Envy

Chapter 9

Harper didn’t usually associate with Beth and her little clique during gym class. Of course she had to be nice to Adam’s girlfriend, and pretend they were friends, but that didn’t mean they needed to be bosom buddies. So usually, after suffering through the forty-five minutes of torture better known as phys ed, she stayed on the other side of the locker room, sliding out of her hideous orange and black uniform and back into her real clothes as quickly as possible so that she could get the hell out. (The girls’ locker room, although lacking the overpowering stench of sweat ever-present in the guys’ locker room, was still not the type of place in which you wanted to kick back and relax.) But today was different. Today she had a mission. Kane and Harper had conferred, and agreed: It was time to set Kaia’s plan into motion.

She moved into position-a few feet away from Beth and the group of mousy blondes who surrounded her. When Beth, with her watered-down personality, managed to be the center of attention, you had to wonder about the quality of the company. Imagine a group that found the Queen of Bland riveting, Harper marveled to herself.

Far enough away to be unobtrusive, but close enough to… to do what she had to do.

She felt a small twinge of guilt about the whole thing, but quickly squelched it. She was doing all of them a favor, she reminded herself. Beth and Adam’s rickety relationship was being held together by a Band-Aid-and it would be less painful for all involved if someone just ripped it off, nice and quick.

Lucky for them all, Harper was up to the task.

“God, if I never have to run laps again, it’ll be way too soon,” Marcy sighed, stripping out of her sweaty gym uniform.

“Who invented gym, anyway?” Marcy’s best friend, Darcy, chimed in.

Beth laughed, letting the familiar chatter wash over her. It was the same every week with these girls: Gym sucked. School sucked. Guys rocked. Gym sucked. Rinse and repeat.

They weren’t her friends, exactly-beyond Marcy and Darcy (one never went anywhere without the other), they weren’t even friends with one another. But they were all dating guys on the team-the swim team, the basketball team, the lacrosse team, depending on the season. It didn’t really matter. At a school this small, there was pretty much only one Team. And whatever the season, Adam was its captain. Which somehow made Beth-what, exactly? She was never sure. Not the most popular, certainly. That would always be Harper, who kept herself aloof from “the girlfriends” but still managed to gain their unadulterated admiration. Not the best liked-for Beth was unsure whether these girls actually liked anyone. She was certain, however, that if she and Adam ever broke up, the flock of giggling girls would disappear along with him. But at the moment she seemed to have a certain cachet. It was as if they were all drawn to one another by some elusive girlfriend pheromone, and hers was-by virtue of dating Adam, Big Man on Campus-the strongest. Maybe it was some kind of evolutionary reflex.

Or maybe you’ve just been spending too much time staring at your AP bio book, she thought, laughing at herself and her insatiable need to overanalyze everything. Why couldn’t she just accept these girls for whatever they were? Comfortable acquaintances, just another perk of dating Adam, like free tickets to football games and a ride to school whenever she needed one.

So what if they were vain and vapid? It’s not like she could afford to be choosy-she didn’t have too many friends these days, beyond Adam. So she should probably stop being so judgmental and just take what she could get.

“So are you, Beth?” Marcy asked insistently.

“Am I what?” Beth asked in confusion, suddenly realizing all eyes were on her. She pulled off her gym uniform and began brushing out her long, blond hair. Back in ninth grade, when she’d walked into the locker room for the first time, she’d been insanely bashful about letting the other girls see her change. Over the course of a few months, she even developed a system of contortions that would allow her to change from her clothes into her gym uniform and back again without revealing a square of naked flesh to anyone. Four years later the whole thing seemed ridiculous. She was totally comfortable now wandering around the locker room in her underwear-it was just another part of the high school experience, like cafeteria food. And trigonometry. She couldn’t even remember what her problem had been. Of course, she mused, back then no one ever saw her naked, and the very thought of revealing herself to another person had made her skin crawl. Then came Adam.

“Are you going to the championships?” Darcy repeated on behalf of her best friend. “You heard the student council got together enough funds to pay for a bus to take us all up to Valley Glen, right?”

