daniel? And made friends with Carlo? How long have you been here, John?”
“Not that long. I was watching with the rest of your friends from your back deck when Goon Leader here tried to catch you. You looked really graceful, Jack, going airborne like that. Like a ballerina, and you landed soft and rolled. That was well done. Oh, by the way, there are a lot of gorgeous women in your house, Mary Lisa.”
“All Jack lacked was a tutu when he did his grand jeté. Yeah, this place is loaded with both gorgeous guys and girls.”
Jack grinned at her as he rubbed his left shoulder, rotated it a bit. “Did you see Little Miss Ego come flitting back because she thought I was mortally wounded?”
“Little Miss what? Ego? You call me Little Miss Ego?” She’d watched Chico do it a dozen times, and she’d tried it twice as often herself that afternoon. She presented her side, rose onto her toes, and lashed out at his side with her left leg. It wasn’t badly done, but she held back a bit because, she supposed, her insides still felt so gooey and fluid, and Jack grabbed her ankle before it landed in his belly and flipped her. She went down, and he snagged her wrist to pull her up again. He stared down at her. “So that’s why you had such bad muscle cramps on Friday. Some martial arts instructor has been beating the crap out of you.”
She’d lost her kicking shoe. She jerked away from him, picked it up and shook it at him. “Next time I won’t hold back, Jack Wolf. Next time I might get you but good.”
“Why were you holding back?”
His voice was sexy and deep and she wanted to jump on him and kiss his face off and kick him at the same time, the jerk, but all she could do was stand there, without a word to say, because John was standing only two feet away, watching them.
John said, his head cocked to one side, understanding in his eyes, “Er, can we go back to your house now, Mary Lisa? Jack, you’d best move fast and rescue your boots before the waves drown them. You need any help, old man?”
Jack laughed at that.
“What’s this? That wasn’t all that funny, Jack. Why are you encouraging him?”
“An old joke,” Jack said.
“I’m one month older than Goon Leader,” John said.
“It still wasn’t very funny,” Mary Lisa said; she turned and began to walk back up the beach and paused to pick up Jack’s boots. He saw them in her hand as she began trotting toward the surf, whistling.
“No!” He stopped between her and the water, panting, his arms out, like a basketball guard. “No, not my boots. Please, Mary Lisa, they’re new.”
“They’re beautiful. I wouldn’t hurt them. You, however, are another matter entirely, but I guess that will have to be later.” She laughed, dropped his boots on dry sand, and ran back to her house, up the deck steps to her friends.
FORTY
Demi Moore spent some of her early acting days on General Hospital.
BORN TO BE WILD
Sunday Cavendish faces the man who’s her father. She studies him, says slowly, “You’re even more impressive in person than on TV.”
Phillip Galliard, in his fifties, tall, with silver wings in his dark hair and Sunday’s blue eyes, is immaculately dressed in a gray suit, white shirt, and black shoes. He inclines his head toward her. “Thank you.”
Sunday looks around his lavish office. “You’re certainly not a monk, are you?”
“No, not in any sense. This, though,” he says, waving his arms around the office, “is for show. People expect it. Years ago, my office, my home, my car reflected my own tastes-functional and spare are good words, I suppose. I never had a thought for anything outside of God’s works. I was what I was and I didn’t think it could matter. But it did. My staid surroundings did not go over well. People who wanted to believe what I preached also wanted me to be different from them somehow. They wanted to see me as special and so my surroundings had to be special-I suppose few in the modern world want to follow a man who looks like a beggar. I learned that the TV people, all the sponsors who make my work possible, wanted the trappings even more than my followers did. They wanted glamour and obvious signs of wealth. I think they were right-my audience grew, and it helped people to believe me, entrust their money to me.”
She wants to smile, but holds it in. He’s charming, she recognizes it, but she’s not about to let him see that. “You know my mother never told me about you.”
“I’m not surprised. She told me she wouldn’t.”
“Look, I don’t know you. Why, all of a sudden, do you want to know me?”
“Well, now, that’s a long story…”
He looks at her, his expression troubled-
“Clear!”
The shine was off Norman’s face three minutes later when Todd Bickly, the stage manager, shouted, “Okay, go!”
Sunday gives her father a sneer. “A long story? As in complicated? It seems simple enough to me. You decide you don’t want me and Mom, and you leave. She never wants to see you again, understandable after you cut out on us. You never contact us. She remarries and I have a step-father, not much of one, but at least he was there, at least until we got rid of him.”
“You mean after he tried to molest your half sister.”
“All he did was try.” She waves her hand at him. “Now that I’m grown, I’m successful, I’ve got money, you suddenly pop into Los Angeles, announce to my mother that you’re back, and you want to see me. I’ve been thinking about why you’d do that, Mr. Galliard. I’ve decided all this display of wealth is a sham. You need money, don’t you?”
Her father walks behind his desk, picks up a glass, and pours water into it from a crystal carafe. He drinks deeply, sets down the glass. He turns to face her. “You look like me. I’ve watched you over the years, Sunday, seen your photos in European magazines, read in the business sections of newspapers about how you’re running a huge corporation. You fascinate people, you know-you’re so very young, and yet you’ve managed to squeeze both your mother and your half sister off the board, you even landed one of your mother’s lovers in jail when he tried to hurt her. You’re on top now. You’re so very young and yet you’re on top of everything.”