She winked at me. “Like many gorgeous things in LA, this home’s had a little work.”
I thanked her again for making me feel at home, and then walked her out. After my exciting journey, I was feeling the after-effects of the cucumber gin and tonics from the night before.
As soon as I was alone, I sent Dalton a cute photo of myself nearly na**d and about to get into his soaker tub overlooking the valley. The photo was cropped, showing me only from the shoulders up.
He messaged me back immediately, demanding to see “the rest of the photo.”
Me: I’m feeling shy now, so I guess you’ll have to hurry home soon.
Dalton: Did you like Jessica? She’s hilarious, right?
Me: She’s very nice. I guess we both have good neighbors.
Dalton: Send me a picture of your sweet peaches.
Me: You first.
A moment later, I received a photo of a nipple, surrounded by a few short, dark hairs. Honestly, I was relieved it wasn’t a photo of his wang. His was truly gorgeous, but, like food, you need to know how to photograph that stuff so it looks appealing.
I returned his message with a shot of my cle**age, my br**sts cupped by the red satin of my bra.
Dalton: No wonder you’re a model. I would buy exactly one million of those bras.
I blushed, pressing my hand to my cheek. Who knew you could get flustered and embarrassed like that, even when nobody was around to see it?
We exchanged a few more messages about the weather, and then he had to get back to filming.
I climbed into the soaker tub and had the hottest and greatest bath of my adult life.
After, I dried off with the fluffiest, softest towel I’d ever touched. The experience was not unlike being gently patted dry by a hundred fluffy white bunnies. In other words, in case you’re not picking up on my subtext here, a girl could get used to this kind of luxury.
The food situation was equally appealing. Dalton had arranged for his housekeeper to stock the kitchen with “a few simple meals” for me. Apparently to Dalton and the housekeeper, this meant a refrigerator jammed full of beautiful cheeses, salads, a half-dozen steaks, desserts, and a basket full of fruit so exotic, I didn’t know the names of half of them.
I made myself dinner in the palatial kitchen, with Shayla on speakerphone the whole time, so I didn’t feel lonely.
As I described the food and the house itself, she played along and described our kitchen back in Beaverdale, trying to put a positive spin on everything.
“I just found at least one third of a cucumber,” she cooed. “It’s been out on the counter all night since the party, but I think if I cut off the wrinkled end, I could use the crumbled potato chips from the bottom of this bowl and make some fancy hoover-doovers.”
(Hoover-doovers is our term for hors d’oeuvres. I know, pretty cute, right? Try not to barf in your mouth over our cuteness.)
“Girl, we are living it up!”
“Tell me something,” she said. “When you turn the kitchen tap off, does it stop right away?”
Giggling, I tested the tap. “Oh my god. The stream stops immediately. No dribbling. And there’s no water leaking out of the base.”
“I’m so jealous,” she moaned. “Okay, finish up dinner so we can go snooping around.”
“I can’t violate Dalton’s space.”
“Sure you can. It’s easy. Just think about where you would hide your good stuff if you lived there.” She gasped. “What if he asks you to move in with him? I can’t pay the rent here by myself.”
“Hang on. Don’t jump on the train to Crazy Town yet. I’ve known the guy two weeks.”
“I should have been nicer to him so he would be generous to his girlfriend’s bestie. I should have screamed when he tried to scare me with his vampire teeth. Shit! Shitting mothershit!”
“Calm down. One shit at a time, Shay.”
“Okay.” She sniffed. “I’m totally not crying.”
“Change is scary.”
“I love you, P.”
“I love you more.”
She sniffed again.
“Time for a little light snooping,” I said.
I picked up the phone, took it off speakerphone to conserve battery, and started wandering around the house, giving her the tour.
I opened a door to what I expected was a closet, but discovered a set of stairs going down. Here I thought I was on the bottom floor, but apparently the house had a basement.
CHAPTER 26
I climbed down the narrow stairs, lights flicking on overhead on their own. “Must be motion sensors,” I said.
“The house is aliiiiiive,” she joked.
“I’m opening a door.”
“Probably a wine cellar.”
Lights flicked on overhead automatically. “You’re not wrong!”
“How’s the spider situation?”
“I’m not screaming, am I?”
“How many bottles of wine?”
I counted the number of bottles in the row, and then the column. “At least four hundred, plus there’s—OHMYGOD.”
“What?”
I took a closer look at the framed art along the cool, cement wall. The pictures were Polaroid photos, from the sixties and seventies by the look of the hairstyles and clothes. The same woman was in all the photos, usually naked. She was voluptuous, with long, heavy br**sts falling to either side of a softly protruding stomach. Her blond hair was teased up, and in the seventies-era photos, she wore thick black eyeliner and lurid blue eyeshadow.
I recognized the view in the outdoor photos, as well as the placement of the pool. These photos had been taken in and around the house I stood in. The woman was kissing or hugging about five different men, plus one woman, in the dozen framed pictures.
Shayla howled in frustration for me to tell her what was going on, so I took some pictures with my phone and sent them to her.
“Holy f**k, that chick looks like you,” she said.
“No way.” I giggled. “Her bush is five times bigger than mine.”
She snorted. “Two birds could live in that bush and never meet.”
“Olden days look so fun.” I sighed. “This must be exactly what Dalton’s neighbor Jessica was teasing me about finding. Apparently this house was where the wife and her lovers lived.”
“If you tell her you know, then she’ll know you snooped.”
“This isn’t snooping.” The thick yellow envelope waiting on the coffee table upstairs popped into my mind.
Shayla yawned audibly, then said, “My ear’s hot, which means this phone call is giving me a brain tumor. Gotta go, toots.”