The Daughter-in-Law (5 page)

“I’d love to go. I was a catcher in Little League.”

When her cab pulled up, Nicole held out her hand. Jonathan used it to pull her close and kissed her gently on the cheek. He stood like a statue, with one foot off the curb, until the taxi turned out of sight.

FOUR

“S
HE’S TERRIFIC
,” he told Ben the next afternoon while they were at the bar waiting for their table. Jonathan had begged his friend to join him for lunch, promising him “big news.” Now he was delivering on the promise.

“You should see her in a dress. An absolute knockout.” He described her from head to foot, providing details of her hairstyle, makeup, and attire that he didn’t generally use to describe the women in his life. Then he took Ben line-by-line through the conversation they had shared. In his recital, Nicole came off as intelligent, witty, sympathetic, honest, ambitious, and courageous.

“Our table has been ready for twenty minutes,” Ben interrupted. Jonathan awoke from his dream and they carried their drinks to the table.

“So, how was she in bed?” Ben asked as soon as they were seated.

Jonathan seemed shocked at the audacity of the question.

“Usually, that’s the first thing you tell me about a date. Generally in more detail than I really need to get the picture. I don’t think you’ve ever begun with a description of a dress, unless the zipper got stuck when you were taking it off. And you’ve never run through the Girl Scout rule in describing a date’s good character. So I assume that you are really taken with Nicole and are keeping the best for last. I’ve heard enough of the preliminaries. I want to hear about the main event. How was she in bed?”

“She wasn’t. We didn’t spend the night.”

“She turned you down?” Ben was stunned.

“Yes . . . well, no, not really. I didn’t push the point. It just didn’t seem right at the time.”

“It didn’t seem right?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Jon, how many times have you told me that it always seems right? Don’t you preach that even bad sex is better than sitting up with Letterman? What went wrong?”

“Nothing went wrong,” Jonathan snapped, showing annoyance at his friend’s teasing. “It was just different. Everything went right.”

They passed on lunch and simply reordered their drinks. Then they hunched together over the table like conspirators as Jonathan gave a step-by-step and word-by-word rendition of his final ten minutes with Nicole. He was particularly factual in explaining Nicole’s analogy of the baby in the basket. “I couldn’t be sure if it was an invitation. Was she saying, ‘I owe you one. Your place or mine?’ Or was she saying, ‘This was fun. Let’s do it again’? So I asked her if it was an invitation.”

“You asked her? Jon, you know better than to put the question point-blank. You’re supposed to act like it’s just for a nightcap, and that you were swept into bed by an overpowering emotion.”

“I didn’t want to play any games with her,” Jonathan insisted.

Ben leaned back and studied his friend across the table. “Let’s think this through, old buddy. You were with a lovely lady in a black dress, recently wined and dined, and you didn’t want to play any games with her? And she’s with Manhattan’s reigning playboy, whose picture is on her American Express card, and she didn’t offer her body in sacrifice.” He paused dramatically. “This is bad, Jon. Very bad. You may need a psychiatrist.”

Nicole’s mind wasn’t really on her work. Not that she wasn’t functioning well. She fielded customer calls with unfailing grace, answered complex questions with unflappable composure, and suffered in silence through the outrage of customers whose recent purchases were bleeding. But she was operating on remote control. Her mind was on the clock.

She had lingered at home until the last possible moment expecting Jonathan’s call. He had invited her to the baseball game, but he had left the invitation hanging. It was still possible that despite the obvious interest he had shown last night, he might well change his mind in the bright light of day. In the office she had checked her voice mail but he hadn’t called. Then she went to her e-mail. It was a long shot that didn’t pay off.

Her phone had been ringing all day. The market had been up at yesterday’s closing bell, but opened in the morning with a swan dive. Yesterday’s buyers were irate. People who had sold up were
now lining up to buy back in. Each time the phone had rung, Nicole cleared her throat, trying to sound attractive in case it might be Jonathan. Each time she had been disappointed.

She thought that she had played it perfectly. Intelligent conversation with hints of admiration and sympathy, promising that she would never be boring. Enough show of flesh to make the sexual side of a relationship appealing. A frank statement of her desire to get closer to him. A polite refusal of his invitation to bed, proving that she wasn’t for sale no matter how much he might bid. Obviously, he had been interested enough to make another date right on the spot. Did she blow it by not inviting him to take her home? Had she let him slip away, or had he simply broken the line?

