Truth
or Dare
by
Diana
Walker and Reagan Kavanagh
This work of adult fiction, loosely based on
characters portrayed by Russell Crowe, includes adult language and
experiences;
you have been warned. No
copyright
infringement on the original work is intended.
© Diana Walker and Reagan Kavanagh 2006.
REAGAN
I
knew he was pissed the moment he walked into the house.
His briefcase clunked onto the floor of the
foyer rather than being placed on the stand by the door. He was loosening his tie
when I came down the
hall; he threw it across the room onto the couch and followed it with
his
coat. I could
almost see the steam
coming from his ears.
“What’s
wrong?”
“Terry
cost me a client today.”
Oh, shit.
“What
happened?”
“You
are aware of my ongoing negotiations with Sheikh Ahmed
AlFouad?”
“Of
course. You’ve
had what …half a dozen
meetings with him over the last couple of months?”
“Seven
to be precise.” He
stopped talking and
paced; I began worrying about my Isfahan
carpet.
“Are
you going to tell me what happened, or do I have to keep asking
questions?” I
followed him to the
kitchen and watched as he poured three fingers of scotch into a glass
and added
ice cubes. I was
nursing club soda – we
weren’t trying to get pregnant yet, but I hadn’t
resumed my normal vices – and
added ice to my own glass before following him to the lounge. I sat and watched him pace
in front of the
fireplace. It was
several minutes before
he spoke.
“Terry
and Dino were talking when they returned to the office today
…joking with
regard to a woman they had noted at the club whilst exercising during
their
lunch break. Sheikh
AlFouad and I were
standing at the door to my office and overheard their comments. He was on the verge of
signing the contract
and suddenly indicated there were a few things he required additional
time to
consider. He asked
if he might contact
me in a day or two. When
I went to the
car park to leave this evening, he was waiting for me at my car. He said he felt
uncomfortable doing business
with a firm in which two of the principals would behave in so
disrespectful a
manner as to speak of women in sexual terms when another woman was
sitting less
than ten feet away. He
referred
specifically to a comment made by Terry.”
“Terry
made the comment in front of Sooze?”
“It
was Sooze who directed the attention of the three of us to the woman
when the
four of us were at the gym together last week.
Sooze had returned early from lunch today and was at her
desk when Terry
and Dino entered her office. Though
they
did not realise she was there, it does not excuse their conduct in
speaking in
so disrespectful a manner in the outer office where their comments
might be
heard by anyone.”
“That
was the reason Sheikh AlFouad gave for not signing the
contract?”
“That
and that alone. Terry
has cost me close
to two million dollars in personal revenue this year on this one
account. That is
entirely separate from what he has
cost the firm in this instance.”
Well,
that certainly put everything in perspective.
DIANA
I
knew something was wrong when Terry walked in the door.
His briefcase hit the floor with a thud, and
he walked towards me with his hands jammed into his pockets. I didn’t get my
good evening hug and kiss; he
walked to the windows and looked toward the barn before he spoke.
“I
think I gave Max all the ammunition today that he’s ever
going to need.”
“Ammunition?
For what?”
This didn’t sound encouraging.
He
held his hand out toward me, and I walked over and took it in mine.
“Max
is getting ready to challenge me for leadership of my
company.” Oh,
shit.
I need information.
“Why
do you think that?” I
was back into
analytical work mode now. It
surprises
me how easily I can make that switch.
“Tell
me – specifically – what happened today.”
One
month later
ELLIE
“Please
tell me this evening will be like the more recent ones we’ve
had with the gang
and not like the first evening I spent with all of you.” Dino laughed;
I’d gigged him unmercifully
about the disaster of an evening when Alex Ross was in town.
“I
promise.” He
fell silent for a couple of
miles before speaking again.
“Why
do we have to go to someone else’s house?”
We were on our way to Dee and Terry’s for
dinner, and bitching
good-naturedly about the drive from Dino’s place to the
Thorne-Walker
residence.
