Nancy Herkness (13 page)

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then can I see the picture?”

They went to the guest room, and Charlie helped Sallyanne open the box with her mother’s picture in it. There were several framed photos, mostly of Sallyanne at various ages. “This is my mama,” she said with pride as she handed Charlie the largest frame.

The head and shoulders portrait had been taken in a discount store studio. The woman in it was achingly young, probably in her mid-twenties, and had a soft, shy smile.

Her hair was a darker blond than Sallyanne’s, and her eyes were brown rather than blue, but the oval of her face, the wide eyes, and the tilt of her nose marked her as the little girl’s mother. Charlie idly turned the frame over in her hands. On the cardboard back was a label from the studio that said “McGraw, Leah.” Beneath it, in careful script was written: “To Sallyanne, the best daughter in the whole wide world. Hugs and kisses, your loving Mama.” X’s and O’s surrounded Sallyanne’s name.

Charlie felt a gentle envy. She had dozens of photographs of her parents, but no written words of love from either of them. Of course, they hadn’t expected to die, but then Leah McGraw hadn’t expected to either.

“Sweetheart, your mother was very beautiful. And you look just like her.”

After tucking Sallyanne in, Charlie went to her office to work. The room seemed empty without Major sprawling on the rug by her chair. She was doing her best to edit the more personal moments out of her memory as well as out of the star-gazing article when the telephone rang.

“Mike!” she said after she heard his hello. “Have you heard about the latest addition to my household?”

“Indeed I have. Isabelle brought me into the loop. It’s a fine thing you’re doing.”

“She’s a complete delight.” I only wish her story wasn’t so sad.

“Isabelle also told me about your problem with a dress for the preview party.”

“Yeah.” Charlie grimaced.

“You need something from a designer. Trust me, I’ve been to a million of those parties.”

“I can’t afford a designer dress!”

“You can if it’s free. Pick me up tomorrow at 9 a.m. and we’ll go see a friend of mine in Manhattan.”

“Why would someone give me a dress for free?” Charlie asked suspiciously.

“For the publicity.”

“I’m not wearing the label on the outside.”

Mike laughed. “Not to worry. Stephen will explain how it works. I’ll see you at nine.”

The entrance room to Stephen Askegaard’s atelier was stark, done entirely in pale gray: walls, ceiling, and plush carpet. Three dresses hung from silver hangers under pools of light. A desk occupied by a very thin woman with black hair stood in another pool of light.

“Mr. Phillips. How nice to see you,” the woman said, rising to an impressive height. “I’ll get Stephen.”

“How do they sell clothes here?” Charlie whispered to her neighbor, looking around. “There’s almost nothing on display.”

“Mike, what have you brought me?” A young man with startlingly green eyes emerged from a concealed door. His blond hair was cut short in back and left long in front so it curved over one eye in a sort of modified pompadour. He was dressed entirely in black: T-shirt, jeans and sneakers.

He and Mike exchanged greetings before he shifted his attention to Charlie. His eyes widened dramatically. Walking around her and looking her up and down, he breathed, “Oh yes!”

“Hello, I’m Charlie Berglund,” she said, pointedly putting out her hand.

“I’m sorry, I’m Stephen,” he said, shaking her hand with a disarming smile. “I was just carried away by the marvelous possibilities of dressing you.”

It was impossible not to smile back.

“Let’s get started,” he said, leading them through the hidden door and down a hall. “I raced over to the Rose Center after you called so I know the setting. Now we have to choose the fabric.”

They entered another gray room; this one had a platform in the middle and metal and plastic chairs scattered around the edges. Mirrors in various configurations covered three walls. Two young women—in black of course—hovered in the background.

Stephen beckoned one forward. “This is Danielle,” he said. “She’ll take you to the changing room and show you what to put on.”

Charlie cast a pleading glance at Mike, but he had settled into one of the chairs and merely raised an eyebrow at her.

