Caught in a Bind (8 page)

Mr. Montgomery glanced at me again to see if he’d missed something. Apparently he decided he hadn’t because he looked at Curt without understanding. Then his gaze slid over Curt’s shoulder, and he broke into a wide grin.

“Ah. Here she comes.”

Curt’s head swung in the direction of Mr. Montgomery’s
look. In fact, the head of every man in the room swung in that direction, and a few of the women’s heads too.

I turned and my blood chilled.

A blonde with the most perfect features I’d ever seen glided up to us, her eyes fixed on Curt. I’d seen lionesses look less predatory as they circled a wildebeest in a nature film on Animal Planet. She was dressed in black from the tiny straps of her slip dress to the toes of her four-inch stilettos. She looked sleek and sophisticated and perfect.

Suddenly I felt every one of the thirty dollars I’d paid for my dress.

“Dad,” she said in a husky warm voice. She stood on tiptoe as Jonathan Montgomery leaned down to receive her kiss on the cheek. “Quite a crowd. A success, aren’t we?”

Then her eyes were on Curt in a proprietary way that made me most annoyed. I was the only one allowed to look at him like that.

“And Curt.” She leaned up and gave him a kiss on the cheek, leaving a perfect petal-pink imprint on his skin. She tucked her arm in his, her perfectly manicured, utterly synthetic nails resting lightly on his jacket sleeve. “How wonderful to see you again,” she all but purred. “I’ve missed you since yesterday.”

Curt smiled fatuously into her big blue eyes. After an eternity, he blinked and recalled who he’d come to the dance with.

“Delia, I’d like you to meet—”

“Curt,” Delia interrupted. “I need something to drink. It was a long drive from Philadelphia, and I even closed the gallery early to make it for Dad’s special night. It’s all made me quite thirsty.” She smiled up at him. “To say nothing of hungry. Help me out here?”

Before he knew what hit him, he was halfway across the room. He looked back over his shoulder at me and made a
helpless face that was supposed to convey what-was-I-to-do? I felt like making a return face that said drop dead. The trouble was that I wanted to make it at Delia, and she was too busy fawning over Curt to deign to glance my way.

“Well, if it isn’t Delia Big Deal-ia Montgomery,” said an acid voice in my ear.

“Jolene!” I spun around, nearly poking Reilly in the stomach with my elbow as I did. “You know her?”

“Sure,” Jolene said. “Everyone knows Delia.”

Reilly nodded. “Can’t say they all like her.” He smiled indulgently at his wife, who looked gorgeous in a vivid red sequin-and-chiffon number. “That homecoming-queen crown was a prized treasure, you know.”

“She cheated, Reilly! You know she did!” Jolene’s eyes flashed and her cheeks flushed. “She got people to vote three and four times. I mean, nobody liked her. She had to buy her votes!”

“I suspect she did, Jo, my sweet. But it was a long time ago and I think it’s probably time to let go of the anger, don’t you?”

“Sure you do.” Jolene made a face at her husband. “It wasn’t you she beat.”

“No, but it was me who won. I got you.” And he gave his wife a bend-over-backwards kiss right in front of everyone.

For once Jolene was speechless.

Grinning at his success, Reilly turned to me. “Can I get you something to drink?”

I never got to answer him because just then I spotted Edie coming in the front door. She was pale, not quite put together and plastered.

Mac saw her and swore softly. Reilly sighed. Jo took off across the room so fast that I practically had to run to keep up with her. We got to Edie just before she took her place in the receiving line.

“Ladies’ room.” Jo grabbed Edie’s right arm.

“Good idea.” I grabbed her left.

“Hey!” Edie wasn’t quite certain what was going on. “Let me go. I wanna meet Mishter Mon’gomery.”

“That’s what we’re afraid of,” I muttered.

We got Edie into the ladies’ room without incident, and once in there we claimed the sofa in the anteroom. Jo and I sat on the edge of the sofa on either side of the slumping Edie.

“I take it Tom hasn’t come home,” Jo said.

“Or called,” I added.

Two big tears rolled neatly down the pathway made on Edie’s cheeks by previously melted mascara.

“Ranny tole me to stay home.”

“For once, Randy was right.” I patted her hand. When in doubt….

“But I need to meet the new boss.” She pronounced it bosh.

“I think not,” Jo said. “You want your job come Monday, don’t you?”

