Caress Part One (Arcadia) (5 page)

It was after one a.m. when I let myself into the apartment.
I did so quietly, not wanting to take a chance on disturbing Emma.

I told myself that I was just being considerate. She’d had a
hell of a day starting with the ride in the dumbwaiter all the way through
getting fired, moving out of the dump she’d been living in, and coming to work
for me. She’d be exhausted and in need of a decent night’s rest.

But the truth was that I didn’t trust myself to face her, at
least not right then. I’d stayed late in the office, putting the time to good
use plowing through the endless piles of paperwork that always required my
attention. Fucking city bureaucracy. But my mind--and other parts of me--kept
wandering back to her.

Having a hot blonde suddenly pop up in my life would have
aroused my interest under almost any circumstances, if only temporarily. But
this was different.

Even on such short acquaintance, I recognized that Emma Whittaker
had intelligence and courage. She’d shown real character in dealing with the
shit life had thrown her. The truth was that I couldn’t help but like her.
Hell, it was fair to say that I admired how she’d handled circumstances that
would have made plenty of other people crumble.

None of which changed the fact that I was willing to use her,
if possible, to get to her father. Sitting alone in my office, I’d been forced
to admit that, given my priorities, a sexual relationship with her should be
out of the question.

Sure, she was hotter than hell, even if she somehow didn’t
seem to know it. And she had me tied up in knots for all sorts of reasons that
I didn’t even want to consider. But that was no excuse for behaving in a way
that would be wrong for both of us.

Having decided that, I almost dragged out my phone to call
one of the women I knew would be glad of my company. But that option didn’t
hold the appeal that it should have. Not when all I really wanted was to be
with a challenging young woman whose fathomless blue eyes were at once
vulnerable and defiant.

Even if that meant just being under the same roof with her
while she slept alone and chaste in her own bed.

Isaac had checked in to tell me that she was at the
apartment. I didn’t know why it bothered me that she had nothing to her name
apart from two suitcases. Plenty of newly minted college graduates weren’t
loaded down with possessions. But most of them had at least some form of family
support. Emma was strictly on her own.

Rather than stand there staring at the staircase that I knew
led up to her bedroom, I retreated to the suite on the main floor. The curtains
were still open, revealing the spectacular sight of Manhattan south to the
harbor, still lit up despite the hour and looking more like fabled Oz than
ever. Yuri, or whoever else ended up living here, would have no cause to
complain about the view.

 To my great relief, the apartment had been in excellent
condition when I got my first look at it. Despite being unoccupied for six
decades, it had been kept scrupulously clean and in perfect repair. I had a
crew come in with fresh linens and other necessities, but otherwise I was
enjoying the sensation of staying in what amounted to a huge and very luxurious
time capsule of the 1950s.

As I shucked off my clothes in the bedroom, I spared a
thought for the mystery that was Margo Stark. From the little that I’d been
able to learn so far, the actress had walked out of the Arcadia on a snowy day
in December, 1957, taking nothing with her except the clothes on her back.
She’d never returned but she had also never sold the apartment or permitted
anyone else to stay in it.

There were all sorts of theories to explain her strange
behavior, most of them linked to the tragic death of a young senator she’d been
dating. But the bottom line was that no one knew why Margo had become a
recluse, living apart from the world until her recent death at the age of
ninety-one.

Maybe Emma would discover something that could shed light on
the matter.

Realizing that I was back to thinking about her, I groaned.
Naked, I walked into the bathroom, turned on the shower and stepped under it
before it had time to warm up. The initial rush of cold water was a shock but
it did nothing to stem my wayward thoughts.

Neither did jerking off. I tried, really, not to think about
Emma but that didn’t last long. Whatever else she was doing to me, she’d
claimed a starring role in my X-rated fantasies.

Later, dried off and lying in bed, I stared up at the
ceiling as I wondered which guest room she’d chosen. Somehow, I didn’t think
she’d opt for a view of New Jersey, as picturesque as that might be. The odds
were that she was lying right above me.