The changing room was large and empty except for a small chest of drawers. Danielle slid open a drawer and pulled out a handful of flesh-toned spandex.

“Please take off everything and put this on,” she instructed as she closed the door behind her.

Charlie shook out the spandex and discovered it had long sleeves, a high zippered neck and ankle-length leggings. She obeyed orders and stripped down to her skin before pulling on the cat suit. Oddly, there was no mirror in the dressing room so she couldn’t check to see how revealing her new outfit was.

Danielle led her back to Stephen and Mike. Stephen took her hand and escorted her onto the platform as though she were visiting royalty. She was enjoying the attention until she caught sight of Mike’s face. Something in his expression made her turn toward the mirrors.

“Oh my god!” she exclaimed, crossing one arm over her chest and the other across her crotch. She looked virtually naked in the skin-tight suit.

“Just think of me as your doctor,” Stephen said. “I’m only interested in your body in a professional sense. You’re nothing more than a frame on which to hang my art.”

“Well, if you put it that way,” Charlie said with heavy irony.

Stephen gently took her wrists and moved her arms down to her sides. His smile was so warm and understanding Charlie let him do it. Suddenly, he was all business.

“Bring me the dark blue velvet, the silver lame, the azure silk, the sky blue brocade and the mixed sequins.”

Danielle and her clone disappeared through another door while Stephen stalked around Charlie, considering her from all angles. Her hands were beginning to creep upward again when the assistants returned, laden with bolts of gleaming cloth.

For the next hour, Stephen wound, draped, wrapped and pinned more fabrics around her than she could keep track of. It was evident early on that Charlie was not expected to voice any opinions so she spent the time composing article proposals in her head.

Her attention snapped back to the designer when she realized he was writing on her breast with a black magic marker.

“What on earth?” she yelped, jumping back a foot.

“I’m writing down your measurements,” he said, holding up a tape measure.

“Do you have to write them on me?”

He laughed. “It’s quicker and easier.”

“Oh, fine,” she muttered, raising her arm at his request. “Remind me never to go into modeling.”

“You’re a bit old for that,” Stephen said, jotting a number on her elbow.

“Thanks a lot!”

He wrapped the tape measure around her hips.

“Just don’t say it out loud,” Charlie begged.

He chuckled. “I’m very discreet.”

She squinted at the number he wrote on her hipbone and frowned. “By the way, I understand you’re doing this for publicity. How does that work?”

“Very, very subtly. You only offer the information when asked. The photographers from certain publications will want to know who designed your gown. You tell them ‘Stephen Askegaard,’ nothing more. If one of the lovely ladies at the party inquires who dresses you, just give them my name because of course they should already know who I am.” He smiled. “It’s very simple.”

“I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to bring the topic up in casual conversation.”

“Believe me, darling, you won’t have to. The ladies will be begging you for my name.”

The designer took some more measurements and then released Charlie to the dressing room. When she returned in her street clothes, he had a few final instructions.

“Come four hours before the party. Don’t bring anything but yourself. No makeup, no jewelry, no shoes, nothing. We will create the entire picture here.”

“Whatever you say,” Charlie agreed. “I just want to go get some lunch.”

Stephen took her hands in his. “You will look unforgettable. Trust me.”

“He’s not going to dress me like Cher, is he?” she asked Mike in the car.

“No. Stephen is extremely talented and very, very subtle. Whatever he does, it will be tasteful and beautiful.”

“Some people think Cher’s clothes are tasteful and beautiful,” Charlie muttered as she paid the parking garage’s exorbitant bill.

Charlie forgot all about the dress when she got home. A Federal Express envelope stuffed with neatly filled-out and notarized adoption documents was sitting on her front porch. “That man is incredibly organized,” she told Major in awe. “Everything is here. How did he do it so fast?”

