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“Oh, honey.” Jade hugged Elizabeth, who felt a sting of tears that she fought back.
As her friend walked toward her car, she pulled herself together and went to meet Buddy and Marg.
The morning crawled on and by eleven thirty Rex had lost all interest in trying to appease Pamela. Somehow he’d made it through breakfast and had ended up at her condo for a quick regrouping, but already, the day was stretching long. The problem was, Pam didn’t appear to be happy unless he was showering her with attention, and keeping up the pretense was not only exhausting but out of character for him. He’d never been the type to pretend interest or fawn over a woman.
He had to break it off with Pam; he knew it and had been considering how to end the relationship for a while, but until today it hadn’t been so painfully obvious that they were wrong for each other. Once Ravinia, odd kid that she was, had shown up, his interest in his work, in his damn life had picked up. He wanted to help her, to find out more about this outré fantasy, sort fact from fiction. For the first time in months, he was jazzed about a case, interested in the twists and strange turns, even if they were all in Ravinia’s head. She was a little wily, had a few street-smarts, and was certainly bullheaded, but she was refreshingly sincere and guileless in her own way. She intrigued him, was a mystery, and he wanted to help her.
Probably put me under her damn spell, he thought with a glance down the hallway to the closed bathroom door where Pamela was freshening up.
Pulling his cell phone from his pocket, he leaned a hip against her kitchen counter and star
ted searching Web databases. His thumbs flew over the keypad in his search for Ralph and Joy Gaines, all the while expecting Pam to return and, no doubt, voice her disapproval.
Yeah, the relationship wasn’t working.
Pamela wanted to go for a long walk on the beach while Rex felt an urgency to keep working on finding more about Ravinia’s cousin’s family.
When his cell buzzed in his hands, he shot a glance at the number, saw it was Dorell Cochran, and ignored the little bit of disappointment that it wasn’t Ravinia. “Hello, Dorell,” he said, as Pamela came out of the bathroom and stopped short, frowning and shaking her head at him.
God, she is a pain.
Turning his back to her unhappy glare, Rex listened to Cochran tell him all about what he already knew—that he’d met his wife at the Ivy.
Undeterred, sandals slapping the floor in loud annoyance, Pamela came around to face him, arms crossed, wedging herself between Rex and the slider to her deck. The pissy look on her face prickled him a bit, but he didn’t hang up. With Pamela listening in, he didn’t feel like explaining to Dorell that he’d seen his client when he’d been following his wife, so he wrapped up the conversation. “I’ll call you later,” he told the man before switching off.
Pamela held out her hand. “If we’re going to have a day together, maybe you’d better give me your phone.”
Really?
Rex actually laughed. “Forget it.”
“What is it going to take to get your complete attention?” she whined.
“You’ve got as much of me as I can give. This is how I work. You know that.”
“Every goddamn day? Can’t you take even one blessed day off?” she demanded, then crawled her fingers up his arms in some kind of sexual foreplay meant to dispel the argument.
The ploy didn’t work. “I’ve got a couple jobs that need tending to. They don’t care that you want an uninterrupted day.”
“The point is, you could give me a day, if you really wanted to. You just don’t want to.”
She was right, of course.
He peeled her fingers from his arms. “I don’t know what you want to hear.”
“This is our day and you’re going to be with me. That’s what I want to hear!”
“I am with you. It’s just that I have things I want to do, too.”
“Joel . . .” she whispered.
He took a couple steps backward, away from her. “Come on, Pamela.”
“Come on, Pamela?” she repeated, not liking the sound of that. “So now, this is my fault? That I just want to spend time with you?”
Rex could feel his temper escalating and he tamped it down. “I don’t think this is working,” he said in a cool voice.
“I know it’s not working. And I know why it’s not working.”
