Danielle Steel - One Day at a Time

“Do you want him to stay with me until you find someone else?”

“No,” Jane said firmly, “I need you to stay here.” I need you to, Coco heard for the ten millionth time in her life. Not would you please… could you… would you mind… please, please, pretty please. I need you to. Shit. This was yet another opportunity to say no. Coco opened her mouth to say the word and not a single sound came out. She glanced over at Sallie, who seemed to be staring at her in disbelief.

“Don't look at me like that,” Coco said to the dog.

“What? Who are you talking to?” Jane asked in a rush.

“Never mind. Why can't he stay with me?”

“He likes to be at home in his own bed,” Jane said firmly, as Coco rolled her eyes. She was a block away from her client's house and didn't want to be late, but something told her she was about to be. Her sister had a magnetic pull on her like the tides, a force Coco could never seem to resist.

“So do I like to be in my own bed,” Coco said, trying to sound decisive, but she wasn't kidding anyone, least of all Jane. She and Elizabeth were going to be on location in New York for five months. “I'm not house-sitting for you for five months,” Coco said, sounding stubborn. And films ran longer sometimes. It could be six or seven in the end.

“Fine. I'll find someone else,” Jane said, sounding disapproving, as though Coco were a naughty child. That always got to her, no matter how often she reminded herself that she was grown up. “But I can't do that in an hour before I leave. I'll take care of it from New York. For God's sake, you'd think I was asking you to stay in the Tenderloin in a crack house. You could do a lot worse than stay here for five or six months. It might do you good, and you wouldn't have to commute.” Jane was selling hard, but Coco didn't want to buy. She hated her sister's house—it was beautiful, impeccable, and cold. It had been photographed for every decorating magazine, and Coco always felt uncomfortable there. There was no place to curl up, to feel cozy at night. And it was so immaculate, Coco was always afraid to breathe, or even eat. She wasn't the housekeeper her sister was, or even Liz. They were neat freaks in the extreme. Coco liked a friendly mess, and didn't mind a reasonable amount of disorder in her life. It drove Jane wild.

“I'll cover it for a few days, at most a week. But you have to line up someone else. I don't want to live at your house for months,” Coco said adamantly, trying to set boundaries with her.

“I get it. I'll do what I can. Just cover me for right now, please. How fast can you pick up the keys? And I want to show you the alarm system again, we've added some new features and they're complicated. I don't want you setting off the alarm. You can pick Jack's meals up at Canine Cuisine, they prepare them for him twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays. And don't forget, we've switched vets to Dr. Hajimoto on Sacramento Street. Jack's due for a booster shot next week.”

“It's a good thing you don't have kids,” Coco commented drily as she turned the van around. She was going to be late, but she might as well get it over with. Her sister would drive her insane if she didn't. “You'd never be able to leave town.” Their bull mastiff had become a child substitute for them, and lived better than most people, with specially prepared meals, a trainer, a groomer who came to the house to bathe him, and more attention than many parents gave to their kids.

Coco drove up to her sister's house, and there was already a town car waiting outside to take Jane to the airport. Coco turned off the ignition and hopped out, leaving Sallie in the car, watching out the window with interest. She was going to have a good time with Jack for the next several days. The bull mastiff was three times her size, and they'd probably break everything in the house as they chased each other around. Maybe she'd let them use her sister's pool. The only thing Coco loved about the house was the enormous projection screen in the bedroom, where she could watch movies. The bedroom was huge and the screen covered one entire wall.

Coco rang the doorbell, and Jane yanked open the door with a cell phone pressed to her ear. She was giving someone hell about the unions, and hung up as she stared at Coco. The two women looked surprisingly alike. They both had tall, spare frames and beautiful faces. Both had modeled in their teens. The most noticeable difference between them was that Jane was all sharp edges, with long straight blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. Coco's long, loose auburn hair and slightly gentler curves made her look warmer, and there was a smile in her eyes. Everything about Jane screamed stress. There had always been a sharp edge to her, even as a kid, but those that knew her intimately, knew that despite the razor tongue, she was a decent person and had a good heart. But there was no denying she was tough. Coco knew it well.

She was wearing black jeans, a black T-shirt, and a black leather jacket, and diamond studs in her ears. Coco was wearing a white T-shirt, jeans that showed off her long, graceful legs, and running shoes that she needed for work, and she had a faded sweatshirt tied around her neck. And Coco looked noticeably younger. Jane's more sophisticated style aged her a little, but both were striking women and looked noticeably like their famous father. Their mother was smaller and rounder, although she was blond like Jane. Coco's coppery mane was a throwback to another generation, since Buzz Barrington had had jet black hair.

“Thank God!” Jane said as her enormous bull mastiff came running up to them and stood up on his back legs to put his paws on Coco's shoulders. He knew what having her around meant, forbidden table scraps he would never get otherwise, and sleeping in the king-size bed in the master suite, which Jane would never have allowed. Although she adored her dog, she was a firm believer in rules. Even Jack knew that Coco was a pushover and would let him sleep on the bed at night. He wagged his tail and licked her face, which was a far friendlier greeting than she got from Jane. Liz was by far the warmer of the pair, but she was already in New York. And the relationship between the two sisters was always tense. However good her intentions, and her love for her younger sister, Jane never minced words.

Jane handed Coco a set of keys, and an information sheet about the new alarm. She repeated the information about the vet, the booster shot, and Jack's designer meals, and about fourteen other instructions, all delivered like machine-gun fire at her younger sister.

“And call us right away if Jack has any kind of a problem,” she finished.

Coco wanted to ask her “What about if I do?” but Jane wouldn't have found it funny. “We'll try to come back for a weekend sometime to give you a break, but I don't know when we can get away, particularly if we're having trouble with the unions.” She sounded harried and exhausted before she even got there. Coco knew she managed the most minute details and was brilliant at what she did.

“Wait a minute,” Coco said, feeling weak, “I'm only doing this for a few days, right? Maybe a week. I'm not staying here the whole time,” she repeated so they understood each other. She wanted no confusion about that.

“I know, I know. You'd think you'd be happy to stay in a decent house.” Her sister glared at her instead of thanking her profusely.

“It's your 'decent' house,” Coco pointed out. “Bolinas is my home,” she said with quiet dignity, which Jane ignored.

“Let's not get into that,” Jane said with a meaningful look, and then grudgingly, she looked at her sister and smiled. “Thanks for bailing me out, kiddo. I really appreciate it. You're a great baby sister to have.” She gave Coco one of her rare smiles of approval, which had kept Coco trying to please her all her life. But you had to do what Jane wanted to get those smiles.