EW YORK CITY

WEDNESDAY, 6 MAY 2009

He got there, Eden’s safe,” Dan reported to Jenn as he hung up from Izzy’s very brief phone call.

“Thank God,” she said, glancing up from the laptop where she was writing letters to help a local veterans’ homeless shelter find the funding it needed to reopen after a fire. “You okay?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess. I’m just … I’m starting to think it might be better for me to go to Vegas by myself. I mean, you’re busy. It’s been weeks since you’ve been home …”

“I can take the time,” she told him.

“I hate that I’m pulling you away from things like the shelter. It’s important. More important than holding my hand through the relentless and endless bullshit that is my life.”

Jenn closed her computer, setting it aside and giving him her full attention. She didn’t say anything, she just gazed at him until he shrugged.

“It is,” he insisted.

“What do you think is going to happen,” she asked, “that I haven’t seen before in my own dysfunctional family?”

And Jesus, she’d hit the nail directly on the head, so Dan stopped pretending. “Believe me, my family makes your family look like the Brady Bunch.”

“You don’t know that,” Jenn pointed out. “You can’t know that.”

“Yeah, I can. It’s going to get ugly,” he admitted. “And now that Greg owns a gun …? How do I know, even if I gain possession of his weapon, which I will damn sure do before entering that house—but even then, how do I know he’s only got the one? And that’s just the firearms violence factor—which is a new one for us. Or an old one—I thought it went away when my father moved out. Jenni, I don’t want you near that, and yeah, there’s more. I’m … embarrassed that you’re going to see …” Jesus, this was hard to say. “Me,” he managed. “Saying and doing things that … Will make you think less of me.”

“That’s not going to happen,” she said.

“I can’t spend any time with them without thinking considerably less of myself,” Dan confessed. “When you meet Ivette … You’re going to look at her and think, Shit, Danny left his sister and brother withthis nightmare? And I did. I abandoned them. I just walked away.”

“You were, what? Seventeen when you left to join the Navy?” Jenn asked. “Give yourself a break. And you might want to look up the definition for abandon—I’m pretty sure it doesn’t involve sending money home every month or flying to Las Vegas on a moment’s notice because your brother and sister need you.”

She was absolute in her support of him.

“It feels like it’s too little, too late,” Dan confessed.

“It’s not,” she told him.

And when she leaned in to kiss him, he could almost believe her.

LAS VEGAS

WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 2009

The plan was to wait for Eden’s mother to get home.

There was no point in talking to Greg without Ivette on the premises, so the plan was to sit in Izzy’s rental car and watch the house until she returned from work.

Wherever that was.

Eden honestly didn’t know. But even if she had known, she could well have not actually known—because Ivette got fired as quickly as she got hired with her still-pretty face and Grand Canyon cleavage.

This way, though, they didn’t have to hunt her down. This way, they’d be watching and waiting for her to return.

“What if they don’t tell us?” Eden asked as they sat in front of the neighbor’s house so as to be not quite so obvious, the motor running to power the air-conditioning. She looked at Izzy. “You know. Where Ben is.”

He looked back at her, his dark eyes colorless in the deepening twilight. “Our Plan B is to call Greg’s church tomorrow.” He put his hand to his ear in the international symbol for talking on a cell phone, and said in voice that sounded a lot like Stewie from Family Guy, “Hello, is this the Church of Hatred and Intolerance? Yes, my name is Bob Muncher and I think I’ve come to the right place for this kind of help. Our son, Dickie, has been singing Elton John songs, in French, in the shower, and everyone knows that means he’s in there having gay sex with himself, so if you could recommend one of those places where we could send him so that we don’t have to face any actual scientific and medical truths about homosexuality …”

Eden had to laugh, but it came out sounding more like a sob. “I want him back tonight. I don’t want to have to wait until tomorrow.”

“I know,” Izzy said quietly as a car slowly drove past them. But it went past Greg and Ivette’s house, too, turning the corner at the end of the street. “But, Eed, he’ll be okay. He’s a pretty tough kid. Wherever he is right now, he knows you’re looking for him. He knows you’ll find him and get him out of there as soon as you can.”

She wasn’t so sure about that. Ben knew, firsthand, that she was a screwup when it came to saving the day.

