Interior Designs (3 page)

"If you're not interested..." began Susannah.

"Of course she's interested," Judy said.

"But I don't know him. And he's just been divorced, and..." Cathryn was aware that she was talking too fast, but she couldn't seem to help it.

Judy's short auburn curls bobbed around her face as she shook her head in exasperation. "Don't you remember the story? About Drew and his ex-wife? I know I must have told you."

"What story?" Cathryn asked blankly.

"Talma—that's his ex-wife's name—suddenly decided to pursue a career as an actress and went off to New York City, taking their six-year-old daughter with her. Drew was devastated."

Cathryn experienced a sudden, crushing sense of disillusionment that surprised her. It wasn't as though there had been any pretense. Drew had told her immediately that he was recently divorced. It was why she had made her exit so abruptly, running from him like a child. She'd been burned once too often, and she avoided newly divorced men whenever possible.

"That's too bad," she said, hoping that she was successfully hiding her disappointment. But if he was devastated by the divorce, she wanted nothing to do with him. It would never do in this instance for Judy to get a line on her true feelings.

"Now, Cathryn," began Susannah, adopting what Cathryn recognized as her let's-stop-and-think-about-this tone of voice. "I know how you feel about men who are trying to get over past relationships, but maybe he's different. Anyway, who's left? By this time, all the eligibles have been married at least once. Maybe even to me." She giggled.

"Susannah," said Cathryn patiently. "Let's face it. Most divorced men qualify as the walking wounded, and Drew's no exception."

"So nurse him," Susannah said matter-of-factly.

"That," said Cathryn, "is exactly the point. Let me tell you about Drew Sedgwick. He's like all men in his situation—he's been through the worst sort of emotional trauma and he's desperate for someone to expend valuable emotional energy on him. He wants someone who will pick him up, dust him off, and put him back together again. And afterward, he'll find someone else, a woman who won't remind him of this traumatic period of his life."

"Drew could be an exception, you know," Judy replied.

Cathryn remembered the yearning in his eyes, and she recalled how strongly she had been moved by it. Past experiences with such men had made her cautious, however, and she didn't need a man with flighty emotions in her life, now or ever. What in the world would she have in common with a high-powered department-store executive anyway? What would they talk about? His problems?
That
she didn't need. Or want.

"I don't think so," she said. "Just forget I ever mentioned him, okay?"

"If you insist," said Judy reluctantly.

"Must you insist?" asked Susannah.

"I insist," replied Cathryn in her most convincing tone. "And now, what are you two wearing to the reunion?" She thought it was the perfect question to nudge the conversation off the subject of Drew Sedgwick.

But, oddly enough, the next day Cathryn couldn't remember for the life of her what either Judy or Susannah had said they were going to wear.

Chapter 2

"Cat Mulqueen! Is it you? You look the same! Exactly the same! Doesn't she, Judy?" Shrieking at them was Tria Dinwoody, former captain of the cheerleaders, her shrill voice undiminished by time. Fascinated, Cathryn couldn't pull her eyes away from Tria's hair, which when last seen had been a mousy brown but was now dyed red for the festive occasion of their class reunion.

Judy, recovering first, laughed. "It's go good to see you again, Tria! I'd like you to meet my husband, Ron," and she drew Ron, owlish in his horn-rimmed glasses, into the group.

The class reunion had been in full swing for a couple of hours. They'd chosen the posh Whitecaps Beach Club, an adjunct to the grand Whitecaps Hotel on the ocean in Palm Beach, for their bash, and the first hour had been the most frantic, with screams of delight, warm embraces and broad grins very much in evidence. Now they had finished eating dinner, and a band was setting up to play for dancing.

"Oh, no," said Susannah under her breath. "Donny Paddock is going to throw Chuck Giles into the pool! Let's get out of here, Cathryn. It's likely to be us next!"

But on their way to the safe haven of the ladies' room, Susannah was whisked off to the dance floor by one of her innumerable old beaux, which left Cathryn on her own. She ducked behind a potted palm and watched in amusement as Chuck Giles, recently bald, swam fully clothed in the spacious inside pool, inviting everyone to join him. No one did, but Cathryn suspected that it wouldn't be long before Donny Paddock, always a rowdy, tossed in someone else to keep Chuck company.

Cathryn was feeling restless, and despite the hundreds of her classmates present, she felt lonely. She had dutifully oohed and aahed over numerous pictures of other people's children and accepted graciously her classmates' admiration of her own accomplishments as recounted in the reunion booklet.

But now that she was alone, away from the crowd, her emptiness was a silence inside her, as though she were a ceremonial drum that had been beaten too loudly and then left while the celebrants danced away, caught up in their own music.

Oh, she was proud of her studio and that she'd been one of the few to discern the new direction interior design would take in gracious Palm Beach when the last round of condominium mania—otherwise known as condomania—descended on the island. She'd sized up the market and she'd stepped in with her own ideas about space, light, and motion, which she'd incorporated into her designs.

Acclaim had come to her early in the game, and she'd become
the
interior designer to
do
the new places, and before long the doyennes of Palm Beach society, usually haughty and scornful of newcomers, clamored for her services. Soon Cathryn was delighted to find herself formulating discriminating interiors for Mizner mansions as well as for condominium penthouses and beachfront cabanas.

And she'd done what she'd set out to do with her life. She lived luxuriously now, beyond her wildest dreams in the days when she'd envied Judy's family lifestyle. She lived luxuriously, but alone.

