Woman Named Red Read online

  I’m a liar. The worst kind. A wave of self-hate hits me as Kennedy’s hand moves up to massage my breast. He’s gentle. Coaxing. His pace slows and his other hand goes to my clit, working me in circles.

  A week and a half. That’s all I have left. Then this all comes crashing down.

  I’ll destroy him. Never see him again.

  I squeeze my eyes shut against the pressure of tears. I’m not sure which hurts worse—the thought of hurting him or not seeing him again. God, I’m so screwed up.

  He ruined your life!

  He’s supposed to hurt. To bleed. He’s the—

  “Scarlet, what’s going on?” Kennedy pulls out of me and twirls my body so that we’re chest to chest, face to face.

  “Nothing.” If I blink fast enough, he won’t see the tears. Right?

  “Babe, don’t give me that shit. Something’s wrong. You’re barely even wet.” He reaches down and runs a finger along my slit. I shudder against his touch. He’s both wrong and right. I’m plenty wet, but it’s not the usual gush of arousal he’s used to.

  “Sorry,” I offer with an apologetic shrug. At least I’ve gotten the tears situation under control. “I’ve been a little distracted lately.”

  His body stiffens. “If you’re distracted while I’m inside you, that’s a problem we need to fix.”

  “No, no,” I say quickly. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you.” Lie.

  Kennedy doesn’t look like he’s going to accept that answer anyway. “If it’s bothering you then it has to do with me. When are you going to get this, Scarlet? I care about you. What affects you affects me. You matter.”

  Okay, he really needs to stop talking right now. For serious.

  I turn away from him and pull up my jogging leggings. “Sorry. I guess I’m just not in the mood today.” I avoid his gaze when I turn back his way. This isn’t how I should be playing this. I ought to be drawing him even closer. Making myself indispensable. Someone he can’t live without. Not aloof and begging off sex for the second time in a row.

  Kennedy gets himself back in order and just when I’m about to take off jogging—there’s nothing like that awkward silence after a failed sexual encounter. But Kennedy takes my elbow before I can start to jog away.

  “You cook all the time. How about a break? Let’s go out to eat tonight.”

  My knee-jerk response is to say no. But then I remember. A week and a half. That’s all I have left. Shit.

  So I nod. “Okay. Where do you want to go?”

  He laughs as he holds back a bush for me so I won’t get scratched while I walk by. “No way. I’m not falling for that. I’m trying for gentleman here, so it’s lady’s choice. What was a place you used to walk by and always wish you could go inside and eat at?”

  I stare at him. Does he know what he’s asking?

  “I can’t imagine what the past two years of your life were like.” His voice softens. “So what’s it gonna be?”

  Damn him. He did know what he was asking. And there was this fancy Chinese food place Enzo and I used to always walk by and drool over. Well, we did more than that. We’d sneak behind back and eat out of the trashcans. We’d always loved Chinese even though it was anathema to our father. Dad thought Italian food was the only good food on the face of the Earth.

  I name the place at the edge of Chinatown and Nob Hill. Kennedy’s eyes light up. “I love that place. I eat there all the time.”

  Wrong thing to say. He must see it on my face because he says, “Shit, I’m sorry, babe.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Fuck, I can’t stand to think that I might have been there inside, eating fucking lo mein while you and your brother were out there on the street, looking in and…” His voice trails off.

  And what can I say to that? Because it’s true. Maybe Enzo or I even ate his leftovers from the trash. The ultimate in screwed up irony—us eating the table scraps of the man who stole everything from us.

  I start walking, my back to Kennedy. Thank God this will be over in a week and a half. I can’t live much longer with this constant war waging in my head, in my chest—hell, in my guts. I constantly feel sick about the choice I’m making.

  But it’s not a choice anymore, I try to remind myself. I already called Francisco and let him know about the timeline. Everything’s in place.