“And he also knows that you’ve been talking to Dan,” Izzy pointed out. “And that the cavalry’s on its way.” He cleared his throat. “What time are he and Jenn getting in tomorrow?”

“Danny didn’t tell me,” Eden said. She turned to look at him. “Dick Muncher?”

Izzy smiled back at her. “You just got that now, huh?”

The last rays from the setting sun threw shadows that emphasized the sharp angles of his lean face. He was not a handsome man by most women’s definitions, but Eden had always found him heart-stoppingly attractive. He was so … alive. His outrageous sense of humor and keen intelligence radiated from him, and sparkled and danced in his eyes.

“Of course, I should talk,” he added, looking out at the street, eyes back on their target—the house. “I feel like I’m on a comprehension time delay, too. I’m running everything through the what-the-fuck filter, you know?”

“Yeah,” she said. She did know. Being here, with him, like this, was surreal and more than a little awkward—and it was just like him to bring that up. Still, she was enormously grateful for his presence. She took a deep breath. “I can’t thank you enough for helping me like this.”

“I’m happy to,” he said. “This is … beyond weird, it’s true. But you know me, I’m okay with weird.”

“If I were you, I’d hate me. I’d run away from me, screaming.”

“I don’t,” he said, glancing over at her again. “Hate you. I wish things had, um, ended differently between us. There were things I wanted to say.”

“I couldn’t stay,” Eden told him.

“I get that,” Izzy said. “I really do understand. Probably more than you think and—Heads up. Is that your mother’s car?”

Sure enough, someone in a newer-model SUV was pulling up in front the house. “I seriously doubt it,” Eden said. “Unless she’s started, like, selling drugs or hooking.”

Izzy looked at her.

“I’m kidding,” she said. “And no, I don’t let anyone do more than look, and screw you for thinking that I would.”

“I wasn’t—” he started to say as both the driver’s and front passenger’s doors opened, and two men climbed out into the street. “Okay, maybe I was wondering, because, as long as we’re talking about this, hooking doesn’t seem—to me—to be that big a step away from stripping.”

“It is,” Eden said. “It’s a huge step.”

He didn’t say anything, but it wasn’t because he didn’t disagree. He was just focusing again on the two men in the street.

The taller guy was bald, and apparently driving had given him a wedgie, because he took a moment to do some serious adjustments to his balls before following the other guy to the front door. To be fair, though, he clearly didn’t know they were sitting here, watching.

“Who are they?” Eden wondered aloud.

“They’re not part of the team who kidnapped Ben?”

“No.”

“They’re both carrying,” Izzy said. “Shoulder holsters. You can tell from the way they hold their arms.”

Eden couldn’t tell, but she believed him. “Maybe they’re from Greg’s neo-Nazi prayer group.”

As they watched, Greg opened the front door a crack, peering out at the two men. There was a conversation in which the wedgie-free bald guy did most of the talking and …

“Okay,” Izzy said. “That was definitely meant to look like a police-badge flash, but it seemed kinda short to me—like!!!Don’t look too closely at this ID I picked up from the Halloween Shop, along with my beat-cop costume … How stupid is Greg, exactly?”

“Exactly?” she asked. “Somewhere between Wile E. Coyote and Homer Simpson.”

Izzy laughed. “I’d almost forgotten why I—” He stopped himself, his smile gone, but then finished the sentence. “Loved you.” He was careful to make sure she heard that ed that made it past tense.

Eden couldn’t look at him. And he, too, was now focused on the front steps of the house, where Greg opened the door wider, but didn’t invite the two men inside. He turned on the porch light—amazing that it actually had a bulb that worked—and pushed open the screen so that he could take a piece of paper being handed to him. Again, it was the bald guy’s mouth that did most of the moving.

Meanwhile, Izzy had fished his cell phone from his pants pocket—he was still wearing those completely-out-of-character khakis, although he’d torn the knee keeping her from her second attempt at putting that pickax through the window—and was snapping photos. Of the men talking to Greg. And of the SUV with its Nevada plates.

“These aren’t the men who took Ben,” Eden said, making sure he understood.

“I get it, Obi-Wan, but it’s kinda suspicious, them showing up like this, right after Ben was taken.” He checked to make sure he got the plate number, zooming in on the digital photo, and then snapping his phone shut, when he saw that he had. “I’m just being thorough.”

Greg was squinting at whatever was on that paper—some kind of picture—and shaking his head.