Her eyes widened when she looked at his financial statements. He wasn’t kidding when he said he’d made some good investments. Jack had certainly kept his end of the bargain. Charlie faxed the relevant documents to Rhonda Brown’s office. The social worker was scheduled to meet Jack on Friday while Sallyanne was at school, and so was eager to read the prospective father’s autobiography.

If truth be told, Charlie was too.

She started to take it out of the pile of papers, then paused. Oddly, she hadn’t hesitated to glance at his financials but reading his autobiography seemed invasive. She pulled it out and laid it on her desk. She obviously needed to know what he had written. But he was so intensely private.

She put it back in the pile.

He could tell her what was in the document himself.

Twelve

“I got you a wedding present too,” Charlie said, handing Jack a flat gold box.

They were sitting on her back porch where she had just served him lemonade and sandwiches. She wanted him in a good mood for what was going to be a rather personal discussion. They needed to coordinate stories for Rhonda Brown. A pleasure boat puttered through the channel, its motor merely grumbling, and a tangy edge of sea and salt drifted on the air. Major sat by Charlie and gazed hopefully at the food-laden table.

Jack flipped open the lid of the box. She had framed one of the photos of the two of them cutting the wedding cake. The groom had his arms wrapped around her from behind, and was smiling with unholy glee while Charlie appeared to be on the verge of elbowing him in the groin. Jack laughed as he took in the scene. “A true Kodak moment. Thanks.” Closing the box, he said, “This isn’t the same photo as the one on the table in your living room.”

“No. The one in the living room is for public consumption.”

In that one, scruffy young Warren Bixby had photographed them as they stood on the steps of the municipal building where the ceremony had been performed. Charlie’s cream-colored dress and Jack’s silver-gray suit contrasted vividly with the dark oak doors behind them. His arm was around her waist, and she still held her bouquet. Most extraordinary though was that they looked glowingly happy as they gazed at the camera. Warren was a magician as well as a photographer.

Charlie watched Jack drape a cloth napkin over his thigh. She shifted her gaze upward and was mesmerized by the contrast of the tanned skin of his long fingers against the pale granola bread he held. Those fingers had contrasted in much the same way with the skin of her breasts…

He turned and focused his eyes on her. “Join me in a sandwich?”

“Um, no thanks, I had a big breakfast. I’ll just have some chips,” she said, scrabbling in the big wooden bowl of organic sweet potato chips.

“What’s got you spooked?” he asked, putting down his sandwich.

“Spooked? Nothing.” She took a deep breath. “We have to talk about some personal subjects. And I hate lying to Rhonda.”

“It’s a little late to develop scruples,” he said, tilting a glass of lemonade to his lips.

Charlie tore her eyes away from the ripple in the muscles of his throat as he swallowed. “I’ve always had scruples. I just use tremendous self-discipline to overcome them,” she said with false flippancy.

He chuckled. “Let’s get our lies in line then.”

With a supreme act of will, Charlie concentrated on the task at hand. They went over the spontaneous wedding story she had made up and got the details right. They discussed Jack’s retirement story and nailed down the time frame. When they got to the topic of their philosophy on child-rearing, Jack picked up the pile of papers he had sent ahead.

“I put all that in the autobiographical section.”

“I didn’t want to read that part without your permission.”

“Those scruples again,” he said, but there was approval in his voice. He handed her three sheets of paper stapled together. “Go ahead and read it. You’ll need to know it all for the interview.”

She would rather have read it in private, but Charlie took the papers and settled back in her chair. The beginning was a very sanitized version of a boy’s life. His mother and father had divorced when he was ten. He had one younger brother. Charlie was surprised to discover he hadn’t finished high school; instead he had a high school equivalency diploma. She was aware of his lack of college education although one would never guess it from knowing him.

His work history was more revealing. He had gone into meteorite hunting at age seventeen. Charlie frowned. She remembered his story of the first meteor shower he had ever seen. But at seventeen how had he even known there was such a thing as meteorite hunting? He must have been a very focused young man.

