Winner Takes All (14 page)

“Don’t beat yourself up, kid. He’s a very compelling man. Hell, I have a total man crush on him myself.”

She smiled weakly. “That’s just because he recognized your name and lavished praise on your work.”

He shrugged. “What can I say? It doesn’t take much.” Sitting down next to her, he took her hand. “Do you want to blow this Popsicle stand? Dessert’s been served so I think it’s okay to leave. Or does that apply to only weddings?”

Mark’s watch, which sounded every hour, chirped quietly at his wrist. Eva glanced at the time. Midnight.

“I believe that’s my cue,” she said, standing up.

He took a final sip of coffee and offered his arm. “Here, you can lean on me.”

Although she was feeling steady on her feet, she looped her arm through his. “I really appreciate your coming tonight,” she said, as they walked along the perimeter of the dance floor. She didn’t see Cole, but then she hadn’t really expected to. He was an expert negotiator and knew how to bend others to will. He would wait. He would bide his time and keep his distance for a few days. Then, after letting her stew for, say, a week, he would pop back into her life with that artful grin. “I’m sorry about the weird plot twist.”

“What weird plot twist? If I had been paying attention, I would have seen that one coming a mile away. The name Reed should have sent up flares. Cole often went by it when his father was alive.”

They were outside now and the cool air felt wonderful on Eva’s flushed skin. An attendant waved over a yellow cab from a procession of cars lined up along Fifth Avenue.

“I didn’t know that,” she said, when the attendant had shut the door behind him. “It makes me feel better, as though he didn’t intentionally lie to me. He did intentionally lie to me, of course. I get that. But he used a name he usually uses, so the lie isn’t as bad.” She threw her head down on Mark’s lap. “Listen to me, Mark, just listen to me! I’m making excuses for him. I’m saying his lies aren’t really lies. I’m terrified that this is going to happen. That I want this to happen.”

Mark studied her in the light from passing street lamps. “Maybe—and I can’t believe I’m actually saying this—maybe you should let it run its course.”

She couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d lit his hair on fire. “What?”

“You’ve got a thing about rich and powerful men.”

Eva stared at him in shock. “What? No, I don't.”

“Your father was always off fetching and carrying for the CEO of Omega Group and because of that you think all rich and powerful men demand total devotion. But the problem wasn’t George MacIntosh; the problem was Silas Butler. Being at MacIntosh’s beck and call was a choice he made and he made it over and over again, even in the middle of your valedictorian speech at NYU. Your father gets a charge out of being necessary to an important man—he probably loves the reflected glory—but you can’t hold that against Hammond. Your father’s an asshole, Eva. He’s a funny and charming asshole, but he’s still an asshole.”

As much as Eva wanted to interrupt this remarkable speech, she listened silently because she knew it was true. Her father had been largely absent from her life, not because George MacIntosh required total fealty but because Silas Butler offered it. In a different, less-evolved age, he would have even been considered a wonderful father, affectionately darting in and out of her life to make sure she was happy and well and all her material needs were being met. But Eva didn’t want a 1950s-era, vaguely indifferent father who imparted wisdom at his convenience and sent her off to bed with a pat on the head. All her life, she’d craved a modern, fully involved dad who knew what she liked to eat for lunch and had the time to talk to her while he made it.

Mark was right, Eva realized. The problem wasn’t George MacIntosh, with all his riches and authority, but her father. She feared falling for a man who would treat her with the same benign indifference with which Silas Butler treated her mother. His affection for Juliana was abiding and sincere, truly, but there was always something more important than her. Her mother never complained, not even when he missed their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary to follow his boss to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“I can’t take the risk,” she said.

“Life is risk. You might as well embrace it,” said the war correspondent in a flat voice.

This wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “He’s a player. You said so yourself.”

Mark nodded abruptly. He had indeed said that in total confidence, but now he wasn’t so sure what it meant. “He watched you all evening.”

She looked at Mark, startled. “No, he didn’t.”