Maybe she should call him. “Hey, if we’re meeting at the stadium, you better tell me the gate number.” Or, “Just checking. Did you say tonight, or did I get the date wrong?”

She stepped out of the elevator and crossed the polished marble floor to the revolving doors. In the street, she nearly missed her name when it was flashed in front of her. It was lettered on a white sign in the hands of a chauffeur: “NICOLE PIERCE.” She stopped and did a double take.

“Are you looking for me?”

“Are you going to Yankee Stadium?”

“Yes, I am.”

He stepped back and opened the rear door of a Lincoln Town Car, letting her slide onto the seat. Next to her was a corrugated cardboard box tied in a bow. The card read “To Nicole, from Jonathan.” She pulled the ribbon away and opened the box. Inside, she found a catcher’s mitt and mask.

FIVE

T
HE LIMO
pulled into the VIP gate, and Jonathan was waiting to open the car door. Nicole jumped out wearing the catcher’s mask, which sent him into hysterics and gave them an excuse for a swinging embrace. They went to the Sky Club elevators and snickered like children when the other passengers tried not to stare at the mask. Jonathan explained that the lady covered her face because she was so ugly.

Nicole had expected to be sitting in a box, but Sound Holdings’ private box was more than she could have imagined. It was as big as her apartment, with one wall a pane of tinted glass that looked out over the field from behind first base. There were half a dozen swivel loungers for those who took their baseball seriously. The bar was against one wall, with a high-definition television filling the space over it. A dining table with silver and white linen was set for four. Beside it was a grouping of leather furniture, with two small televisions popping out of the cocktail table, and then a card table that could seat six for poker. The kitchenette had a two-burner stove, microwave, refrigerator, icemaker, and a small sink. And, in a small alcove, doors led to a powder room and a gentlemen’s room. The three men waiting inside were in white shirts and ties, and one looked suspiciously like the former mayor of New York.

“Dad, this is Nicole,” Jonathan said casually. It was at that moment that Nicole realized she was still wearing her catcher’s mask. As she eased it up over her head one of the men, with the short, stocky build of a linebacker broke toward her. He had a fringe of red hair that was fading to gray, mischievous blue eyes, and a jaw like a bulldog.

“A pleasant surprise,” he said. His grip locked on her hand like a vise, and his eyes swept her from head to toe, lingering at every curve.

“Nicole Pierce, Mr. Donner,” she answered softly.

“Jack,” he corrected. When her eyes widened he explained, “That’s my name. ‘Jack.’ ” He was already walking her to the other two. “You’ve probably seen the mayor in a police lineup,” he said as Rudy Giuliani flashed his best smile. “And Joe Tisdale,” as he turned her to the other man, “is the biggest slum lord in the city.” She remembered Tisdale’s face as soon as she heard the name. Next to Donald Trump, he was the city’s biggest real-estate developer.

“Help yourself,” he said pointing to the bar. “If it’s not there, we can get it.”

Jonathan shook hands with the other two guests, asking after names that she guessed must be significant others. Obviously, he was at home in this company. When he reached his father he whispered, “Sorry, I didn’t know you had guests.”

“It’s Boston,” Jack Donner answered. “I always have guests for the Red Sox.”

Jonathan nodded weakly. “I thought it was Cleveland.” He went to the bar to help Nicole.

Tisdale joined them. “Is that what the attractive women are wearing these days? Catchers’ masks?”

“She works on Wall Street,” Jonathan answered.

Tisdale doubled over. “Did you hear that, Rudy? Things are so tough on the Street that you have to wear catcher’s equipment.” The three of them laughed, which eased Nicole’s embarrassment and toned down the blush in her cheeks.

Jack Donner reigned supreme even in the company of dignitaries. He ordered everyone about, telling the mayor and the developer where to sit, what kind of snacks they should eat, and what they were going to have for drinks. “I’ll send down for steaks. Medium rare. With Heinekens all around,” he shouted as he picked up the phone. Then he remembered there was a newcomer. “You drink Heinekens?” he yelled at Nicole.

“Could I have wine?” she asked.

“Sure!” His eyes flashed to Jonathan. “Open up one of those reds.” The red turned out to be an eighty-dollar cabernet.

