Single in Suburbia (6 page)

No matter how hard Anne Justiss had to squeeze.

The Children’s Hospital Gala was underway by the time Candace and Dan arrived. It was early March and the theme was Spring Fling. The women’s gowns reflected that, the pastel shades and muted jewel tones providing a sophisticated accent to the grand ballroom’s sherbert décor.

“Remember,” Candace said, straightening the bow tie of Dan’s rented tuxedo, “there are all kinds of heavy hitters here tonight. This function could do a lot for your accounting practice.”

“My practice is doing fine.” Dan took her hand and guided it gently from his throat. “Why don’t we just enjoy ourselves?” He smiled impishly. “You look like a bonbon in that dress. Definitely good enough to eat.” He brushed his lips across her cheek. “And the orchestra sounds great.”

“You never liken a woman to a piece of candy,” she admonished, nonetheless pleased by the compliment. “Too fattening.” She scanned the room trying to determine the best place to start mingling. “And besides, I don’t think Christian Dior was going for ‘bonbon’ when he designed this gown.”

She made a subtle adjustment to her gown’s strapless bodice and slipped her arm through the crook of his. Then she led him toward a knot of couples on the far side of the dance floor.

“That’s Todd Williams on the left,” she whispered as they crossed the room. “He builds shopping centers. Walter Green is next to him. His family has always owned banks. They were just bought out by Bank of America.”

She drew him along with her enjoying the picture she knew they presented, but unsure how Dan would handle himself with this crowd. So far most of their time together had been spent in casual pursuits or in bed. She’d enjoyed both immensely, with the possible exception of the ballpark. But this was her milieu and, she assumed, as alien to him as the concession stand had been to her.

“Hello, darlings.” She went up on tiptoe to peck Walter Green on the cheek then slipped an arm around his wife’s waist for a social hug. “This is my friend, Dan Donovan. Dan, this is Walter and Tessa Green.”

The men extended their hands and shook. Candace was poised to facilitate conversation. If necessary, she could promote Dan and his company without him speaking a word.

“I know you, don’t I?” Walter said to Dan. “Is it from the club?”

Candace prepared to step in and save both men any embarrassment, but Dan was smiling easily. When he spoke it was with the same comfortable tone he used with the boys on his team and the clerk at the convenience store.

“I helped with an audit you were conducting before the merger. And then I strong-armed you into making a donation to the inner-city baseball program. We put your money to good use.”

“That’s right.” Walter’s smile was equally genuine. He turned to the man beside him and said, “Todd. Want you to meet Dan…”

“Donovan.” Dan put out his hand and shook comfortably. A moment later, the men were discussing the inner city baseball program and then moved on to the Braves’ current lineup. Candace accepted a glass of wine from a passing waiter and tuned in to Tessa, surprised to realize that Dan didn’t need her to run interference or help him through any social awkwardness.

Conversation among the women began with their offspring then turned, as it often did, to their “help.”

“I’d give anything for someone I could give instructions to in English,” Sandra Williams said. “Our maid is Brazilian, and she’s absolutely lovely, but I don’t speak a word of Portuguese and she has about ten words of English. We use sign language and charades in order to communicate. You can’t really get what you want when you can’t express the details.”

“Tell me about it.” Tessa leaned closer. “Have you ever tried to act out toilet paper?”

Laughing, Candace glanced over Tessa Green’s shoulder and spotted Brooke and Hap Mackenzie. The redhead looked lovely, but uncomfortable, in the only black gown in a sea of pastels. It was also a tad too revealing, with a plunging neckline that revealed creamy white breasts. It was too bad, Candace thought. With Brooke’s thick auburn hair and her elegant figure, the right sort of dress would have made all the difference.

The men’s conversation continued. Reassured by Dan’s easy participation, she tuned them out. Listening to the ladies with half an ear, she smiled at the appropriate pauses in conversation and subtly scanned the room.

