The Last Man on Earth (16 page)

“No, you’re nothing like her. If you tried, you couldn’t be half the cold-blooded bitch she was.”

“Then you must believe I’m like your mother, promising you love, then taking it away.”

“Madelyn—,” he warned.

“Because she’s part of this too, isn’t she?” Madelyn said insistently. “She taught you early that you can’t count on people, especially women. She taught you not to trust.”

He scowled but didn’t disagree.

“You say you want me and need me, but for how long?” she asked. “A few months? A handful of years until you decide it isn’t working and move on? And what about a family? Children?”

His expression grew darker. “What about them?”

“Do you want those things? Children and a family? Because I do.”

“You can’t always have what you want. Sometimes you have to make do with what seems best. Bringing children into this world doesn’t seem best, not to me.”

“Why?”

He raked his of fingers through his hair. “Because kids get hurt. Because they don’t understand when their parents lives go to hell and they get caught in the crossfire. I swore long ago that I’d never do that to someone else, especially a child that I was responsible for bringing into this world.”

Madelyn said nothing, stunned.

“But why are we having this big debate about marriage and kids?” Zack went on. “We’re a long way from either of those things. Can’t we just enjoy being together? Why do we have to worry about the rest right now?”

“Because if we don’t worry now, then when will we?” Madelyn drew a quiet breath. “Look, we’ve both said a lot tonight, things that can’t be taken back. What I have to know is whether you think time will change your mind about any of this. Can you give me any reason to hope?”

Lie,
she thought.
That’s all you have to do. Just lie and say yes.

All he had to do was tell her that his feelings about marriage might mellow in time. That he might come around and want children despite the risk. That he might love and trust her enough someday that the wounds of his past wouldn’t matter anymore so long as they were together.

She waited, praying.

Then he sighed. “No. I’m sorry. I can’t.”

Her chest began to ache. “So you’re offering me what we have now with no secrets, no strings, for as long as it lasts?”

“Yes, for as long as it lasts.”

She wanted to cry, but the pain cut too deep. All he could give her was temporary pleasure and nothing more. There would be no home, no family, no children. Not with Zack. Yet knowing all that, she still wanted him. She still loved him. She thought about Brie, how unhappy she was because of loving the wrong man.

An unattainable man who was never going to change.

“Why don’t you sleep on it,” he suggested. “You don’t need to decide tonight.”

Moving near, he bent his head and pressed his lips to hers.

For an instant she responded, kissing him back with a wild, almost desperate intensity, breathing him in as if she were taking her last breath. Then she wrenched herself away. If she didn’t do this now, she knew she’d never find the strength again. “I don’t need the night. My answer is no.”

He was silent for a moment. “All right. Then we’ll leave things the way they are. We’ll keep meeting on weekends and an evening here and there.”

She straightened her shoulders. “No, you don’t understand. When I say no, I mean no to everything. It’s over, Zack.”

Anger and disbelief flashed in his eyes. “So you’re ending it?”

“Yes, I guess I am.”

“That’s not what you wanted earlier.”

“A lot has changed since earlier.”

“And that’s it? Your final decision? End of discussion?”

“Yes. It’s the end,” she said dully.

Of her heart.

Of her hopes.

And most of all, her happiness.

His jaw hardened, his eyes fierce. “Fine. Have it your way. I wish you joy in finding the perfect life.”

He stormed out, slamming the door behind him with enough force to shake the walls and the pictures hanging on them. The dishes rattled in the kitchen cupboards as well, along with the vase on the countertop, sitting empty—the flowers he’d brought lonely and abandoned nearby.

That’s when it struck her—the incredible irony.

She’d been so sure, so worried, that he’d come here tonight to break up with her. Yet in the end she’d been the one to break up with him.

She dropped onto a hard kitchen chair for support and began to cry.

•   •   •

“Which do you like better? Ivory bisque or the royal pearl?” Peg tapped one well-manicured fingernail against the wedding stationery samples spread across the table between her and Madelyn. “There’s also this one—classic white. Todd liked it, but I don’t know. With men it’s usually ‘the plainer the better and don’t bother me with all that shade stuff.’”

“The white’s nice,” Madelyn said, sipping from her glass of iced tea.

“Really? You think so?” Peg’s face puckered as she reconsidered. “I’ve been leaning toward the ivory bisque.”

“The bisque is nice too.”

“Or the pearl. Oh, I can’t decide.” Peg threw up her hands. “How do people do this?”

“Planning a wedding’s a lot of work. The person you really should be talking to is my mother.”