“Because
your apartment’s too small, you don’t have enough
cookware, plates, or
flatware, the last time we did this it was at Reags’ and
Max’s place, and my
house is in Palestine.”
“You
mean Chinese take-out from the carton isn’t good
enough?” I
laughed as I slapped him on the leg.
“No where
close …besides, Reags is bringing her ‘world
famous’ beef stroganoff for dinner,
and I’m still trying to figure out what her magic touch is. We use the same recipe
– got it in home ec class
in high school – but hers is always better than
mine.” It
was a pot luck dinner, and all of us were
taking something. The
kicker here was
that all three of us were bringing our own version of beef stroganoff
and
pigging out. Dino
looked at me.
“Why
is Reags’ beef stroganoff world famous?”
“Because
when she put it on the table that day in home ec class, she said it
was world famous. When we all tasted it, none of us had guts enough to
tell the
bitch she was wrong. I’d
never eaten
stroganoff before, and I had no idea if was world famous! Besides, you know what a
force-to-be-reckoned-with she is now …can you even imagine
what the
force of that personality was like when we were 16? She
had more balls than the entire
football team combined, and she had absolutely NO fear of
failure.” We
were still laughing when we pulled into
the drive at Terry and Dee’s.
He shook
his head.
“Honey,
some things never change!”
DINO
I
snagged a beer as Ellie walked to the kitchen with her dish and made my
way to
join mis amigos after stopping to hug Dee and Reags. I popped the top and
raised the can to them.
“You
guys do realize we’re fucked.”
They
nodded. Terry
looked toward the kitchen bar
where the various pots sat.
“Oh
shit …we’re doubly fucked.
Diana has matching
serving dishes. That’s
likely to keep us
from knowing who cooked what.”
I looked
at the dining table; it was set complete with trivets for the hot
dishes.
“I
vote that the three of us take the stroganoff to the table and switch
the order
on them. You know
they’ll assume
the dishes will be in the same order on the table as they are when they
dump
the food into them.”
“Knowing
Diana, she has their names stencilled on the bottom.”
“So
you think they’ll pick up the bowls and look for the
names?”
“Hopefully
not …we should be home free.”
Max
raised an eyebrow. “Gentlemen,
I would
venture each lady will know the precise colour of the sauce in her
entry into
this – hopefully light-hearted –
competition.”
Terry
nodded. “Too
right. They’ll
pick up the bowls to look on the
bottom just so they can dump their own on our heads
…right after they
relieve us of our bollocks.”
Max
chuckled as he spoke. “Gentlemen,
we are
fucked.” After
we stopped laughing, Max
had a question. What
was funny about that
was that he also had a point.
“Why
are we always concerned regarding our genitalia and frequency of sexual
congress where these women are concerned?
To my knowledge, no one of us has yet been
deprived.”
“I
may be the newest one in a real relationship …”
“Too
right!”
“All
things in time.”
They
thoroughly enjoyed their laugh at me, and I joined in, formulating my
response
to put them in their place. “And
I’ve
had an easier time of it. Now,
before I
was so rudely interrupted, I was attempting to say we got damned lucky
finding
these women. Don’t
interrupt me again; I
know we’re all agreed on that.
We’re
still recovering from finding them and scared shitless
they’ll use their power
over us for evil, which in all our cases is getting cut off.”
Terry
held his glass out for a toast. “To
our
good women!”
Max
and I echoed his sentiment. “To
our good
women!”
Terry
returned us to our immediate problem.
“The
goal tonight is for this competition to come out with a draw.”
“Ah
…that would be preferable to the other
possibilities.” We
laughed again, and Reags called over to us.
“I
don’t know what you three are doing over there, but
you’re having way too much
fun.” Max
smiled at her before speaking
again.
“My
Love, I have always had concern regarding the potential for bodily
injury at
the hands of you and Diana …my apprehension increases with
the addition of
Ellen to our midst.”
