Crowne Rules Read online

  Ella, my mother, and I had switched cars in an underground lot so I wouldn’t be followed, but I didn’t relax until I was past Santa Barbara and completely alone on the freeway.

  The rain didn’t start until the last hour of the three-hour drive—long enough to get me out of my head and into an almost-decent mood. I sang along with the radio; at one point I even caught myself wailing off-key so loudly I hurt my own ears.

  Piloting my little buttercup Jaguar—my father’s last birthday present before he left us—along the wet, narrow road felt just dangerous enough to be exciting and just safe enough to enjoy.

  At least my car will always be sexy.

  I had to stock up on supplies before I arrived at the house, so I pulled off the freeway and into a tiny town called Harmony, because who could resist a name like that?

  My cellular service had just about died fifty miles earlier and was completely gone when I needed to find a grocery store, but Harmony was a lucky break. I found a strip mall with a restaurant specializing in biscuits and gravy, a mom-and-pop convenience store, a hardware store, and Harmony Lights, which looked as though it sold greeting cards and candles. I’d check it all out in a few days, when I was settled and it wasn’t raining domesticated animals.

  At the market, I picked up reasonable things: yogurt, whole wheat bread, unsalted almond butter—and some less-reasonable things: a carton of salted caramel ice cream and a bag of potato chips thick enough to stay in one piece when they got soggy. I was in charge, I figured, for better or worse. I could do what I wanted, up to and including drowning my sorrows in fat and sugar. The rest of the meals would be tomorrow’s problem.

  I was waiting in the market’s checkout line, craning my neck to see if they had plastic spoons I could use to eat the carton of ice cream in the car, when I saw the DMZ Weekly in the rack and my appetite took a hike.

  The front was splashed with Renaldo and me photoshopped together in a way that made us both look anxious and upset. The yellow of my leggings was an unmissable neon flag, drawing everyone’s eyes to the headline.

  RENALDO & THE HOMEWRECKER:

  HOW MANDY BETTENCOURT’S BIG PLANS BACKFIRED

  Those were the pre-humiliation rumors of a week ago—back when I could stand it because he was mine and I was his.

  I dumped my groceries on the conveyor belt, then I swept every single issue of the magazine along with them. I couldn’t destroy every copy in LA, but at least I could keep my new temporary neighbors from seeing my shame. Maybe there would be a fireplace at the house and I could do a ritual burn.

  The goateed guy behind the counter rang it all up, light-brown eyes flicking up at me, then back at the food. I tried to look at my phone while I waited, but the signal had dropped ten miles back and never picked back up again. I really had to switch my carrier—except maybe it was for the best. If I was getting away, I was getting away.

  Goatee Man got to the stack of tabloids. “You wanna pick up just one of these or…?”

  He left me to fill in the blank.

  “All of them.” I put on my sunglasses so he wouldn’t recognize me, but that probably made it worse. We were inside, it was raining, and it was night. But I kept them on as I handed him my card, even though my name was on it.

  Hooking the handle of the plastic bag on my wrist, I gathered the papers in my arms. On the way out, I found the counter with plastic utensils and plucked a white spoon out of the basket.

  I ran across the rainy parking lot and tossed everything in my trunk. When I closed it, I realized I was really and truly alone, behind a windshield obscured with rain and miles and miles from a cellular signal. Cut off from everyone who loved me and everyone who hated me. For once, I was in control of all my relationships.

  Rooting around the bag, I found the ice cream. Sticking the spoon in my mouth, I peeled the container open and put it down long enough to pull open the bag of chips. I smashed one on top of the ice cream and scooped it up, letting the cold, crunchy mixture freeze out the loneliness.

  When I turned the key, the radio and comforting heat blasted on. The wipers sprang to life, clearing the rain from the windshield. Now I could see inside the market, where Goatee Man stood in front of the rack I’d emptied and slid in a fresh stack of DMZ Weekly. A snarling, man-eating version of my face stared back at me from the cover.