“Yeah, I heard.” Beth smiled, remembering how delighted Adam had been when she told him she would finally be there to see him swim. And hopefully, win. This year’s regionals were being held at Valley Glen High, a huge school up north, and a school bus had been chartered to take half of Haven High along to cheer on the swimmers. (Given the football team’s 0-9 record-three years in a row-Haven fans had plenty of time and energy on their hands.) It would be a long day, but Beth wouldn’t miss it for anything. She knew how important it was to Adam. And seeing how much he wanted her there had just reminded her how much he loved her. And how much she loved him. Not that spending five hours on a bus with Marcy, Darcy, and the rest of the Haven High cheering section sounded particularly appealing to her-but it would be worth it to get to see Adam in action again, to show him that she cared. Besides, she’d promised him. She was, after all, his good luck charm. “I’m definitely going,” she answered, grinning. “I can hardly wait.”

“Looks like you won’t have to,” Marcy said.

“What do you mean?”

“Weren’t you listening?” Darcy asked. “We were just talking about how great it is that they rescheduled the championships for this week.”

“This week?” Beth asked in alarm. “But the SATs are on Saturday!”

“Exactly, that’s what’s so great-you know they’re giving the seniors Thursday and Friday off.”

“So we can study’” Beth pointed out.

Darcy laughed. “Yeah, but who’s actually going to do that? No, it’s perfect-we’ll ride up on Thursday morning, watch the meet, do some victory partying, and then ride back late that night. And we have all of Friday to sleep it off!”

“Are you sure about this?” Beth asked, her throat tightening.

“Yeah, Kyle just told me.”

Kyle was Darcy’s boyfriend, and the swim team’s cocaptain. If he’d said it, it must be true.

Shit.

“I can’t do that, I can’t go away two days before the test,” she cried. “That’s insane.”

“Breathe, Beth. It’s no big deal. It’s just…”

But Beth tuned out the rest of the prattle, her mind frantically racing to find a way around the problem. There wasn’t one. She was just going in circles, always coming back to the same basic certainty.

She was going to have to back out-and Adam was going to freak.

As the rest of the girls filtered out of the locker room, Harper lingered. Once she was on her own, she snapped open her cell and quickly flipped through the images she’d captured. Perfect. She’d gotten everything she needed-and more. This swim meet development was quite the windfall.

That had been the only flaw in Kaia’s ruthlessly brilliant plan-the when. And now Beth had supplied them with the perfect solution. If Adam went out to Valley Glen and Beth stayed here… Well, if she’d had any doubts before about whether this was the right thing to do, they were gone now. Why else would all this good luck be raining down on her if this weren’t exactly what she was meant to do? Why else was everything working out even better than expected?

It would be the ideal setup, but it would mean they had to move fast. And Kane, who was on the swim team too (at least when he felt like going to practice) would have to give up a shot at athletic glory-somehow, Harper was pretty sure he wouldn’t care. Why would he want to go all the way to Valley Glen for a pathetic plastic trophy, when the real trophy would be right here, conveniently close to home?

She slipped out of the locker room and sprinted down the hall to e-mail Kane and Kaia. They needed to know that step one was taken care of and step two needed to happen ASAP. Beth had just dumped a giant gift in their laps. It would be a shame to let it go to waste.

Beth steeled herself all day for the inevitable. But when the moment came, she still wasn’t ready. She sat in the car next to him, looking out the window as the familiar scenery whizzed by, nodding absently as he filled her in on the details of his day at school. She was too nervous to pay much attention, instead plotting out the conversation in her mind, striving for some angle that wouldn’t cause an eruption. She’d yet to find one-but a couple miles from her house, she realized she just couldn’t wait any longer.

“I’ve got bad news,” she blurted out, interrupting some story about his history teacher’s toupee.

He flicked his eyes off the road for a quick second, flashing her a look of concern. “What is it?”

“It’s your swimming championships.”

“Oh, right, I’ve been meaning to tell you, there was some kind of scheduling screw-up, so they changed the date and-”

“I can’t go,” she said flatly.

“What?”

Something suddenly occurred to her-and she didn’t like it. “Adam, if you knew they’d changed the date, why didn’t you tell me?” she asked suspiciously.

“I was about to,” he said uncomfortably.

“It’s two days before the SATs-you knew I wouldn’t be able to do that.”

“Yeah-wouldn’t want to do that.”

“Wouldn’t want to blow the test, no,” she agreed. He could be such a baby sometimes. “Look, I’ll come see you some other time, I promise.”

“Some other time? This is it, Beth, this is the time. It’s the end of the season-it’s the championships, for God’s sake. I thought you understood that this was important to me.”

“And the SATs are important to me,” she retorted. “Look, it’s not like I’m asking you not to go.”

“No, you’re just saying you can’t be bothered to come along,” he countered.

