“I just wanted to find out where you are,” I said, “so I can drive to that location and then slowly dismember you, something I obviously should have done the day we met.”
“Same old Suze,” Paul said fondly. “How long has it been, anyway, six years? Almost that. I don’t think I’ve heard from you since the night of our high-school graduation, when your stepbrother Brad got so incredibly drunk on Goldschl?ger that he hurled all over Kelly Prescott’s Louboutins. Ah, memories.”
“He wasn’t the only one who was drunk, if I recall,” I reminded him. “And that isn’t all that happened that night. You know what I’ve been doing since then, besides getting my counseling degree? Working out, so that when we meet again, I can—”
I launched into a highly anatomical description of just where, precisely, I intended to insert Paul’s head after I physically removed it from his body.
“Suze, Suze, Suze.” Paul feigned shock. “So much hostility. I find it hard to believe they allowed someone like you into a counseling training program. Have the people in charge there ever even met you?”
“If they met you, they’d be wondering the same thing I am: how a manipulative freak like you isn’t locked up in a maximum-security penitentiary.”
“What can I say, Simon? You’ve always brought out the romantic in me.”
“I think you’re confusing the word romantic with sociopathic sleazebag. And you’re lucky it was Debbie Mancuso and not Jesse who came along when you were pawing at me that night like an oversexed howler monkey, because if it had been, he’d—”
“—have given me another one of those trademarked beatings of his that I so richly deserve. Yes, yes, I know, Suze, I’ve heard all this before.”
Paul sighed. He and my boyfriend have never gotten along, mainly because Jesse had been an NCDP for a while and Paul—who, like me, was born with the so-called “gift” to communicate with those trapped in the spirit world—had been determined to keep him that way, mostly so that Paul could get into my pants.
Fortunately, he’d failed on both accounts.
“Could we move on, please?” Paul asked. “This is very entertaining, but I want to get to the part about how I now own your family home. You heard the news, right? Not about your house—I can tell by your less than graceful reaction that you only just found out about that. I mean about how Gramps finally croaked, and left me the family fortune?”
“Oh, no. Paul, I’m—”
I bit my lip. His grandfather had been cantankerous at times, but he’d also been the only person in Paul’s family—besides his little brother, Jack—who’d genuinely seemed to care about him. I wasn’t surprised to hear that he’d passed on, however. The old man had already been in pretty bad shape when I’d met him from “shifting” back and forth too often through time, a skill mediators possess, but are warned not to use. It’s considered hazardous to their health.
Still, it felt wrong to say I’m sorry for your loss to Paul, considering he was acting like the world’s biggest jackhole.
It didn’t end up mattering. Paul wanted something from me, but it wasn’t my condolences.
“Yeah, you’re talking to one of Los Angeles magazine’s most eligible bachelors,” he went on, oblivious. “Of course my parents aren’t too happy about it. They had the nerve to take me to court to contest the will, can you believe that?”
“Uh . . . yes?”
“Funny. But justice prevailed, and I’m now the president and CEO of Slater Industries. I’ve got a home on both coasts and a private jet to fly between them, but—as the magazine put it—no one special with whom to share them.” I could hear the mocking tone in his voice. “Interested in being that special someone, Suze?”
“I’ll pass, thanks,” I said coolly. “Especially since you can’t think of anything more creative to do with your new fortune than knock down other people’s houses. Which I don’t think you can even do legally. Mine’s nearly two hundred years old. It’s still got the original carved newel post on the staircase from when it was built in 1850. It has stained-glass windows. It’s a historic landmark.”
“Actually, it isn’t. Oh, it’s quaintly charming in its own way, I suppose, but nothing historic ever occurred there. Well, except for what happened between you and me,” he smirked, “and considering the way you’ve been avoiding me these past few years, I guess I’m not the only one who remembers that as being historically significant.”
“Nothing ever happened between us, Paul,” I said. He was only trying to get under my skin, the same way he’d tried to get under my bra at graduation. That’s how he operated, much like a chigger, or various other bloodsucking parasites. “Nothing good, anyway.”
“Ouch, Simon! You sure know how to hurt a guy. I distinctly recall one afternoon in my bedroom when you did not seem at all repulsed by my advances. Why, you even—”