“Trust me, I’m a trained observer. He couldn’t take his eyes off you all night long. And the way he looked at you—like he was a thirsty man in a desert and you were a glass a water. He didn’t like my being near you,” he added. “Even though he figured out that we were just friends, even though he was nothing but polite and cordial to me, he hated seeing me near you. I don’t know what it means and I don’t know where it will go, but maybe it’s worth finding out. There are few things in life worth pursuing. This might be one of them.”

This was the last thing she expected him to say. Mark was supposed to be in the other corner, emphatically in the other corner. She ran a hand over her eyes. “God, I’m so tired and confused.”

“That’s all right. You don’t have to decide anything now. In fact, you don’t have to decide anything until you’re ready.” He said this as the cab pulled up in front of his apartment building. “You going to be all right?”

She kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll be fine. I’m not going to worry about this any more tonight.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow. Maybe we can do brunch with Ruth?”

His smile dimmed. He’d rather think about Eva’s romantic troubles than his own. “We’re wasting our time.”

“This is another one of those things.”

“What things?” he asked.

“The ones worth pursuing.”

***

Cole watched Eva beat a hasty retreat. He wasn’t surprised to see her leaving so soon after their dance. He had overwhelmed her. It hadn’t been his intention to flood her with emotion, but there was nothing else he could do, what with the cool way she kept calling him Mr. Hammond.

He smiled as he thought about the week to come, imagined her thinking of him often and wondering when he’d make his next move. He’d call Thursday to ask her out to dinner. After five nights of thinking about him, she’d jump at the offer. Or maybe he’d phone Wednesday. One more day wouldn’t make much of a difference.

Then he remembered that his mother planned on having lunch with her this week. Perhaps he’d find out when and drop in on the meeting. Wouldn’t Eva be surprised? He could easily imagine those seductive green eyes opening as wide as saucers.

No, that wouldn’t be fair. What they felt for each other had nothing to do with business. It wasn’t about a pile of Impressionist paintings and auctions and commission rates. It was about them, and he would keep the two things separate. Once again, he was very relieved that he had nothing to do with deciding which auction house would get the commission. Eva couldn’t use it as an excuse to keep him at arm’s length.

Yes, it was going to be a very interesting week, he thought again, as he made a golf date with an old friend of his father’s. And he could barely wait to talk to Eva when he finally called her. Maybe on Tuesday.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Eva opened her
eyes and looked at the clock. Two-thirty. She sighed with disappointment. Only two-thirty? It felt as if she had been trying to sleep for hours, not fifty-four minutes.

It’s all his fault, she thought, climbing out of bed. She usually didn’t have trouble sleeping. The second she laid her head on the pillow, she was out like a light. Asleep. Good night. End of story. None of this awful tossing and turning and trying to stop her mind from thinking. It was a futile battle. No matter what she did, she couldn’t erase the memory of Cole, devastating and dangerous, whispering and touching and promising. This was what her brain focused on, and no matter how many times she’d tried to concentrate on innocuous scenes—work, Ruth, a visit to the dentist—images of Cole persisted. And a strange excitement held her captive. Her response to him was physical. Even while she was lying in bed in the darkness, her heart pounded wildly at the thought of him.

Eva turned on the TV, checked out the offerings on her DVR and decided she’d rather flip through hundreds of channels than watch Upper West Side socialites battling it out for preschool supremacy. She wanted something distracting, something mindless and diverting like a senseless summer thriller, and was annoyed when she couldn’t find anything that fit the bill. Finally, she settled on a music channel in the upper stratosphere of programming and watched a bunch of music critics with bad hairstyles tear apart bands she had never heard of. After a while, she closed her eyes and hoped the drone of their voices would put her to sleep. It didn’t, of course. Her mind was just as active as before. God, what a long, terrible week it was going to be.

