Held A New Adult Romance(27)

"I understand," I say.

"You better," he says, and he's that guy again, the hard-ass from London.

I go back around my usual route. The drapes are closed, the doors are all shut and there's no sign of her. I guess she has the doctor with her. Psychiatrist. Maybe that was why she kept telling me she was crazy - trying to warn me off before she pounced. Maybe sex is some part of it. It's not like I'm a prize, not for a rich girl like her.

The gatehouse is quiet. Cory has left his laptop on the table. I feel like Pandora left alone with that goddamn box. What is she hiding? And why do I think it's any of my business at all? It's not my job to pry into her past. My job is to keep her safe, keep the paparazzi from sneaking up around the edges of the property in the hope of getting a candid shot of her in her bikini. I protect her privacy, don't I?

Cory comes back in, a comic book under his arm. Usually I get the running commentary on the state of his irritable bowels, but today he looks surprised to see me at all. "I didn't get fired," I say, in response to his raised eyebrow.

"Wow. He must really like you."

"How come?"

He flops onto the couch and grabs his laptop. "Most people so much as look at his daughter funny and they're done."

"Nothing happened."

"No, sure," he says, tapping something into the laptop. "Huh. That's new."

"What's new?"

"Camera," he says, and clicks something. It brings up a view of the house, one I haven't seen before, at least not through a lens. I realize with a start that I'm looking directly at Amber's swimming pool. Cory waggles an eyebrow suggestively. "You sure nothing happened, bro?"

"We're spying on her now?"

He shrugs. "Nobody's spying. The pool is alarmed anyway. You should have heard the noise when a raccoon fell it in one time. Woke the whole goddamn house."

There's movement on the camera. She's a thin grey figure, approaching the water. Her head turns this way and that, and then she bends to sit on the edge of the water. I see the tiny flame as she lights up. I'm shocked by how uncomfortable it makes me feel, seeing her like this.

"Turn it off," I say.

Cory gives me a sidelong look.

"This isn't right. We shouldn't be creeping on a girl like this. Especially not in her own home."

"Creeping? Who's creeping? We're just making sure she doesn't drown herself or whatever."

I uncurl my fingers. I hadn't even noticed I was making fists. What the hell is wrong with me? She's a rich kid. I shouldn't even feel sorry for her. My Aunt Liliana went crazy and nobody even noticed until one Thanksgiving she picked up a paper napkin and started eating it. No expensive doctors and cameras for Aunt Lili - she just kept going, feeding the kids, washing the dishes, weeding the drive - then that one day we looked in her eyes and realized she wasn't in there anymore. She'd checked out long ago. She didn't get to go nuts the way Amber did. She didn't have staff to bring her meals and pick up her clothes when she dumped them on the floor. Even when we finally persuaded her worthless husband that she wasn't doing it to piss him off, there wasn't the money to cover the medication she needed.

Then you have someone like Amber, who has some Ivy League doctor come running every time her father catches her in the act of that eternal rich-girl pastime - Trying To Piss Off Daddy.

When it's time to do my round again I'm in good shape. I have her cigarettes in my pocket and a belly full of righteous indignation. And she's pissed too. I can tell even before I see her face; her spine is stiff and her bare feet are swinging back and forth in the water, like she's an angry little kid.

She turns to look at me and there are unfamiliar dents at the sides of her nostrils, a V pulled tight between her brows. "Where have you been?"

"Working."

"I was waiting."

"I can see that."

She exhales. For a moment I feel like tossing the cigarettes into the pool. I've never seen her quite like this before.

"You'll be pleased to know I didn't get fired," I say.

"I told him not to fire you."

"Thanks. I'll write you a letter of recommendation to the goddamn union  ."

The little V scrunches deeper and I realize that although I'm only two years older than her, I may as well be twenty in terms of real life. So she had some kind of unhappy love affair - didn't we all? It's no excuse for this bullshit. She has no idea what life is like for ordinary people. "Fuck you," she says, so mean that it sends a jolt right through me. She pulls her legs up out of the water and for an instant before she turns to me I see that her heels are red and raw from where she's been kicking them against the side of the pool.