  And Enzo’s depending on me. I have to get him out of here. If we don’t have money, how will we get anywhere? Not to mention the 12th Streeters are too deeply involved now… There’s no choice but to finish what I started.

  I don’t say much as we jog there and Kennedy doesn’t force the issue. I’m glad because I’m gearing myself up to be personable and attentive throughout dinner. I’ve been swinging too far on the moody side of the pendulum. Time to bring it back to charming and lovely.

  I can push through this last little bit to the end. I can. I freaking can, no matter how bruised and battered I come out in the end.

  No one looks at us askance even though we’re in jogging gear and covered in sweat when we get to the restaurant. It has an amazing buffet and attracts all sorts—people in business suits, hipsters, college students. When we were on the streets, Enzo and I loved this place because restaurants with buffets always have the best trashcan eats—so much perfectly good food is thrown away. Yessirree.

  Kennedy and I both get our food and meet back at a booth in the far corner. My stomach growls by the time I sit down with my plate piled high.

  I get a classic Kennedy eyebrow arch when he looks down at my tray. “Feeling a touch hungry?”

  I look at his own plate of very moderately sized portions, none of any one food touching any other. Then I glance back at my plate which essentially looks like some kind of giant Chinese food casserole, everything just piled one on top of the other.

  “Buon appetito.” I smile at him. He returns a smile, but I notice that it’s suddenly gone a bit tight.

  He spears some lo mein on his fork and spins it around and around like it’s spaghetti. Then he stares at it like he’s amping himself up for something. After briefly closing his eyes, he shoves the bite inside his mouth. Still without looking up, he starts chewing with the determination of someone solving a complicated math problem.

  Weird, but I look away before he notices me staring. Okay, be engaging. Be engaging. I take a bite of my own food. Wow, it’s extra delicious when it’s hot. I take another bite, then another. Soooooo good. The pork on a stick, no idea what it’s called, but God, it’s so tender. Mmm.

  When I glance over at Kennedy, he’s set down his fork and is just watching me. Oh damn, I’ve been sitting here quiet too long. This is supposed to be a date. All right, time to be sultry and irresistible.

  I swallow my last bite and take a gulp of water. “My brother and I always loved Chinese food but we had to hide it from our dad.” Well, crap, where did that come from? Still, I keep talking. “Dad was Italian through and through and used to say God perfected the art of flavor when he got through with the Italians. In his eyes, Italians had perfected soup, fish, pasta, meat, salad, cheese—there was no other way to make food.” I smile, thinking back to one of Dad’s many rants in the kitchen after a customer asked for something like a hamburger, chips, or God help the poor patron, french fries. Potatoes were meant for many things—to be roasted with herbs or meat, to be put into soup, to be cooked and smashed into little cakes and then fried, again with the perfect level of herbs and seasoning—but they were not meant to be cut into little strips and overcooked, then over-salted in the tasteless bastardization that is the American french fry.

  “What’s making you smile that way?” Kennedy asks. He holds his hands together over his plate, watching me with a warm curiosity.

  “Oh,” I wave my hand, “nothing. Just remembering my dad. It’s such a stereotype.” I shake my head and laugh. “He was exactly what you’d think of when you imagine a super passionate Italian-American man. Especially if you got him talking food.” I bite into an eggroll. It’s warm,
soft, and delicious. I close my eyes for a second. I used to eat these all the time out the back of the restaurant, but they were always cold and hard by then.

  “So how did you and your brother even get a taste for Chinese food?”

  I open my eyes and laugh. “I was out with one of my friends and we went to a food court at the mall somewhere. I can’t even remember where.” It was after we lost the restaurant but before I got sick. “I remember feeling like I was doing something so illicit.”

  I lift my eyebrows. “I was such a rebel. I had orange chicken.” I laugh. “My dad would have hated the idea of it. Not only was I eating Chinese food, but I was eating a super Americanized version of it. God he hated that kind of thing. But it was soooooo good.” I put my hands to my heart. “And fried rice.” I roll my eyes in ecstasy and then take a huge bite of the fried rice from my plate.

