Kelley Eskridge Read Online Free Page B

change.”
    “What's your real job?” She had meant to
be assertive, but it only sounded rude. She kept her hands locked
around her folded arms so her fingers would not tremble.
    Chao answered as if it were a reasonable
question. “I'm the Executive Vice President of Organizational
Development for Ko Worldwide.”
    Jackal opened her mouth. Nothing came out,
so she shut it again. She was feeling shaky now: the adrenaline hit had
faded and left her with a sour stomach and the beginning of a headache
behind her right eye. Maybe she should take the chair after all. What
was she doing here? Had she hurt Tiger worse than she realized? She had
only meant to hit him in the face, to sting and shame him, but even
that had gone wrong. There had been no time to check the damage: two Ko
security guards had snapped to her side like stones from a slingshot,
quick enough to push Tiger back into the chair he'd kicked aside in his
lurch around the table, one hand cupped and filling with blood and the
other reaching for her, the machiavelli tiles scattering across the
courtyard.
    She wished she could grab the moment back
and tuck it safely into a pocket until the urge to hurt someone had
passed.
    “Am I in trouble?” she said.
    “No one's in trouble,” Chao replied
smoothly. “But of course we're concerned. You offered violence to a web
mate. I'm sure you had a very good reason, and I'd like to know what it
is so that I can help you with it.”
    Jackal thought bleakly, I'm too tired. But
she would just have to tough it out. She would have to find something
to distract this woman who, given her position, was almost certainly a
psychiatrist: something that would keep her from going after the real
reason, which had nothing to do with Tiger and everything to do with
being a false Hope.
    Chao waited, bright-eyed and relaxed.
    Okay, Jackal thought. Okay. She unclasped
her arms, and plucked at her shirt. “Have you got a towel?”
    Chao smiled. “Of course,” she said.
“There's bathroom right behind that door. Why don't you clean up and
then we'll talk?”
     
    “You and Tiger were lovers,” Chao said
matter-of-factly.
    Jackal shook her head.
    “It's in your record.”
    “We did—It was—” She shook her head again
helplessly. How to explain the horror of Halloween day, the confusion
of brandy and the desperate need to be real again? But she mustn't tell
Chao about Donatella's hideous blunder, or that the rest had happened
only because Jackal was trying to make the bad news go away. Tell her
instead about dancing like a banshee until she had dervished herself
into a place where only each single, exquisite moment mattered. That
was something a doctor would buy, without looking underneath. Doctors
loved the discovery of demons, the moments of I
just wasn't myself , those revealing truths that rolled over
and yawned in the mud of the hindbrain. Jackal gave Chao the glow of
the setting sun that stippled Tiger in gold, the way his face had
stilled and then hardened when he saw her watching him. The hours after
and their awareness of each other, so intoxicating, a different kind of
dance. Leaving the group without looking behind her, knowing he would
follow; leading him to his own apartment door, waiting, then the sudden
shock of him against her with one arm stretched out to palm the lock.
And then inside. The sex was a series of strobe moments, mouth here,
fingers there, and she flowed through them click click click as if
working a string of worry beads to count her sorrows away. Until,
between breaths, she stepped off the shelf in her head where she'd been
storing herself, came back into real time to find him on her, in her,
his breath in her open mouth.
    “What happened then?” Chao had prompted
her after a moment.
    What had happened was that Tiger said, “I
can't believe I'm fucking the Hope of the whole bloody world,” and she
had heard again her mother's voice, out of control, screeching. And she
hadn't been able to bear it, she