Genuine Lies

about me. I’m going to work it out.”
    “We’re going to work it out,” he corrected her.
    After she hung up, she stayed where she was a moment. She wasn’t sure she could go back yet, face Eve. There was still too much anger, too much hurt. How much time it would take to ease either of those emotions was uncertain.
    Slowly, she walked back through the lobby, back outside, where the air was beginning to thicken with afternoon heat.
    Like a shadow, the man she would have recognized from the airport, trailed behind her.
    •   •   •
    Drake decided he was finished with fucking around. No more Mr. Nice Guy. He was riled up enough to stand on the roof of his car without worrying about scratching the spiffy red paint. He didn’t give more than a passing through to ripping his Savile Row suit as he scrambled, awkwardly, on the wall of Eve’s estate.
    She thought he was stupid, he reflected grimly as he scraped his palms on stones. But he wasn’t stupid. He’d been smart enough to detour through the house on his way out to switch off the main power of the security system.
    Thinking ahead—that’s right, he was thinking ahead. To his future. His belt buckle clinked against stone as he bellied his way over the wall. She couldn’t have her goddamn secretary give him the old heave-ho. She was going to listen to what he had to say, and she was going to understand he meant business.
    He landed with a grunt, his left ankle giving way so that he tumbled back into a hedge of Russian olives. The thorns raked over the back of his hands as he fought his way clear to his knees.
    He was sweating hard, breathing hard. She wasn’t going to cut him out. That one certainly was in his mind as he pushed himself up to limp toward the putting green. He was going to bring that single point home to her. With a vengeance.
    The man shadowing Julia spotted the Porsche. He was circling the estate after watching Julia turn through the gates. He’d decided to spend the rest of the afternoon staked out down the block, in case she came out again.
    It was a boring job, but the pay was good. A man tolerated a lot of inconveniences, like heat, tedium, and pissing in a plastic bottle, for six hundred a day.
    When he recognized the Porsche, natural curiosity had him pulling up behind it. It was locked up tight, and was cleanas a whistle except for a couple of scuff marks on the roof. Grinning, he hopped up and peered over the wall.
    He was just in time to see Drake hobbling between the green and the tennis courts.
    It took him only a moment to decide to hop the wall. When opportunity knocked, a smart man opened the door. He was bound to find out more inside than out. And the more he found out, the more he got paid.
    Julia pulled through the gates just as Gloria’s Mercedes shot out. Without sparing her a glance, Gloria punched the gas and had her wheels screaming on asphalt.
    “Nearly took off her bumper,” Joe called out. He shook his head smiling through the window at Julia. “That lady drives worse than my teenager.”
    “She looked upset.”
    “Looked the same when she got here.”
    “Was she here long?”
    “Nah.” He worked a cherry Life Saver out of the roll, offered it to Julia, and at her murmured refusal popped it into his mouth. “Fifteen minutes maybe. People been coming and going all morning. I’da made a fortune if I was charging toll.”
    Because she knew he expected a smile, Julia accommodated him. “Is anyone with Eve now?”
    “Don’t think so.”
    “Thanks, Joe.”
    “No problem. You have a good day now.”
    Julia drove slowly, trying to decide whether to make the turn for the main house, or go on. She let instinct take her and followed the route to the guest house. She wasn’t ready, she admitted. She needed a little more time, a little more space.
    The moment she got out of the car, she turned toward the gardens, lost herself in them. Behind her a curtain twitched open, then back into place.
    It was an indulgence, but only a small one, to sit on a stone bench and let her mind empty. With her eyes closed, she could absorb the sounds and smells of the garden. The lowhum of bees, the rustle of birds among lush leaves. Oleander, jasmine, lilac, all those sweet fragrances mixed with the richer, deeper scent of earth freshly watered.
    She’d always loved flowers. In the years she’d lived in Manhattan, she’d put geraniums on the windowsill every spring. Perhaps she’d inherited that love, that need