The Closer. Rhonda Nelson

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СКАЧАТЬ “That’s a shame. I think you could have given Lane Johnson another run for his money.”

      She did, too. Lane Johnson was a cocky, loudmouthed blowhard with more luck than skill and a sickening following of track whores—not to be confused with crack whores, though they could be easily mistaken for those as well—who stroked his giant ego, among other things, Jess thought with a shiver of disgust. They contributed to his misguided perception that he was, first, God’s gift to women, and second, almost on par with Dale Earnhardt Jr. behind the wheel.

      He was neither.

      Gallingly, while she’d taken plenty of heat for being a “woman driver” when she’d first started racing, she’d quickly won the respect of the majority of her fellow drivers. There were always going to be a few with the old-school boys’ club mentality—she’d be foolish to think otherwise—but of them, Lane was definitely the loudest. She’d thought beating him would shut him up, but instead he’d upped the trash talking and told everyone that he was going to “put her in her place” the next time they shared asphalt.

      That should have been this weekend, but she hadn’t been able to get either of her siblings to accompany the damn bra, so now it was going to look as though he’d scared her away.

      As if.

      It made her blood boil.

      Jess had always been proud of her Rossi heritage and took a keen sense of pleasure from being a part of the family business. She was a fourth-generation jeweler and thanks to inherent talent and creativity, the Rossi name was synonymous with excellence. Unfortunately, with the exception of her father, she was the last of the family with any interest in continuing the traditional trade. Her younger brother, Sean, played guitar for a popular country-music band and traveled all the time, and her even younger sister, Bethany, was a professional student, happy with higher education and her job at the Gap. Neither of them were likely to change their minds.

      Which just left her.

      To complicate matters, her father had developed agoraphobia after the death of her mother. It had begun gradually. At first, he simply refused to travel. He’d said that his wife had always been his companion and he couldn’t face going without her. Because her parents had genuinely been soul mates, Jess had understood and hadn’t pushed him, assuming that it would only be temporary, that, in time, he’d be able to move forward.

      She couldn’t have anticipated how wrong she’d be.

      Citing the need to “be closer to work,” the second her new home, a tree house, was finished, her father had sold the family house in the country and finished an apartment above the store. Initially, Jess had thought this would be a good idea. The house was still a painful reminder of her mother, being in town would keep him from being lonely, etcetera. But it was when the apartment was complete that she really began to notice a difference.

      Frank Rossi loved Shadow’s Gap and the town square, where their business had stood for the past hundred years. He routinely ate at the diner next door and visited the other business owners around their little block. He’d played chess at the five-and-dime and shopped for all his clothes at Billy Walter’s, an upscale men’s store. He not only knew every proprietor, he knew their families, as well. He’d been social.

      But shortly after moving into the apartment above the store, he’d started manufacturing reasons not to go out. He’d have the diner deliver his meals and he stopped visiting the other stores. He’d stand at the front door and look out, but when Jess had casually suggested that he go see if Billy had any new ties in stock, he’d shake his head and retreat to the backroom.

      She’d begun to seriously worry at that point, but she hadn’t realized how dire the situation had become until she’d discovered that Paula, one of their part-time workers, had been doing his grocery shopping for him. She’d also gone to the post office for him, picked up his prescriptions and generally did anything that would require a trip outside the shop.

      At that point, Jess had confronted her father and had tried to get him to talk to a therapist, but her concern had been met with an uncharacteristic angry outburst and an order to mind her own business. He was fine, he insisted, though it was obvious that he wasn’t, that he’d become a prisoner in his own space. He’d started spending an inordinate amount of time on the internet, his only window to the outside world.

      It was then that Jess had started traveling for him—it would be good for her, he’d said—and, while most of the people her father had done business with over the years didn’t think too much about the fact that he’d stopped doing the legwork, there were a few who did find it odd. One of those, a representative of the Montwheeler Diamond Company, made an unannounced visit to the store to share the news that Rossi’s had made the final cut for the Clandestine design. When the man had asked her father to go out to celebrate and her father had declined, it was then that the older Rossi had become labeled a “recluse.”

      Interestingly enough, it was the “recluse” part that would seal his ultimate nomination for the Clandestine bra. Everyone assumed that her dad had retreated so far into his work that the outside world had become a distraction he couldn’t afford and wouldn’t indulge. It had given him a certain mystique that the press had instantly loved and capitalized on.

      Their web hits had tripled and orders were pouring in faster than they could fill them. Even her own signature line, If It Crawls, featuring bejeweled insects and bugs, had seen a significant bump in sales.

      There was no doubt that the bra, much as it pained her to admit it, was already netting the results her father had expected. And it hadn’t even had The Big Reveal yet. Once it was covering the breasts of one of the world’s sexiest supermodels, the buzz would really get going. And that was good for business.

      In today’s lagging economy, there wasn’t a single company that wasn’t affected in some way, theirs included. High-end jewelry was a luxury item and when money got as tight as it was now, fewer and fewer people had the ready cash to splurge on something like fine jewelry. They’d made good investments and her father had always been a big believer in gold, but they’d certainly had to tap into their reserves over the past couple years.

      The Clandestine bra would change that.

      And really, when one considered what was to gain, she really didn’t have any business being put out over missing a race, one that she only wanted to run in order to prove a point.

      With a quick glance at the clock, Jess sighed and closed up her garage, then made the quick walk through the woods to her place. She’d already packed, but still needed to shower and change. The security agent hired by Montwheeler was set to arrive at the shop at three to collect both her and the bra, and she’d promised her father she wouldn’t be late.

      If she intended to keep that promise, she’d better get a move on. She mounted the steps to her tree house—an eleven-hundred-square-foot architectural wonder of reclaimed wood and leaded glass—and leaped lightly over her cat, Pita (short for pain in the ass), who liked to lie on the next-to-last step, solely in order to better trip someone, Jess believed. Shorty had promised to come out and feed her while she was gone.

      Thirty minutes later, she secured the house and lugged her bag to the car. Because she imagined the security agent was going to be either short on conversation or too long-winded to endure, she’d included her iPod and an eReader. For whatever reason, when she tried to picture the man, her warped imagination kept conjuring images of Kevin James from Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Why? Who knew, but it made her snicker every time all the same.

      With a shake of her head and another glance СКАЧАТЬ