They were all the way to Janet’s door before she answered. “I don’t really know. Tom is good-looking and nice, and he has a good job. Maybe those things are enough—maybe love is just a figment of some poet’s imagination.”
Carly shook her head as she followed her friend into an apartment that was virtually a duplicate of the one they’d just left, except for the carpet. Here, it was forest green. “I wouldn’t do anything rash if I were you,” she warned. “There might just be something to this love business.”
“Yeah,” Janet agreed, tossing her purse onto the sofa and shrugging out of her raincoat. “Bruised hearts and insomnia.”
After that, Carly stopped trying to win her friend over to her point of view. She didn’t know the first thing about love herself, except that she’d never been in it, not even with Reggie.
* * *
“AN ADVICE COLUMN?” Carly’s voice echoed in her cramped corner office the following Monday morning. “But I thought I was going to be a reporter....”
Carly’s new boss, Allison Courtney, stood tall and tweedy in the doorway. She was a no-nonsense type, with alert gray eyes, sleek blond hair pulled tightly into a bun and impeccable makeup. “When we hired you, Carly, we thought you were a team player,” she scolded cordially.
“Of course I am, but—”
“A lot of people would kill for a job like this, you know. I mean, think of it. You’re getting paid to tell other people what to do, for heaven’s sake!”
Carly had pictured herself interviewing senators and homeless people, covering trials and stand-offs between the police and the underworld. She knew the advice column was a plum, but it had never occurred to her that she’d be asked to serve in that capacity, and she was frankly disappointed. Calling upon years of training, she assumed a cheerful expression. “Where do I start?”
Allison returned Carly’s smile, pleased. “Someone will bring you this week’s batch of mail. You’ll find all the experts you need listed in your contacts. Oh, and between letters you might help out with clerical work and such. Welcome aboard.” With that, she stepped out, closing the office door behind her.
Carly set the box down on her desk with a clunk and sank into her chair. “Clerical work?” she echoed, tossing a glance at the computer system perched at her elbow. “Good grief. Did I come all the way to Oregon just to be a glorified secretary?”
As if in answer, the telephone on her desk buzzed.
“Carly Barnett,” she said into the receiver, after pushing four different buttons in order to get the right line.
“Just seeing if it works,” replied a bright female voice. “I’m Emmeline Rogers, and I’m sort of your secretary.”
Carly felt a little better, until she remembered that she was probably going to spend as much time doing office work as writing. Maybe more. “Hi,” she said shyly.
“Want some coffee or something?”
Carly definitely felt better. “Thanks. That would be great.”
Moments later, Emmeline appeared with coffee. She was small, with plain brown hair, green eyes and a ready smile. “I brought pink sugar, in case you wanted it.”
Carly thanked the woman again and stirred half a packet of sweetener into the hot, strong coffee. “There are supposed to be some letters floating around here somewhere. Do you know where they are?”
Emmeline nodded and then glanced at her watch. Maybe she was one of those people who took an early lunch, Carly thought. “I’ll bring them in.”
“Great,” Carly answered. “Thanks.”
Emmeline slipped out and returned five minutes later with a mailbag the size of Santa’s sack. In fact, Carly was reminded of the courtroom scene in Miracle On 34th Street when the secretary spilled letters all over her desk.
By the time Emmeline had emptied the bag, Carly couldn’t even see over the pile. She would have to unearth her computer and telephone before she could start working.
“I couldn’t think of a way to break it to you gently,” Emmeline said.
Carly took a steadying sip of her coffee and muttered, “Allison said I’d be helping out with clerical work during slack times.”
Emmeline smiled. “Allison thinks she has a sense of humor. The rest of us know better.”
Carly chuckled and shoved the fingers of her left hand through her hair. Until two weeks ago, when she’d made the final decision to break off with Reggie and come to Oregon, she’d worn it long. The new cut, reaching just a couple of inches below her earlobes, had been a statement of sorts; she was starting over fresh.
Emmeline left her with a little shrug and a sympathetic smile. “Buzz me if you need anything.”
Carly was beginning to sort the letters into stacks. “If there’s another avalanche,” she responded, “send in a search party.”
Her telephone and computer had both reappeared by the time a brisk knock sounded at her office door. Mark poked his head around it before she had time to call out a “Come in” or even wonder why Emmeline hadn’t buzzed to announce a visitor.
“Hi,” he said, assessing the mountain of letters with barely concealed amusement. He was probably off to interview the governor or some astronaut.
Carly gave him a dour look. “Hi,” she responded.
He stepped into the tiny office and closed the door. “Your secretary’s on a break,” he said. He was wearing jeans, a plaid flannel shirt and a tan corduroy jacket.
“What I need is a moat stocked with crocodiles,” Carly retorted with a saucy smile. She wasn’t sure how she felt about this man—he produced an odd tangle of reactions that weren’t easy to unravel and define. The impact of his presence was almost overwhelming—he seemed to fill the room, leaving no space for her—and Carly was both intrigued and frightened.
