“I’m on four till ten again.”
“Okay, well, I could pick you up after? We can go to my new place – you can meet my roommates.”
“Sure, that would be great. You really don’t mind?”
“Course not! Go have some fun.”
And I had some business to take care of, too.
Sebastian picked up his cell.
“Battery’s almost dead but I should have enough juice for one call.” He scrolled down to find Ches’s number and dialed. “Hey, man, what’s up? No, I’m with Caro. We’ve just driven past Silver Strand and it’s pumping. You wanna go take the boards out? No, she’s cool.” He grinned over at me. “We’ll hook up later. Yeah, okay.” Then he frowned. “What? No, we didn’t yet. Yeah, okay, okay. See you in twenty.
He ended the call. “Ches says City Beat printed your article. I dunno, he sounded a bit weird.”
I’d forgotten about the article. It was rather irresponsible of me – after all, it was supposed to be my future source of income.
“I’ll pick us up a copy on the way back. Where are you meeting Ches?”
I dropped him off on Seacoast Drive. Ches was leaning against his van waiting for us. I smiled and waved but stayed in the car. Things were still a little tense between me and Sebastian’s best friend: I didn’t want to push anything.
“I’ll see you later, baby,” said Sebastian kissing me hard.
I kissed him back and felt the now familiar electricity surge through me. I pushed Sebastian away and tried to calm my pulse rate.
“Fuck!” he breathed, closing his eyes. “I just can’t get enough of you, Caro.”
I smiled and shook my head to clear it.
“Go, before Ches drives off in disgust. I’ll text you later.”
He kissed me quickly and leapt out of the car, a huge grin on his face.
“And charge up your cellphone!” I called after him.
He sketched a wave and jogged over to Ches.
I stopped by a convenience store and picked up half a dozen copies of City Beat. As soon as I turned to my article I could see why Ches had acted a little weird. As well as six pictures of different events from the Base’s fun day, there was a half-page photograph of me – with Bill’s grinning face, his arms wrapped around my waist, and kissing my cheek. Shit!
That must have been one of the pictures Ches took when he was messing around with my camera. No wonder he was acting weird: he damn well should! Worse still, the way the photo was captioned made it look like Bill was my husband: ‘The author, wife of Lieutenant Commander David Wilson’. Double shit!
Carl had known damn well that David hadn’t been at the fun day. Was it a mistake, or was this his way at getting back at me for refusing to go for a drink with him?
Jeez, I was getting paranoid. I was sure it was just an honest mistake; probably the sub-editor wrote the caption – nothing to do with Carl at all.
But an ominous feeling chilled me. I was about to leave David and, looking at this photograph, people would assume I was having an affair with Bill. But… just maybe I could work this to my advantage – it would certainly deflect attention from Sebastian. Probably too well.
I drove home chewing on the inside of my mouth, deep in thought. I’d do one more check of the house to make sure there was nothing else I wanted and then I’d go find David at the hospital. That was the plan. It seemed callous to just leave a note although a large part of me would have preferred it. Come to think of it, maybe David would prefer that, too.
But when I got home, I was out of choices: David’s car was parked in the driveway.
I sat in my car and took several deep breaths to calm myself. It didn’t help in the slightest – my heart was still slamming against my ribs.
Pull yourself together, Venzi. You can do this.
My legs were shaking as I got out of the car. I dropped my key twice before I managed to open the front door.
David was sitting at the kitchen table as I walked in, his face tight with anger… and a copy of City Beat laid out in front of him.