Nick knocked again. “Tess? You want me to grovel? I’ll grovel. I’ve got a great grovel. You’ve never seen my grovel—you left before I could show it to you. Come on, Tess, let me in.”
Gina jerked her head toward the door. “If you’re thinking about swapping your bod for money, go answer the door. He’s still loaded, right?”
Tess nodded. “I haven’t checked lately, but knowing Nick and his affinity for money, he’s still loaded.”
“Marry him,” Gina said.
“No,” Tess said.
“Why not?”
“Well, to begin with, he hasn’t asked me,” Tess answered. “And he’s a Republican lawyer, so my mother would disown me. And then—” Tess frowned “—I always thought it would be a good idea to marry somebody who wouldn’t try to pick up the maid of honor at the reception. Call me crazy but—”
“Since that would be me, you got no worries. Marry him.”
“You don’t know Nick,” Tess said. “He could seduce Mother Teresa.” She cocked her head toward the door and listened for a moment. “And it doesn’t seem to be an option anymore. I think he got tired and left.” She tried hard not to be disappointed. After all, she’d had no intention of opening the door anyway.
Still, it wasn’t like Nick to give up that fast, dangerous hallway or not. He must not have missed her that much, after all.
Damn.
NICK LEANED against the wall outside Tess’s door and analyzed the situation. Pounding was obviously not getting him anyplace, and his charm was bombing, too, which was a new experience for him. What the hell was wrong here? Maybe she was still mad, but she couldn’t be that mad. Not Tess. Tess erupted all over the place and then forgot about it. She’d never sulked in her life. So there was something else keeping her from falling at his feet. Nick grinned at the thought. Okay, she’d never fallen at his feet. But she’d never slammed a door in his face, either.
She was upset about something.
That wasn’t good. He liked Tess, and the thought of her being unhappy bothered him. He spared a fleeting thought of concern for her and then returned to his own problem.
She wasn’t upset with him. She hadn’t slammed the door on him right away, so it was something else. Probably one of her lame ducks in trouble. And when he’d tried that dumb line about her looking great—when she actually looked like hell—she’d gotten exasperated and slammed the door. All right, so he deserved the door. Now all he had to do was get the door open again, give her a little sympathy, and he’d be in.
If he waited half an hour and then knocked again, she might open it, thinking he’d gone away.
And if he had flowers or candy or something…No. Not for Tess. Tess would not be impressed with generic peace offerings. He thought about the problem for another minute and then left, surveying the gloomy hall with contempt as he went.
“I THINK you shoulda let him in,” Gina said. “Rich lawyers don’t grow on trees.” She flexed her right leg cautiously. “Hey, you got any muscle rub? My calves are killing me.”
“I don’t have time to toy with Nick right now. I have to work on my plan.” Tess rose and walked the few steps across her tiny apartment to her bathroom, stepping over several sloppy stacks of books, a pile of mismatched socks, a bundle of partly graded essays and a half-finished poster that said I Read Banned Books. “I have a chance at a teaching job, but I don’t know if I can get it. I’m not really qualified for it, and it would be working with a bunch of rich kids, so they’d probably think I was an alien, but the money is good and the hours are great.”
When she’d found the muscle cream, she went back out and handed it to Gina and then dropped back into her chair.
Gina squirted the cream onto her fingers. “Go for it. It beats starving.” She winced as she rubbed the cream into her calf.
Tess sat up, her job problems forgotten. “Are you all right? I thought this was just your usual dancer’s cramp.”
“No, I’m not all right,” Gina said. “I’m thirty-five. I’m not snapping back like I used to.” She rubbed her calves again, frowning at the ache. “I’m starting to really hate the pain. I never liked it, but now I’m starting to hate it.”
Tess wasn’t sure what to say. “How can I help?”
Gina laughed. “You can’t. It’s age.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tess began, but Gina waved her into silence.
