Carina had said she was going for a bath before Ivy started on the dishes. Rosie must have used that time to glam herself up, using every makeup brush in the pack from the looks of the layer of spackle on her face.
‘You want to get laid,’ Ivy exhaled. ‘I suppose that means you don’t have a fella?’
‘I have a few,’ Rosie laughed. ‘But as it happens, I’ve got a guy in LA, and he wants to see me tonight. I can’t pass that up, can I? Get changed and you can come out with us.’
‘I don’t want to go out,’ Ivy said, she still hadn’t told the other women about why she was here or what Dax was doing in the city that kept him away from their supposed vacation. ‘I want to stay here.’
‘Is Dax coming back tonight?’ Rosie asked, strutting over to the fridge.
She pulled out a bottle of wine and proceeded to pour herself a full tumbler of the liquid, she didn’t even look for the wine glasses that Ivy knew were there. But when you came from a background of having nothing, you drank out of whatever presented itself.
‘I don’t know, maybe.’
‘Call him, he can meet us at the club. I bet he’s a guy who likes to have a good time.’
Rosie gulped down the liquid then poured another glass, so Ivy went over to take the bottle away and put it back in the fridge. The only Dax she had seen in a club was one working security, he wasn’t the type to dance surrounded by others, or the type to get drunk out of his wits. She imagined that from his experiences with Trystan he was used to finding a suitable observation post and watching everyone else go wild rather than going wild himself.
‘Don’t get drunk,’ Ivy said to Rosie but they’d already had wine at dinner, so Rosie was on her way to tipsy.
‘Why not? Come on, it’s cheaper to drink here than the fortune they charge you in the clubs.’
Rosie tried to move Ivy aside, but she kept herself in front of the refrigerator. ‘I thought you said you had a guy, he’ll be paying for your drinks, won’t he?’
‘I guess,’ Rosie snorted. ‘He can afford it, he’s stinking rich.’
A guy with that amount of money would probably want his woman to conduct herself with a bit of class. A woman that he was serious about anyway. If he was just looking for a good time then Rosie was top of the bill, she could make a party come to life anywhere.
‘I don’t think that it’s a good idea to go into the city,’ she said, glancing at the clock. ‘It’s already almost ten, if the guy has to come and pick you up and then drive back out there then it will be after midnight by the time you get there. How much fun can you have at that time?’
‘Uh, loads!’ Rosie declared. ‘Anyway, he’s already on his way…’
‘What?’ she asked, snatching her sister’s slender wrist. ‘You invited a random guy out here to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night?’
She wasn’t sure if she should be more concerned about how Dax would react to that news or about this random man’s safety. If he drove up here expecting to pick up a date and was descended upon by Stark security he might not get out in one piece.
‘You’ve gotta test how eager they are,’ Rosie grinned. ‘If he’s willing to drive all the way out here to pick me up then he’s definitely interested.’
‘You have to call him back and tell him not to come here. No one is allowed out here. It’s not our house, we can’t invite other people to—‘
‘Dax won’t mind, he’s cool.’
Rosie and Dax had yet to have a conversation. Once again Rosie was making up rules to suit her needs. ‘I’m telling you that it’s not cool. Phone him, Rosie, I mean it. Did you think about consulting me or Carina? We don’t want a guy invading our space. Call him and tell him not to come or you’ll be invited to leave too.’
‘Uh, fine,’ Rosie tsked, wandering away from her sister. ‘You’re such a drag.’
‘I’m sorry, Rosie, but you can’t just invite a party here and expect the rest of us to deal.’
‘I’ll call him, but you’ve got to promise we’ll crank up the atmosphere here. Do you promise we’ll have our own party?’
‘I have to call Dax, but after that we can—‘
Rosie whooped. ‘Let’s have some fun! We’ll have some wine and play some music, does this place have a sound system?’
There was a sound system in the living room with state of the art speakers in every room and outside too, which could be individually controlled. But Ivy wasn’t going to tell her sister that.
‘I can’t believe that you’ve only been here a couple of days and you’re bored already.’
This was the recurring theme of her relationship with her sister who would much rather party than do most other things like have a civilised conversation or hold down a job. Though Ivy had lost her share of jobs too, maybe it was more than just bad luck, and somehow it was engrained in their DNA that they would get themselves into frequent trouble.
‘We’re in California! LA is full of hot guys loaded with cash! We’re wasting opportunities locking ourselves up out here. We could be in nightclubs, meeting people. Maybe we’d be discovered!’ Rosie gasped and began to sashay around the room. ‘Who would turn down a chance to be rich and famous?’
Ivy didn’t want to be the one to tell her sister that at the age of thirty-one she was a little too old to be discovered. Or more accurately that Rosie should be a little too old to fall for that line.
While Rosie amused herself by singing a dance tune and dancing around the dining table, Ivy finished cleaning up the kitchen. ‘Go and phone him,’ Ivy instructed.
Rosie didn’t miss a word of her song, she twirled her way out of the kitchen to the living room and Ivy was pleased to get peace, though she could still hear Rosie’s singing from the other room.
She was about to go upstairs and phone Dax when Carina came into the kitchen, dressed but still flushed from the heat of the bathroom.
‘She’s in a good mood,’ Carina said, wearing a grin. ‘Is she always so happy?’
‘Rosie is the queen of finding her happiness.’
‘I’m always impressed by people who manage to remain optimistic through their lives. We all have difficult times, but those don’t seem to have affected Rosie.’
It was an admirable quality, Rosie wouldn’t let anyone else alter her mood. Carina retrieved the wine from the fridge and held it up in an offering to Ivy, who shook her head. ‘Please carry on and enjoy it, I’m not much of a drinker.’
‘You’re teetotal?’ Carina asked, pouring wine into a wine glass that she obtained from the top shelf. ‘Forgive me for asking, but did you have a problem?’
‘With alcohol? No,’ Ivy said. Carina can’t have noticed the glass of wine she’d had at dinner. ‘I just… I have to call Dax before I go to bed, and I’d rather be clearheaded to do it.’
‘He doesn’t like you drinking? Does he direct a lot of your behaviour?’
‘You’re asking if he’s controlling?’ she asked, pouring herself a tall glass of orange juice then going outside to sit on the deck with Carina following just behind her.
Ivy put her glass on the glass-top table between two wicker chairs and her feet up on the matching footstool. Carina seated herself in the other chair and held her glass close to her chest in both hands.
‘I am curious about your relationship, you’re very close and both very secretive.’
‘Dax is a straightforward guy. His barriers are just higher with you because… he doesn’t want to get invested.’
‘Because I abandoned him once, he thinks that I’ll do it again. I can understand that. It’s difficult to accept your son rejecting you. He holes up in your bedroom and avoids me.’
Ivy wasn’t sure what Carina wanted from her or from Dax. She complained about Dax’s behaviour but made no excuses for her own.
‘You know, you haven’t made your intentions clear, and until you are honest with us, you’re unlikely to get any respect from us.’
‘Us? If I don’t have your respect, then I won’t have Dax’s?’
‘I think that I can be an ally, but I have to believe that you’ll be good for him. Soon, I’ll be leaving here, and I don’t trust you, so I won’t be arguing your case to Dax.’