Page 37 of The Virgin's Dance
“Just look after my girl is all I ask.”
“I promise, and you know you’re always welcome to come stay with us, if you get lonesome. Any time.”
Grace smiled. “You really are a sweet man, but as a matter of fact, I already have a roommate lined up.”
“She replaces me so quickly.” Boh pretended to be shot through the heart, slumping in her chair and letting her tongue loll out of her mouth. Pilot grinned and Grace chuckled.
“Lexie. The kid has to commute from the other side of Paterson every day. I offered her your room at a reduced rate. Hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. That girl hero-worships you, with good reason.”
Grace nodded. “I don’t know about that, but she’s a star in the making.”
“No arguments here.”
Eventually, Grace threw them out. “Go, go christen your new place, and be happy. I love you both.”
As they rode the elevator to their new loft Boh felt a calm descend over her. A new life, she thought, full of love and laughter, and this gorgeous man, holding her hand. She looked up at him, still always surprised by the beauty of his smile.
“Are you okay?”
“More than okay,” she said. “I love you.”
“I love you too, baby.”
He insisted on carrying her over the threshold. She giggled as he pretended to stagger. “We’re not married, Pilot; we don’t have to do this.”
He stopped, put her on her feet, and took her face in his hands. “Yes, we do. This is it, Boheme Dali. The beginning of everything. Our life together. From now on, Boh, we’re going to be the happiest people on this earth.”
But, of course, he was wrong.
Chapter Seventeen
Serena slammed her locker shut and made her way down to the outside of the building. Kristof was still teaching class, but he’d given her a key to his apartment. Whether he acknowledged it to himself or not, Serena thought of it as a reward, athank you, for solving his Eleonor Vasquez problem.
And it had been so easy. The older woman had already been wandering throughout the halls of the company’s residency. To lead her up to the roof had been a walk in the park, steering her towards the edge.
“Celine is waiting for you just over that little wall,” she’d said to her, and watched as Eleonor Vasquez had walked to her death. Serena told herself that it didn’t count as murder.
Kristof had been shocked when she’d told him that Eleonor had died. He had been in bed, sick from weaning himself off the drugs, getting clean. She smirked to herself. Fool. He would never be clean—she was dosing him in his food with a new drug—small doses at first, but enough that she could measure his reaction to them. As she increased the dose, she could see it in his eyes, the slight loss of control again. Good. When she needed him to blow, he would.
She took out her pack of cigarettes as she reached the sidewalk and didn’t immediately see the limousine parked at the curb side until the window was slid down.
“Excuse me?”
Serena looked up and saw a thin but beautiful blonde woman smiling at her. “Yes?”
The woman beckoned her closer. “You’re Serena Carver, yes?”
“That’s right, and you are?”
The woman smiled. “Eugenie Radcliffe-Morgan. I’d like a few moments of your time, if you don’t mind. I think we could be of great use to each other.”
For the first time, Boh saw Pilot look nervous. Today, they were finalizing the order of his prints in the exhibition, and his friend Grady Mallory was flying over from Seattle to view the photographs.
Despite her bravery in allowing Pilot to photograph her nude, she balked slightly when she saw the huge blow-ups of her body, her breasts, her belly, even the dark triangle between her thighs. They looked stunning, she had to admit, but still, it washerbody on display to the world.
Grady Mallory soon put her mind at rest. A handsome blond in his mid-forties, his easy manner and friendly personality eased both her and Pilot’s nerves.