Two more tears. “I don’t care.” She was deeply into self-pity. “I just came for Mac. I want him to have his job.”

“That was very thoughtful.” I cringed at what a drunk Edie might mean to Mac’s career.

“Thoughtful, schmoughtful.” Jolene stood and stared down at Edie. “If Mr. Montgomery saw you now, he’d fire Mac for hiring incompetents.”

Edie drew herself up, quite a feat when you’re slouching on a sofa. “I’m not incompetent.”

“You couldn’t prove it tonight.” Jolene stalked to the sinks, grabbed a fistful of paper towels and stuck them under the cold water. Then she walked purposefully to Edie.

Poor Edie never saw it coming.

Jolene was just finishing her forceful washing of Edie’s face with Edie batting ineffectually when the door opened and Delia glided in.

Everyone froze for a moment. Then my stomach dropped and my hands turned cold. Of all the people who shouldn’t see Edie, it was Delia.

She smiled nastily at Edie, who was too miserable to notice. “I see you still know how to pick your friends, Jolene Marie.”

“Nice to see you, too, Delia.” Jolene smiled regally, as if bathing snockered friends was the posh thing to do.

Delia walked to the mirror and checked her perfect makeup. She pulled out a lip pencil and colored her already perfectly colored mouth. Satisfied, she turned to leave. She looked at us and contempt oozed from every glamorous pore.

“Did you hear that?” I demanded as the door shut.

“What?” Jo asked, staring daggers in Delia’s direction.

“Her silent sniff! I never heard anything like it.”

“I heard it too,” Edie lay her head on the back of the sofa. “She doesn’t like us.” Her sniff was very audible. “Where is he?”

Both Jo and I decided to treat the question as rhetorical.

Jolene reached into her little silver evening bag and pulled out a lipstick. She rubbed some on her index finger and then rubbed her finger over Edie’s pallid cheeks. She did this until Edie looked healthy again. Then she carefully put some on Edie’s lips. “I don’t have any mascara with me, but we can’t risk her crying it all over herself again anyway.”

I reached in my little black bag and pulled out a tiny metal bristled brush. “Sit up, Edie. It’s hair time.”

While I brushed, Jo asked. “Do you think there’s coffee out there anywhere?”

“Probably not.” I pulled Edie to her feet. She barely swayed. I smoothed her green dress over her hips and tugged at the hem to get it to lie smoothly. It was a bit snug, but not as snug as the skirts she usually wore to work.

Jolene circled Edie and nodded in approval. “If one of us
is always holding her elbow, I think we’ll be okay. Just don’t let her near Mr. Montgomery.”

“But I have to meet him,” Edie said. “Now’s not a good time,” Jo said. “We don’t want him to get mad at Mac.”

“No, we don’t,” Edie agreed. “We want Mac.”

“Shoulders back, Edie.” I took her elbow. “Here we go.”

We walked back to the Brennan Room, and no one but Mac and Reilly even knew we’d been gone. I snagged a Perrier with a twist of lime and handed it to Edie. She took it eagerly until she realized it was Perrier and not champagne or some such thing. As we stood in a small knot near one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, I could have sworn I saw a man with a bicycle staring in. I blinked, and the impression was gone. It was a good thing I was a teetotaler. If I saw visions stone cold sober, what would I see if I drank?

Occasionally through the interminable evening, I glimpsed Curt in the distance, always with Delia hanging on his arm. She’d look up at him with an adoring look that made my stomach clench. I was the one who gave him adoring looks. Only me.

“I hear her local gallery is having its grand opening Wednesday night,” Mac said as he watched me watch her.

“Her local gallery?”

“Sure. Intimations.”

I stared at Mac in dismay. “Intimations is hers?”

“You didn’t know?”

“Well, no. I mean I knew about Intimations. Curt’s the first show and there’s the gala opening and all kinds of exciting stuff. The owner has great connections in art circles.” I studied my little black bag. “I just didn’t know she was Intimations.”

I pulled at a loose thread until I realized I would have little black beads bouncing all over the floor if I continued. I willed myself to let the thread alone.

Mac looked across the room where Delia and Curt were talking with Mr. Montgomery. “I never did like her much when we were kids, didn’t miss her at all when her mother died and they moved away right after her graduation. But I’ve got to admit that she’s done all right for herself.”