Peg sighed. “I wish I could, but, well, without sounding gauche, we can’t afford your mother. You know Todd and I are paying for the wedding ourselves. My parents had given up on me ever getting married and blew my wedding money on a Hawaiian cruise. You should have heard the guilt in their voices when I told them the good news. But it’s okay. This way Todd and I can have the wedding
we
want. If only I could decide what that is.”

“Mother doesn’t have to plan your whole wedding, and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind offering a little free advice here and there. Chances are she’d even be willing to order some things for you at a discount—once you make up your mind. I’ll ask her about it when I go up to visit this weekend.”

Peg’s eyes brightened. “You’re sure? I don’t want to be a bother.”

“It’s no bother. Believe me, she lives for this stuff.”

Madelyn waved away Peg’s murmurs of thanks, grateful when the waiter arrived bearing their lunch seconds later. She let Peg rattle on, brimming with excitement about her plans, and stabbed a fork into her Cobb salad.

Madelyn was happy for her friend—she really was—and genuinely flattered to have been chosen as Peg’s maid of honor. Yet lately, all this talk of weddings was wearing on her nerves. As if it weren’t bad enough listening to a constant play-by-play account of the impending nuptials, seeing Peg and Todd together, overflowing with joyous anticipation and beaming love, well, it was enough to give an iron-stomached sailor the dry heaves. And more than enough to remind Madelyn of everything missing in her own life and precisely how unhappy she was.

Over the past six weeks, she’d tried hard not to think about Zack. It was nearly impossible, though, especially at work, where she might turn at any moment to find him there, unexpectedly striding into a conference room or passing her in the hall, sparing her nothing more than a polite nod. And sometimes not even that.

At least her friends and coworkers knew nothing about her liaison with him, so she was spared any pitying looks or hushed whispers. Right after their breakup, she’d worried Zack might say something, let slip some unthinking comment that would give them away. But true to his word, he’d kept their secret. Deceit was the one thing he’d never practiced with her; afterward she’d been ashamed for doubting him.

She missed him.

It was as simple as that. The nights were dark and empty and endlessly long. The weekends were pure torture.

For Zack, their parting didn’t seem to have affected him at all. Obviously, she’d been just one more woman in a long line of women who’d shared his bed. If only she could get over him as easily.

“I didn’t know he came in here,” Peg murmured.

The comment drew Madelyn from her reverie. “
Hmm?
Who?”

“Zack. He just walked in.”

Madelyn willed herself not to look around. She shrugged. “Probably a client he’s taking to lunch.”

“That’s no client. Unless business attire has changed and professional women are wearing four-inch Italian heels and lavender slip dresses to their appointments now.”

This time she couldn’t help herself. She whipped her head around and watched as Zack and his date followed the maître d’ to a table. Stunning, the woman had flawless features, a slender, curvaceous figure, platinum blond hair, and prominent breasts. The result of a cunning dye job and implants, no doubt—she’d probably had plastic surgery on her nose and chin as well. No woman could be that beautiful naturally.

Zack looked wonderful, lean and smart in a dark blue suit that emphasized the green in his eyes and complemented his dark hair.

Madelyn’s eyes turned to the blonde again, jealousy curdling in her stomach.

“My guess is she’s a model,” Peg mused.

“Or a hooker.”

Peg choked out a laugh. “If she were with any man but Zack, I might agree. Of all the men on earth, though, he’s the last one who’d ever have to pay for sex. Flash that smile and the women come running for free.”

“I’m surprised you never made a play for him yourself with that attitude,” Madelyn said, deliberately turning her gaze away from Zack and his date.

“I have to admit I considered it a time or two, a long time ago, well before I met my sweet Todd. But as we’ve both noted, Zack’s got ‘heartbreaker’ written all over him in big red letters. I knew better than to hold my fingers out and burn them in that fire.”

Madelyn had known better too. Feeling faintly ill, she set down her fork.

“Something wrong with your salad?” Peg asked.

Madelyn had barely touched her meal. “No, I’m just not very hungry. I . . . um . . . ate a doughnut late this morning. I guess it’s ruined my appetite,” she lied.

“That’ll teach you to snack,” Peg admonished.

Peg finished her own meal while Madelyn sat, forcing herself not to look in Zack’s direction, trying to pretend he wasn’t there.

•   •   •

He missed her.

It was as simple as that. He didn’t know why he’d decided to torture himself today, coming to this restaurant. Some perverse little masochistic streak in him, he supposed.

