No Reservations Required (7 page)

11

Sophie closed the grill cover so she wouldn’t have to look at the burnt salmon. “Nathan, you promised you’d never call me at home. We’ve already had this discussion.”

“Just hear me out, okay?”

Sophie could tell he was smoking. He’d stopped years ago, but now that he was dating Elaine Veelund, one of Sophie’s oldest friends, he’d started again. “And you can’t just drop by the hotel. You know it upsets Bram, and when that happens, it upsets me.”

“Then you’ll be happy to hear the news. I wanted to tell you this afternoon, but when I bumped into Margie, she said you weren’t around. I figured it was the kind of news you’d want to hear in person, but now I’ve got no choice. You need to hear it from me first.”

“Hear what?” She sat down on the chaise and picked up Bram’s half-finished glass of wine.

“I’m getting married.”

For a moment, she was knocked off balance. “You’re serious? To Elaine?”

“Are you happy for me?”

Sophie wanted to shout “No!” Elaine Veelund was the last person she wanted to see marry Nathan. Not that Sophie didn’t think the world of her, but when it came to men, Elaine was a horror show. She ground men up and spat them out. She’d already been married four times. She’d started dating Nathan when she was on the rebound from her last divorce. Didn’t he have a brain in his head? “Have you proposed to her?”

“Tonight. I’ve got the ring and I’ve even got the honeymoon all planned.”

Sophie had no business meddling in his affairs. If she felt proprietary about him now, it was just because he was a friend. She’d warned him about Elaine, so what more could she do? “Well then, that’s . . . wonderful.”

“You really think so?”

“Sure. If it’s what you want.”

Silence. “You already know what I want, Sophie. But I’m never going to get it, right?”

“What is this? You’re calling to give me one last chance to accept your proposal?”

“What if I said yes? That no matter how hard I try, I still can’t get you out of my heart.”

“Nathan, I love my husband. How many ways can I say it?”

“But you love me, too.”

“Not the way you want. Not anymore.”

More silence. “Okay. Then I guess I’ll marry Elaine.”

“You make it sound like you’re standing at a candy counter, deciding which candy bar to buy. Have you really thought this through?”

“Of course.”

“You don’t have to marry anyone, you know.”

“But I want to. I’m sick of being alone. I’m settled here now. I have a great restaurant and I want to share my life with someone.”

“And Elaine and I are interchangeable?”

“I didn’t say that. I care about Elaine, but I’ll never feel for her what I feel for you.”

“You’re aware of her track record with men.”

His voice grew hard. “Your concern is touching, but I can take care of myself.”

This was a guilt trip, pure and simple. But it was so obvious, it was pathetic. He was calling so that Sophie could save him from the clutches of an evil femme fatale. But the only way she could do that, the only way he would change his plans, was for her to choose him over her husband. In the past year, Sophie had thought long and hard about her feelings for both men. The conclusion she’d come to was clear and firm: Bram was the only man she wanted. Perhaps the only man she’d ever really loved. The feelings she had for Nathan were all wrapped up in teenage angst and adolescent melodrama. She couldn’t even say she knew him—not as an adult.

Nathan’s voice suddenly brightened. “Elaine said that your stepdaughter is a wedding planner. She just started a business.”

Now Sophie grew wary. “That’s right.”

“I may contact her.”

“Nathan, I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Why not? Might as well give her the job. Keep it in the family, so to speak.”

“Nathan—”

“I was also thinking that getting married at the Maxfield might be cool.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“No? Well, I’ll find someplace else, then. Listen, Soph. I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll call and let you know if Elaine accepts my proposal.”

“Please, Nathan, don’t call me here.”

“Well, I’ll catch you one way or another.” He laughed. “Freudian slip. Bye, Sophie. Wish me well.”

