A surge of emotion crossed Vincent’s dark face. He looked upset. Well, good.
“I don’t understand you. And I don’t want to.” My eyes narrowed in disgust. “I hope I never see you again,” I said, and began walking toward the gate.
I felt a strong hand grip my arm, and whipped my head around to see that Vincent stood inches behind me. He leaned over until his mouth was next to my ear. “Things aren’t always as they appear, Kate,” he whispered, and carefully released my arm.
I ran toward the front gate, which was already swinging open to let me through. Once I was outside, it began to close. A loud crash that sounded like porcelain being smashed against marble came from somewhere inside the house.
I stood motionless, looking back at the massive metal gates. My intuition told me that I had done something wrong. That I had misjudged Vincent’s character. But all signs pointed to the fact that he was some sort of criminal. And from the smashing sounds still emanating from the house, maybe even a violent one. I shook my head, wondering how I could have lost my capacity for reason just because of a handsome face.
Chapter Nine
OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, I COULDN’T STOP replaying the events of that day in my mind, over and over again like a broken record. From the outside I must have looked the same. I got up, did my reading at an alternate café, went to the occasional movie, and attempted to join Georgia’s and my grandparents’ dinner-table conversations. Even so, they seemed to know that I was troubled. But they had no reason to attribute my dark mood to anything new.
Every time Vincent pushed his way into my mind I tried to push him back out. How could I have been so mistaken? The fact that he was a part of some sort of criminal network made more sense now that I thought back to that night at the river. There must have been some kind of underworld gang war going on. Even if he’s a bad guy, at least he saved that girl’s life, my conscience nagged.
But whatever his past contained, I couldn’t justify his cold detachment after Jules was hit by the train. How could anyone leave the scene of a friend’s death to insure his own safety from the law? The whole thing chilled me to the bone. Especially knowing that I had already started to feel something for him.
The flirty way he had teased me at the Picasso Museum. His intense expression as he grasped my hand in Jules’s courtyard. The comfort I’d felt when he placed his hand over mine in the taxi. These instants kept flashing up in my memory, reminding me of why I had liked him. I shoved them aside again and again, disgusted with myself for having been so naive.
Finally Georgia cornered me one night in my room. “What is wrong with you?” she asked with her usual tact. She threw herself onto my rug and leaned roughly back against a priceless Empire dresser that I never used because I was afraid I would break the handles.
“What do you mean?” I responded, avoiding her eyes.
“I mean, what the hell is wrong with you? I’m your sister. I know when there’s something wrong.”
I had been yearning to talk to Georgia but couldn’t even imagine where to start. How could I tell her the guy that we saw leap off the bridge was actually a criminal I had been hanging out with—that is, until I saw him walk away from his friend’s death without shedding a tear?
“Okay, if you don’t want to talk I can just start guessing, but I will get it out of you. Are you worried about starting a new school?”
“No.”
“Is it about friends?”
“What friends?”
“Exactly!”
“No.”
“Boys?”
Something on my face must have given me away, because she immediately leaned toward me, crossing her legs in a tell-me-more pose. “Kate, why didn’t you tell me about . . . whoever he is . . . before it got to this?”
“You don’t talk to me about your boyfriends.”
“That’s because there are too many of them.” She laughed and then, remembering my low spirits, added, “Plus, none of them are serious enough to mention. Yet.” She waited.
There was no way I was getting off the hook. “Okay, there’s this guy who lives in the neighborhood, and we kind of hung out a few times until I found out he was bad news.”
“Like how bad is the bad news? Married?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “No!”
“Druggie?”
“No. I mean, I don’t think so. It’s more like . . .” I watched for Georgia’s reaction. “It’s more like he’s in trouble with the law. Like a criminal or something.”
“Yeah. I’d say that’s bad news,” she admitted pensively. “Sounds more like someone I’d go for, actually.”
“Georgia!” I yelled, throwing a pillow at her.
“Sorry, sorry. I shouldn’t joke about it. You’re right. He doesn’t sound like good boyfriend material, Katie-Bean. So why don’t you just pat yourself on the back for not getting in too deep before you found out, and be on your merry way back to Guyland?”