Hours earlier he’d overheard Peg mention plans to meet Madelyn here for lunch. So when Vonda—a bodacious Swedish stewardess who dropped into his life every once in a while to share a meal, some intelligent conversation, and a few hours of unbridled, free-spirited sex—called to say she had a brief layover in town and would he like to meet, he’d agreed, suggesting they start with lunch. Then he’d chosen this restaurant.

He’d spotted Madelyn the instant he walked through the door.

Her hair was ablaze with color, twisted up off her neck in the neat little bun she favored, the one that always made his fingers itch to pull out the pins.

He watched her from the corner of his eye as he and Vonda made their way through the restaurant to their table. His breath caught when Madelyn turned to look their way. But then she swung back and didn’t look again, as if seeing him with another woman made no difference to her at all. Perhaps it didn’t, not anymore.

Tension he didn’t know he’d been feeling eased from his shoulders when Peg and Madelyn finally paid their bill and left.

“So are you going to tell me who she is?” Vonda demanded in her husky, accented voice.

“Who?”

“The Park Avenue redhead, of course. The one you’ve spent the past twenty minutes desperately trying to ignore.”

“She’s no one.”

“Hmm. Then I guess I will have
no one
to thank for keeping you out of my bed tonight.”

“Who says I won’t be in your bed?”

Vonda gazed back with knowing eyes. “Actually, it is kind of fun, you know, to see you like this.”

“See me like what?”

She reached out and patted his hand. “Why, in love, of course, sweetheart. In love.”

W
arm, thick sounds of summer hummed around her, the drone of honeybees dusting themselves gold with pollen gradually giving way to a symphony of chirps and cricks as night creatures prepared for the sun to fade and the moon to take its place in the sky. Flowers and new-cut grass added a soft perfume to the humid twilight air, mingling with the human scents of grilling hamburgers and citronella candles.

Clustered beneath rows of Chinese lanterns that glowed like fanciful jewels above the spacious redbrick patio, people ate and drank and chatted in anticipation of the fireworks to come, courtesy of the nearby municipal government.

Typical of her mother, Madelyn thought, to have her house built on the one lawn in the area that boasted an unobstructed view of the Fourth of July festivities, despite the stately oak and elm trees that ranged the length of the property.

Usually her parents’ parties were a chance for Madelyn to relax and enjoy catching up with old friends and acquaintances. But this year she found herself struggling to have fun. It was different this year.

She was different.

A low stone wall bisected a portion of the rear grounds, creating a secluded, semicircular perennial garden crowded with masses of flowering plants and slender-limbed trees. Madelyn seated herself atop the wall, as she had so many times over the years, letting her feet dangle above the grass. Closing her eyes, she drank in the mingled richness of rose, peony, and honeysuckle, scents that turned the air candy sweet.

She liked this place, where the light didn’t quite reach, where she could survey the dazzle of the party and the people spread before her as though it were all some grand play. She took a sip from her glass before balancing it carefully next to her hip, then ate a piece of the cookie she’d taken from the dessert table.

“I knew I’d find you here.” James slung his legs over the wall from the garden side to seat himself next to her. “Cookies and lemonade—I thought by now you’d have outgrown that disgusting predilection.”

Startled, Madelyn raised a hand to her chest. “You shouldn’t sneak up on a person like that. You nearly scared me to death.”

“Me? Never. I needed to run over to the house for a minute and decided it would be easier to cut through your parents’ backyard on the way back. It used to be the only way I ever traveled.”

As teenagers, the two of them had made a habit of slipping back and forth between their homes via the garden wall. They’d spent many a pleasant hour sitting together exactly as they were now.

“You could have made some sort of noise to warn me you were coming,” she scolded. “Last time I looked, Sheila Wharton had you cornered near the guacamole dip.”

“Yes, she did,” he grumbled.

Sheila Wharton was a voluptuous forty-three-year-old blonde widow with an unapologetic appetite for younger men, especially those with money. “It wasn’t very nice of you to abandon me.”

“I knew you could hold your own. Besides, I couldn’t endure more of her arm-twisting. She’s always trying to con me into hawking some homemade perfume of hers, seeing as how I have an ‘in’ with advertisers. I’ve tried to tell her it doesn’t work that way, but explaining something to Sheila is like trying to convince a salmon not to swim upstream.”

“I’ve always thought of her more as an octopus—eight clinging tentacles that refuse to let go.”

Madelyn smiled. “Here, as a consolation present, half of my cookie to ease your pain?”

“Chocolate chip?”

“Of course.”

He reached out to accept the treat.

Quietly they ate, listening to the abundant night sounds, watching partygoers mill and mingle.

