Page 53 of Her Rival

By eight she'd agreed to drive herself back to Brynn's. Agreed to let me pick her up at seven. Agreed to a quiet conversation with Brynn that would tell Brynn only that there was an old family situation and Dani was handling it and didn't want to talk about it yet, which Brynn would respect, and which Brynn would also clock, but which Brynn had told her over an onion two nights ago she wouldn't push on.

By eight thirty she was in the SUV in my driveway, ready to leave.

I stood next to the open driver's door. I hadn't yet said the thing I knew I had to say.

"Hartley."

"Yes."

"Last night. The thing I called about."

"Yes."

"I have a man on your father from this morning forward. He won't approach. He won't be seen. He'll report to me twice a day until your father leaves the city. I will not let your father near you. I'm telling you this now because you asked me to, and because I'm not going to do anything in this from here forward that you haven't been told about."

She looked at me from the driver's seat. She held it.

"Okay," she said.

"You're not angry."

"I'm not angry."

"You're allowed to be."

"I know. I'm not. Not at you. I have other places to put it."

"Okay."

"Jett."

"Yeah."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome, Hartley."

She closed the door. She drove away.

I stood in the driveway in the morning sun and watched the SUV go down the canyon road, and I thought about a date downtown at seven and a man on her father by noon and a guest room down the hall with a coffee cup on the nightstand, and I thought about the very small clean thing I'd managed to do the night before. And the fact that the very small clean thing was, possibly, the most important thing I'd ever done in this city.

I went back inside.

I sat at the island with my own second cup.

I thought about what I was going to wear at seven.

I had not, in eight years of dating in this city, given a single thought to what I was going to wear at seven for anything other than a media obligation.

I gave it twenty minutes.

I figured I'd earned twenty minutes.

15

DANI

The doorman at Brynn's building rang up at six fifty-seven.