  * * *

  When I finally reached the Crownes’ Cambria house, the rain had turned to a drizzle, but the sky was still dark with thick, bloated clouds.

  Even with the view obscured by darkness, it was obvious the place was a dump. The ten-foot hedges that circled the property were in need of a trim. The solar panel over the security platform had been knocked sideways, making me worry—when I had to put the code in twice—that there was no power to the keypad. The gate creaked, but when it slapped closed behind me, I felt protected and alone.

  The long, uphill driveway was so cracked and uneven my Jag bounced and popped over the wet concrete, snapping sticks and smacking into potholes as the cottage came into view.

  “Don’t you worry baby.” I patted the dashboard at the halfway point between gate and house. “We’re going to be safe here.”

  But the car made a liar out of me. The tires slid, and I heard a scrape from the right bumper.

  When I got out, the breeze was cool and damp, crisp with ozone. The crash of ocean waves hissed under the rustle of wind in the leaves. I’d scraped the bumper against a low stone wall that bordered each side of the driveway. It wasn’t a big deal, but the tires weren’t going to stop sliding, and the walk wasn’t too bad.

  After so long in a heated garage, the Jag would have to spend the night under rainy skies.

  After yanking my bag out of the trunk, I grabbed my bag of food, locked the car with the stack of tabloids in the back, and headed up the hill.

  The house looked as if it had been built in the seventies, with glass walls on four sides, wood siding, and slate tiles. Unlocking the door, I dragged my bags in and shut myself behind it, laying my hands on the wood as if I couldn’t believe it was solid. A click-click made me spin, pressing my back to the door.

  Click-click.

  Movement in the shadows.

  Click-click.

  A branch hitting a window.

  “Girl,” I said to myself, “take it easy.”

  The flashlight on my phone revealed teak furniture, high ceilings, windows on every side. It smelled of cleaning fluid and unlived-in-ness. Undoubtedly, they had caretakers keeping it ready, even though the exterior had gone to shit.

  I was in a dump, but it was the safest dump imaginable. With a locked door, an iron gate, and a few hundred miles between the paparazzi and me, I slid down to the floor with my back to the wall. No one could see me. In that dark, musty room, I could finally breathe.

  There were bowls of fresh fruit on the counter and food in the refrigerator. The garbage can I threw the plastic ice cream spoon into had a new liner in it. The freezer where I put the remainder of the ice cream was full of meat. The sink was as empty and dry as my tear ducts, and though I laid the half-empty bag of Kettle chips on cans of food that weren’t dusty, most of the pantry’s condiments looked as if they hadn’t been touched in a while.

  Weird. If no one lived here, why the fresh food? And why would the cans be new?

  I shrugged and went to the master bedroom, opening my suitcase on the bed I’d be occupying alone while I sorted out my life. I put my toiletries on the vanity, including the birth control pills I could stop taking any time now since I was single. In the mirror, past the liberated, in-control woman who fucked and forgot without getting attached, was a bathtub.

  A bath would be a beautiful thing.

  I left the water to run until it was hot, stripping down and pacing the house naked, eating potato-chip-crumbled caramel ice cream. The windows had blinds, but I left them open. There was no one to see me. When lightning flashed and lit up the outside, I saw a small pool and a garden of sticks. Out of habit
, I counted the tense seconds the way my sister and I had before she died, with the melding of our names.

  One Samanda.

  Two Samanda.

  Three Samanda.

  Four Samanda.

  Thunder.

  The Jack-and-Jill bathroom led to the second bedroom. Inside, a manual typewriter sat on a wood desk, a ten-pound prop from a black-and-white movie. A sheet of clean, white paper looped around the tube with the excess sticking out the back like a tongue. I hit the letter W. An arm popped up and lightly tapped the paper. I hit it harder, leaving the fuzzy impression of a W behind.

  It worked. Huh. I thought I knew the Crownes, but apparently they had an unexpected commitment to analog technology.

  As I scraped the last of the ice cream out of the corners, lightning flashed.

  Looking up, I noticed steam curling out of the bathroom door.