She was at once attracted to him, and defensive about her lack of experience as a journalist.
Mark drew up the only extra chair, turned it around backward and sat astraddle of it, resting his arms across the back. “What are they going to call this column now? ‘Dear Miss Congeniality’?”
“I wasn’t Miss Congeniality,” Carly pointed out, arching her eyebrows and deliberately widening her eyes.
“Little wonder,” he replied philosophically.
Carly leaned forward in her chair and did her best to glower. “Was there something you wanted?”
“Yes. I’d like you to go to dinner with me tonight.”
Carly was putting rubber bands around batches of letters and stacking them on her credenza. A little thrill pirouetted up her spine and then did a triple flip to the pit of her stomach. Even though every instinct she possessed demanded that she refuse, she found herself nodding. “I’d enjoy that.”
“We could take in a movie afterward, if you want.”
Carly looked at the abundance of letters awaiting her attention. “That would be stretching it. Maybe some other time.”
Idly Mark picked up one of the letters and opened it. His handsome brow furrowed as he read. “This one’s from a teenage girl,” he said, extending the missive to Carly. “What are you going to tell her?”
Carly took the page of lined notebook paper and scanned it. The young lady who’d written it was still in high school, and she was being pressured by the boy she dated to “go all the way.” She wanted to know how she could refuse without losing her boyfriend.
“I think she should stand her ground,” Carly said. “If the boy really cares about her, he’ll understand why she wants to wait.”
Mark nodded thoughtfully. “Of course, nobody expects you to reply to every letter,” he mused.
Carly sensed disapproval in his tone, though it was well masked. “What’s wrong with my answer?” she demanded.
“It’s a little simplistic, that’s all.” His guileless brown eyes revealed no recriminations.
Without understanding why, Carly was o
n the defensive. “I suppose you could come up with something better?”
He sighed. “No, just more extensive. I would tell her to talk to a counselor at school, or a clergyman, or maybe a doctor. Things are complex as hell out there, Carly. Kids have a lot more to worry about than making cheerleader or getting on the football team.”
Carly sat back in her hair and folded her arms. “Could it be, Mr. Holbrook,” she began evenly, “that you think I’m shallow just because I was Miss United States?”
He grinned. “Would I have asked you out to dinner if I thought you were shallow?”
“Probably.”
Mark shrugged and spread his hands. “I’m sure you mean well,” he conceded generously. “You’re just inexperienced, that’s all.”
She took up a packet of envelopes and switched on her computer. The printer beside it hummed efficiently at the flip of another switch. “I won’t ever have any experience,” she responded, “if you hang around my office for the rest of your life, picking my qualifications apart.”
He stood up. “I assume you have a degree in psychology?”
“You know better.”
Mark was at the door now, his hand on the knob. “True. I looked you up. You majored in—”
“Journalism,” Carly interrupted.
Although his expression was chagrined, his eyes twinkled as he offered her a quick salute. “See you at dinner,” he said, and then he was gone.
Thoroughly unsettled, Carly turned her attention back to the letters she was expected to deal with.
Resolutely she opened an envelope, took out the folded page and began to read.
By lunchtime, Carly’s head was spinning. She was certainly no Pollyanna, but she’d never dreamed there were so many people out there leading lives of quiet desperation.
Slipping on her raincoat and reaching for her purse and umbrella, she left the Times offices and made her way to a cozy little delicatessen on the corner. She ordered chicken salad and a diet cola, then sat down at one of the round metal tables and stared out at the people hurrying past the rain-beaded window.
After a morning spent reading about other people’s problems, she was completely depressed. This was a state of mind that just naturally conjured up thoughts of Reggie.
Carly lifted her soft drink and took a sip. Maybe she’d done the wrong thing, breaking her engagement and leaving Kansas to start a whole new life. After all, Reggie was an honest-to-God doctor. He was already making over six figures a year, and he owned his sprawling brick house outright.
Glumly Carly picked up her plastic fork and took a bite of her salad. Perhaps Janet was right, and love was about bruised hearts and insomnia. Maybe it was some kind of neurotic compulsion.
Hell, maybe it didn’t exist at all.
At the end of her lunch hour, Carly returned to her office to find a note propped against her computer screen. It was written on the back of one of the envelopes, in firm black letters that slanted slightly to the right. This guy needs professional help. Re: dinner—meet me downstairs in the lobby at seven. Mark.
Carly shook her head and smiled as she took the letter out of the envelope. Her teeth sank into her lower lip as she read about the plight of a man who was in love with his aunt Gertrude. Nothing in journalism school, or in a year’s reign as Miss United States, had prepared her for dealing with things like this.
She set the letter aside and opened another one.