“Good
reason to worry, Max!” Max
nodded as we
all laughed again. We
do a lot of that
when we’re together. Reags
laughed and
shook her head as she headed back to the kitchen.
“Do
we all like stroganoff? Is
it a dish we
could do without if we do invoke the ire of our ladies, and they
refused ever
to prepare it again?”
Terry’s
hands went to the spare tire that’s appeared since he moved
in with Dee. “I like it,
but yeah …I could definitely live without it!”
Max was still looking for a way to keep all of us in good
graces.
“Do
either of you know the color of the sauce in your lady’s dish? That might save
us.”
I groaned.
“I’m so fucked …Ellie
brought hers in the
cooler from Palestine
so ‘the flavors could marry.’
I haven’t
seen it.”
TERRY
The
plan we sorted was that Max would take Reagan’s stroganoff
first and put it in
the one o’clock position on his plate.
I’d do the same with Diana’s; Dino
would go last. Hopefully,
that would keep us from making
fools of ourselves. It
seemed like a
good plan at the time. We
got to the
table and sat; Diana was the last to join us.
She walked round the table and picked up the plates before
each of us
and took them with her to her seat in front of the china cabinet. She smiled as Max scooted
her chair in for
her; he glared at me over her head.
Maybe he ought to try living with Diana for a bit to
understand how
fruitless any attempt is at trying to control her.
Given that he lives with Reags,
you’d
think he’d already know about the futility of controlling
either of those two women.
“I
thought that since I wanted to do this nicely I’d serve
everyone.” She
smiled …Reags smiled …Ellie was biting
her lip not to laugh aloud. We
should
have known they’d do an end around on us. I
watched as Diana plated three small servings
over noodles for each of us, and as soon as I got my plate, I turned it
so that
mine had her stroganoff in the one o’clock position and
prayed Max was paying
attention. Either
he was or he was
focused on the colour of Reags’ sauce, and he turned his
plate
accordingly. That
left Dino. He took
the plate Diana offered him and just
stared at it. Max
and I might survive
this night, but Dino’s a dead man.
Oh
well …every ritual needs a sacrifice.
Christ, this is worse than having to improvise an
extraction. I
dropped my head to my chest and
laughed. One by
one, everyone started
laughing. The girls
had us sussed, and I
suddenly realised they didn’t care a damn which of us liked
whose dish the
best. Diana was the
first to recover
enough to speak.
“You
guys do realise you didn’t have a prayer, don’t you? We had this figured out
long before the three
of you decided it was a competition.
It
really doesn’t matter who likes what; we were having such a
good time watching
the three of you strategize that we almost screwed up our blocking
maneuvers.”
Dino
breathed a sigh of relief. “Does
that
mean I don’t have to sleep on the couch tonight?”
All
three varieties of stroganoff were wonderful.
One had a few more mushrooms than the others, one a bit
more sour cream,
and one had the beef in chunks rather than slices.
Picking a favourite would have been entirely
dependent on what your taste buds wanted that night.
*
We
adjourned to the lounge after we’d got the dishes cleaned up
and into the
dishwasher.
I
looked at Dino as I opened another beer.
“So, I heard the gears grinding as you pulled
into the drive …how many
miles do you have on Baby? Or
is she the
Bitch tonight? I
know you’ve been
burning up the road between here and Palestine. Get stuck with her dead on
the roadside
yet?”
Diana
didn’t give him a chance to answer.
“Don’t
worry. Ellie can
pick him up in her
truck; there’s plenty of room for the Spyder in the bed of
that dually.”
“Actually,
the trips to Palestine
blow out the carbon. She’s
running
better than ever now. Is
the clutch on
the Poor-shit still under warranty?
Had
to replace it yet?”
I
grimaced. It had
been a long while since
I’d driven anything with a standard transmission and had
killed the Porsche
several times with Dino in the car.
