CHAPTER NINETEEN

She'd awoken in the dark, disoriented. Momentarily, she forgot where she was. She fumbled for a light switch and almost tumbled out of bed in her desperation to get out of the dark. It was then that it occurred to her that she was expected to have dinner with the Curtis family, and that somebody had mentioned that Joe was likely to return there.

 

"Come on," Regan said. "Let's get you dressed."

 

"Oh, you don't have to--I'll just wear what I was wearing before."

 

"You'll find that a bit uncomfortable, considering those clothes are churning around in the washing machine as we speak," she said. "Come on. I bet you haven't changed for days and I know you don't have a change of clothes in that tiny little handbag of yours."

 

"No makeup, either," Ruby admitted in a small voice. "Well, just some powder and lip gloss." She'd been trying to do the best she could with it for a few days, praying nobody--least of all Joe--would notice the dark circles under her eyes, the unplucked eyebrows, and imperfect complexion--half greasy, half-ashen. Thank God she had a spare comb in there too because after so much time on the bike, trying to tame her hair would have been like taking a machete through the Amazon jungle.

 

"Ooh, fun! You know, I went to cosmetology school for like a minute. Show me the inside of your wrist." Bewildered and blinking, Ruby turned her wrist over, and Regan reached out her own hand. "Your skin is so..."

 

"Weird?" asked Ruby. She'd never known anyone, all through school, who had the same strange olive tone as she did--her father's fairness and her mother's darkness had combined to create something entirely different. Kyle, of course, had it too, and he used to joke that they were some kind of new species.

 

"Like Kyle's," laughed Regan. “We’ve got nothing even close. But I think you're definitely closer to my skin tone than Holly's. Wait here." She flew into the bathroom and came back with a train case full of cosmetics, dumped it down on the spare bed, and clicked it open. "Might be a little off, but I'll do my best. Besides," she added with a mischievous little gleam in her eye, "it's not like there's anybody special coming. Anybody who you're trying to impress," she added softly. She bent down and whispered in her ear. "He likes girls in leather pants."

 

"Regan!" Ruby exclaimed, rising to her feet. "I can't tell whether you think I have a thing for Joe, or whether you do."

 

Regan giggled. "I know, I know, I'm sorry! I'm terrible. But it's all in fun, I swear. Joe and I flirt all the time, but that's just who we are. He really is like my brother.”

 

“It wasn’t always that way, was it?” Ruby asked.

 

Regan sighed. “No,” she admitted. “When he came to live with us, I was fourteen. He was older, straight-up hot and a certifiable bad boy, and of course I was crazy about him. And even weirder, he was nice to me--which shocked me, because he was an absolute ass to Dad and Holly. He gave me cigarettes and rides on his bike--when Dad wasn't looking of course, because Dad’s a total hypocrite. And my girlfriends sometimes made excuses to come over here just to see him. Some of them still hang around the bar when he's there. I hate it. I mean, it's not like I'm jealous, but I just... don't want to share."

 

"You're a fun hostess, aren't you?" joked Ruby.

 

Regan laughed and nodded, "I try."

 

"Anyway, for the record, I’m not interested in Joe. I thought--” she swallowed. “Regan, this is going to sound weird, but..." The teen looked attentive. "I think you should be really careful around Joe. I know you think you know him really well. But...but people change. When they see stuff they shouldn't see, bad stuff...they change. Sometimes they can't help it. But I found out something the other day that convinced me that he's not what he seems."

 

"What?"

 

Ruby knew this was beyond what Regan needed to know about Joe, Kyle, or about what was going on with the Jockeys. She knew there was a reason Colt had wanted to shield her from it for so long, and he hadn't been wrong. "Nothing important. I just wish I'd known earlier not to trust so easily. No matter what they tell you. Or what they promise you." She must have sounded more intense than she meant to, because Regan dabbed the last of the eyeliner and got up slowly.

 

"I doubt you'll have any pants that fit me," said Ruby.

 

"No, because you actually can wear women's clothes," sighed Regan. "Rather than stuff designed for ten-year-old boys." She brought out a ruffled white blouse with silver threads laced through it.

 

"Isn't that a little low-cut?" Ruby asked.

 

"Hey, if you've got the assets, show them off," said Regan. She pulled out a draped heather gray-cardigan, one cut low with a lot of extra fabric in front. "What do you think of this?"