“Honey, I’m the Grandma Moses of the chorus line.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tess said again. “You work all the time. You’re never out of a job. How many dancers can say that?”
“I’m never out of a job because I always show up, I’m never sick, I never screw up, and I never leave the show in New Jersey to get married.” Gina stretched out her legs, the pain reflected in her face easing a little. “But that’s not gonna carry me forever.” She shrugged. “’Course, neither will my legs.” She stared at them as if they were something she’d picked up on sale and now regretted. “I don’t think I ever want to do another plié again.”
“You’re joking.” Tess fell silent for half a second and then regrouped. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to get married,” Gina said.
Tess sank back into her chair. “Married? This is new.”
“Not really. I always wanted to get married,” Gina said wistfully. “I just wanted a career first.” She smiled a little. “Big career I got. Now I want some peace and quiet. Some security.” She looked at Tess, suddenly vulnerable. “You know, some love. I never found anybody on the road, which is no big surprise when I think about it. But now I’m ready. I want a house and kids and the whole bit.”
“Is this because you never got out of the chorus?” Tess said. “Because think about all the people who never got in…”
“I never wanted out of the chorus.” Gina flexed her legs again and winced. “I never wanted to be a star. I never wanted all that attention. I just wanted to be part of the show. And that’s what I want now. I don’t need some big, important guy. I just want to find a nice, unimportant guy and be part of his show.”
“As a feminist, I should probably say something here,” Tess said. “But I won’t, because it’s your life.”
“Thanks,” Gina said. “I appreciate that.”
“I know some nice guys from the Foundation,” Tess said. “Of course they’re out of work now, but they’re…”
Gina shook her head. “I can do this on my own, Tess. Forget about fixing my life.” She shot another look around the apartment. “You got your own to fix first, anyway.”
“Me? I’m not ready to get married. I never even think about it.” Tess looked around the apartment, too. “Well, I hardly ever think about it.”
Gina’s eyebrows shot up. “Hardly?”
“Well, every now and then I have these fantasies where I wear an apron and say, ‘Hi, honey, how was your day?’ to somebody gorgeous who immediately makes love to me on the kitchen table.”
Gina looked confused. “Sounds like Betty Crocker Does Dallas.”
“I know.” Tess frowned. “I don’t think I’m cut out to be a wife. I mean, I get lonely sometimes, and I start thinking about how nice it would be to be a homey sort of person and bake cherry pie for somebody, but then one thing leads to another and I’m having fantasies about somebody ripping off my apron and licking cherry juice off my body, and I lose my grip.” She focused back on Gina. “Besides, I can’t bake pie. So I don’t think about getting married much.”
Gina scowled at her. “How could you get lonely? You think it’s your job to save everybody in the world. You gotta know more grateful people than—”
“Well, sometimes it would be nice not to save everybody,” Tess said. “Sometimes I think it would really be nice to be taken care of and live in a house, instead of an apartment, and to have great sex every night.” Tess stopped. “I’ve got to get off this sex thing. It’s clouding my mind. The career, Tess, concentrate on the career.” She shook her head. �
��Now I’m starting to sound like Nick.”
“Speaking of Nick, why’d you shut the door on him? That’s prime home-building material there.”
Tess laughed. “You obviously don’t know Nick. The only reason he’d build a home is for the equity. In fact, that’s the reason he did build a house.” She leaned her head back against the chair, remembering. “The skeleton of the place was up about the time I left him. We walked through it once, and I was trying to figure out what it would look like, and he was trying to figure out how much it would appreciate in value the first year.” Tess grinned. “It was not a Kodak moment for us.”
“Did you have Kodak moments?”
“Yeah,” Tess said, her grin fading. “We did. Quite a few actually.” She stood up suddenly and went into her bedroom.
“Tess?” Gina called.
