Billie leaned forward. “Listen to me, Frank. This piece has everything you want. Money. Politics. Corruption.”
She pitched it. When she finished he said, “Let’s order.”
Unsure if he was buying, she scanned the menu for something cheap.
“On me,” he said. “This is business.”
The twinge of disappointment she felt irritated her. Of course it was business. At least it was business. Long married and longer divorced, what the hell else did she want? She’d asked for an assignment, and when she’d asked she had thought that was all there was to it. Really.
When their food came—tamales for him and seafood enchiladas for her—they ate, not talking. She wondered what else she could say to persuade him.
“Billie?” He was looking at her empty plate, and she realized she had inhaled the food without even noticing that she was eating.
“Do you want something else?”
She had no idea.
“You always ate slower than I did,” Frank said. “You were always the last one at the table when we went out.” He said it as if he were proud of her for that.
Memories threatened to sabotage her. Memories of the parts of their lives together that she never allowed herself to think of. Restaurants with lines out the door, lines they bypassed when the owner recognized them and waved them in. First-class seats on airplanes, front row seats at fights and ball games, backstage passes to Broadway shows and the ballet.
“You gobble like that and you’ll get fat,” Frank blew out his cheeks at her.
“Not your business.”
“It is my business if you want to work for me again. You have to be competitive if you work in New York. You have to write and look better than anyone.”
“Give me this assignment, and I’ll eat like a fucking bird the rest of my life, okay? If that’s what you care about.”
“I want you writing for me. But no horses. I like the danger angle you’ve got going, but it needs to be attached to something important.”
“Trust me, Frank. This is important.”
“I am not publishing a Pet Partners blog, Billie. I need chic. I need ecstatic readers. I need… Hell, you know what I need.”
“Listen, Frank, you won’t be out anything. I’ll tell you what. Give me the job, and if you don’t like it, I’ll waive my kill fee. You won’t have to take the article, and you won’t have to pay me anything except my expenses if you don’t run it.” She had said it without thinking, had given away everything in an all-or-nothing gamble that she could make the article work.
“You do know that was a stupid offer, don’t you?” he said. “I’ll give you thirty seconds to change your mind.” He unstrapped his Rolex—it was a new one, she saw, not the one she’d given him—and laid it on the table. “Starting now.”
Billie didn’t move, didn’t blink. “Ten. Fifteen. Twenty,” Frank looked at her. “Twenty-five.” He strapped on the watch at thirty. “All right then, baby. I’ll email you a contract early next week.”
“You pay expenses,” she said. “With an advance on them, so I can get started.”
He nodded then signaled the waiter. “Dessert, Billie?”
She started to shake her head no but felt his leg press against hers, from ankle to knee. She closed her eyes. When he took her chin in his hand and turned her face to him, she kept them closed. After he kissed her, he said, “Order something sweet while I get us a room at the hotel across the street.”
“I thought you were staying there.”
He shook his head. “We’re at the Arizona Inn for the conference. I figured you and I could talk better here.”
“Where you wouldn’t be seen with me?”
“Something along those lines.”
Billie pinched a chip from the bowl in front of Frank and cracked it into pieces. “Who’s we?”
“The conference attendees.”
The awkward sound of attendees bothered her. “Who are you with?”
“You left me, if you remember.”
“You’ve been coming on to me.”
He laughed. “Look who’s talking, kiddo. You got what you wanted. You can write the damn article. I’ll pay your expenses, and if I like the piece, I’ll buy it. And if I buy it, I might even run it. If I don’t take it, you can try to sell it to some animal rights rag. And if you want to go upstairs, we can do that too, right now. But no strings. Not even the thinnest, weakest filament between us.”
What she saw in his eyes surprised her, a pure sweet yearning for her. She realized that she had won. She’d gotten what she’d asked for not because he believed in her idea or cared about her cause, but because he still loved her.
“I’m going home, Frank,” she said.
He nodded.
“But write me a check before I leave.”
He wrote the expense check and handed it to her, but when she tried to take it from him, he held onto it until she looked up into his eyes. “Do me a favor, kid. Don’t get yourself killed.”
CHAPTER 18
TOO FIRED UP to go to bed when she got home, Billie changed into a T-shirt and made herself a mug of iced coffee. She sipped it standing at the window, looking out at the Milky Way while she listened to a new bunch of messages on the answering machine.
Visa had called wondering when her payment would arrive. There were three hang-ups. When she looked at caller ID, she found only toll-free numbers. Then Kristine had called.
“Billie? This is Kris. How’s Hashtag doing? Are her cuts healing okay? Call me back.”
Billie promised herself that she would call her back later in the morning after she checked on the mare’s wounds.
The last message was from Richard.
“Hey there, Billie Snow. I’ve got you on my mind. So, call me back, okay?”
He’d called around nine. It was now almost three in the morning. She stretched out on the futon in her clothes, intending to