  One Samanda.

  Two Samanda.

  Three—

  Thunder cracked, and the water heater had probably done its job by now.

  When the water was so hot I could barely touch it, I plugged the tub and rooted around under the sink, finding a box of squat, white candles and a lighter and a red satin bag of bath bombs. I lit the candles and tossed a couple of bombs into the water, then threw in another for good measure.

  When the waterline was near the top, I shut off the faucet.

  My phone had been completely useless for miles already, and if there was Wi-Fi in the house, it was off, but I could still play music. I threw together a playlist of songs with a “fuck him” theme, put headphones on, and settled in, letting the line of scalding heat envelop me to the neck.

  Arms floating, I let the music take me away, singing along with a song about heartbreak and renewal, unable to hear my voice as much as feel it against the sobbing soreness of my throat.

  He broke my heart

  When I was so nice

  Forget that asshole

  I mean it, girl

  Forget him twice

  I belted it out not to the bathroom tiles, but to the Renaldo in my mind. He was begging to have me back, and I was toying with him, asking, “Why?” Why did he promise to leave his wife only to humiliate me? Turn me into an object of public disdain only to get on his hands and knees and literally kiss my feet?

  Not just him, but Caleb, who’d treated me like trash for years, and every guy after him who dumped me and then strung me along so they could dump me again.

  In my fantasy, I was telling them about all the other guys I was fucking and how little I cared about any of them. I was walking away from some faceless stud, sated and satisfied and totally unattached. I was never, ever going to get hurt again, and every time I started to cry again, I sang louder.

  “No, no, no-no!” I chanted with the music, waving my finger at my imaginary lover. “You ain’t that…”

  The lights went out, and I practically leapt out of the tub in shock, sliding my headphones away from one ear. A moment later, I realized what must have happened, and surprise turned to exasperation. Because, of course, this goddamn house couldn’t stand a thunderst—

  “Hello?” A man’s voice came from the darkened doorway.

  In a crouch, dripping wet, with female empowerment in one ear and his question in the other, I grabbed something, anything, in the dark and came up with a shampoo bottle.

  “I know tae kwon do,” I said in the general direction of the voice, standing up to wield the plastic bottle.

  “I’m sure.” The lights went back on with a click, and I could see the source of the voice.

  Fuck.

  Dante Crowne. Gray raincoat glinting with droplets of water, finger on the light switch, looking down at me from the top of Mount Six Foot Four. All the Crowne men had light eyes, but Dante’s were deeper set and the iciest blue I’d ever seen.

  “Hello, Amanda.”

  “It’s Mandy,” I said, pulling the headphones around my neck and lowering the shampoo.

  His gaze followed the poorly chosen weapon and took a circuitous route back upward by way of the naked triangle between my legs, my belly, my breasts. When his eyes landed on mine, there was desire there, but I could tell by the way he tightened his mouth that it was an easily dismissed interloper and not something he wanted to act on.

  “Logan said you’d be here,” he said.

  He wasn’t going to apologize for scaring me half to death and then checking me out without even admiring the view?

  “Well, he didn’t warn me about you,” I said.

  Lightning flickered, and I held my reply for the whipcrack of thunder one Samanda later.

  “Clearly,” Dante scoffed, looking my nudity over again.

  I turned for the towel, catching sight of myself in the mirror. I was splotched in patches of bubble. South America drifted down my hip.

  Dante grabbed the towel and handed it to me, eyes respectfully averted. I took it slowly, daring him to look again, and he took me up on the challenge, letting his gaze fall all over my body like a steamer pushed under a dress to relax the creases in every corner.

  “Logan sends his apologies, but this house is mine,” Dante said as I wrapped the white towel around myself. “And I need to use it this weekend.”

  “Your brother said it was a family house.”

  “Hm.”

  After the one syllable, he turned and left me alone in what was apparently his bathroom.

  Chapter 4

  DANTE

  Amanda Bettencourt.

  Logan’s phone call had prepared me—otherwise I would have been furious and not a little unnerved to find her there. I’d come up here to do a sensitive task. I didn’t want company.