“Don’t do that.” She was getting so sick of having the same conversation again and again. Was she supposed to plan her entire life around him? “Don’t try to make this about you and me. You know this test means everything to me.”

“And I don’t?”

She was running out of patience-if she wanted to spend the afternoon dealing with a whiny child, she’d be home babysitting her little brothers.

“Adam, it’s not that I don’t want to be there for you-but this is my life we’re talking about here. I can’t throw everything away for some stupid swim meet.”

“Right,” he muttered. “When it’s something you care about, it’s important. When it’s something I care about, it’s just stupid.”

Beth sighed. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. I wish I could go, Adam, I do,” she said desperately. “I just can’t-I mean, if it were some other weekend. Any other weekend. This just isn’t the time.”

He gripped the wheel tightly. “It’s never the time. You just don’t get it, do you? You and me, we need-I need-can’t you just make the time?”

“You just don’t get it,” Beth cried, as all the anger and frustration she’d been suppressing for the past few weeks bubbled to the surface and burst through. “Why do you have to be like this? Why can’t you understand that this is my future we’re talking about? It’s your future too,” she pointed out, even though she’d promised herself she would never bring this up, wouldn’t try to force him to see what he was missing out on. “It wouldn’t hurt you to do a little studying of your own. I mean, even Kane-”

She cut herself off, realizing as soon as his name came out of her mouth that she’d made a serious mistake. But it was too late.

“So that’s what this is about?” Adam snarled. “I knew it.”

“No, that has nothing to do with what this is about. Why can’t you just let this go?”

“Are you seeing him tonight?” he asked in a low, calm voice.

“Yes, but-”

“And tomorrow?”

“Adam-”

“And I guess he’ll be ditching the swim team, staying here with you for some hot and heavy studying while your boyfriend conveniently goes out of town?”

“You got me!” she cried. “You figured out my secret plan. As soon as you get out of town, Kane and I are just going to hop into bed together. That’s all you care about, isn’t it? Not spending time with me-keeping me away from him!”

Adam stared straight ahead at the road, fingers tightly clenching the wheel. The car suddenly felt very, very small. “I didn’t realize that staying away from him would be such a sacrifice.”

“I’m not your property, Adam. You don’t get to tell me who to spend time with. And acting like this isn’t the best way to keep me from cheating on you-or breaking up with you.”

“What is the best way, then? You tell me. Because I’m beginning to think there isn’t one. You’re just going to do whatever you want to, no matter what I say.”

“You’re right,” Beth spluttered, barely able to believe the words that were coming out of her mouth. She would never cheat on Adam-and she’d never throw away her relationship just to preserve some barely-there friendship with Kane. But that was her decision to make. Not his. “If you want someone who’s just going to take orders from you, follow you around like you’re her almighty ruler, you’re dating the wrong girl.”

“Maybe I am,” he agreed angrily.

“You know what? Stop the car.”

“What?”

“Stop the car. I’m getting out. I can’t be around you when you’re like this.”

He glanced over at her incredulously. “You want me to stop the car and let you out on an empty road in the middle of nowhere?”

“Anything would be better than being stuck in this car with you,” she said, her voice filled with spite.

“Fine.” He swerved to the side of the road, slammed on the brakes, and the car skidded to a stop. “Get out. See if I care what happens to you.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I know you don’t. You’ve made that painfully clear.”

“Don’t try to-”

But she slammed the door in his face, and his voice trailed off as he saw she was serious. She turned away from the car and began walking slowly down the narrow shoulder of the road. At that rate, it would take her an hour to get home from there-and it was getting dark.

Adam knew he should pull up alongside her and try to persuade her to get back into the car. If that failed, he should drive beside her the whole way home, just to make sure nothing happened.

It was the right thing to do. He knew that.

And he really meant to do it, right up until the moment he put the car in gear and pressed a leaden foot down on the gas pedal. The tires screeched as the car peeled onto the road and sped past her solitary figure.

By the time he’d calmed down enough to realize what he’d done, she had long since disappeared into the dark distance. He could have turned around. Gone back for her.

But he didn’t.

Kaia’s favorite French film was part of a trilogy: Bleu, Blanc, and Rouge. She’d seen all three in a row during a foreign film festival at Lincoln Center. One rainy day, she’d barricaded herself in the theater and, shivering in her Anna Sui raincoat, she’d fallen in love. The best of the three, she’d decided, was Bleu. The plot was elegant and obscure: A young, beautiful woman loses everything, everything that matters. She is alone, disconnected, disenchanted, and free. Ultimate freedom, at the ultimate price. Death of the spirit-and, ultimately, a reawakening.