Thank God he didn’t know about Diana’s
driving lesson in it. Of
course Diana hadn’t known I’d stalled it
until Dino opened his mouth.
She
assumed I’d shared the stories of her driving lessons with
the others. “Terry!
You promised me you wouldn’t tell them how many
times I stalled
it!” Max
grinned at her.
“He
said nothing, Diana …you just told the tale on
yourself.” That
got all of us laughing again. Reags
turned to Diana.
“You
can drive a standard now?”
“It
started out pretty well but kind of fell apart on hills.” Max turned to Dino, going
suddenly serious on
us.
“Dino,
have you given further thought to a four-way ownership split in the
firm?”
“Haven’t
had the time yet.” Max
shook his head.
“Dino,
we discussed it more than a month past.
If we are to bring Sooze in as a partner, it would be best
to do it
before the start of the new year.
Do you
not agree? What do
you do with
your time?” Ellie
offered no assistance
to Dino; he was twisting in the wind of his own procrastination.
“Yeah,
Dino, you have the travel time to and from Palestine
…you could think about it in the
car.” Dino
looked round the room and
settled on Reags, holding his hands out in surrender.
“Take
your shot, Reags. Everyone
else has.”
“In
good conscience, I have to abstain.
I
can’t ping on the only other Celt in the room.”
I
spoke again. “Still,
Dino, we do need to
get this sorted.”
“Why’s
everyone picking on me? I
haven’t gotten
any hard numbers from you or Max yet …that makes it a little
hard to work up a
split.”
Diana
jumped into what was close to becoming true discord.
“Let me take a look at it.
You do recall I used to earn my living doing
this sort of shit. You
three are
agreed in principle, right?”
We
all nodded. “Okay,
then let’s leave Dino
alone for a few minutes. I’ll
give you
some standard options and a formula where you can plug in some numbers
and see
the effect on everybody’s holdings …who can we
pick on now?”
She
looked at Reags. “Okay,
Reags, spill
it. Tell us your
dirtiest secret.”
Reags
looked at Dino and raised an eyebrow; he shrugged.
Was there something between the two of them? I couldn’t help
it …my thought was please,
God, let there be. It
would likely get
me permanently off the hook for my so-called
‘crush’ on her.
“Max
isn’t the only man who’s been alone with me in a
hotel room in the last
year-and-a-half.”
Five
heads snapped round to look at her.
This
just got deadly serious, astonishingly quickly.
It had to be the night she disappeared.
Diana and I knew about the argument, but neither of us had
known Reags
had called Dino. Wonder
which of them
we’ll have in our guest room tonight?
It
has to be Max because Reags won’t leave the dogs. I was getting very
uncomfortable as Reags
continued in a low voice, but in all truth, Diana had started it.
“Max
and I had a disagreement a while back.
I
left the house shortly after noon and didn’t return until the
next
morning. I did let
him know I was safe
and that he needn’t worry, but I was too upset to go home
that night. I
checked into the Holiday Inn a couple of
miles from the house. I
needed someone
to talk to …and I called Dino.
He drove
over and spent a couple of hours with me.”
I
looked at Max, expecting him to go for Dino’s throat, and he
surprised me. “Dino,
I did not know you had consoled her
that night, but I thank you for your care of her.
Had I known you were with her for part of
that time, I would have worried far less.”
Diana
smiled. “It
was a tough night all
round. Terry drove
down and spent the
night with Max, and I stayed here to man the phone in case Reags
checked
in. I’m
glad you two got it straightened
out, but I’d no idea Dino was involved.”
Reags spoke again.
“Okay,
who’s in the pickle barrel next?”
I
took a deep breath. “It
might as well be
me.” Everyone
settled back in their
chairs and waited. “Diana
and I had a
disagreement whilst Max was in Syria.”