In a distant corner, she spotted Rob Sheridan, the louse, with the sparkly Tiffany on his arm. Tiffany looked even less comfortable than Brooke, or maybe that was just wishful thinking. Amanda Sheridan had spent most of her adult life focused on her husband and family and she’d been supplanted by an empty head of blonde hair and a perky set of breasts. Candace shook her head, resenting the girl on Amanda’s behalf. Women of a certain age needed to stick together. She made a mental note to check in with Amanda tomorrow. Maybe she’d like to do lunch or go out for a drink.

Realizing the conversation flowing around her had come to a halt, Candace pulled her attention back to Tessa and Sandra.

“I’m sorry,” Candace apologized. “What did you say?”

Tessa nodded to a group of women to their left. “Isn’t that your mother?”

Slowly, so as not to call attention to herself, Candace turned her head and followed Tessa’s gaze. She loved her mother and knew that in her own way she meant well, but tonight the words “isn’t that your mother” filled her with the same sort of dread she might have felt if someone had said, “isn’t that Typhoid Mary?”

“Yes,” she said, “it is, isn’t it?” Which was very surprising since her mother was supposed to be in Florida right now.

As subtly as she could, she slipped her arm back through Dan’s and squeezed gently. “I, um, wondered if you could come with me for a minute?” she asked quietly as he turned to her. To the group, she offered a smile and said, “Will you excuse us? There’s someone on the other side of the room I want Dan to meet.”

They extracted themselves and without comment she propelled them to the right, away from her mother. Though she wanted to, she was very careful not to actually cut and run. Instead she walked sedately—OK she might have been tiptoeing—while she tried to figure out how to slip out without being noticed. And how to explain to Dan why she suddenly wanted to leave.

“What’s the matter?” Dan looked down at her, his eyes telegraphing his concern. “You’re trembling.”

She was contemplating feigning a headache when she heard her mother’s voice behind her.

“Candace?”

Candace froze, bringing Dan to a stop with her. She let go of his arm and barely resisted the urge to shout, “Save yourself! Run, get away as fast as you can.” Slowly she turned. Dan turned with her.

Hannah Bloom was short by anyone’s standards, but she was mighty. Possessing incalculable quantities of will and determination, she was a force of nature. In hurricane terms, Hannah Bloom was a category five.

“Mother!” Candace didn’t have to feign her surprise. “I thought you were out of town.” Which was why, of course, she’d felt safe bringing Dan to this function.

“Ida asked me to stay to help with Myra Mench’s daughter’s bridal shower, so I decided not to go. You look like a bonbon in that dress.” She said it with none of the affection that had filled Dan’s voice.

“Yes, I was telling her that earlier. It’s fabulous, isn’t it?” Dan wrapped an arm around Candace’s bare shoulder, clearly offering his support. “I’m tempted to start calling her Candy.”

“Don’t.” Candace and her mother uttered the word in unison. Her mother’s tone was adamant, Candace’s automatic. At the age of three, when she was preparing to enter preschool, “Don’t call me Candy” was the phrase her mother had taught her to share with her classmates.

Candace would have explained that to Dan now, but all of her mother’s formidable attention was focused on him. Candace’s goal now was to minimize casualties and get out alive.

“And who is this?” Her mother asked Candace the question, though her gaze remained on Dan.

“This is Dan Donovan, my date for the evening.” Candace felt Dan flinch as she relegated him to the level of paid escort. But she knew her mother too well to think that Dan Donovan was going to pass muster. The tall, dark, good-looking part might fly; the not-so-ambitious and definitely-not-Jewish part would not.

“Oh?” Hannah Bloom’s tone was icily polite. Candace knew what was coming. As her mother liked to say, all she wanted was what she thought was best for her only daughter; the words “what
she
thought best” being the operative ones.

Candace knew what sort of men her mother deemed best for her; she knew because she’d married—and divorced—three of them. Dan Donovan wasn’t one of those kind of men.

She straightened her shoulders and battened down her mental hatches, wondering just how old she’d have to be before she stopped trying to win her mother’s approval. Then she threw Dan an apologetic look as Hannah Bloom, with the surgical precision of a trial attorney, commenced the third degree.

“So, Daniel,” she said in a deceptively friendly voice. “You don’t mind if I call you Daniel, do you?”

“Of course not.”

“Where are your people from?”