  Kennedy laughs.

  I swallow, still smiling big. “I took Enzo there a few days later and his reaction was almost identical to mine. It became our thing. Things weren’t always…easy at home.” The smile slowly falls from my face. “Finances were tight. You know.” I shrug and look away from Kennedy. “It was nice to take Enzo and just get away from it all. We’d go at least once a week.”

  “So then you tried to keep up the tradition even when you were on the street.” Kennedy’s voice is soft. I glance over at him and shrug.

  “Well, we’d gotten a taste for Chinese food by then,” I try to laugh it off. “And buffets throw out a lot of perfectly good food.”

  Kennedy shakes his head. “Don’t sell yourself short. You’re an amazing big sister. An amazing woman.” He reaches across the table and takes my hand.

  I smile uncomfortably at his praise and the warmth I see in his eyes. But it’s more than warmth. Affection, but maybe more than that, too. Oh God, what am I doing?

  “Where’s your brother? Is he all right?” Kennedy’s concern is real. “Is that what’s been bothering you, worrying about him?”

  “He’s fine,” I assure him and then give the same line I did Callie about sending him down South to work for the season. Then I pull away from his grip with a light laugh. “Eat,” I say softly. “Before it gets cold.”

  He immediately lets me go and takes another one of his careful bites. He seems more interested in me getting everything I want to eat, though. He encourages me to go for seconds even after I’m so stuffed, I laugh about needing to be rolled out of the restaurant.

  “Well we can’t leave before reading our fortunes.”

  He hands me my small wrapped cookie the waitress dropped off with the check.

  “Ooo, I always loved this part,” I confess, pulling off the wrapping and cracking open my cookie. I pull out the little slip of paper.

  Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. —Confucius

  I jolt in my chair and look around, my heart suddenly beating a hundred miles a minute.

  “Dig the well before you are thirsty,” Kennedy reads from his small paper. “What’s yours say?”

  I stare at him wide-eyed. Dig two graves. “Um, nothing. I mean, just some nonsense about how there’s a journey in my future. Come on.” I stand up abruptly. “Let’s go.”

  “Ok, sure.” Kennedy looks a little confused, but he drops some cash onto the table and stands up. I’m already heading toward the door, not even arguing about paying half the bill like I usually would.

  I look both ways as we step from the restaurant, but of course, there’s no one I know there.

  It’s just a stupid fortune cookie. It doesn’t mean anything.

  Then why, along with the internal clock ticking down on every second of my time left with Kennedy, do those words keep ringing through my head like a prophecy?

  Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.

  Chapter 15

  On Friday, there’s a knock on my door after I’ve made dinner and turned in for the night.

  “Scarlet, open up,” comes Kennedy’s voice as he knocks again. “I have a question for you.”

  I sit up on the bed where I’ve been laying down, reading. What does he want? He ought to know by now that I have certain boundaries—no sex at home, no exception.

  I walk toward the door, hoping I won’t have to say so out loud. I like the unspoken understanding we’ve had so far. Then again, he did say he just had a question. I open the door a slit and look out cautiously.

  I relax a little when I see that Kennedy’s dressed in a nice suit like he’s about to go out somewhere. He probably just wants to let me know he’ll be gone all night and to warn me not to mess with his stuff while he’s away.

  His face brightens upon seeing me.

  “Looking lovely as always, Miss Scarlet.” His eyes soften as he looks me up and down in my pajama leggings and the oversized t-shirt I sleep in. I roll my eyes at him, about to shut the door in his face.

  “But I was hoping you wouldn’t mind coming out with me to the club tonight. Duty calls and I do believe you were the one who said all work and no fun…well you get the gist.” He smiles.

  I give him a brittle smile back. “I never said that. I think you’re confusing me with one of your other hook-ups.” With that, I go to close the door in his face again, but he stops me with a foot in the door.

