Some Like It Perfect (A Temporary Engagement) (18 page)

“Rarely.”

“It really pisses her off that you won’t let her use your bathroom.”

He couldn’t help his smile and Gus raised her eyebrows. “Maybe she does see a different side of you than I do.”

Jack would hope so. “It would be so much less fun if she didn’t react to it.”

He smiled again. He’d have to point out to Delia that he would have let her use his bathroom this morning.

Gus stopped eating, putting her chopstick down. “Jack, torturing the girl you like is so third grade. Stop it.”

He laughed. “You assume that’s what she doesn’t like about me. I don’t think that’s it.”

“What else could it be?”

He said slowly, hearing the truth as it left his lips, “I don’t think there is anything. I think that’s what she doesn’t like.”

He looked into his cup, at the pale green liquid, and he smiled yet again. He said, “I think that is exactly what she doesn’t like.”

Delia came to Sunday dinner at his mother’s. All it had taken was Jack saying on Friday, “She has a ceiling, Delia. She has walls crying for good art. Don’t you want enough?”

He’d heard her muttering and cursing the entire afternoon. She’d glared, she’d banged lids and stomped up and down the ladder. She’d ripped her booties off and thrown them at the end of the day.

She’d turned to him and he’d said, “I’ll pick you and Gus up.”

“Fine,” and she’d slammed the door on her way out.

Sunday evening, she and Gus were waiting outside their apartment when he drove up. Gus was wearing jeans and a bulky sweater, but Delia looked like she had dressed up from her normal, paint-covered casual to business casual.

Her hair was smooth, the red sleek and shiny, the curls gone, and her makeup made her green eyes sparkle.

Gus jumped in the back, waving Delia to the front and saying, “Glad you didn’t bring the convertible.”

Jack stared at Delia’s hair.

Gus poked her head between the seats. “She looks good, huh?”

Jack said, “Your hair.”

Delia smoothed her hand down it. “I thought if I was going to try and bilk your mother out of a chunk of change, I should dress up.”

Gus said, “You’re not bilking her. She’ll love having her ceiling painted. So old world. Everyone will want one.”

“I don’t want to paint her ceiling. I want her to buy a painting.”

Jack thought there was no reason they couldn’t do both.

Delia unzipped her coat in the warm car and he closed his eyes in pain. “You’re wearing a cardigan.”

She patted his leg. “It’s okay, Jack. Tomorrow morning I’ll be back to my jeans and sweatshirt.”

“And your hair?”

She laughed. “If this lasts through dinner, it will be a miracle.”

When they arrived at his mother’s and he could see the whole ensemble– emerald green cardigan, black slacks and flats– he could see how polished she looked. How normal.

His mother would love it. His mother had complained long and loud about bringing an
artist
to dinner, of all things.

Jack hated it.

His only consolation was he could see her hair beginning to curl at the base of her neck. He wanted to twirl his fingers around in it and help it along.

He pecked his mother’s cheek and she stared at Delia.

Delia stared back.

Catherine nodded at her daughter and said, “Diane came for a visit today.”

Gus clenched her fists and raised her chin. “Did she tell you the happy news?”

“She told me
some
news. She didn’t think it all that happy.”

Gus smiled meanly. “She wouldn’t.”

“I told her she must be mistaken. My son wouldn’t get engaged without telling me.” Her tone said she had no such faith in her daughter and this must be one of her jokes.

Jack jumped in before mother and daughter could say anything more. “An engagement announcement was perhaps a bit premature. Although Diane may want to expand her horizons.”

Catherine looked again at Delia. “You don’t marry the help, son.”

Delia opened her mouth and Jack pinched her.

He said, “She’s not the help, Mother. She’s an artist.”

Catherine didn’t say it, didn’t need to, that an artist was worse.

Delia said, “I haven’t said yes.”

All three of them turned to her.

She looked at Jack and said again, “I haven’t said yes to anything.”

He smiled. “Yet.”

She looked at Catherine. “If I were you, I wouldn’t be worrying about it.”

Catherine watched Jack push her into dinner and murmured, “I think I will.”

They sat down to dinner in the dining room and Delia kept sneaking glances up at the ceiling.

Jack leaned in to her. “What would you do to it?”

She jutted her chin and looked back down at her plate. “Nothing.”

He turned to his mother. “When Delia is done with the office, I thought she could do something in here.”

Catherine looked up at the ceiling, interested. “Do you? I’m not sure I would enjoy eating with chubby angels watching overhead.”

Jack wished she’d thought of that before she’d commissioned them to stare down at him all day long.

Delia said, “I can’t do the same ceiling twice.”

Jack silently thanked a kind and benevolent God. “What were you thinking, then.”

She sighed and looked back up, measuring the area with her eyes. “Parchment. Mottled parchment.”

Jack wondered what she would paint into the parchment.

Catherine said, “You don’t seem too enthusiastic about the idea.”

“Painting a ceiling is exhausting. And painful. I don’t really want to think about doing it again when I still haven’t finished Jack’s office.”

Jack said, “Perhaps after a short break, you’ll be ready to do it again.”

Delia looked at Catherine and Catherine looked at Delia. They didn’t say anything, just sized the other one up. Jack thought they were probably both thinking the same thing.
Maybe
.

Gus said, “Jack’s office does look amazing. You should come look at it, Mother.”