“So are you going to tell me about it?” he asked, dusting a leftover crumb from his finger.

“About what?”

“Whatever it is that’s troubling you. You can’t fool me, you know.”

“It’s nothing. I’ve just been thinking—about a lot of things.”

“About him, you mean.”

She’d told James of her breakup with Zack not long after it happened. Her involvement with Zack was still a sore point with him.

“No,” she defended. “I’ve been thinking about me. Oh, look, the fireworks are starting.”

A trio of pyrotechnic bursts lighted the sky in a patriotic shower of red, white, and blue. Another round followed, rockets whining as they streaked upward, exploding in thunderous volleys reminiscent of cannon fire. Additional starbursts brightened the night, tiny pinwheels that whizzed and whirled in a crazy dance of corkscrew spirals.

“Have you come to any conclusions?” James asked.

“Only one. I need to stop moping and get on with my life. Whatever I thought I had with him, it’s done. I need to accept that and move on. I need to feel happy again.”

“Are you so certain it’s over? You’re positive he won’t change his mind?”

If Zack were inclined to change his mind, he’d have done it by now. He’d had weeks in which to regret his decision. The two of them were more distant than strangers now, even the old rivalry between them unable to rouse more than a lukewarm spark inside her chest. He’d told her once that all he wanted was sex, that liking and loving had no part in his needs. She should have taken him at his word and kept her heart whole.

Another series of explosives raced high into the night, bursting open in a blaze of color and light and noise before fizzling and fading into nothing.

Madelyn inhaled deeply and let a door close somewhere deep inside herself. “No, there’s no chance. He and I don’t want the same things.”

Their hands rested side by side on the stone wall, which was still warm from the residual heat of the day. James covered the top of hers with his own. “You and I do. We’ve been friends too long not to understand each other. Let me give you what you want, Meg, what both of us want. When we aren’t in the city, you’d have the house here, right next to your family.”

“The mausoleum, you mean,” she teased, using their old name for his place.

“It’s mine, now that my parents have moved to Italy for good. With your touch, you could turn that lumbering old elephant into the home it’s never been. I’d give you free rein inside and out—change anything you like. The same with the apartment in town.”

“Your penthouse is lovely just as it is, and no one could complain about the magnificent view of Central Park. A definite step up from the brick building I see from my current apartment,” she quipped.

“And as soon as you like, we can start a family. Think of the beautiful babies we’d make. A whole patch of little strawberry blondes to bring laughter and joy into our lives. They could play right here in this very garden.”

Madelyn gave a wistful smile at the thought. “Mother and Dad would adore it. But a patch? That sounds like a few too many. Just two will do, thank you very much.”

He gazed full in her face, the glow from the fireworks reflected in his eyes. “Then two it will be. I love you, Meg. Say you’ll marry me. Give me the chance to make you as happy as I know you’ll make me.”

Traitorously, an image of Zack flashed into her mind, along with a wish that he was the one saying these beautiful things to her. But he wasn’t. And he never would be.

She looked at James, her friend. The man who’d always been there for her, who’d always been able to make her laugh, even when she wanted to cry. She loved him. Oh, not in the same way she loved Zack, but in the end, was one sort of love really better than another? Perhaps she never would share with James the passionate intensity, the breathless fire that raged out of control at Zack’s simplest touch. But neither would she suffer the exquisite pain, the empty, aching gap his loss had left in her heart.

Maybe it was time to put away unrealistic dreams and romantic fairy tales, to learn to be content with the wonderful gift she was being offered. And the wonderful man who was offering it.

A final glitter of color saturated the sky, accompanied by booming claps that were as loud as thunder.

Amid the fanfare, alone in their own shadowy retreat, Madelyn turned her hand over and threaded her fingers with his. “Yes, James, I’ll marry you.”

His eyes glowed with relief and delight, then deepened in a blaze of desire. He drew her into his arms, pressing her tightly to the width of his chest before joining his mouth with hers.

She let him take what he wanted, needing to give him everything she could. It felt comfortable, familiar, being with him again this way, and not at all unpleasant.

Their marriage would be satisfying, she told herself, a true partnership of friends. Unwanted comparisons rose in her mind as his lips played over hers, haunting memories. Ruthlessly, she pushed them away. She would be a good wife, she promised herself. She would make him happy. And somehow, some way, she would be happy too.

James lifted his head, his voice husky. “I almost forgot.” He reached into his pocket and brought out a small, square box. “I guess I should have given this to you when I was actually proposing.”