“Maybe they really are cops,” Eden said. “This whole awful thing started when Ben got stopped by the police, at the mall. He told me that the detectives were looking for a friend of his. This little Asian girl who ran away from home. He said they showed him a picture of her.”

Greg handed the paper back, and pulled the screen door shut. But then he opened it again, and took something smaller from the bald guy. It looked like a business card. And this time, after latching the screen, he closed the front door, too.

The two men—maybe cops, maybe not—were moving down the steps, taking a look at the yard, the broken glass from that window Eden had trashed nearly a year ago glittering in the porch light. They didn’t miss the pickax, either. It still lay where she had thrown it, beneath the living-room window.

The place looked exactly like what it was. The home of desperate people who not only lived hand to mouth, but made bad decisions about which bills to pay first.

Izzy rolled down his window slightly, turning off the a/c fans so they could—maybe—hear what the two men said to each other as they headed for their SUV. And sure enough, they’d raised their voices to converse over the roof.

“… could offer a reward,” the man with the hat was saying. “Doesn’t have to be much. Ten thousand dollars.”

The bald man was heading for the driver’s-side door, which put him into the middle of the road, closest to Izzy’s cracked window. “For ten K,” he agreed as he opened the door, “he’d get his kid home from that camp and make him suck both our cocks at the same time. And claim he was doing it for Jesus.”

The other man laughed and said something as he opened the passenger door, but Eden missed it, because the bald guy had already closed his door and started the engine with a roar.

Which is when Izzy said, “Oh, shit.”

He grabbed her, wrapping his right arm around her and pulling her close so swiftly, she slammed up against him. He was so solid, she nearly had the wind knocked out of her and she looked up at him in stunned surprise.

“What—” she said, but then she couldn’t say more, because just like that, he covered her mouth with his and was kissing her.

It was as sudden as the body-slam embrace, and it was a very high-octane kiss, with exactly zero acceleration to get to that place. On a passion scale from one to ten, it started at around six hundred, justbam, with his tongue in her mouth and his hand on her breast, and she gasped her surprise.

But before she could react in any way whatsoever, the headlights of the SUV went on, like spotlights in their faces, and she understood.

They could either be fully lit, in plain sight of the two men in the SUV while they were suspiciously sitting and watching Greg and Ivette’s house, or they could be fully lit while they were innocently sitting in Izzy’s car, making out.

Pretending to make out.

Problem was, pretending felt an awful lot like the real thing.

Still, she kissed Izzy back, looping her arm around his neck and hitting him with the same level of passion that he was dishing out, running her fingers through the decadent softness of his hair as she tried her best to eat him alive without going so far as to throw her leg across him, to straddle him right there in the front seat of the car.

Even though—God help her—she wanted to.

Pretending. This was only pretending. But Lord, it felt so good—the ardent way he was kissing her—and Eden knew with a flash of certainty that he wasn’t pretending. He’d always wanted her, and he obviously still did, even though she’d hurt him as badly as she had.

And didn’t that give her the ultimate power?

Except for the fact that she was powerless when it came to her feelings for this man. Her heart had leaped at the sight of him, when she’d realized he’d come zooming, once again, to her rescue. She’d almost kissed him like this right there, in the dust of the front yard, after he’d pulled her down behind his car.

But she did have the power, because it was now clear that—if she had kissed him? He would have kissed her back, exactly the way he was kissing her now.

He’d always tried to bury it—his lust for her. He’d tried to hide it or dress it up, disguising it as something loftier—as love. And he’d probably even fooled himself. A lot of men did. I love you really only meant!!!I want to get with you.

Seeing him again—sitting here and talking to him—was … devastating. It was heartbreaking. It was soul shaking. It had pulled Eden back, hard, into that crazy place of longing and wanting. Longing for something she knew she’d never have. Wanting to believe words she knew couldn’t be true.!!!I love you …

But!!!I want to get with you …

That she could handle. And as long as she knew what she was doing, as long as she stayed in control …

The SUV was pulling past them, heading down the street, and Eden broke free from that kiss, turning her head away as if she’d suddenly become aware of the light, hiding her face against the wide expanse of Izzy’s shoulder, as the too-bright headlights slid past their car.

And then there they were, sitting in the dark again, both breathing hard.