Catherine dropped Delia’s gaze to look at the ceiling. “I think I will. I was going to wait until it was finished but now. . . Parchment, you say?”

Delia drew in the air with her finger. “Mottled parchment with ribbons of gold sewn through it, like really old, really expensive paper.”

Catherine relaxed into her seat. “That would be apropos in a house that paper built.”

Jack smiled into his glass. Delia said she hated ceilings, and he had no doubt that it was exhausting and painful laying on your back all day long with your arms in the air. But she loved it, too. She got lost when she was painting. And when did an artist ever have a big enough canvas to work with?

Delia said, “If I do another ceiling I’m going to need an assistant. I’m tired of carrying things up and down the ladder.”

Gus said, “I can help you at work. There’s this guy on my floor who would be happy to carry things up and down a ladder if I was watching.”

A slow smile spread across Delia’s face. “Oh, yeah? Did you make him forget his name?”

Gus blushed. “Yeah.”

Jack’s pulse raced and he realized he’d have to get used to this feeling now. He was happy for Gus, happy that she was gaining confidence in herself. He could only hope she would drop Nate soon, when she realized she could have her pick of the litter.

But he was going to have to take up yoga or meditation to help with his anxiety. Maybe Delia would have some tips for him.

He shook his head at Gus. “You don’t need any more excuses to stop working.” He looked at Delia and muttered into his glass, “And I don’t want my little sister seeing what you’ve been painting on my ceiling.”

“She’s eighteen.”

Gus leaned forward. “Now I have to see what is on the ceiling.”

His mother said, “I hope it is cherubic angels peeking out from behind clouds.”

Delia said with a voice full of conviction, “It is. Jack thinks he can see things in the shadows.”

Gus said, “And that’s so like him.”

Jack raised his eyebrows at Delia and she mouthed silently, “It’s not you.”

Her face said,
Oh, it’s you.

He smiled at her, slow and long. He knew it was him, he knew it was her, and one day she would admit it. And then. . .

And then heat rushed into Delia’s face and she looked away from him.

Gus rolled her eyes and smiled, all at the same time. “Googly eyes.”

Catherine silently studied Jack and the woman sitting beside him.

She said, “Hmm.”

She turned away from them, dismissing something she didn’t want to think about. She said to her daughter, “Tell me about this man you’ve made forget his name. He doesn’t sound like he’s firing on all cylinders but at least he’s gainfully employed.”

Monday morning, Delia was back in her paint-stained jeans and wild hair. Jack watched it bounce around her head and he sank into his chair. Everything was right with the world.

At noon, he helped her put her coat on and said, “I canceled lunch with Gus today.”

“You didn’t cancel lunch with my stomach.”

“We’ll grab something on the way.”

“On the way to where?”

He smiled. “You’ll see.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I’ll go, but I want you to know it’s under protest.”

“Duly noted.”

First order of business was a stop for hot subs around the corner from his office and Delia said, “There’s a little less protest now.”

Jack ate leaning over the counter, juice dripping from his sandwich, his tie tucked into his shirt.

Delia watched him eat with his hands and said, “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”

“I wanted to get you something for putting up with my mother.”

“I thought she was remarkably calm considering you brought home a fiance you hadn’t bothered to tell her about.”

She had been calm, though not remarkably. Catherine Lowell Cabot Bradlee was always calm.

Gus had spent the rest of dinner explaining to Mother how a woman could make a man forget his name and how Gus was practicing. Delia had pointed her finger at her and Gus said, “Responsibly. I’m not going around robbing every man of his ability to think.”

Catherine Lowell Cabot Bradlee had looked at Jack and Delia again and said, “Ahh.”

Jack hadn’t told his mother that while Delia
had
made him forget his name, it had been after he’d already wanted her.

Jack snagged one of Delia’s chips. “My mother wouldn’t have cared if I brought home an undisclosed fiance as long as it was Diane Evans. She wants me to marry her.”

“Eek. And you, the perfect son that you are, can’t come up with any other way out except a fake fiance?”

“I could tell her no. I just don’t want to have to.” He sucked at the last of his Coke. “I don’t want to see who else she’d bring home.”

They walked through the Common, the trees bare of leaves, the grass lightly dusted with snow, and headed toward Beacon Hill. When they emerged from the park, surrounded by historic row houses and brick sidewalks, Delia sighed.

Jack smiled, and when he stopped in front of a shoe boutique, Delia’s breath caught.

She said, “This is a bad idea.”

“It’s a gift.”

“It’s impractical. And you shouldn’t be encouraging my vice.”

“I’ll encourage your vices as much as I like.”

He cupped her elbow, propelling her into the store. He whispered into her ear, “I want you to pick the most expensive, most impractical shoe they have here. And wear them tonight for me.”

She walked slowly to a display, looking at the shoes, running a light finger along the material. She’d gone straight to the heels, her eyes wide and sparkling, and said, “I can be bought. My whole life I thought I had principle but no. I can be bought for a sparkly pair of shoes.”

She picked one up gingerly, a silver strappy heel that looked like it would fall off with every step. “A pair of shoes I will never be able to wear anywhere but at home.”

He told the saleswoman what size to bring and Delia turned to him. He said, “Gus told me.”

Gus had told him what size dress as well and it was waiting for Delia in the trunk of his car. A dress for dancing, a dress for wooing. A dress for saying yes.

The saleswoman brought out the shoes and Delia sat, stripping off her real Italian boots.