“Here,” Tess said when she came back. She sat beside Gina on the edge of the couch and showed her a snapshot. It was Nick, a smudge of dirt on his chin and his hair in his eyes, in an old sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, sitting on the ground with his arms wrapped around Tess from behind, his chin buried in her shoulder. Tess was even more of a mess: her red hair stood straight up and her face was dirty, and she had no makeup on at all. Her smile took up her whole face, and she looked about ten.
“What were you doing?” Gina asked, mystified.
“This is the first day we met.” Tess smiled at the picture. “At a picnic. Playing touch football. He was wearing these really ratty jeans and a sweatshirt that was older than my sweatshirt, and I thought he was poor and cheerful, like the prince in my fairy tale.” She laughed. “Boy, was I wrong.”
Gina took the picture and looked at Nick more closely. “Even messed up, he’s gorgeous, Tess.”
“I know,” Tess said. “But looks aren’t everything. It was those damn crinkles he gets around his eyes when he smiles that threw me off, but he was definitely the wrong prince.” She shook her head and sighed. “It wasn’t long before I caught on, though. I mean, we were obviously not the perfect couple. We went to this opera thing the night we broke up, and the press took our picture.” She grinned at Gina. “Actually the press took Nick’s picture and got me because I was standing beside him. It finally made the society page a couple of days ago.” Her grin widened as she remembered the picture. “Nick looked like a Kennedy cousin. I looked like a rutabaga with hair. All over Riverbend, people looked at that picture and said, ‘What does he see in her?”’ Tess shook her head again. “We definitely do not belong together.”
Gina handed the photo back. “I still don’t get the prince bit.”
Tess moved back to her own chair, looking sadly at the print. “Remember I told you I lived in a commune when I was little?” she said, her fingertip stroking the edge of the photo. “Well, my mother wouldn’t let me read Cinderella and the other fairy tales. She said they were patriarchal and sexist, and I was really disappointed, so a friend of hers at the commune, this guy named Lanny, made up this story for me that he called CinderTess.” She laughed at the sound of it.
“Cute,” Gina said. “But I still don’t get the prince.”
“Well, CinderTess got to the ball on her own without any fairy godmother by rescuing people and animals who turned out to be able to help her,” Tess explained. “But she felt responsible for them and their problems, so when she got to the ball, and she was the best dancer there—”
“Not the prettiest?” Gina asked, grinning.
“Looks are superficial. Real women get by on hard work and skill,” Tess said primly, and grinned back. “Where was I?”
“She was the best dancer…” Gina prompted.
“So while she had all the attention because she was the best, she sort of made speeches about the problems. There was one about the environment and one about the poor, I think. I never really paid attention to those parts and only listened to the good ones—about the prince.” She smiled again, remembering. “I didn’t care about the politically correct part. I just wanted a fairy tale with a prince.”
Gina laughed. “Who doesn’t? So where’s the prince?”
“There were two of them who got upset about the speeches. But the third prince said she was right and helped her and—this is the part I always liked—he had these crinkles…” she screwed up her face to make laugh lines at the corners of her eyes “…right here, and he promised her he’d help her make things better and that she’d laugh every day if she married him, so CinderTess knew he was the one.” She looked back down at the picture. “I’m sure Lanny meant well, but those crinkles have played merry hell with my life ever since I met Nick.”
Someone knocked on the door.
“Must be the landlord,” Gina said. “Try not to hurt him too bad.”
Tess tossed the snapshot on the end table and stood up, tipping her exasperated cat out of her lap again, but when she opened the door, it was Nick.
“I know you’re upset, so I won’t bother you for long.” He smiled at her, his dark eyes brimming with the confident charm she found alternately obnoxious and irresistible, depending on the reason he was using it on her. There were crinkles at the corners of his eyes, and a lock of his hair fell over one eye and made him look rakish and endearing.
Tess was sure he knew he looked rakish and endearing.
Still, he also knew she was troubled, and that was touching.
His smile broadened as she hesitated. “I brought you something to cheer you up,” he said, handing her a carton of Chinese food.
