“Can I help you?” he asked.
“My name is Lark Robinson, and I’m here to see Jonathan Wright.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No. But he’ll see me.”
The guard’s expression said, We’ll see about that. He asked for her driver’s license and scrutinized it carefully—even holding it under a black light—before scanning it, handing it back, and picking up the phone.
One does not simply walk into Mordor, she thought for some reason, which made her giggle.
The guard raised an eyebrow.
“I’m not used to this level of security,” she explained.
He nodded curtly.
She had tried and failed to plan the words she would use with Trip, finally deciding to let them spill out however they wanted.
She waited while the guard tried one extension, then another, then resigned himself to waiting on hold.
Her head suddenly warm inside her ski cap, Lark took it off and shook out her hair. As she did, two women emerged from a frosted-glass door behind the security desk. One of them was a slightly curvy brunette with a heart-shaped face and chestnut hair whom she’d never seen before. The other was a slim, elegant, ash-blonde woman who looked somehow familiar.
“Nice to see you again, Mrs. W,” said the guard, covering the receiver.
The blonde didn’t seem to hear him. Staring back at Lark, she nudged her companion with a none-too-discreet elbow.
They both looked at her with curiosity.
“Love your hair,” said the brunette.
“Thank you,” said Lark, almost as a question.
“My name is Jessica, and this is Holly. Who are you?”
“Lark Robinson,” she said, her mind spinning. Holly W? As in Holly Wright?
“What brings you to Cancura?” asked Holly, who in person looked exactly and not at all like the woman shown in Google images riding horses, standing beside Trip in formal wear, and posing at her pediatric practice.
Tell them? Don’t tell them? Lark couldn’t decide. Then, in an instant, it became clear to her that the only truth she was responsible for was her own.
“I’m here to meet my fiancé, Jonathan Wright,” she told them, thinking to herself it was the last time she would use that word for him.
The two women exchanged a dark, highly charged glance.
“Still trying to get through,” the guard told Lark. “His assistant is on maternity leave.”
“He’ll be on a videoconference call for another ten minutes or so,” Jessica said.
“Lark,” said Holly, coming closer and speaking softly so the guard wouldn’t hear her. “Jonathan Wright is my husband.”
“I know,” said Lark, trying not to freak out about how totally weird this was. “But you’re getting divorced . . . right?”
“He’s also my husband,” said Jessica.
Lark’s heart misfired and nearly stopped. Staring back at the two women crowding her personal space, she felt like she was in a dream whose logic suddenly made perfectly terrifying sense.
Holly Wright turned to the guard and said, “No need to bother Jack. Ms. Robinson will come back in a little while. We’re taking her to lunch.”
Lunch?
“We need to talk,” said Jessica.
Chapter Forty-Seven
TRIP/JON/JACK
My Achilles’ heel? Love.
—“How I Lied about My Name and Discovered My Truth,” a TED Talk by Jon M. Wright
So much has changed, thought Trip as he stepped out the front door of the new Coldwater Canyon house he was halfway through renovating and made his way toward the limo idling at the curb. The June morning was blindingly hot, and the driver was visibly sweating as he opened the back door. As the big car started to move, Trip ran a finger around his collar and told the driver to “set the AC to stun.” He would not be arriving with his own suit soaked in sweat.
A $20 million piece of real estate spread was an extravagance, but with Barrington Hills off-limits, and Jessica in a holding pattern, he was sick and tired of the corporate apartment. His future was out here, anyway. All he had to do to justify Cancura’s purchase of the house was lease a floor of offices for the so-called LA headquarters—and since he’d done it in Lark’s building, she was welcome to use it in the meantime as her company grew. And as of tonight, she would finally leave behind the crummy courtyard apartment she shared with Callie.
Holly would come around eventually. She was still being difficult, but she needed him for too much. He’d been more than happy to let her cling to the notion that she’d passed up a promising career to raise their children, but long years together had proved to him that she didn’t have the steel to run anything more ambitious than a suburban charity.
Jessica’s insistence that they hit the pause button had been puzzling. Her stated reason—that they’d married too soon, and she’d rushed into it because she was frightened of Holly—was understandable enough. Had Holly gotten to her again? Holly staunchly maintained she hadn’t had any contact with Jessica since their meeting at Whole Foods, but he had his doubts. All he’d been able to do was graciously accept it and move out of the Lakeview apartment and promise that soon he’d be able to provide proof Holly was no longer a threat. Things had to work out with Jessica for the sake of Cancura, but he hadn’t had time to orchestrate a reunion because he’d been managing the catastrophe with Lark.
First, she’d shown up at his office, so weepy and wild eyed he’d been sure a fuck off was coming—but all she’d said was she needed more time to think.
Then, having thought for a few weeks, she suddenly decided they should get married after all. Only she had conditions. That they get married in LA, not Hawaii. That the ceremony be performed by her mother’s friend, a lesbian Unitarian minister. That the wedding be a little bit larger than they’d discussed so Lark
