Intimate Relations, Rebecca Forster [best ereader for manga .txt] 📗

appreciation for the hard earned dollar. That lesson was underscored after her boyfriend took a powder when she got pregnant. Amber even apologized for pressing her mother into buying her the shirt. The good news was that Amber was still wearing that T-shirt all these years later.

Now Cori was heading to Newport  for another girl's day out. Today her time would be spent with Beverly O'Brien. She slung one arm over the steering wheel, yawning as she inched along in traffic. Last night between the burrito/taco/enchilada combo, Cori told Lapinski about her task. While they waited for the flan, Thomas looked up the address Bev had provided, and his whistle said it all. He turned his phone her way, and Cori was impressed. When he dropped her back at Finn's, her partner was nowhere to be found. She wouldn't be sharing the news that Bev had made a very soft landing. When it was clear he wasn't coming home, Cori stayed awake a little while longer. At first she wondered if he'd gotten himself into some kind of trouble. Then she concluded the trouble he had found was probably not nefarious, but it was definitely needed. Cori spent another few minutes  trying to figure out how she felt about that. Before she could find the honest answer, she fell asleep. For the next five hours she slept like the dead. When she got up, she left a note giving Finn her itinerary ending with an ETA at the office. Now here she was, cooling her jets as a security guard examined her credentials.

"LAPD?" he said.

"That is correct," Cori answered. "I have an appointment with Beverly O'Brien. This is the address she gave me."

The guard, clean-cut and young, held up one finger, and stepped back into whatever shelter he had emerged from. The gate remained closed. Cori ran her fingers across the steering wheel to the beat of Jailhouse Rock. She hadn't made it past the jail birds singing before the gate opened. Cori drove onto a half-moon driveway that could park thirty cars on a good night. Since she seemed to be the only visitor, Cori parked smack-dab in front of the huge white house. It looked just as good as it had in Lapinski's picture.

 The main structure was two stories. Long, low appendages winged off either side. The building on the right she pegged as a four car garage despite the expert way the doors were camouflaged so as to not break the aesthetic of the architecture. She would love to see what was behind those doors, but the only way that would ever happen would be if she had a warrant. Even then, entry wouldn't be a slam dunk. Whoever owned this place might honor a warrant, but only after an army of lawyers tried to stop its execution.

Cori took her jacket out of the back of the car and put it on, noting the almost surreal quiet. She looked behind her. The gate guard had disappeared again, but Cori had no doubt that she was being watched. Not that it was necessary. First, she was a cop and trustworthy by default. Second, there were cameras everywhere. Third, she was too tired to do anything untoward nor did she have reason to—yet. Cori reached into the car for her purse and headed for the front door, admiring the landscaping as she went.

Giant palms softened the corners of the modern structure. Their leaves were as big as elephant ears. Ferns trailed delicate tendrils along rock walls. Their tips touched a patch of grass here and artfully mounded moss there. Cori appreciated the artistry. It would have been easy to go all fake rocks, a few plants, and a requisite waterfall. Or the designer could have taken a cue from the house and kept everything clean, giving the place no more personality than an operating room. All in all, it looked perfect from the outside. Then again a lot of rotten things kept their shiny skin far past the discard date, so Cori reserved her final opinion.

All the foliage worked to a higher purpose, making it seem that Cori was standing on a whole lot of land. Houses that fronted the water in Newport commanded stratospheric dollars, but those dollars didn't necessarily buy much terra firma. She couldn't wait to see how much sand sixty-three million bucks bought.

Cori walked out of the sun and into the shade of the entrance. It was as big as Amber's bedroom. The front door was a stunning one-of-a-kind piece of art, breathtaking if you were into that sort of thing. Cori was a tchotchke kind of girl herself. She preferred things that made her smile at a memory or fancy frames to hold pictures of the people she loved. She liked a little glitter, but she sure didn't want to spend every last cent on it. Although, given what she'd seen of this place, a six figure front door probably didn't mean much to the person who owned it.

Cori rang the bell and heard nothing. That was not unexpected given the size of the house.  She passed the time checking out the door. Cast of copper, it had aged to a stunning blue/green patina. The relief sculpture was of vines and outcroppings that reminded Cori of a fancy climbing wall. It stood ten feet tall, but up close she saw there was a break at the seven foot mark. Those seven feet made up the working door, and the break above was a keystone. Cori leaned closer. Under the vines, sitting on the outcroppings, were tiny people. Children...

Before she could determine if those children were fully clothed, the door swung open, and the sight of the brilliantly blue Pacific Ocean smacked her in the face. Hollywood couldn't have done it better. The sky was robin's egg blue and cloudless. It melted into a deep, deep navy at the horizon point. In the middle of the sea, the water turned cobalt blue before it frothed