With all her work, there hadn't been time for even a serious relationship much less a husband or children. She'd never really minded until tonight when the parade of smartphone pictures had touched a nerve she never even knew she had.

Unseen by the merrymakers inside, Cathryn slipped through an open sliding glass door leading out to a low seawall overlooking the ocean. Her emerald-green designer dress, its full silk skirt folded in minute pleats and spangled with tiny golden beads at the hem, flared around her legs in the breeze. Below, on the other side of the seawall, waves overlapped on the sand in scalloped swirls, the dark water beyond veined with a scant moon's skimpy embroidery.

Too bad about the moon, thought Cathryn. It should be round and full, so bright that it would hurt to look at it. As if to make up for the lacking moon, the scent of the sea filled her nostrils. The sliver of moon curved into a cloud, and the brisk sea breeze lifted Cathryn's hair and made her feel light-headed. She didn't know how long she stood there, thinking, withdrawing into herself, far away from the beach club and its neighboring hotel. And then she saw him.

She'd briefly wondered about him earlier—no, that wasn't true. It had been more than briefly. But Drew Sedgwick hadn't previously been in evidence at this gathering of former classmates. Not that she'd actually looked for him or expected him to seek her out. Not at all.

"I saw you come out here," he said easily, detaching himself from the seawall several feet away. "Aren't you having a good time?" Even in this inadequate light she detected the flicker in his eyes. She had the involuntary thought that there was a great deal of presence about him. He was the kind of man that, if he walked into a room, all eyes were drawn to him.

"I didn't know you were here tonight," she said before she realized that this revealed more than she wanted him to know.

"I didn't know you were looking," he shot back, regarding her with a hint of amusement.

He was fascinated by the way she looked tonight. Cathryn was beautiful, her eyes large and luminous, their green depths emphasized by that gorgeous dress floating around her slim figure. Tall as she was, Cathryn wasn't lanky; she had exquisitely delicate bone structure, and her softly contoured facial features were arranged around a perfectly sculpted nose. The gold of her lashes was soft against creamy-white skin.

But when he saw the embarrassment his remark caused her, he sobered. "I arrived late," he explained. And then he added gently, "Why did you come out here? Is anything wrong?"

"It's just..." she began wistfully, and then stopped, wondering how to explain the unwieldy and unexpected emotions that she was feeling on this night that should have been no more than a pleasant gathering of classmates.

"Go on," he said. "I'm listening."

She found herself wanting to explain to someone. "It's just that I felt time slipping away, I guess." She shook her head, unable to go into detail.

Her hair shimmered with lambent light, making up for the absence of moonlight. "I know," Drew said gently, thoughtfully. "A class reunion is a time to become introspective, isn't it? A time to take stock and wonder if the last fifteen years have been spent wisely and well."

She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to quell the prickling of the skin above her elbows that she always felt when she was particularly in tune with another human being. It didn't happen often, that prickling.

"Yes," she agreed. "That's it exactly. Everyone has children, it seems. All those bright, smiling faces to pull up on a phone screen. I can't imagine having
people
to show off. All I have is a series of decorated rooms, houses made comfortable for my clients." She shrugged. She wasn't saying this very well. She couldn't imagine why she was opening up about something that should be private.

Drew leaned against the wall beside her and stared out over the waves foaming and curling across the narrow spit of white sand below. The stiff breeze cooled their faces and feathered Drew's black hair across his forehead. The moonlight rendered his eyes dark as slate. In his expression, briefly, Cathryn saw the familiar look of a more youthful, less wistful man and the boy that she'd never really known.

"Regrets?" he said, his long, sudden glance making her pulse leap in her veins.

Cathryn shook her head. A wayward strand of her long hair strayed across his face. Gently he lifted it and regretfully let it go.

"I never had time for marriage or a family," she told him. "I worked very hard, took the little bit of money I inherited from my parents and invested it in my business, made the right contacts. I enjoy my work. In the beginning I tackled one day at a time, which seemed to be the right thing to do, and now all of a sudden it's been fifteen years since high school and I've never been married or had a child. I've designed interiors for everyone else, but I've neglected my own." Cathryn wasn't talking about the interior of the place where she lived—her apartment was decorated imaginatively and according to her own excellent taste. She was describing her interior life, and she knew that Drew would sense what she meant.

When she dared to look at him, Drew Sedgwick was regarding her with respect and something more. Understanding, of course, and she admitted to herself in that moment that somehow she'd known she should expect no less from him. What's more, there was empathy in his expression, and life had taught Cathryn that such heartfelt empathy with another human being was rare.

"Let's go to the lounge and have a drink," Drew said unexpectedly. "We can talk quietly there."

Lights winked on and off behind windows high above them; the twin towers of the hotel were softly spotlighted against the black velvet of the sky. Palm fronds rattled in the wind. Cathryn stared at him, wondering what was the substance inside this man. When she took on new clients, she listened carefully to their requests, looked closely at their lifestyles, and then interpreted all of her information to design a home that encompassed the person, the space, the light. What were the dimensions of Drew Sedgwick's interior? How did he need space, where might she let in the light? What kind of home was he seeking?

"I'd like to go to the lounge with you," she said gravely, wondering it if was her own husky voice she heard or whether it belonged to someone else entirely, someone she didn't know at all. He smiled at her, and all at once she knew she was making a good decision.