Realizing that did absolutely nothing for my state of mind.
I slept fitfully, disturbed by dreams of dumbwaiters, blondes, and myself,
incongruously behind the wheel of a classic 1950s Chevy Corvette muscle car
while a young woman who looked like Emma laughed beside me.

Not too surprisingly, I woke up feeling as though I hadn’t
slept. Forgoing a shave, I pulled on sweats and decided that, it being
Saturday, I’d hit the gym. But first, I wanted to check on Emma.

The apartment was quiet, too much so. I wandered out into
the living room, looking for her there first, then in the dining room, the
screening room, and finally on the wrap-around terrace that gave the main floor
of the apartment a 360-degree panoramic view of Manhattan and beyond. No Emma,
just a few pigeons who ignored me.

I was starting to wonder if she was still asleep when the
front door opened and Emma walked in. She was wearing jeans that hugged her
exquisite ass and long legs. Her hair was brushed back and held by a couple of
tortoise shell clips. So far as I could tell, she didn’t have any make-up on.
For sure, the blush that spread over her face when she saw me was entirely
natural.

 “Oh…” she said, sounding a little breathless. “You’re
here.”

Where did she think I’d be? I was sure that Isaac had passed
along the message that I’d be back, just not until late.

She gave me a small, tentative smile as her eyes darted
toward the master suite almost as though she was looking for someone else.

She thought I might have brought a woman home with me?

Why the hell would her thinking that shock me? If I wanted
to bring a woman to the apartment, I would. We wouldn’t be doing it on the
kitchen counter, as enjoyable as that could be, but still--

And if Emma hooked up with someone--

Hell, no! She’d be too busy. I’d see to that.

“Taking the day off, Miss Whittaker?” I was being a douche
but I didn’t care. I was too busy watching the flicker of surprise deep in her
remarkable eyes, followed by a quick flash of steel.

Oh, yeah, there was a lot more to Blondie than big blues and
a reckless streak. She had backbone.

That pleased me. It made her a hell of a lot more
interesting than she would otherwise have been. It also made her fair game, at
least up to a point.

“On the contrary, Mr. Phelps,” she said coolly. “I’ve
actually been making good progress, which I’ll be happy to discuss with you.
Over breakfast, perhaps?” She hefted the bag she was carrying. “The bagel place
I remembered is still around the corner. I got extra.”

Without waiting for a response, she moved toward the
kitchen. I followed. I told myself it was because I just happened to like
bagels but the truth is I was enjoying the view. Did the woman have any idea of
how she looked from the back? Poetry in motion didn’t get close to it.

“I’ll make the coffee,” I offered, feeling suddenly
magnanimous.

There were a few things about the apartment that I already
knew had to change and I’d fixed the first of them. Rather than shudder at the
thought of coffee from a 1950s style percolator, I’d installed a state-of-the-art
espresso/cappuccino machine.

As I got busy with it, Emma found a cutting board and bread
knife. Her movements were graceful and economical. With a glance at me, she
asked, “Plain or poppy?”

“Poppy.”

“Toasted?”

Incredibly, the refrigerator in the apartment, having been
kept in excellent condition like everything else there, was still working after
sixty years, leading me to wonder when exactly we had lost the ability to build
machines like that. But I still wasn’t ready to trust the toaster.

 “Not unless you want to plug in an appliance that hasn’t
been used in decades.”

“Never mind. Sandwich or schmear?”

I grinned. If I hadn’t already known that Emma was a New
York girl born and raised, I would have right then. She knew deli-speak for
just how I liked my bagel.

“Schmear, please.”

As she spread on the thin coating of cream cheese, she said
softly, “I wanted to thank you again for giving me this job. Looking around
yesterday, I realized just how incredible this apartment really is. It’s not
merely a time capsule of sorts. Margo Stark had wonderful taste, or at least
her decorator did.”

Pleased that she echoed my own thoughts about the vibe of
the apartment, I asked, “Have you figured out how you want to start?”