She came to the section on child-rearing. He had written a fairly lengthy essay. She took a deep breath and plunged in. Much of it was similar to what she had written since she had given him her essay to read. The penultimate paragraph caught her attention.

Children should be allowed to be children as long as possible. Every effort should be made to shield them from cruel situations and harsh choices that an adult would find difficult to face. It is the parents’ responsibility to protect their children even as they teach them the wisdom and judgment that will enable the young people in their charge to make these hard decisions.

There had been nothing like this in her own essay. Every instinct said this was a statement from the heart. Something very bad had happened in Jack’s childhood. She finished the essay and put the papers down on her lap. “Very thorough, if a little bland.”

He smirked. “I’m doing my best to fade into the background.”

Charlie looked at the length of him stretched out in her chair, at the luminously blue eyes, at the shift of muscle under fabric as he leaned over to set the plate down on the table, and burst out laughing. “You have about as much chance of doing that as the fireball we saw.”

“Now how should I take that?” he asked, folding his arms across his chest. “There’s the blaze of glory, the brilliance and the heat,” he drawled the last word. “On the other hand, the glory is brief and generally ends in total destruction.”

“You could take it to mean that you’re noticeable.”

“Thus grounding my flights of fancy.”

“There’s another small matter I want to discuss,” Charlie said, brushing aside his caprice. She didn’t want him charming her just now. “Sallyanne will be expecting us to sleep in the same room since we’re married. I’ll use the fold-out couch in the living room so you can have my bed. But I won’t fold it out until after she’s in bed for the night.”

“A preemptive strike,” he said almost to himself. “A gentleman always takes the couch. You can keep your own bed.”

Charlie pushed aside her recollection of the last time he’d played the gentleman. “I have to get up early to get her ready for school, so the couch makes more sense for me.”

“I only sleep late when I’ve been up meteor watching. Don’t argue, sugar, unless you want to join me on the couch.” He stood up and stretched, exactly as he had on the morning after the first meteor shower.

Charlie locked her gaze resolutely on the tray she was loading with plates and glasses. She picked it up and held it in front of her like a shield. “Would you like to come with me to pick up Sallyanne?” she asked.

“No, let’s have the introduction here. I want to be able to talk with her face-to-face, not in a schoolyard or over a car seat.”

She nodded her approval and carried the tray into the kitchen. He walked in behind her, and the kitchen walls suddenly shrank around them. Charlie put the tray down with a clatter and looked at her watch. “I’ll do the dishes later. I should drop off Major and get going to the school.”

He picked up a glass and pulled open the dishwasher door. “See you soon.”

Charlie called the dog and fled.

In a half an hour, she was back with Sallyanne in tow. They had discussed the new man in the house, but Charlie held her breath as Sallyanne preceded her through the front door. Jack came out of the kitchen with a smile that made Charlie’s internal temperature shoot up ten degrees. The dimple was strongly in evidence, and the ice in his blue eyes had melted completely. .

“Hey, Sallyanne,” he said, striding over to squat in front of her. “I’m Jack.”

Charlie gave herself a mental shake. All that warmth and sunshine is for Sallyanne, not me.

“Hello, sir. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said, putting out her hand.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you too,” he said, engulfing her small hand in his. “I’ll be staying here with you as much as I can, but I know Charlie told you I’m real busy with business right now.”

“Yes, sir, she did.”

“I’m a lucky man to be living with two beautiful ladies.”

Sallyanne giggled. Charlie snorted. However, she gave him full marks for immediately getting down to Sallyanne’s eye-level. Tall men were intimidating as she remembered from her childhood.

“Charlie is very beautiful, isn’t she?” the child said.

“The most beautiful woman in the world. That’s why I married her.”

“Let’s have some cookies,” Charlie said, brushing past Jack with enough force to make him brace his hand on the floor to keep his balance.

He chuckled and swept Sallyanne up in his arms as he stood. She shrieked with delight.