He opened the velvet-covered jeweler’s case and lifted out a ring. She recognized it instantly. Originally his great-great-grandmother’s, the nineteenth-century heirloom was passed on each generation to the eldest son. He’d shown it to her once many years ago when they’d snuck into his father’s study and opened the safe during a party.

Massive and intensely yellow, the flawless emerald-cut diamond was secured in an old-fashioned Victorian setting of twenty-four-karat gold. As remarkably beautiful as it was, the ring was not one she would ever have chosen for herself.

“Is that why you had to go over to your house?” she asked. “So sure I’d change my mind, were you?”

“Not for an instant. Only hopeful.” He hesitated, and the stone winked in the dark. “I know this thing’s a monstrous old antique, and if you don’t want it, I won’t be hurt. We can ride in to New York tomorrow so you can pick out something else.”

She knew he would be hurt, despite his assurances to the contrary. She held out her left hand. “No, this is lovely.”

Pleased, James slid the weighty gem onto her finger. The ring slipped sideways, then on around to fit against her palm.

“Looks like we’ll be taking that trip to the jeweler’s after all,” he remarked. “Fat-fingered women must run in my family.”

They both chuckled.

“Hi, what are you guys doing? Am I interrupting?”

They looked up at the same moment and found Ivy, tall and reed slender, silhouetted in a backwash of light from the party.

“No, not at all,” James declared. “Matter of fact, you can be the very first to wish us happy.” He took Madelyn’s hand in his. “Your sister has just agreed to be my wife.”

“Your wife?” Ivy squeaked. “You mean you’re getting married?”

“That’s precisely what I mean.”

“But I thought . . .”

“What did you think?”

There was a small pause. “Nothing. I didn’t think anything. This is great, really great. Congratulations!” Ivy rushed forward to embrace them both. “Just wait until Mom hears. She’s going to be over the moon.”

“She’ll probably drive
me
over the moon with wedding plans before this is through,” Madelyn murmured. “Maybe we should think about eloping.”

“And listen to the family whine and complain for the rest of our lives about how we cheated them out of their special day? I don’t think so. Even my parents would have a fit, and you know they don’t much care what I do as long as I don’t embarrass them. They’ll probably even fly in from Italy.”

Imagining it, along with the hordes of relatives and friends that would descend for the wedding, made Madelyn long to back out.

James sensed her distress. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. The trick is to let everyone else do all the work, while you and I just go along for the ride.” He grinned. “Piece of cake. You’ll see.”

•   •   •

She owed him no explanations, but Madelyn decided that first thing Monday morning she would tell Zack about her engagement. Of course, he probably wouldn’t care. He might even hug her the way everyone else had done all weekend long, give her a kiss on the cheek and wish her happy. Somehow, though, she had trouble imagining that from him.

She nearly phoned him late on Sunday evening, after she’d returned to the blessed peace and solitude of her apartment. But what would she say?
Hi, Zack, it’s Madelyn. I know we’re not seeing each other anymore and it’s probably no big deal to you, but I thought you might want to know. I’m getting married.

His feelings shouldn’t matter to her anymore, she told herself. Still, she didn’t want him hearing the news as grist for the daily mill of office chitchat. Zack could be as affable and charming as they came. He could also on occasion be as unpredictable as a lightning storm. There was no telling how he might react. So she decided she would go into the office early and leave a brief, impersonal note on his desk asking him to stop by and see her. Satisfied with her decision, she turned out the light and fell asleep.

At precisely six thirty a.m., her clock radio switched on. Worn out from the eventful weekend, and with the radio volume inadvertently turned down to a soft hum, Madelyn snuggled deeper into her pillow and slumbered on. Thank God for her trusty alarm cat, Millie, who awakened her forty-five minutes later with a brush of her whiskers and a great deal of noisy purring.

Groggy, flustered, and out of sorts, Madelyn made it into the office thirty minutes late. Thirty minutes too late to prop a nice, discreet little note in the center of Zack’s desk. By now, he was sure to have arrived, along with nearly everyone else. In desperate need of counsel and caffeine, she settled for the easier of the two and brewed a pot of strong Irish breakfast tea.

“What is that on your finger?” Peg demanded from the doorway.

Startled, Madelyn nearly spilled hot tea in her lap.

Oh God, the ring.
Why hadn’t she remembered to take it off this morning? She still couldn’t believe the jeweler had been able to size the band so quickly.

She and James had visited the exclusive store late Saturday afternoon. By the same time Sunday, the ring was finished, messengered special delivery to her at James’s penthouse apartment. That was the kind of service one received, she supposed, when one’s fiancé came from very old establishment money.