Emma nodded. “I thought I’d go room-by-room beginning with
the major pieces of furniture and art, then itemizing categories such as books,
clothing, and so on. I’ll set up the data on spreadsheets by type, valuation,
and any other way you’d like to see it. But before I start, do you know if there
are any files, receipts for example, that Margo or someone who worked for her
may have kept? They could help.”

I was impressed. She’d been here less than a day and she’d
already figured out a workable approach that should give me a decent sense of
what the apartment contained fairly quickly.

Just not too quickly, I hoped.

“One of the staff rooms at the back is set up for use as a
household office,” I said. “Take a look in there. You should also check the
desk in the library. Margo may have used that for her own correspondence.”

Emma nodded. “I should have thought to check her desk
myself.” She smiled self-consciously. “I just feel a little odd going through
her things. That’s foolish, of course. She’s deceased and she just abandoned
everything here anyway.”

“I don’t think it’s odd that you have an instinct to treat
her property with respect. Trust me when I say that I’ve seen the opposite
happen, especially when there are heirs involved who don’t care about anything
other than what they have to gain. It’s not a pretty sight.”

As I spoke, it occurred to me that Emma couldn’t have had
any opportunity to go through her family’s possessions. The feds would have
confiscated everything except her clothes and personal items. Anything else
would have been sold for the benefit of her father’s victims.

I wondered how much she missed her former life. Being back
in the Arcadia couldn’t be easy for her. I didn’t know which apartment the
Whittaker family had occupied, although I made a mental note to find out.

Thinking about that, I realized Emma was waiting for me to
answer a question I’d missed. What was it? Oh, right, did I know who Margo’s
heirs were.

“From what I understand,” I said, “everything goes to a
couple of charities.”

 “She had no children?”

The question surprised me. With a sense of stating the
obvious, I said, “She lived as a recluse for most of her life.”

“I know…it’s just so hard to make that fit with the woman in
the photographs upstairs. She was so vibrant, so engaged…”

I shrugged. “She was an actress. How she looked when she was
in front of a camera isn’t necessarily how she really was.”

“I suppose not…”

I could tell that Emma wasn’t convinced but I let it go. We
took breakfast out onto the terrace. Over coffee and the bagels, we talked.
About the city, now and in the 1950s, and about the Arcadia itself.

She was a little hesitant to talk about the building at first.
Not wanting to raise unpleasant memories, I didn’t press her. But she opened up
at least a little and even went so far as to admit that she’d taken a ride in
the dumb waiter once before.

I was still mentally shaking my head over that as we cleaned
up and went our separate ways. Generally, I caught breakfast on the run. It
surprised me how much I’d enjoyed sharing it with her instead. Just not as much
as what I would have enjoyed doing with her both before and afterward.

Instead, I went to the gym. Chase Hollis was there. After I
filled him in on my call to Yuri, we hit the handball court where we did our
level best to drive each other into the ground.

The work out helped but not for long. Rather than go back to
the apartment, I decided to head for the office. Half-way into a prospectus on
a new property development, I found myself thinking about Emma again,
remembering how she looked with the morning sun caressing her hair and a smile
lifting the corners of her luscious mouth.

With a sigh, I resigned myself to the fact that it was going
to be another long night.

A week after our impromptu breakfast, I’d made significant
progress inventorying the items in the tower apartment and was preparing to
begin researching their value. But I was no closer at all to making sense of my
feelings for Lucas, as I’d caught myself thinking of him.

That might have been at least in part because I was
reluctant to admit even to myself that I had feelings for him. He was my
employer. He’d hired me to do a job. Full stop.

But he was also the man who I now had breakfast with every
morning. Somehow, our schedules had fallen into sync. We were both early risers
but that didn’t really explain how readily we’d gotten into the habit of
starting the day in each other’s company.

As distracting as I found it to face Lucas at our preferred
spot on the terrace overlooking Central Park, I looked forward to our
encounters. Besides the chiseled features, perfect body, and brilliant mind, I
was getting the sense of the man himself.

He liked pigeons or at least he tolerated them. Most New
Yorkers I knew called them sky rats and would have been happy if they’d
disappeared. While Lucas didn’t go so far as to put food out for them, he would
toss the occasion piece of bagel or toast to one brave enough to land near us.