12

It was the eye of the storm. Anika was certain of it. Ever since Bob’s funeral, her life had become unnaturally still. While events swirled furiously around her, nothing touched the silence that had become her world. In the last few weeks, Andy had retreated into a sullen shell. The distance she’d felt growing between them before Bob’s death had seeped suddenly into every part of their relationship. For months, Anika had been thinking about asking Andy for a divorce. But asking him now would be like throwing a drowning man an anchor.

When Andy had proposed eight years ago, he’d insisted that he didn’t want a traditional wedding. Specifically, when they said their vows, he wanted the words “for better or for worse, until death do us part” replaced with the phrase “as long as love is good.” Perhaps he’d had a premonition. Anika didn’t know. But what she did know was that their love had ceased to be good a long time ago.

She traced the disintegration to Andy’s first week as associate editor at the
Minneapolis Times Register.
Bob had offered him the job out of kindness, out of the desire to help his brother through a rough patch, and probably as a way to get to know him. Andy had grown up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and had attended Northern Michigan University in Marquette on a journalism scholarship. He’d received his degree in 1987. For the next few years, he’d worked as a reporter at various small-town papers across the country. He hated big cities, and working in small towns allowed him to become a big fish in a small pond. It provided him with a chance to really make a name for himself.

Andy craved success. But the first paper he worked for folded after only a few months, and the next was sold after he’d been there a little over two years. Andy lost his job to a relative of the new owner. The third job he took paid so little that he subsisted on Kraft macaroni and cheese and peanut butter sandwiches for the duration—just under a year. After his fourth job ended because the owner of the paper died suddenly and no one else in the small town had any interest in keeping it going, Andy moved back to Marquette. It was the spring of ’94, and he was depressed, exhausted, and penniless.

One day, while having a cup of coffee at a shop on Milford Street near NMU, he’d run into an old buddy of his who was seriously considering a start-up publishing company. Rick Lostine had the money, but what he didn’t have was a good editor—a partner, really. Rick was the same age as Andy, also from Ann Arbor. They’d been friends since grade school. Rick’s enthusiasm was so contagious that Andy said he’d kill for a chance to be that editor. He explained that he was sick to death of newspapers where he had to do everything from editing and reporting to paying the light bill. He couldn’t finance the plan, but he’d developed considerable editing skills over the past six years, and he promised he’d work not only gladly but tirelessly to make the idea a success. Thus, Lostine & Gladstone Publishers was born.

Anika met Andy for the first time that spring. He was so passionate about what he was doing, so upbeat, focused, and energized that Anika thought that’s who he was. Andy Gladstone was a man on fire, a man who loved books as much as she did. Watching the publishing house take shape was almost as exciting as falling in love. Maybe it was all part of the same fabric. It was certainly hard to separate the two in her mind now.

Lostine & Gladstone started out slowly, publishing only two books that first year. But five years later, they were publishing twelve books a year, both fiction and nonfiction. As far as Anika could see, Rick and Andy had done everything right. They’d taken their time, learned through trial and error the best ways to approach various publishing problems. Andy had the capacity to throw himself into his work with total single-mindedness. And yet he always had time for Anika. Andy was a romantic. He loved to bring Anika little gifts, plan romantic trysts. He’d never been in love before, and Anika and the publishing house quickly became his whole world. He seemed to have endless energy, staying up late, getting up early. He never appeared to get tired those first few years.

After they were married, they bought a little house on Colby Avenue and settled down. Anika had a degree in hotel management and worked at one of the top hotels in Marquette as an assistant food and beverage manager. Everything was going wonderfully. They were even talking about having a baby. And then the roof fell in.

In the summer of ’99, Rick acquired a book called
White Sails.
It was a memoir, one man’s account of his eight months sailing the Great Lakes. The author, Whitby Armstrong Sellers, was a professor of English literature at Princeton, and a modern-day adventurer and raconteur. The book was brilliant—beautifully written and observed, hilarious and touching, full of suspense and good old-fashioned adventure. Everyone told Andy and Rick that this memoir would be huge. It would put Lostine & Gladstone on the map.