  Damn, it’s annoying when he does that.

  “Shit,” he swears, running a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry about that, Scarlet. And I’m sorry I’m trying to be all suave and use lines on you. Christ,” he looks up at the ceiling. “You’ve got me so twisted around I never know if I’m coming or going with you. So here, I’ll just ask you. Will you please come to the club with me tonight?”

  His face is so earnest and pleading. And there’s that damn ticking clock in the back of my mind.

  So I nod, if a little reluctantly. “Okay.”

  He grins and it’s like the sun dawns on the world. I have to fight not to look away from him. He’s so…handsome is too tame a word. Luminous. Full of light. Of affection. Or something stronger than mere affection? Oh God, what have I gotten myself into? I never meant for this to go so deep.

  But didn’t I? Isn’t this the only way Plan A would work? But I didn’t realize it would feel…like this.

  “I’ve got to get dressed.” Abruptly, I shut the door in his face.

  * * *

  Forty-five minutes later, Kennedy and I stroll into Chandelier. Heads turn our away and I’m not surprised. The dress I’m wearing isn’t much all on its own, just a red bandage number with a deep slit up the thigh. I inherited my mother’s long model legs but still have tits and ass from my Italian side of the family.

  My shapeliness made me all wrong for the modeling industry—not that it stopped more than a few numbers slipped to me over the years from sleazy-looking men who said they were so-called ‘talent scouts.’ My dad used to go ballistic on them if he was anywhere in earshot.

  It’s funny, when I was dressed as myself growing up, I always looked older than my age, but when I bound my breasts and dressed like a boy, I could pass for years younger. Just goes to show, all anyone was ever looking at was my chest. Before I got so sick, all my friends used to joke that I could get us all the liquor we’d need for house parties when we got to high school.

  “No one can take their eyes off you,” Kennedy says. “They’re just as mesmerized as me.” He takes my arm and leads me through the thick crowd.

  I scoff. “I thought we agreed, no more lines.”

  Kennedy laughs lightly. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those girls who can’t take a compliment or doesn’t know how beautiful she is.”

  “Oh, I know I’m gorgeous,” I shoot back with a toss of my long blonde hair. “It’s my best weapon.”

  Kennedy laughs again. He has no clue I’m being absolutely serious and that it’s one I’ve been wielding against him since we first met.

  “This way.” He drops one hand to the small of my back where there’s a cut out of fabri
c. The contact of his skin against mine sends a slight shiver up and down my body. And therein lies the problem. I was supposed to use my beauty as a weapon—full stop. He was never supposed to be able to affect me in return.

  Again I’m thinking it’s a good thing that this will all be over in a week and a half. I don’t know how much more I could handle and keep it together.

  We get to the stairs and Kennedy gestures for me to go up. Of course, he’ll want to go to the VIP floor like last time. Maybe we’ll hang out on one of those sultan’s couches. His club really is quite luxurious. For as loud as it is, there are nooks and crannies where you can get away and feel very secluded.

  But when we get to the top of the stairs, I’m surprised when Kennedy leads me down a small corridor to a second set of stairs. He doesn’t say anything, he just starts up the stairs, looking back once over his shoulder to make sure that I’m following. Well, well, well. Where is he taking me?

  Briefly I think of girls in horror movies going up dark stairways into the unknown, but I dismissed the thought immediately. Kennedy’s here. He would never let anything bad happen to me.

  Probably not a good moment to think about all of the ironies inherent in that statement.

  At the top of the stairs is a heavy velvet curtain like at a theater. Kennedy pushes through and then holds it aside for me. I approach cautiously.

  Then I see Callie and Vale sitting on the couch by a balcony similar to the one that makes up the lower VIP lounge. Except this one is empty but for the four of us.

  “Oh. Hi,” I say, glad to see them but also confused.

  Callie brightens at seeing me and jumps up from the couch. She hurries over and gives me a hug. “It’s so good to see you again.”