 

Ruby smiled a little, remembering what Regan had said about Joe liking leather pants. "Don't you have anything a little edgy?"

 

She'd been wearing cardigans, button-downs, and ballet flats for as long as she could remember. Probably influenced by her mother, who had excellent taste but was more than a little conservative when it came to her wardrobe. Compared to the raw juiciness of the girls Joe was used to, Ruby must have had all the appeal of dry toast. All naive and innocent, it was no surprise he thought she’d be easy to lie to. Her face burned again.

 

"My Dad doesn't let me do edgy."

 

"He lets Morgan do edgy."

 

Regan made an exasperated noise. "He lets Morgan do everything." She grinned almost evilly. "Except the one thing she really wants."

 

"What's that?"

 

"Watch her when Joe walks into the room. You'll know." She paused then added, "Mostly by the way my dad is sending out death rays from his eyeballs."

 

"Your dad is a strange man, isn't he? He's so conservative when it comes to his daughters. He's like a tax accountant trapped in a biker's body."

 

"Yeah. Before he had me was a different story, though. You can't see it under all the whiskers, but once he actually got part of his ear chewed off in a bar. He never found it again."

 

"The bar, or the ear?"

 

"Hmm," she said, her voice muffled from within the closet, having been distracted, Ruby reasoned, by the search for something edgy. "I don't--wait." She snapped her fingers and disappeared over into the spare room. She returned with a pair of black leather pants that looked tantalizingly close to Ruby's size. "Here's something that used to be my mom's. Wish I had her body. Instead I got my grandma's." She laid them in Ruby's lap. "Well?"

 

Ruby got up and held them up to her body. She had to admit, the material was as supple as the seat of Joe's motorcycle when she slung her legs over it, and they were teasingly close to being her size. She could tell without even checking the tag. But she'd also never worn leather pants before in her life.

 

"Joe does like you, though." Regan lowered her eyes and fiddled with the cap of a lip gloss. Ruby was kind of charmed by the way Regan could talk her ear off, then suddenly get all sweet and shy. "He has two ways of looking at women. The first one is all about the trappings. And it’s not just looks. It’s money; it’s power. That's not you."

 

"Thanks."

 

"No, listen. As gorgeous as he is, he can use girls." Ruby opened her mouth. "He doesn't like to, but sometimes he does. And I don't blame him. When you come from nothing, you've got to use every trick at your disposal." Regan was staring off into space. Ruby struggled with the zipper on the pants, bending down to take it between her teeth when Regan wasn't looking. "And the other way?" She asked through a mouthful of metal. Success. She zipped herself in, feeling instantly taller, sleeker, and sexier. And utterly unlike herself.

 

"The other way is when he wants to know you. Then he looks past. Right into the heart." She looked at the floor, then raised her eyes, but it wasn't Regan that Ruby was seeing all of a sudden. It was Joe, looking at her the same way, with that earnest and intelligent confusion, as if he wanted to unwrap her and taste her all in one bite.

 

"When I first met him, I would have killed for him to look at me like that." Regan laughed a little bit and dipped some more powder on the puff. She frowned as she ran it lightly over Ruby's eyelids, then frowned as Ruby started coughing. "Ah, but it's okay. Wasn't meant to be." She'd gone over the same spot three times, and the dust was beginning to crowd Ruby's sinuses. It was obvious that Regan, when her mind was somewhere else, tended toward distraction. But Ruby suspected it wasn't Joe to whom the teenager's thoughts had wandered. "Oops. Powder was lesson two, and I never made it past lesson one."

 

"Dare I ask what lesson one was?"

 

"Eyeliner," said Regan, her face buried in her kit. "Gosh, I'm jealous of your eyes. They're, like, insane. They're not green, they're not gray, they're not hazel...they're like...grazel."

 

"Grazel," repeated Ruby. "I like that."

 

"Kyle had the same ones," Regan said softly. "And--" She seemed to swallow her words.

 

"What?"

 

"Never mind." Regan's face had gone a little red under her makeup, and she quickly cast her eyes back down to her work, dipping the brush into the powder and tapping it almost fiercely on the side of the container.

 

"I guess you're right," she sighed. "None of us are quite what we seem."