They published the book in September of 2000. The initial print run was a modest six thousand copies, but when it sold out almost immediately, Andy okayed another five thousand copies to be printed. As soon as the major book chains got wind of the memoir’s growing popularity, orders came in from all over—in such huge numbers that Rick and Andy had to borrow money to print more books to meet the demand. This happened several times over a two-month period. Before they knew it, all their assets, both personal and professional, were in hock to
White
Sails.
But Andy told Anika not to worry. The chains wouldn’t order such large quantities if they couldn’t sell them. These were smart businessmen. It would just take a little time.

Thanksgiving rolled around and people began their Christmas buying. Rick and Andy expected that
White
Sails
would sell like crazy, especially in the Midwest. Professor Sellers was supposed to be interviewed on NPR’s “Fresh Air” in early November, but due to scheduling difficulties, the interview fell through. Not to worry, said Andy. The
New York Times
was reviewing the book. But somehow, that never happened either.

And then, in late February, booksellers began to return the books. It was just a trickle at first. The chains had obviously miscalculated and hadn’t sold as many copies as they’d anticipated. But there was still time. The memoir had received a great review in
People
magazine in late January and that was surely a magic bullet if there ever was one. That one review alone would sell thousands of copies, just as soon as people went back to the stores—or so Rick and Andy thought. Book buyers were tapped out after Christmas, but in the spring, sales would pick up. And Professor Sellers had hired himself a publicist. He felt certain he’d get on a major morning network show soon.

But in the end, that fell through, too. By the end of March, the floodgates had opened as books poured back into Lostine & Gladstone, with very few orders going out. Of the 220,000 copies that were printed, only 40,000 sold. By May, most of the unsold copies were sitting in a warehouse gathering dust. The book that was supposed to be Lostine & Gladstone’s break-out bestseller had bankrupted them. A bigger press might have been able to absorb the loss and go on, but for a small press, the major interest from the big chain bookstores had ultimately sunk the publisher.

The day their bankruptcy was officially finalized, Andy came home and closed the door to his study. Anika knocked several times, wanting to comfort him, but each time Andy said he needed time alone. She could hear him crying, but by then, that wasn’t new. He’d been crying a lot the last few months as he watched his dreams once again turn to ash.

Shortly after they moved out of their little house into an efficiency apartment, Andy got a call from Bob Fabian. Bob was twelve years older than his half sibling. They shared the same mother, but had different fathers. Andy was six when Bob had gone off to West Point. Their mother had died two years later, and Bob had never returned home again after that. He’d never gotten along with Andy’s father, Merle Gladstone. From what Anika had been able to piece together, neither had Andy. Merle had come to their wedding, but he’d remarried shortly thereafter and hadn’t invited any family or friends. His father had called it “eloping,” but Andy said it was just a way for him to cut people out of his life. He always referred to his dad as “the old bastard”— that is, when he referred to him at all, which was seldom.

Andy never wanted to discuss his childhood. At first, Anika had pressed him about it, but she’d learned quickly that if she didn’t want to spend the evening with a sullen, quietly furious fiancé, she should drop the matter—and fast. She’d looked through his family photograph album, and nothing looked amiss to her. The house, the Christmas dinners, the swing set in the backyard all looked pretty normal. There were far fewer pictures after Andy’s mother had died. Apparently, Merle wasn’t into photography. In Anika’s family, her mother had always taken the pictures and videos at family events, so it didn’t seem that odd to her. Still, she wished she knew more about Andy’s childhood. It might help her make sense out of a man she found nearly inscrutable these days—a man she’d once loved deeply and perhaps still did, but someone who’d changed so much in the eight years that they’d been married that she hardly recognized him anymore. His sweetness, his desire to make her happy, his humor and his unassuming kindness had all vanished. In its place, she found she was living with a man of mercurial temperaments, one whose own internal darkness, something she’d never really comprehended before, had virtually swallowed him whole.