“Sorry.” Izzy’s voice was raspy, his breath hot against the side of her face as he exhaled hard, as he moved his hand from her boob but still continued to hold her in his arms. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“No,” she whispered as she, too, kept her arms around his neck. “It’s okay. If they were cops, I didn’t want to have to answer their questions.”

“The cops are the good guys,” Izzy said, still not releasing her.

“Not always,” she said. “But you are. You’re always the hero. Coming to my rescue.” She lifted her head to look at him, and the look in his eyes was one that she’d remember on her deathbed. It was desire, pure and sweet.

“Eed,” he breathed, “I think I might be on the verge of really screwing this up—our new friendship, our impending amicable divorce—”

She didn’t let him finish. She just kissed him.

And on a scale from one to ten, it was completely off the charts.

Eden kissed him as if the world were ending.

Izzy saw it coming, and even though he saw it telegraphed in her eyes, in the way her tongue briefly moistened her lips, he still couldn’t quite believe it. And he certainly didn’t do anything to stop it.

But then, as she kept kissing him, he could believe it, because this was Eden, and she wasn’t just kissing him, she’d actually thrown her leg across him and straddled him—which was possible only because he’d adjusted the seat as far back as it could go and had reclined it quite a bit, too.

And it was very, very clear that she, too, was hell-bent on screwing up their impending amicable divorce. Or maybe she wasn’t. Maybe this was her crazy-ass definition of being amicable.

Either way, it was obvious that they were both extremely willing passengers aboard this particular bad-idea bus. And as she reached between them to verify that that was, indeed, him in all his glory and not the gearshift, he knew that, this time? He wasn’t going to be the one to stop them.

He was done with that.

He’d spent nearly his entire premarriage relationship with Eden slowing her down to an absolute stop, and look at where that had gotten him. Decidedly unfucked for all of his gallant efforts, except for their very brief wedding night. Oh yeah, and except for the ultimate fucking she’d given him shortly thereafter, by walking away.

Now, however, hoh jay-sus, she was simultaneously reaching into his pants even as she pressed and rubbed herself against him, all the while kissing the shit out of him.

His own hands weren’t idle. He’d sent them on an assignment up beneath her T-shirt, to find and unfasten the front clasp of her bra. Her skin was cool and silky, and—mission accomplished—he filled his hands with the unfettered softness of her breasts as she moaned her approval.

She stopped kissing him to pull back slightly, her goal apparent—to unzip and free him from his pants.

His own choices were a) to pull up her shirt so he could kiss and lick the sweet tautness of her nipples into his mouth, or b) to start working to get her out of her jeans. That was going to be quite a task, involving an Olympic-worthy dismount—not to mention the impending awkwardness and self-consciousness that would no doubt come with her being half naked in a fishbowl-like car on a fairly busy suburban street.

True, there was currently no traffic and the streetlamp on the corner had long burned out. The circle of light from Greg and Ivette’s porch lamp didn’t begin to reach them, but still, Izzy was pretty certain that the odds of him actually getting laid right here, right now, were slim to none.

He did not doubt, however, that he was going to get a very lovely BJ, which was fine by him. Fine, that is, by this new, heart-hardened him.

Still, if he had his druthers, he’d prefer the big bang, and he took the optimistic route and unfastened the top button of her jeans, his fingers against the smooth warmth of her stomach. She was wearing jeans with a button fly, so he kept going—and found she was wearing the same red satin thong that she’d worn while stripping.

That discovery was either off-putting or hot, and he decided to let it be hot. And it did, absolutely, make him even harder as he remembered the way she’d moved when she’d danced. Or maybe he was responding to the unobstructed touch of her impossibly soft hands as she finally untangled him from both his pants and briefs.

And there it came—the dismount he’d been expecting. She pulled away completely, leaving him the use of his own hands to recline his seat a bit more, and to push his pants and briefs a bit more down his thighs, away from any impending spill zone.

But when he realized what she was doing—kicking off her right sneaker and pulling her right leg free from her jeans in the age-old sex-in-the-car tradition of not getting completely undressed—he dug for his wallet and the condom he always carried there in the event that he bumped into Veronica Mars and Lieutenant Starbuck from BSG, and they wanted to do him simultaneously.

Or in the event that he bumped into Eden.