Dan smiled and Candace thought she saw a twinkle steal into his eyes, which told her he had no idea who he was dealing with. “Originally, County Cork. Ireland, ma’am. More recently, to be sure, we’re from Boston.”

Candace turned slowly to consider Dan Donovan who, if she wasn’t mistaken, now had a distinctly Irish lilt in his voice.

“How interesting,” the Grand Inquisitor said. “And what do you do, here in Atlanta?”

“I’m an accountant.”

Hannah brightened a little at that. “Oh. Are you with one of the large firms?”

“I’m afraid not,” Dan replied. “’Twould be a fine thing of course. But I’m a sole practitioner. It allows me my freedom, don’t you know.”

Candace had a bad feeling the next words out of his mouth were going to be “faith and begorra.”

She nudged Dan gently, but his attention was focused on her mother. He didn’t look the least bit worried. Or apologetic.

“Dan is very involved in charitable works, Mother,” Candace felt compelled to point out. “And he coaches his son’s Little League baseball team, the Mudhens.”

“How nice that you have the time for that.” Her mother’s tone made it clear that she believed only the underemployed would have time for that sort of thing. “How many children
do
you have?” Here the assumption was that someone named Donovan would have a truckload.

“Just the one,” Dan said easily, the smile and the lilt firmly in place, “which was a sore disappointment to me sainted mother. I was one of seven.” He winked. “I’d love to have more, meself. And I don’t think it’s ever too late.”

Candace told herself Dan hadn’t really said “me sainted mother” or “meself,” except of course he had.

She shot her mother an appraising glance, but saw no sign that she realized how thoroughly she was being had. Candace knew for a fact that it was time to beat a retreat, but it was beginning to occur to her that they weren’t necessarily going to be leaving with their tails between their legs as she had expected.

“I always think it’s a shame for the only child.” Dan was still on the subject of children, a subject Candace had given up on a long time ago. “They have no one to squabble with. No character-building issues over hand-me-downs or lack of personal space. And just think of all that parental attention and adoration aimed solely at them. Imagine what that can do to a child.”

Hannah Bloom flinched. It was a small movement, not much more than a blink, really, but Candace saw it. The unimaginable had happened. A mild-mannered, unassuming accountant had thrown himself in the path of an oncoming train and somehow managed to alter its course.

“Well then,” Candace said much too brightly, “I’m so glad you two had the chance to get acquainted.” With Dan’s arm still around her shoulder, she leaned forward and gave her mother a peck on the cheek. “There’s someone else we need to say hello to and then we really have to be going. I have a, um, headache. And I think we should go lie down for a while.”

Her mother gasped.

“I mean,
I’m
going to go lie down. At home. By me…myself. Dan is just going to drive me there.” She finally clamped her mouth shut to halt the babbling.

Dan just smiled his good-bye and followed along without comment. But his blue eyes twinkled merrily.

chapter
6

H
ave a seat,” Anne Justiss said as she ushered Amanda into her office the next morning. “Would you like some coffee? A Danish?”

Goosebumps shot up Amanda’s spine as she took in the attorney’s tone of voice and the look of concern on her face. The offering of food felt especially inauspicious.

“No thanks.” She braced herself, much as her children had done the night before, barely able to wait for the attorney to walk around the desk and take her seat.

“What’s wrong?” Amanda asked, not really wanting to know, wishing for about the thousandth time since her life had spun out of control that she could turn back the clock. This time she’d settle for right before she’d walked into this office. Right before her alarm had gone off this morning might be even safer.

“It turns out that your husband’s financial balls are much smaller than we expected them to be.” This time there was no accompanying smile or hint of laughter. “In fact, they appear to be nonexistent.”

Amanda’s stomach dropped somewhere around her knees. The one thing she’d been counting on was the cleansing effect of taking her husband to the cleaners, of leaving him up a creek without a financial paddle.

“Actually, he seems to have been living beyond his means for some time.”

Amanda was trying, but she simply could not get her brain around this. “Beyond his means? But he has a huge salary from the law firm and he’s made all kinds of investments over the years.”

The attorney’s eyes telegraphed her regret. “Oh, he’s made investments all right—all of them ill advised. Each one of them has weakened his position even further.”