Genuine Lies

second quarter and Drake was feeling smug. His team was holding the line like bulls. Personally, he detested the game. It was so … physical. But the need to bet was unrelenting. He thought of Delrickio and smiled. He would pay the Italian bastard back, everypenny. He wouldn’t have to sweat when he heard the cool, polite voice over the phone.
    Then maybe he’d take a quick winter vacation. Down to Puerto Rico to play in the casinos and fuck a few high-class broads. He’d deserve it after pulling himself out of this hole.
    With no help from Eve, he thought and reached for a fresh beer. The old bitch refused to lend him another dime—just because he’d had a run of bad luck. If she knew he was still dealing with Delrickio … Well, he didn’t have to worry there. Drake Morrison knew how to be discreet.
    Anyway, she didn’t have any right being so tight-assed with her money. Where the hell was it going to go after she croaked? All she had were her sisters, and she didn’t have any use for them. That left Drake. He was her only blood tie, and he’d spent his entire adult life knotting himself around her neck.
    He was brought back to the game with a thud when the tight end on the opposing team sprinted thirty-five yards for a touchdown.
    He felt his little bubble burst—as if a balloon had lodged then exploded in his throat. And reached for another handful of chips. Crumbs scattered over his shirt and lap as he stuffed them into his mouth. Didn’t matter, he told himself. It was only a three point spread. Four, he corrected himself, wiping his hand across his mouth as the kick sailed through the posts.
    He’d get it back. There was plenty of time.
    In his beach house in Malibu, Paul huddled over his keyboard. The book was giving him trouble—more than he’d expected. He was determined to get past his current block. He often looked at writing that way. One wall to scale after the next. He didn’t enjoy it—and it was the greatest pleasure of his life. He hated it and loved it in much the same way he’d learned some men felt about their wives. Writing a story was something he had to do—not for the money; he had plenty— but in the same way he had to eat or sleep or empty his bladder.
    Leaning back, he stared at the screen, at the little white cursor that blinked after the last word he’d written. The word was
murder.
    It gave him a great deal of satisfaction to create thrillers, complicating the lives of the characters that grew inside him. Most of all, he liked to watch them balance life and death in their hands. At the moment he just didn’t seem to care enough.
    Too many distractions, he admitted, and glanced over his shoulder at the television that was blaring out the action in the third quarter of the big game. He knew it was childish to have the set on and pretend to watch. The truth was he didn’t even care for American football. But he was sucked in, year after year, by the Super Bowl. He’d even picked his team, vindicating his weakness by rooting for what he considered the underdog—since they’d been behind by three in the first quarter.
    The game was certainly a distraction, but it wasn’t what had been keeping him from falling into his work over the past couple of weeks. That distraction was certainly more fascinating than a bunch of men with padded shoulders dragging each other to the ground. A cool-eyed, long-legged blond named Julia.
    He wasn’t even sure what he wanted from her. Besides the obvious. Getting his hands on her was a pleasant enough fantasy—particularly with her remoteness and bursts of passion sending out such mixed and irresistible signals. But if that was all it was, why wasn’t he able to dismiss her from his mind as he had been able to dismiss others when it was time to settle in to work?
    Perhaps it was her complexity that nagged at him. She was slickly professional, quietly domestic. Ambitious and retiring. He’d already discovered that rather than aloof, she was shy. Cautious rather than cynical. Yet she had been bold enough, brave enough, to cross a continent with her young son and take on the vagaries of one of Hollywood’s legends.
    Or was it hungry enough? he wondered.
    He could fill in some of the blanks himself since he had dipped into her background. He knew she had been raised bytwo professionals, had survived a broken home, a teenage pregnancy, and the loss of both parents. Despite the vulnerabilities he’d seen, she was tough. She’d had to