He kept that condom there, he had to admit, mostly because of Eden. Although before today, the idea that she’d seriously want to do him had seemed as absurd and impossible as a three-way with outer-space-themed fictional characters, even though one of them was only named after a planet.

But he now took it out of his wallet, dropping the leather bifold that held his ID and credit card onto the floor of the car so he could more quickly cover himself. He focused on the task at hand—penis, latex, rolling it carefully down—so he didn’t have to think about the fact that he shouldn’t be doing this.

And there, alas, it was: He shouldn’t be doing this.

Izzy pushed the unhelpful thought away. Latex. Penis. Happy, happy penis. Not quite as happy as it had been under Eden’s sure touch, but that was going to change very quickly, very soon.!!!He shouldn’t be doing—!!!Oh, yeah, asshole? Why the fuck not?!!!Because you still love her, dim nuts. And maybe—just maybe—she loves you, and this is some kind of a test—!!!You are such a fucking moron. Test? She doesn’t love you. This is just her twisted way of saying thank you. Just shut up and get it while you can. She’ll be gone again, soon enough.!!!And where will that leave you? Freaked out and feeling like the shit that you are, because you know that she thinks all guys want just one thing from her, and here you are on the verge of proving her right.

Eden ended Izzy’s mental argument with himself by coming back, slipping her completely naked right leg over him.

But no doubt about it, despite how far back he’d reclined his seat, that steering wheel was going to interfere. So even as she came toward him, he lifted her up, and moved them both up and over the parking brake, and quickly reclined that seat as far as it could go.

He reached out and touched her then, sliding his fingers up the entire gorgeously smooth length of her leg. She, in turn, had reached for him again, one arm bracing herself as she balanced there above him, and she stroked him even as she maneuvered him toward her, pushing him just a little bit inside of her, and then a little bit more.

He watched her face, just letting her have complete control. Her eyes were closed, and she’d caught her lower lip between her teeth. But then, God, as she pushed herself down, all the way down, she opened her eyes and looked back at him.

Izzy had no idea what kind of expression he was wearing, but she seemed to think a conversation was in order.

“I was a little afraid it would hurt,” she whispered.

“Hurt?” he echoed, aware as hell that he was about as deeply inside of her as he could possibly be. At least in the front seat of a car like this. He wasn’t quite sure what to do. Move her off of him?

“But it doesn’t,” she said before he could do anything. And then, as if to prove it, she began to move on top of him, pulling herself up and almost entirely off him, before sliding slowly back down. “Definitely not.”

Yeah, hurt wasn’t the word he’d use to describe what she was doing, at least not on his end.

“Why were you afraid it would hurt?” he asked, even though he was pretty sure he knew the answer, as he lifted his hips up to meet her in a move that made her moan.

“Why would it?” he asked again, because it was clear she’d forgotten—or was ignoring his question.

“Because it’s been so long,” Eden told him in a sigh, closing her eyes as he again pushed himself home.

“For me, too,” he admitted, even as his heart pounded at the idea that Eden hadn’t been with anyone else. Of course, she hadn’t exactly said that … Still, it was a nice fantasy—one that he was happy to run with at this moment. “Damn, sweetheart, at the risk of ruining your evening, I think I got three, maybe four more of those left in me. I usually last much longer. In my defense, I think I might be a little distracted by the whole in-the-car thing, too.”

She laughed as she lifted herself up and began another long, slow slide back down. “Are you seriously apologizing? In advance? For the most awesome sex I’ve had this year?” She leaned forward and caught his mouth with hers, kissing him, even as she moaned again at his extra push.

And then she didn’t pull back again, at least not the way she’d been doing it for the past few moments. She moved against him, faster, hard, then even harder, as if, even though he was filling her completely, it still wasn’t enough.

So he gave her more, pushing himself as deeply as he could inside of her, his hands on the softness of her ass as he anchored her in place and thrust himself up and up and up.

“Oh, yes,” she broke their kiss to say. “Yes!”

So Izzy kept doing what he was doing, even though it meant he couldn’t stop his own release from ripping through him, and really, there was nothing he could have done to prevent it, but he was hyperaware that she still hadn’t come. But then she did come, God, and as she did, she moaned his name.

And forget best sex of the year, it was the best sex of his life, and he was so fucked, because the voice in his head had been dead right.

He was still in love with her.

Of that he no longer had any doubt.