incident, after having a few too many drinks. We made a deal: I would never bring up such “girly nonsense” ever again, and he would refrain from “knocking some sense” into me.
“It’s just the realization that there isn’t going to be a happily ever after. You put your dreams on hold, time goes by and one day you realize it’s never going to happen. I’ve made up my mind-this is going to be my last assignment.”
He shrugged. “Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”
An awkward silence hung between us as we entered my neighborhood. Lined with the greenery of summer, it was like an oasis in a concrete jungle.
By the time we arrived at my place, the blue sky was just a memory. The wind had picked up and was whipping the tree limbs. It seemed like a symbol of something, but I just wasn’t sure what.
We entered the pre-war building, escaping the volatile weather, and I sniffed the comforting fragrance of home. I smiled again-happy with the new life I was heading for, even if Carter wasn’t.
“I don’t know why you’re pining for other chicks when you got a great girl like Lauren Bowden,” Carter said with a grin, breaking the tension. “And what’s with the John Peter stuff?”
“It shows what type of reporter she is. JP actually stands for John Pierpont. My mother is head of the historical society in Rockfield, Connecticut and…”
“Is that like one of those cults where they have those rituals with the strange masks and robes?”
“No, that’s professional wrestling. She happens to be one of the leading history experts in the state and named my brothers and me after famous people who were born in Connecticut. I’m named after JP Morgan, whose full name was John Pierpont Morgan. My brother Ethan is named after Ethan Allen, the Revolutionary War hero, and Noah is named after Noah Webster. He was the guy, you know, like Webster’s Dictionary … that would be a book that contains words, they are the things that…”
Carter shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m getting my balls busted by a guy named Pierpont.” Then as quickly as the skies darkened outside, he changed the subject, “How’s Noah doing?”
“Better,” was all I said. It wasn’t a place I wanted to go right now.
We entered a mudroom on the garden floor. French doors led to a backyard that looked more rural Connecticut than Manhattan. It looked inviting, but we had business upstairs.
As we began to climb the stairs, a sound stopped us in our tracks. Carter pulled his gun from the waistband of his jeans.
Chapter 8
I put up the stop sign.
“It’s Christina, the girl who house-sits while I’m away.”
“Is she hot?” Carter asked, going quickly from gun-toting to horny.
I cringed. “It’s not like that.”
Carter’s sly smile fell off his face. “I rest my case-what have you done with JP Warner?”
“First of all, you need to put
We climbed a spiral staircase to the spacious second floor. It featured a twenty-foot ceiling and walls covered with oversized windows that provided a view of the Manhattan skyline. On a normal summer day, light would saturate the room, but the impending storm had now painted the sky black. The room looked as if I didn’t spend much time there, which was accurate. It was furnished with just the essentials-a black leather couch, flat-screen plasma TV, and a large desk.
Lauren once tried to decorate the place with what she called an “Old South antebellum motif.” When I rebuffed her, she returned with an interior decorator. That’s when I decided to have Christina move in to watch the place.
Christina was seated behind my desk, furiously typing on a laptop. She looked up suspiciously. “Hey, JP,” she greeted me, her voice jumping three octaves. “They have the new GNZ website up. You should check it out.”
It didn’t take me long to figure out the reason for her nervousness. Walking out of the bathroom was a college-age kid wearing my evergreen colored bathrobe with the letters
My new perspective became a distant memory. When I smelled my own cologne-very expensive cologne-my inner J-News boiled over. The young man in the robe stuck out his hand for me to shake and tried to introduce himself.
Bad move.
“JP, this is my friend Daman. They lost hot water in his dorm, so I let him borrow the shower. He was just…”
“Leaving,” I finished her sentence.
Before Daman could even stutter his way through an apology, Carter’s large arm reached out and wrapped around his neck. He then escorted-dragged-Daman down the stairs like a rag doll.
I turned my attention back to Christina. “I thought we had one rule-nobody over. There are people who would pay big bucks to get their hands on some of the information I have in here.”
“What’s your problem?” she lashed back.
“My problem is I let you live free in an apartment that you couldn’t afford in three lifetimes. All I had was one rule, and you couldn’t follow it!”
Christina wasn’t one to back down. “I’m the one doing you a favor, JP, so spare me the guilt trip. Do you know how much it would cost you to have someone look out for this place full time? Not to mention keeping that luna-chick you call your girlfriend out of here. If you want me to leave, I’ll leave!”
The front door slammed, briefly stealing my attention-Daman had left the building.
Carter returned, momentarily halting our spat. “I let the kid go,” he said as if it truly pained him. He had my bathrobe in his hands, which sparked an unfortunate visual of Daman scampering all the way back to Fordham’s Bronx campus in the buff.
“You are the most charitable man I know,” I told him.
“I think I’m getting soft.”
“Just in your midsection.”
“It’s warm moments like that I’ve missed the most since your lobotomy.”
I ignored Carter, which he interpreted as a sign to raid my refrigerator. He took out a bottle of Stella, but didn’t open it with his teeth, which made me think that maybe he truly was mellowing.
Christina and I resumed our sparring match. But she was a smart kid who knew exactly how far she could push me without getting sent back to Taco Night in the dorm cafeteria, and eventually backed down, “Listen, JP, I messed up. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“You’re damn right it won’t.”
“So where are you guys headed this time?” she attempted to change the subject.
“I can’t tell you,” I blurted, still in a frenzy, but then something hit me. “How’d you know we’re leaving?”
“It’s kinda what you do.”
“What I’m going to kinda do, is kick you out on the street if you don’t give me a straight answer.”
“Byron called. Said he’ll meet you at your stopover in Germany. How long are you going to be gone?”
“Why, planning a party?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah right, JP. I’m taking twelve hours in summer school and have two internships. And whatever social life I did have likely just ended when your henchman assaulted my only friend.”
Carter let out his booming laugh, before announcing, “You’ll have to excuse JP, he’s experiencing a midlife crisis. Being rich and famous is too rough for him. And he’s never gotten over some girl from high school, so he’s thinking about leaving the business.”
“I thought that was between us?” I snapped at him.