Jack continued to lay on the charm with a trowel all evening.

Charlie supposed she should be grateful things were going so well between her “husband” and her ward but somewhere it hurt that he would smile for a child he considered an inconvenience and not for her.

After Sallyanne was in bed, Charlie took out the sheets for the sofa bed. When she came back to the living room, Jack had already flipped open the mattress. He took the fitted sheet from her and expertly slipped the corner on before smoothing it in her direction.

“I think it went well,” he said in a low voice. “She’s a nice little girl.”

“You’re great with children,” she agreed, brushing out some wrinkles. “You should have ten.”

“Not me, sweetheart.” His face was closed. “I’m a wanderer. And wanderers don’t make good fathers.”

“Speaking from experience?”

“I wish I was.”

An odd response. She shook out the top sheet.

“Did you see your father much after your parents’ divorce?”

“More … questions, Madame Journalist? I thought we’d called a moratorium on those.”

He had been about to say something else. In that pause after “more,” Charlie had heard a revelation forming. “Sorry. It’s one of those occupational hazards.”

“When do I get to see the meteor-shower article?” He tucked a pillow under his chin and slid the pillowcase on.

“I decided to honor the spirit of our agreement so I’m not writing anything about you.” Charlie plumped the comforter she had spread over the sofa bed.

“I see.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“The auction is coming up soon, so I’m looking for publicity just now. The right kind of publicity.”

“Why didn’t you say so? I have a rough draft on my computer. I’ll print out a copy for you to approve.”

“Thanks, sugar. I appreciate it.”

Now he was smiling for her. The soft light of the table lamp threw shadows over half his face, but she could see the gleam of strong white teeth and the hollow of his dimple. His eyes flickered with something she thought it was better not to put a name to. She arranged the last pillow on his bed. “All done. You can have the bathroom first.”

He nodded and disappeared down the dark hallway.

Charlie looked down at the bed they had made together. Instead of perfectly plumped pillows and pristinely flat sheets, she saw the shape of Jack’s body under the quilt while his bare shoulders rumpled the sheets. From an indent in the pillow, he smiled at her with those blue flames dancing in his eyes. “An overactive imagination is a dangerous thing,” she murmured, turning on her heel and heading for her bedroom.

She closed the door and leaned against it for a moment. Twinkle slunk out from under the bed and sat down to wash his ears. Since she had company, she put on a white, man’s T-shirt and a pair of flannel boxer shorts. She decided to burn off the excess energy humming through her by brushing her hair one hundred strokes, something she hadn’t done since childhood. So she stood in front of her mirror and started counting.

Fifty-one, fifty-two… She was interrupted by a light tap on the door. “Come in.”

The knob turned and Jack leaned in the door. “The bathroom is …”

He stopped.

Her brush halted in midstroke as she watched the flames she had only imagined before flare to life in those cold eyes. Fire and ice. She had never understood the power of opposites as she did now.

“Damn!” he said. The door slammed, and she was alone again.

Her brush hit the floor with a bang.

Jack turned his back on the door to Charlie’s bedroom and stood for a long moment, remembering the sight of her standing in a pool of light, her long legs bare and her hair streaming down over her shoulders and back, shimmering like a fine chardonnay.

He needed to move. Fast.

Striding over to the French doors, he unbolted, unlocked and unlatched the various security devices with less deftness than usual. Then he was outside, heading for the channel’s edge. The breeze from the ocean was bracing. He inhaled it gratefully. Two chairs sat invitingly on a small stone patio but Jack paced along the cement wall that kept the water from undercutting the lawns along the channel.

What had Miguel said about long blond hair? That it could turn into a rope. Her hair was more like a fuse that ignited a nuclear reaction. It fried his brain and made his body want to explode. Inside her.

He needed to take a long, grueling run. But he couldn’t leave the doors unlocked, and he was not going to go near her again tonight, even just to get a key. Tomorrow he got to touch her.

Wrong word choice.