Ellie
laughed. “Sorry
to laugh, Terry, but you
should know that I’m proud of you for being able to say the
name of the country
now. You’ve
made progress.” I
grinned at her and put my arm round Diana’s
shoulders. Since
the day Max was taken,
only Reags – and Max on his return – had been able
to say the words
‘kidnapped’, ‘abducted’,
‘hostage’, and ‘Syria.’ Diana had come up with the
euphemism of “whilst
Max was away.” You’d
think adults could
deal better, wouldn’t you?
Diana’s
voice was low. “Terry,
you don’t have to
talk about that.”
Dino
couldn’t let that pass.
“Dee,
I told you there was something wrong, and you
denied it.” Nothing
for it but to
acknowledge the misunderstanding since it was now behind us and clear
the air
completely.
“Diana
accused me of having a crush on Reags.
She felt it was rather adolescent in nature –
said that in my eyes Reags
could do no wrong – and I denied it.
The
problem for Diana wasn’t that fact that I had
the crush …her problem was
that I wouldn’t acknowledge it was
there.”
“Terry
…?” Reags’ voice was pained. By now she
was sitting forward in her chair, her eyes wide with concern.
Diana
jumped in. “Terry,
I misspoke that
day. I
wasn’t jealous of her, I was
angry that you wouldn’t acknowledge the possibility that you
had a crush on
her.” Reags
exhaled suddenly and sat
back as if one of us had slapped her.
Max moved his chair closer to hers and took her hand in
his.
“It
took me several months to get to the point that I could
acknowledge that
Diana was right …and she was as good as her word. She’d not said
another thing about it until
Max forced me to get it sorted with her.”
I
looked at Reags to see tears in her eyes.
“Reags, Luv, I’m sorry to drop a
bombshell in your lap, but you’ve
nothing to worry about. Max
and I sorted
it out some time past. It’s
time the
resolution got out to everyone.”
ELLIE
Holy
fucking shit. Are
these people always
this intense? My
first dinner with all
of them had been the Alex Ross debacle.
We’ve had some yuck-it-up nights since then, but
now we’re back in
deadly serious mode.
I
knew about Dino’s having been with Reags that night;
he’d called me after
leaving her and said she and Max were having problems.
He asked that I give her a call.
He said nothing about what the problem had
been, as it wasn’t his tale to tell.
Reags told me when I called her the following evening. I looked around the room,
wondering if I
should speak next, but Max looked up and met everyone’s eyes,
took a deep breath,
and spoke first.
“When
I was very young, I was away from home a great deal because of my
position in
the Army. Before my
first wife and son
were killed, I did a very dishonourable thing.
I took a local woman as mistress.
Her husband had recently died, and I took advantage of her
despair. She was
very beautiful; I was very
lustful. She bore
me a child – a
daughter – though the infant lived only a few weeks. I was fearful that she
would speak of our
relationship and dishonour me in the eyes of my commanding officer. I gave her a sum of money in
return for her
promise to say nothing and turned my back on her.
I still bear the shame of that and always
will.”
Diana
stood and walked over and leaned down to Max, kissing him on the cheek. “You were very
young, Max. We all
have things we regret.”
He
looked up at her and nodded. She
turned
to the rest of us. “This
is beginning
sound like the documentary of that Madonna tour …the one
where she and her
entourage were piled up in a hotel room and playing truth or dare. Somehow, I think the dare
aspect is gone;
either Terry or Dino would try to fly off the roof.
This is all about truth. Didn’t we do this
before you guys went to the Barracks?
Oh, hell. I
guess it just became
a tradition …everyone bare your soul once a year.”
We
laughed, and I took a deep breath.
“I
guess it’s my turn.”
Terry
smiled at me. “Ellie,
you’re still new
to the group. You
have licence to be
superficial.”
I
shook my head. “Nope,
I’m either all the
way in, or I’m all the way out.
This
happened when I was in law school.”
Dino
leaned back to listen. “I
got married my
second year in law school. A
group of us
went to Las
Vegas
over spring break. The
last morning we
were there, I woke up in bed with one of my classmates.