“I don’t like her much as an adult,” Jolene said as Delia’s laughter floated above the rumble of conversation. “Look at her, hanging on to Curt like she has a right.”

Curt had been so low-key about the gallery owner he’d been working closely with that I hadn’t paid any attention to the fact that she was a woman. I wasn’t so small-minded that I reacted negatively to the fact he was working with a woman. I mean, I work with men.

But now I’d seen the woman.

SIX

T
he reception at City Hall dragged on forever. Every time I heard Delia’s musical laughter play its tune across the room, I stretched my smile wider to hide my hurt.

“It’ll be okay, Merry,” Edie whispered after one particularly charming laugh floated across the room.

I blinked back tears.

When I collected my coat, resigned to the fact that Mac would be taking me home, Curt appeared at my side.

“Ready to go?” he asked as if we’d separated a mere five minutes ago. I gave him my most haughty expression, but he merely smiled down at me. I automatically smiled back, idiot that I was. I couldn’t even stay mad at the man!

But as we drove home, I regained all my spleen and then some. By the time we entered the apartment, I was primed.

“You never even told me you knew Mr. Montgomery!”

Curt sank comfortably onto the sofa where Whiskers snuggled against him, purring and shedding white fur all over his black dress pants. I started pacing, flinging my arms and ranting, the very picture of what any man would want in a woman.

“You should have told me!”

“I thought you knew that the Montgomerys used to live in
Amhearst.” He looked surprised at my outburst. “You always seem to know everything at that paper of yours.”

“Well, I didn’t know this little tidbit.”

He waved his hand in the air. “It’s no big deal.”

“And I suppose Delia Big Deal-ia Montgomery is no big deal either?” Just thinking about her raised my internal temperature several degrees.

Suddenly it dawned on him that I was genuinely angry. And hurt. He looked at me cautiously. “Maybe.”

“Maybe she’s a big deal? Maybe?” I gave him the most scathing look I could manage. It was quite a stretch for the Saccharine Queen.

“Well, of course she’s important.”

“Ha! I knew it!”

He backtracked. “Well, not important important, of course. Not like you. Just sort of important. Merely a professional contact.”

I glared at him. “Intimations. Intimations. What kind of a stupid name is that for an art gallery? Sounds like Imitations.”

“I think the idea is ‘intimations of greatness.’”

“Oh.” Wouldn’t you know there was logic behind that ridiculous name, and I’d been too blind to see it?

“Merry, honey, you’re overreacting here. There’s no need to get all in a huff.”

“You think not?” I huffed. “You ignored me all evening!”

“I didn’t.”

“I had to spend the entire reception with Mac!”

He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, tumbling it into delicious curls. “I should have left you on the front porch in your undies.”

“It would have been less embarrassing.”

“What?” Suddenly he was standing, towering over me. “You’re saying I’m an embarrassment?”

“Yes! No! Not you. Your absence.”

“I wasn’t absent! I was right there!”

“But not with me!” I clenched my teeth against my tears.

He stared at me for a minute. “This is an idiotic conversation.”

“It is not idiotic! It’s important!”

“So I talked with Delia. Big deal!”

“You are so dense,” I shouted. “If you can’t figure out why I’m upset, then I don’t want to talk about it anymore. And I don’t want to talk to you anymore!”

I grabbed my coat and stalked to the front door. “Don’t worry. I have my keys this time.” And I stormed out.

I stomped to my car and drove off into the night. I did not have to put up with a man who had no sense of how he’d hurt me. I did not.

I was three blocks from home when it dawned on me that I had stormed out of my own apartment, leaving Curt behind with the warmth, light, food and comfort, to say nothing of Whiskers. I felt the flush of embarrassment envelop my entire body. Now I was not only furious and deeply hurt; I was mortified.

I pulled up to a stop sign and sat, trying to decide what to do now. A beep from a car behind me pulled me from my blue funk. I drove around a bit more, trying to find a graceful way out of my situation. I finally admitted I had only two basic choices. I could drive around all night, or I could go home.

The first was stupid; the second was humiliating.

I sighed. I pictured Curt and Whiskers, lying together on the sofa, eyes closed, gentle snores mingling harmoniously. It was such a peaceful scene.

I, on the other hand, was driving around town with no place to go, lonely and alone.

Dear God, what’s wrong with me? How could I have done something this stupid?

I heard Stephanie Bauer say, as clearly as if she were sitting next to me, “The power of choice.”