When the game started, the elder Donner began his commentary, generally unflattering to the players and poisonous toward the managers. When they had all finished their steaks, he announced
cheesecake for dessert. “From Myron’s. It’s the best!” He poked Jonathan. “Pour us a round of brandy.”

There was no middle ground with Jack Donner. If you were around him enough, you learned to avoid the jagged edges, ignore his rudeness, and enjoy his excitement. If you did business with him, you started out fearing him and ended up hating him. His personality was too strong to tolerate indifference.

He had been born in a South Boston Irish enclave of a German father and a first-generation Irish mother. His redheaded features favored his mother, but his drive and determination were definitely Teutonic. A public school education earned him a scholarship to a Jesuit high school, where he lettered in three sports and finished as valedictorian. That record won him a scholarship to Boston College. He was a mediocre guard on a mediocre football team, but once again at the top of his class academically. His classmates graduated with Jesuit inspired ideals and set out to remake the world. Jack Donner set out to make a fortune.

He toiled in a money-center bank during the day and in Boston University Business School at night. By age twenty-seven he was a junior partner in a small investment bank, by twenty-eight he had several accounts of his own, and by thirty he had his own portfolio. That was when he changed his letterhead to his proper name, “John.”

John Donner Partners caught the minicomputer wave that swept down Route 128, put money into DEC, Data General, and Prime, and emerged with his first one hundred million dollars. On his letterhead, the “John” became “Jonathan” even though his friends still called him Jack. The day Jonathan first understood the microprocessor, he dumped the minis and put his huge profits into Hewlett-Packard, Apple, and a software outfit headed up by a nineteen-year-old nerd named Bill Gates. When everyone else jumped on the minicomputer train, Jack moved to New York and named his expanded operations Sound Holdings after the view of Long Island Sound he had from his living room. He diversified into blue chips when the Dow was at thirty-five hundred and left his bets on the table all the way up to ten thousand. Shares in his funds cost too much for the average investor, but to the very rich and very famous, Jonathan Donner was a sure thing.

He screamed an obscenity in the sixth inning, when the Yankees scored four runs to put Boston out of reach. There were more brandies for the seventh inning stretch, and then Jack, the mayor, and Tisdale left when Boston went down in the eighth.

“We’re going to beat the traffic,” he told his son, and then with a glance toward Nicole, “Great meeting you!” He was already through the door while Giuliani and the slum lord were saying proper good-byes.

Nicole and Jonathan sat quietly until the voices disappeared in the direction of the elevators. “That’s my father,” Jonathan said, his tone indicating that she had seen the unadorned version.

“Wow!” Nicole answered. “He certainly is . . . energetic.”

“A regular ball of fire.”

“Do you think he remembered my name?”

“Did you give him a million dollars to invest?”

She laughed.

“Then he didn’t remember you at all. Next time I’ll introduce you as Mother Teresa. He won’t know the difference.”

“You don’t get along very well, do you?”

Jonathan pursed his lips. “For a while we didn’t. He was disappointed when I joined the company and didn’t catch fire. But then he realized that the things I did had absolutely no effect on his net worth. So now he doesn’t waste his time being disappointed.”

“But how do you feel?” Nicole asked.

“I’m not disappointed in him either.”

They shared a nightcap while they were waiting for the fans to empty out of the stadium. Then he escorted her down to the gate, put her in the limousine that had apparently waited the full nine innings, and gave the driver her address. For an instant, Nicole thought that she had struck out with Daddy, and for that reason Jonathan was simply sending her away. But before he closed the door he said, “You free over the weekend?”

She was, but she didn’t want to leap at the invitation. “I may be working Saturday.”

“I’m going up to Newport. I think you’d like the place so, if things free up, give me a call.” Then he added, “Dad won’t be there. He stays in the city until August.”

SIX

N
ICOLE BEGGED
off Friday night. Togetherness, she had learned, was best in short sessions. Three days together and St. Francis could get on your nerves. But she promised to free up on Saturday morning, and that was when he pulled up in front of her Village apartment in the Mercedes convertible. They were an hour getting into Connecticut, and an hour and a half more reaching Rhode Island. It was well after noon when he turned off the Jamestown Bridge and sped down to Ocean Drive. They passed behind the mansions; Vanderbilt’s Breakers, Château-sur-Mer, and a summer home that had been converted into a university.