I had a hangover and a ring on my
finger. I looked
over at him and
discovered we were wearing matching wedding bands; the marriage license
was on
the bedside table next to me.”
Dino sat
up straight.
“We’d
been good friends and decided to try and make a go of it. We couldn’t.
Three months later I took a long weekend from my summer
internship with
the DA’s office and flew to Mexico
for a quickie divorce …I also had an abortion while I was
there. I’ve
always regretted the abortion, but there
was no way I could have stayed in school and been pregnant, much less
have a
baby.” I
felt the tears gather in my
eyes – that seemed to be going around tonight – and
felt Dino’s arm go around
my shoulders and he pulled me into his side.
I wiped away the tears as he spoke.
“Ellie,
Honey, we’ve all done things we regret.
We’ve all made mistakes.”
REAGAN
Trust
Dee to ask the
pointed question.
“Dino,
you wrapped up that operation in Belize
a lot faster than anyone
expected. What was
different about that
one as compared to the others you guys have handled since
I’ve known you?”
He
grinned at her. “You
know damned well
what my motivation was.”
She nodded and
smiled sheepishly. “We
needed a safe
win. We
needed it done quickly to
prove to ourselves that we could have someone in the field and have a quick,
successful conclusion, and all it came to was money.
Because of what had happened to us, I wanted
to get the guy out safely and back to his family as quickly as possible. I paid a bit more than
I’d have spent
previously, and it was worth every fucking dime.
“The
thing is that when I was in Belize,
it hit me hard as to what these families are going through. Until Max was abducted,
I’d really never
thought about it. We
all know what PTSD
is, and it hit me on that extraction.”
He looked at Terry and Max.
“The
same thing is going to happen to both of you, and it’s going
to happen on an
extraction. I’ve
built in enough padding
on billing to cover your spending more than we normally would, because
at that
point, you’re both going to want to get the poor bastard out
as fast as you
can, and you won’t care what it costs.
The reaction won’t be an ongoing thing, but
we’re all going to have it
in turn. We can
cover it in the short
term …as long as we don’t make a habit of
it.”
I
smiled to myself. Dino
was a damned good
amateur psychologist. He
was telling
both Max and Terry how deeply the threat of losing Max had impacted him. For all intents and
purposes, he’d have lost
a brother if Max hadn’t come home, and that thought was
almost more than he
could bear. Even
though Dino’s words
were couched in terms of the clients, he had himself been scared
shitless
during that time in Belize. He wanted to get himself
out before he made a
mistake as much as he wanted the cargo safely home.
He’d carefully deflected his emotion onto the
families because saying how badly it had impacted him personally was
something
he just couldn’t do.
Max
and Terry nodded, and I knew it would be tonight.
Ellie’s earlier statement about being all in
or all out set the wheels in motion for her rude awakening about who
these men
are.
Irrespective
of whatever professional disputes Max and Terry may have, at the
personal level
they’re incredibly
connected both
from their odd bump into this existence and their tie through Dee and
I. They share a
personal shorthand and
understanding that’s almost as good as Dee’s and
mine. It was in
mid-nod that Max looked at Terry
who nodded more definitively, and then my husband dropped the bomb.
“Dino
…is there not something else you wish to disclose
…at least to Ellen?”
I looked at Dee;
she looked at me; we both looked at Max, then Terry and finally at Dino. He looked at all of us and
then at
Ellie. Ellie looked
at all of us and
spoke, probably feeling as if she needed to defend herself.
“Ummm
…is there something going on here that I don’t
know about?”
Terry
looked at me, sighed, and nodded.
Gee,
thanks so fucking much, Thorne!
Okay, I’ll do the intro for you, but you guys
are on your own when it
comes to this particular ‘disclosure.’
“Ellie,
I dislike getting personal, but as we all have our guts strung out on
the line,
may I ask you a couple of questions about your and Dino’s
relationship?” She
looked at me for a moment and then nodded.
