“You do like girls, don’t you?” she asked.
Eli paused as he tried to remove a piece of tree bark. If she’d turned around, she would have seen how much he “liked” girls. “I do, yes,” he said.
“But just not me. Except you said you wanted to kiss me.”
“I don’t want to be Rodrigo or Clive or Thomas or Nigel. If we become more than just friends, I want you to see me, not just a body that’s been built by sweating in a gym.”
She ignored the last part of what he said. “So you have kept track of me to the point where you know the names of my exes. You didn’t just discard me because I quit writing letters.”
“No, I didn’t.” He was smiling. She’d managed to twist what he’d said to being about his never-ending . . . What? Obsession with her? “There, I think I got most of it out.”
Chelsea stood up and turned toward him. With her eyes on his, she pulled her shirt over her head, exposing her breasts, encased in a very pretty, very skimpy bra. “Eli,” she said, “trust me, I know who you are.”
She picked up her toiletries bag and went into the bathroom.
Eli stood still for a moment. As far as he could tell, he hadn’t won even one round with her.
When he heard the shower water running, he got his phone and stepped outside to call his father.
“Eli!” Frank said. “How are you doing? How’s Chelsea? Where are you?”
“Dad, I need you to do something for me.”
“Anything,” Frank said, then began to make notes while Eli told him all he knew.
“I don’t know what this guy is doing, but I’m pretty sure it’s illegal,” Eli said.
“Anybody who’d go through that much subterfuge of different houses and cars should be looked into. What I would like to know about is the woman Grace’s husband.”
“Me too. I thought I’d see what I can find out about him.”
“Can you use any of your government sources from there?”
“Yes,” Eli said. “I can key into most of them.”
When Eli stopped talking, Frank knew his son hadn’t called only about some guy’s shady business practices. “I talked to Jeff and he said you took Chelsea camping. Did you forget what happened when she was a kid?”
Eli couldn’t repress a laugh. “I carry the photo with me. It’s one of my favorites.” After their first campout, Eli had crawled out of his tent to what looked like a bear cub. Chelsea was on her stomach on a big branch, arms and legs hanging down. Eli had used Chelsea’s camera to take a picture before he ran to get her dad to get her down.
“I guess you had a reason for taking her camping a second time,” Frank said.
The question unleashed something in Eli. Since they’d met, he and Frank had been kindred souls. “Dad, you should have seen her when she showed up at my house in Edilean. She had on so much makeup I hardly recognized her. Her eyelids were nearly black and she had on clothes so tight they were like tourniquets.”
“Some men like that,” Frank said.
“I like my Chelsea better than who she was pretending to be.”
“So what did you do when you saw her?”
“Actually, I pretended to be Jeff.”
“Ah,” Frank said.
“Right. The truth is that it hurt that she didn’t recognize me.”
Frank was smiling, proud of what his son was saying. Like Eli, he’d kept track of Chelsea over the years. She’d been on three magazine covers before she dropped out of the fashion world. The string of boyfriends she’d had afterward had dismayed him, and he’d tried to get Eli to go to her. “She’s not ready to be rescued yet,” Eli had said, but he wouldn’t elaborate on his meaning.
“So you took her camping?” Frank asked.