But what he really liked were the hawks. My third day in the
apartment, he showed me the nest he had spotted on the roof of a building a
block to the north. From then on, I kept an eye out and from time to time, I
was rewarded with the sight of a powerful bird of prey soaring out over Central
Park in search of its next meal.

I’d also come to appreciate how much he loved New York. He
knew it well, not just the affluent parts but everywhere. And it turned out
that he was something of an expert on its history. He made the city’s past come
alive, speaking of people and events as though they had just happened.

At the same time, he confessed that the one thing he truly
disliked about being a New Yorker was that he couldn’t see the stars.

He had a family--a mother, and a younger brother and sister
whom he seemed to really care about, although he didn’t say much about them. He
did, however, coax me to talk about my own family or what was left of it.

I still wasn’t sure how exactly he managed that. I hadn’t
really talked to anyone since everything happened. The truth was that I’d
barely even spoken with my mother and brother in the years since.

“My mom remarried,” I told Lucas when he persisted in asking
about them. “She’s living in the south of France now, I think. I don’t hear
from her very often.”

As in essentially never. Mom was a beautiful woman with a
gift for making powerful men want her. She’d had no trouble moving on.

“And your brother?” he asked softly.

A flicker of pain shot through me. In some ways, losing
Nathan had been tougher even than losing my mother. Growing up we had been as
close as siblings born five years apart could be. He was my big brother and I’d
thought that I could always depend on him. But he was also a free spirit with
an incurable case of wanderlust, at least until he seemed to find whatever it
was that he’d been looking for.

“He’s living in a Buddhist monastery outside of San Diego.
The last time I spoke with him he seemed very…calm, very centered.”

And very distant. As though he was viewing me and my
struggles from a loftier plane.

Lucas hadn’t commented directly, which was fortunate because
I couldn’t have stood any hint that he felt sorry for me. Instead, he’d gone on
to speak of other things. The cut-throat nature of the real estate business in
New York. The reasons why the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet
were flocking to the city. Whether the recent stratospheric prices indicated
that we were in yet another financial bubble.

He didn’t seem very concerned about that possibility. I got
the impression that Phelps Properties was well positioned to benefit from
whatever the market did next.

What did worry him surprised me.

“The gap between the one percent and everyone else is bigger
than ever and it’s getting even bigger,” Lucas said. “If that’s not enough,
we’re facing technological changes that threaten to hollow out the middle class
even more. They’re the bulwark of democracy. Without them, we can kiss freedom
goodbye. Something has to give.”

“Have you considered going into politics?” I asked. With his
looks and charisma, and the power he already had in the city that seemed like a
reasonable choice.

But he just frowned and shook his head. “I value my privacy
and in politics there’s no such thing. Besides, I can be just as effective, if
not more so, behind the scenes.”

I didn’t want to think about his private life. It was enough
that he hadn’t brought a woman back to the apartment. If he was involved with
one or more, it wasn’t in his own bed.

Which left me all too free to imagine myself there.

The first time my mind went in that direction, I was
standing in the master suite. He’d seemed amused that I’d sought his approval
to go in there but I didn’t want to start inventorying its contents without his
knowledge.

All the same, I was undeniably curious to see how strong his
presence would be in the space he was occupying temporarily. If I’d had to
guess, I would have said ‘very’.

But my first impression on stepping into the suite was
surprise. Margo Stark had been a sexy, gorgeous, ultra feminine movie star. Her
boudoir--and that’s exactly what it should have been--cried out for brocade
wallpaper, chandeliers, a canopy bed, one of those old-fashioned dressing
tables with a three-part mirror, maybe even a fainting couch.

Instead, I found myself looking at a room that seemed far
better suited to a man. Certainly, the darkly paneled walls and carved mahogany
furnishings including a large four-poster bed had a masculine vibe. I could see
Lucas feeling right at home among them.

Inevitably, my gaze focused on that bed. It was neatly made
up, the burgundy covers pulled smooth without so much as a wrinkle. Apparently,
he didn’t need servants trailing after him.