But the question remained. Should she ask him for a divorce, or should she wait? Maybe there was still hope for them, although in her heart, she knew the bright, happy man she’d married was not the same one she was living with now. Andy seemed haunted and frightened. Anika had no idea why that should be. For the first time since the publishing debacle, his life was back on track. More than on track. Overnight, they’d both become millionaires. And yet she’d recently seen not only fear register in his eyes, but panic. He no longer talked to her the way he once had, sharing his triumphs and tragedies, his ups and downs—
himself.
Especially during the last year, he’d grown secretive, short-tempered, self-centered. They were strangers living in the same apartment. Except Anika wasn’t sure Andy saw it that way. He treated her, when he talked to her at all, as if everything were fine between them.

The phone rang just as Anika came into the kitchen. She picked it up and said hello, but received only silence in reply. She knew someone was on the other end because she could hear street noises in the background.

“Hello,” she said again. “Who’s calling, please?”

The line clicked.

As she placed the receiver back on the hook, she heard Andy’s key in the front door. Their current apartment was much larger than the house they’d lived in when they were first married. Andy’s salary was almost triple what it had been during his days at the publishing house. And since coming to Minnesota, Anika had found another job as assistant food and beverage manager, this time at the Maxfield Plaza in St. Paul. After Bob’s death, she’d taken a leave of absence. She wouldn’t return to work for another few days. She was going stir-crazy in the apartment by herself, but felt she should be available for Andy if he needed her.

He hadn’t.

“Honey,” called Andy from the living room. “I’ve got some great news.”

In spite of herself, Anika kept hoping that Andy’s gloomy distance might finally evaporate and in its place her old husband, the man she thought she’d married, would return. “I’m in the kitchen.”

He walked in and set his briefcase down on the glass-topped table. “Come here.”

“Why?”

“Just come here.”

She moved cautiously toward him.

He folded her in his arms, kissing her hair, running his hands up and down her back. “I love you, babe. Have I told you that lately?”

She could feel her body stiffen, but Andy didn’t seem to notice. “Not really.”

“Well, then I should be drawn and quartered.”

“I’ve considered it.”

He stood back, holding her by her shoulders. “It’s been a hard year, honey. For both of us. But all that’s going to change.” He leaned back against the counter, his right hand jingling the change in his pocket. “I got a call this afternoon. You’ll never guess who from.”

Anika sat down at the kitchen table.

“Rick! He’s been offered a job at Simon and Schuster in New York. He’s got two weeks before he has to start, so he’s flying out here to stay with us for a few days.”

“That’s great news,” said Anika. And it was. They hadn’t heard from Rick since he’d moved to New York six months ago. “What kind of job is it?”

“Publicist. He’ll be working with their children’s book line—or something like that. He can tell us more about it when he gets here.”

“And when will that be?”

“End of the week.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “I talked to the movers this afternoon. They said they’d be here first thing in the morning.”

“Movers?”

“Sure. You didn’t think we were going to stay here, did you? We’re millionaires now, babe. I want to be all settled into Bob’s house before Rick arrives.”

Anika was shocked. She’d never considered that Andy would want to move into Bob’s place.

“Come on. Don’t give me that look. There’s no point staying here when we own that incredible piece of property.”

The idea of living in a house where a man she’d loved had been shot to death repelled her to her very core. Surely that revulsion must be written all over her face. But Andy went on as if her agreement were a given.

“I feel like celebrating. I mean, I’m not trying to dance on Bob’s grave or anything like that. What happened to him is horrible and it goes without saying that I’ll do everything I can to help the police find the man who murdered him, but I’m sick of being down in the dumps. We’ve got a chance at a new life. A new beginning. I know I haven’t been the best husband lately. Well, even longer than that. You were such an angel when I hurt my back last year. I probably never thanked you enough. And you’re still my angel. Come on, sweetheart. What do you say? Should I call and make reservations at the Rookery?”