This was what he wanted. This unsettled feeling was exactly what he wanted
,
she thought, feeling like a fool for falling so easily in line with his tactic. She’d assumed she was made of sterner stuff but realized now she wasn’t. The awful truth was that for the next seven days or so she would jump every time the phone rang and she would look over her shoulder constantly and she would lie in bed thinking of his hands on her and imagining what those clever fingers could do. It was silly to deny it. Perhaps Mark was right. Maybe the only way to deal with an attraction this intense was to give in to it. Let the affair run its course and move on with shoulders back and head high when it was over.

But could she do that? In all honesty, she didn’t know. The fantasies she’d constructed around Reed were pretty straightforward and traditional. Although she hadn’t been quite as foregone as a high school student writing “Eva Hammond” on all her notebooks, she had imagined them taking long walks in the park and reading the paper together on the couch on lazy Sunday afternoons. All this, of course, was in between bouts of good, hot sex.

These things wouldn’t be possible with Cole. He was too successful, too high profile and in demand, to spend quiet evenings at home in front of the fireplace with his sweetheart. No, there would always be some party to attend, some important business meeting, some head of state in another city to cajole. She knew the schedule almost by heart, since her father had lived it right alongside the CEO of Omega Group. Her mother never grumbled about her husband’s almost constant absence, and Eva’s life was so full of friends and family, she hadn’t noticed herself until she was a teenager. Both sets of grandparents were present in her life, as was a coterie of aunts and cousins, and it was only when she hit middle school and saw how often other kids’ fathers showed up for games and performances that she realized her own was never around.

Despite this lack, her childhood had been happy, and she was grateful for all the time she got to spend with her grandparents, especially her mom’s mom, through whom she discovered her love of antiques. She had very little to regret, and as she laid on her couch, trying to listen to the drone of the host, she acknowledged that her father wasn’t the only reason she was wary of Cole. Even when he was just Reed, he was already the total package: handsome, funny, charming, intelligent, funny. He could have any woman. Throwing rich and powerful into the mix pushed him into another dimension of desirable. Why would a man like that ever stick with one woman?

Why would he ever stick with her?

“This is useless,” she muttered in disgust as she switched off the TV. Strolling to her bookshelves, she ran through the titles and took out a well-thumbed Dorothy Sayers mystery she hadn’t read in ages. Surely, Lord Peter Whimsy would do the trick.

She was returning to her bedroom when she heard her buzzer sound. It gave her a moment’s pause, but then she recalled all the drunk urbanites who roamed the bars on her street and continued to her bedroom. The buzzer sounded a second time. This was strange. Usually a person buzzed once and moved on to the next apartment. Eva froze, unsure what to do. It buzzed again, more persistently this time. Some drunk man was leaning on her button and obviously wouldn’t leave until she told him to go away.

“Yeah,” she said annoyed, pressing the talk button on the intercom.

“Eva, let me up.”

Her heart jumped violently as she recognized the voice through the loud static. “Cole?”

“Eva, let me up.”

Why was he here? “It’s three o’clock in the morning.”

“I’m perfectly aware of the time,” he said calmly. “Let me up.”

She hesitated. If she sent him home, she’d never know why he was here. But did she really want to know?

“Please.”

Sighing deeply, she succumbed to the inevitable and let him in. She listened through the intercom as he opened the door and began climbing the five flights to her apartment. Then she ran quickly to her bedroom and threw on jeans and a red top. There was no way she was welcoming him into her apartment in a barely there white T-shirt and boxer shorts.

She was looking through the peephole when he reached the landing and smiled briefly as she took in his distorted figure still in a tux.

Ordering herself to stop shaking, she opened the door before he knocked. He stood on the threshold looking disarmingly sexy in his disheveled evening wear. Before she could step aside and invite him in, Cole said, “I’m sorry.”

Eva waited for him to expand on his apology, but he said nothing more. He just stared at her with an odd light of expectation in his eyes. Because the look made her nervous and because she still didn’t know what he wanted, she fiddled with the doorknob and said, “It’s all right. I was already awake.” Then, because she didn’t want him to think he was the reason she wasn’t sleeping, she held up the book. “I was reading.”

He didn’t take his eyes away from her to glance at the cover. “No, I’m sorry about before.”