Being instinctively tidy myself, I appreciated that in
another person. Still, my wayward mind conjured a vision of the covers strewn
on the floor, the pillows tossed aside and two bodies--

I really needed to get a grip! Lucas and I were in a good
place. I was getting my job done and we were able to enjoy each other’s company
without a lot of weirdness.

Of course, I was vividly aware of how my body reacted to the
mere thought of him, not to mention the way he had of cropping up in my dreams.
But that didn’t stop me from genuinely liking him and appreciating the time we
had together.

The last thing I wanted to do was screw that up by giving
him any hint of my wayward thoughts. If nothing else, I didn’t need the
humiliation.

Wrenching my eyes from the bed, I managed to focus enough to
make a quick inventory of the contents of the room. As I was finishing, I
realized that I should check the closets.

There weren’t any but there were two large dressing rooms,
one clearly intended for a man with fitted cabinets and drawers matching the
style of the bedroom. It was empty except for the clothes that Lucas must have
brought with him. The other…

Whoa! When the rumors claimed that Margo had walked out of
the Arcadia with nothing but the clothes on her back, they weren’t kidding. She
had left behind a wardrobe fit for a queen of Hollywood, and I’d just found it.

Stepping into the dressing room felt like venturing into an
Aladdin’s cave filled with silks, satins, and tulles in jewel colors. At a
glance, I saw dozens of pairs of shoes, evening gowns, day dresses and suits,
and the lingerie… Oh, my god, the lingerie! It alone made my mouth water.

Just inventorying the dressing room would take at least
several days by itself. On top of everything else, I’d have to get up to speed
on vintage 1950s clothing before I could have any hope of putting a valuation
on what I’d just found.

What a horrible job that would be! I was grinning as I
backed out and carefully shut the doors behind me.

The rest of the day passed quickly. At noon, I went for a
run in Central Park to clear my head. George was on duty and we chatted
briefly. After a shower, I settled back to work in the library.

Margo hadn’t just collected books, she’d also read them.
Everything from Shakespeare to Balzac to Hemingway. I even found scattered
notes in the margins of several in the same delicate hand as the notes I
discovered in her desk.

Looking at what she had thought was especially noteworthy, I
began to piece together who Margo was and how she felt about various aspects of
life.

She was a romantic. Regarding Ophelia she wrote--
Poor
girl! What a bastard Hamlet is!
But she was also a realist. Balzac’s Cousin
Bette, surely one of the most scheming, manipulative women ever put on paper,
merited this remark--
She’s in Hollywood now!

I laughed when I read that but I sympathized, too,
remembering my brief experience with Heather. Apparently, versions of Cousin
Bette cropped up everywhere.

I worked into the evening, not looking forward to the hours
when I would inevitably lie in bed, wondering where Lucas was or when he’d be
home. I never heard him come in. He was just there again every morning.

That evening I decided that I needed a diversion. Women my
age were heading out to bars with their friends, dancing the night away,
meeting interesting or at least tolerable guys. I was spending way too much
time thinking about a man I had no business thinking about at all.

That needed to change. Now that I had a better handle on the
job, I’d be smart to carve out some time to relax. Join a gym, maybe. Even
entertain the possibility, however remote, of meeting people who wouldn’t freak
when they heard my name.

But for the moment, the best I could do was decide to
explore the screening room next door to the library. It was the 1950s version
of a home theatre and I loved it.

Oversized couches and chairs faced a large, rolled down
movie screen. At the back was an old-style projector. Along the walls were
shelves holding round metal canisters filled with movies from the era before
streaming, before DVDs, before even video tape.

I hesitated to touch them but temptation overcame me when I
found a copy of “The Lady is a Flirt”, the movie that had made Margo a star. A
few minutes on-line and I had instructions for how to load the reel into the
projector.

The movie was up and ready to go, and I was just about to
turn off the lights in the screening room before settling in to watch it, when
I heard the front door to the apartment open.

Surprised, I glanced at the time. It was barely 9:00 pm.
Lucas never got home this early. Concerned that something might be wrong, I
went to meet him.