It was intense, it was sexy, and it was the way Kaia wanted her world to be. Elegant, beautiful people, awash in a cool, bluish gray light, speaking in clipped sentences packed with suppressed passion and cryptic meaning.

So it was this DVD that she tucked into a picnic basket, along with some gourmet cheese imported directly from a small farm in the French Alps, and a bottle of Bordeaux snagged from her father’s ample wine cellar, before setting off for Jack Powell’s house. It was time for Little Red Riding Hood to pay a call on the Big Bad Wolf.

She wasn’t completely sure that now was the time to make her final move-though it was quite obvious the move would need to be hers. He wasn’t about to take the step. But was he ready yet? Oh, she saw the glint in his eyes when he looked at her, the hint of desire in his voice every time he told her to go away. And the spark between them when they’d touched the other night, that couldn’t be denied.

Yes, she told herself once again. He’s ready.

And so was she.

She wore a filmy black slip dress and strappy black kitten heels. And beneath it all, a custom-made camisole of red lace, and black panties with a red lace trim. She looked good, all over. And she knew it.

She rang the doorbell, savoring the nervous energy fizzing inside of her-it was rare, these days, that a guy could set her blood boiling with anticipation, that the thrill of the chase came paired with the arousing fear of rejection. It was one of the reasons she wanted this so badly. That, and the way his designer shirts hung on his sculpted body, the sound of his elegant British accent, his easy charm, his icy anger.

He was the complete package. And it was such a turn-on.

He opened the door, unlike her dressed down for the night-adorably rumpled hair, tight jeans, Oxford T-shirt. His eyes widened when he saw what was waiting on his front doorstep.

“You,” he said simply, blocking the entranceway to the house.

“Me.” She smiled.

“You’re out kind of late,” he finally observed. “Won’t Mommy and Daddy be wondering where their precious little one has run off to?”

“Daddy’s off screwing his secretary in a Vegas hotel room, and Mommy’s back in Manhattan, probably having a nice, long sleep courtesy of Dr. Valium,” she informed him bitterly. “So… no.”

“What’s in the basket?”

She pulled out the wine. “Reinforcements.”

He looked down the dark and deserted street.

“Did anyone see you? Does anyone know you’re here?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you’re trouble,” he reminded her. “But as I recall, we’ve already had that conversation.”

“Ad nauseam… are we ready for a new one?”

He looked her up and down, then sighed appreciatively. “You are not what I expected when I came out to this hick town.”

“Ditto. So-what do you want to do about it?”

There was a pause, and a palpable tension in the air. This was the moment, she knew. He was on the brink, and it was now that he would either step back to safety-or grab her wrist and plunge them both into the depths.

He took a deep breath. “There are going to be some rules.”

“Of course.” She nodded, disguising her relief. Now they were getting somewhere.

“No one can know.”

She rolled her eyes.

“No one,” he repeated.

“Yes, sir.” She saluted.

“No other guys.”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your-”

“High school boys get jealous,” he explained. “When they get jealous, they get curious. And that I don’t need.”

“Right. No extracurricular activities,” she agreed. She had the sneaking suspicion this wasn’t the first time he’d had this conversation. He was too quick, too smooth.

“And no more of this stalking nonsense. I don’t want you showing up in my classroom, in my bar, at my house-we meet when I say, where I say. I don’t like surprises.”

Kaia gave him a slow, simmering smile.

“Then you’re going to hate me.”

His face remained frozen. “Are we agreed?”

“Completely.”

“You break the rules, and we end this,” he warned her. “Immediately. I’m not some horny teenager who’s so desperate to get some that I’m willing to throw my life away.”

Could have fooled me, Kaia thought, wondering-not for the first time-what had brought a man like that to a town like this.

But if he wanted to believe he was in control, that was just fine with her.

“Your wish is my command, Jack.”

“In that case, what are you waiting for?”

She took a step toward him, tilting her head up as if to seal the deal with a kiss, but he backed away and shook his head.

“Not out here,” he chided her. “Never where people can see.” He swung the door open a bit wider and stepped aside, ushering her in with an exaggerated sweep of his arm.

No matter, she could wait. For another minute or two, at least. And then, she thought, pausing in the doorway and marveling at his cocky good looks and the sizzling current of sexual tension flowing between them-then all bets were off.

She stepped inside the house, and Powell slammed the door shut behind her.

Waiting time was over.