“Sure.
What do you want to know?”
“I
know what I’m about to ask is going to seem very intrusive
– and you know I’m
not usually like that – but there is
something you need to know if you
and Dino are serious about each other.
We’re all convinced that he’s serious
about you …and please, Ellie, if
you’ve ever trusted me at all, trust me now.
I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t
frightfully important, and please be
honest. Do you
trust me, Ellie?”
“You’ve
been my friend since we were five-years-old, Reags; of course
I trust
you!”
She
turned to look at Dino. “Jesus,
Baby,
did you kill someone, and these guys helped you hide the body? NO! Don’t
answer that question! If
you admit it to me in front of all of
them, privilege goes right down the shitter.
If you did, you know I can’t
defend
you – I’m too personally involved with you
– but I’ll find you the best
criminal defense counsel money can buy.”
Her question and statement told me she was serious about
Dino. She ran one
hand through her short hair; I noticed
the hand was shaking.
“Ellie
…are you in love with Dino?”
He pulled
her close, and she looked at him with wide eyes.
“Yes
…I am.” Her
voice was so soft I had to
strain to hear it. They
weren’t the
first couple in our group who made strides in their relationship in
front of
the rest of us; Terry and Dee had elevated it to an art form.
I
stood, walked to Dee’s
entertainment centre
and turned on the DVD player and TV, then pulled two DVDs from her
collection. I
turned and looked at the
scene behind me. What
I saw might seem
melodramatic, but what all of us knows about the theory could be put in
a very
small thimble; we’re working experientially.
We don’t know what might happen each time
another person finds out about
the men’s past. Nothing
had happened before, but who knows
if
the variables will be right this time to rip one, some, or all of them
from
us. This time might
be the time that
fucking butterfly in Indonesia
so often used in chaos theory examples flaps his wings causing God
knows what
to rain down on us.
Dino
had Ellie in a clinch; I didn’t know if he had seen Max and
Terry’s decision
being made and was holding her for whatever this revelation might bring
or if
he was reacting to her admission of her love for him.
Terry’s arm was tightly around Dee’s shoulders, and
she had his free hand in a death
grip with both of hers. If
he was
physically sucked out of this thread, they were doing their damnedest
to insure
that she went with him. She
wore her
‘soldier off to war’ smile so if she were left here
and he did remember her
wherever he landed, his last memory of her would be good; they were
whispering
to each other.
Max
had his right hand so tightly about my left wrist that my fingers were
going
numb. If either of
us had disappeared at
that point, he’d have been holding the bloody stump of my
hand in his wherever he
landed if we weren’t together. That
just
added an entirely new dimension to ‘I’ll take a
part of you with me.’ Geeze
…Dee and her cheesy music.
I put
the first DVD into the player and hit Play after it
loaded. Max jerked
me from my feet and into his lap,
his arms going tightly round me as mine encircled him.
If some other force wanted him, it would have
to literally rip us apart unless it took me as well.
“Then
there’s something you need to watch.”
*
Forty-five
minutes later, a very shaken woman spoke.
“Stop
it. Stop the
fucking DVD.” I
did as she asked, but she said nothing
further. I removed
the disc and slipped
in the one of Gladiator.
She
asked me to stop that one after the opening battle scene.
“Turn
it off.” She
moved away from Dino and
stood, walked to the wet bar, and picked up the bottle of scotch from
the
counter. I watched
as she poured
…straight scotch, two fingers, and tossed it back like my
Irish forebears. She
put down the glass and added more scotch
before getting ice from the bucket and rejoining us.
When she sat beside Dino, her left hand
slipped onto his right thigh and rubbed it.
She looked at all of us.
I knew
she believed us when she opened her mouth.
“Okay.
You’ve got me.
I believe it …what I want to know is
HOW.” I
took a very deep breath before answering.
“Ellie,
that’s something we’d all like
to know.”