“What is it?” Tess said, taking it from him, knowing she shouldn’t but weakening.
“Pot stickers,” Nick said. “Double order.”
“Oh.” Tess blinked at him. “You remembered.”
“I remember everything,” Nick said, and Tess’s uncertain expression turned to contempt.
“That sounds like a line,” she said. “Did you really come back to apologize, or is this something that you and that weasel you work for have cooked up to close some deal?”
“Park? Funny you should mention Park—” Nick said, and Tess slammed the door in his face again and went back to her chair, dropping the pot stickers on the table as she sat.
“He’s hopeless,” Tess began, and then she jumped when Nick opened the door and closed it behind him, throwing the dead bolts.
“Lock your door, dummy,” he said. “This is a terrible neighborhood. Anybody could walk in here.”
“Anybody just did.” Tess put her hands on her hips, faking indignation. “Go away.”
Nick headed for the kitchen, stopping only to pat Gina on the head. “Hi, kid. Good to see you again. You look great.”
Gina beamed and started to say something, but he’d moved on by then. She checked herself, her smile fading, and then she dug in her purse until she found a stick of gum.
“Excuse me?” Tess called after him. “I did not invite you in.”
Nick backtracked swiftly and kissed her. She softened into him for just an instant, giving herself just a second of his warmth before she ripped into him as he so richly deserved. But before she could retaliate he let her go and again headed for her tiny kitchen. “God, this place is a mess,” he said. “Is any of my beer still in the fridge?” He stepped over the cat as it made for Tess’s lap. “Hello, Angela. Try not to shed on me.”
Tess looked at Gina.
“Definitely time to talk to the body,” Gina said. “If you’d had an apron on, you woulda ripped it off.”
Tess jerked on the hem of her sweatshirt and lowered her chin, trying to psych herself into being impressive. “You’ve been rejected,” she called to Nick. “Leave.”
“You can’t reject a proposal you’ve never heard,” Nick said from the kitchen.
“You’re proposing?” Tess said in disbelief. “I don’t believe it.”
Gina’s eyebrows shot up. “Marriage?” she whispered to Tess around her gum. “Grab him.”
“Of course not marriage,” Tess said to Gina. “What are yo
u proposing?” she asked Nick. “Whatever it is, the answer is no, of course, but I like to know what I’m rejecting.”
“Well, not marriage.” Nick came to lean in the doorway with his beer, smiling at her, solidly attractive, boyishly confident and infinitely desirable. Stop it, Tess told herself, and narrowed her eyes at him.
“I need a date for the weekend,” he said, and widened his grin. “I thought of you first.”
“Why?” Tess said, trying to stomp on the little sizzle that had started inside her when he smiled at her.
“Because I need you,” Nick said. “My life has been empty since you walked out.” He twisted the cap off the beer and began to drink.
“Your life has never been empty, even after I walked out.” Tess swung her gaze to Gina. “I picked him up at the airport one day, and the stewardess kissed him goodbye. You’d have thought he was going off to war. She did everything but offer to have his baby right there on the spot.”
Nick choked on his beer. “She was just a friend,” he said, swallowing. “I’m a friendly guy.”
“I realize that,” Tess said, crossing her arms. “Get out.”
“Tess, honey.” Nick leaned forward and smiled at her. “Sweetie. Baby.”
“Boy, you must really be in trouble,” Tess said.
“Up to my neck,” Nick said. “I need you. One weekend. No strings.”
“No sex,” Tess said, ignoring her body. “That offer will not be repeated.”
“Whatever you say,” Nick agreed. “If that’s the way you want it, no sex.”
Tess turned to Gina. “This must be bad. I think he really is in trouble.”
“So of course you gotta save him.” Gina smiled shyly at Nick. “I’m all for it. For once those do-gooder instincts of hers are gonna do her some good.”
“You know, I always liked you,” Nick said to Gina, and she blushed with pleasure.
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