The Drowning Girls by Paula Treick Deboard Read Free Book Online

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    “Bottom line, McGinnis? Keep them happy.”
    It hadn’t seemed like a difficult task. How could people live here and not be happy? They had minimansions with up to six garages, golf and yoga and walking trails and all the amenities of a resort, year-round. There was enough room to spread out, to really breathe. Liz and Danielle and I had been crawling on top of each other like cockroaches in that crappy rental, sharing a single bath and a kitchen so narrow I could stand in the middle and touch the walls on either side. Here we had all the room we needed, plus some to spare.
    I was surprised how much convincing it had taken to get Liz on board, when I’d jumped in feetfirst.
    “Are we raiding an orphanage or something?” she had asked, counting the upstairs bedrooms.
    “We could make one into a home gym,” I said.
    “There’s a gym in the clubhouse. Plus golf, tennis...”
    “Okay, a sewing room, a music room. Whatever you want.”
    Liz laughed. “Just what every girl in the 1800s wants,” she’d murmured, but this didn’t deter me.
    It was a chance at the good life. So what if we didn’t need so many bedrooms, if the job requirement was to kiss a few asses here and there?
    So when Kelsey Jorgensen came into my office unannounced, when she plopped into my chair and pouted, I only said, “You’ve come to the right place, then. What can I do for you?”
    She yawned in response, stretching her limbs like a cat sunning itself on the pavement. I tried not to look directly at her body, focusing instead on the tips of her fingers, the pink wink of her toes. I heard it already then, that little warning bell in the back of my mind, but I pushed it to the side.
    “What you can do,” she said, dragging out the syllables, “is keep me from being so bored.”
    * * *
    Most days, she wandered through the clubhouse with her limbs on display in tiny dresses that fluttered in the air-conditioning, or halter tops and shorts that ended at her crotch. “I just wanted to say hello,” she would say, lingering in my doorway. “So, hello, Mr. McGinnis.” In her mouth a simple greeting sounded full of suggestion.
    At first, for all of five minutes, it was entertaining. I figured it was the charm she turned on every man, equally—neighbors and groundskeepers, the college kid who maintained the play area, even, yes, the thirty-seven-year-old community relations specialist. That first day I figured, where’s the harm? This was how most of the women at The Palms acted around me, and playing along seemed to be required by the job. Deanna Sievert couldn’t talk without flirting, and Janet Neimeyer couldn’t keep her hands off me—there was always a collar to be straightened or an invisible crumb to be picked from my chin.
    But I loved Liz, and I wasn’t looking.
    Sure, it was flattering. It made me feel young again, like the Phil I’d been in my twenties, after my parents died and my brother, Zeke, and I pooled their assets and moved to Corfu, where we opened a bar that catered to college kids on holiday and gap years. There had always been a girl—a German tourist, or Swedish or Czech—who didn’t leave at closing time, who hinted that she needed a place to stay before her boat left the next morning. When I shook her awake, she would snuggle closer and say she could catch the next one, the next time. But I’d come to California, in part, to leave that Phil behind. I’d had too many fuzzy mornings when I cleared the condensation in the mirror and didn’t like what I saw. I wanted more out of life than a rented room, a bank account that emptied month to month, women who moved out, moved on.
    When I met Liz, I knew she was the real deal—funny and sexy and so damned smart, someone who had met life on its terms. For the first time, I was the one in pursuit; she had too much riding on her life to hang around waiting for my call. She’d been the one who was hesitant to commit, who introduced me, for months, as a