  Not even the kind who drove sexy Jaguars left diagonal in my drive. I could have gotten around, but I took the back way, parked in the garage, and checked the solar cells out of habit.

  The sun wasn’t going to hit the panels for another week, and the electrical had been turned on full blast without increasing the battery load. Worse, she was running a goddamn bath. Either Logan hadn’t warned her about the water tank, or she hadn’t listened. If she didn’t get out soon, the house would run out of both water and power in a few days.

  The master bedroom looked already occupied by the aftermath of a tornado. Apparently, Amanda had grown up to be a slob. Her clothes were everywhere, a scattering of lace and Lycra and cashmere in varying shades of yellow. The bath stopped running, and I heard her get in.

  Her suitcase was splayed open on the bed. I untwisted a pair of underwear from their curl, laying them flat on the comforter.

  Clearly, this was a woman who had no boundaries. No precision. No control over herself or her life.

  From the sound of her singing, she hadn’t noticed I was in the house yet. No one with a voice like that would sing in front of another human. It was aural equivalent of brutalist architecture, and letting her finish would have been an aesthetic injustice.

  I opened the bathroom door. Though I was glad to smell the demise of the bath bombs my sister had left under the sink for ten years, the room was lit with the emergency candles I kept next to them. Amanda’s eyes were closed, and her ears were covered with noise-cancelling headphones as she sang some garbage pop song.

  Her voice was truly terrible. Metal scraping metal was more pleasant, but the earnestness of her expression changed the entire tone—turning discord into harmony. Somehow, if she’d been on key, it would have been wrong. But she was real in a way I wouldn’t have expected, and I stared at her a few seconds longer than I should have.

  “Amanda,” I said, but she didn’t hear me. She kept on singing, and I kept on staring.

  “No, no, nooooooo…!”

  “Amanda,” I said a little more loudly before I realized I wasn’t getting her attention because I wanted to keep watching her and listening to her voice when I had no right to do either.

  “You ain’t thaaaat…”

  I shut off the light, and she went silent with a gasp, sp
lashing in surprise.

  “Hello,” I said, trying not to smile as she weaponized a shampoo bottle, crouching in a battle stance, then stood.

  “I know tae kwon do,” she said over the tinny music coming from her headphones.

  “I’m sure.” In fairness, I turned the lights on. I’d see her naked, but she’d see I wasn’t a threat.

  She looked so fierce, with swollen, red-rimmed eyes cupped by dark circles, reminding me of Logan’s warning that she was having a hard time.

  “Hello, Amanda.”

  Knowing she’d be in the bath hadn’t prepared me for the sight of her body slippery with bubbles and soft in the steamy air. She heaved with a dose of adrenaline more desirable than her nudity.

  My attraction to her didn’t portend anything deeper. She was gorgeous, but she wasn’t the only beautiful woman in Los Angeles any more than she was the only empty one. She was a host of clichés. A tall drink of water. A long-stemmed rose with not a petal out of place.

  “It’s Mandy,” she said, using her leftover adrenaline to fight over her name.

  I watched her body as it let go of danger, relaxing one muscle at a time.

  She was shallow, vain, and immature. Prideful, but not confident. Useless as a mate and probably dull as a doorknob in bed.

  And yet—all that still being true—she’d always piqued in me a pointless curiosity that if ever sated would surely disappoint. There was no there, there. I knew that like I knew the exact location of my own dick.

  And yet again—the game of hoodat so long ago. I’d always told myself those minutes in a closet said more about me than her. That had to be as true now as it had always been.

  “Logan told me you’d be here,” I said.

  “Well, he didn’t warn me about you.” She put the shampoo bottle on the shelf and laid her hands on her hips.

  “Clearly.”

  Lightning flashed. Her lips didn’t move, but I could tell she was counting the Mississippis until the thunder came a second later. Her shoulders relaxed as if knowing how close the storm was gave her control over it, and I knew right then that I was watching her too closely.