Allison popped in at five minutes before five. “Hello,” she chimed. “How are things going?”
Carly worked up a smile. “Until today,” she replied, “I had real hope for humanity.”
Allison gestured toward the computer. “I trust you’re making good use of Madeline’s contacts. She made some excellent ones in the professional community while she was here.”
Madeline, of course, was Carly’s predecessor, who had left her job to join her professor husband on a sabbatical overseas. “I haven’t gotten that far,” Carly responded. “I’m still in the sorting process.”
Allison shook a finger at Carly, assuming a stance and manner that made her resemble an elementary school librarian. “Now remember, you have deadlines, just like everyone else at this paper.”
Carly nodded. She was well aware that she was expected to turn in a column before quitting time on Wednesday. “I’ll be ready,” she said, and she was relieved when Allison left it at that and disappeared again.
She was stuffing packets of letters into her briefcase when Janet arrived to collect her.
“So how was it?” Janet asked, pushing a button on the elevator panel. The doors whisked shut.
“Grueling,” Carly answered, patting her briefcase with the palm of one hand. “Talk about experience. I’m expected to deal with everything from the heartbreak of psoriasis to nuclear war.”
Janet smiled. “You’ll get the hang of it,” she teased. “God did.”
Carly rolled her eyes and chuckled. “I think he divided the overflow between Dear Abby, Ann Landers and me.”
In the lobby the doors swished open, and Carly found herself face-to-face with Mark Holbrook. Perhaps because she was unprepared for the encounter, she felt as though the floor had just dissolved beneath her feet.
Janet nudged her hard in the ribs.
“M-Mark, this is Janet McClain,” Carly stammered with all the social grace of a nervous ninth grader. “We went to high school and college together.”
Carly begrudged the grin Mark tossed in Janet’s direction. “Hello,” he said suavely, and Carly thought, just fleetingly, of Cary Grant.
Mark’s warm brown eyes moved to Carly. “Remember—we’re supposed to meet at seven for dinner.”
Carly was still oddly starstruck, and she managed nothing more than a nod in response.
“I take back every jaded remark I’ve ever made about love,” Janet whispered as she and Carly walked away. “I’ve just become a believer.”
Carly was shaken, but for some reason she needed to put on a front. “Take it from me, Janet,” she said cynically, “Mark Holbrook may look like a prize, but he’s too arrogant to make a good husband.”
“Umm,” said Janet.
“I mean, it’s not like every dinner date has to be marriage material—”
“Of course not,” Janet readily agreed.
A brisk and misty wind met them as they stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of the Times building, and Carly’s cheeks colored in a blush. She averted her eyes. “I know he’s the wrong kind of man for me—with all he’s accomplished, he must be driven, like Reggie, but—”
“But?” Janet prompted.
“When he asked me out for dinner, I meant to say no,” Carly confessed, “but somehow it came out yes.”
CHAPTER TWO
CARLY ARRIVED AT the Times offices at five minutes to seven, wearing an attractive blue dress she’d borrowed from Janet and feeling guilty about all the unread letters awaiting her at home.
She stepped into the large lobby and looked around. She shouldn’t even be there, she thought to herself. When she’d left home, she’d had a plan for her life, and Mark Holbrook, attractive as he might be, wasn’t part of it.
An elevator bell chimed, doors swished open, and Mark appeared, as if conjured by her thoughts. He carried a briefcase in one hand and wore the same clothes he’d had on earlier: jeans, a flannel shirt and a corduroy jacket.
“This almost makes me wish I’d worn a tie,” he said, his warm brown eyes sweeping over her with admiration. Another of his lightning-charged grins flashed. “Then again, I’m glad I didn’t. You look wonderful, Ms. Congeniality.”
Carly let the beauty-pageant vernacular slide by. Although she’d had a lot of experience talking to people, she felt strangely shy around Mark. “Thanks,” she said.
They walked three blocks to Jake’s, an elegantly rust
ic restaurant-tavern that had been in business since 1892. When they walked in, the bartender called out a good-natured greeting to Mark, who answered with a thumbs-up sign, then proceeded to the reservations desk.
Soon Mark and Carly were seated in a booth on wooden benches, the backs towering over their heads. A waiter promptly brought them menus and greeted Mark by name.
Carly figured he probably brought a variety of women to the restaurant, and was inexplicably annoyed by the thought. She chose a Cajun plate, while Mark ordered a steak.
“Making any progress with the letters?” he asked when they were alone again.
Carly sighed. She’d probably be up until two or three in the morning, wading through them. “Let’s put it this way,” she answered, “I should be home working.”
The wine arrived and Mark tasted the sample the steward poured, then nodded. The claret was poured and the steward walked away, leaving the bottle behind.
Mark lifted his glass and touched it against Carly’s. “To workaholics everywhere,” he said.
Carly took a sip of her wine and set the glass aside. The word “workaholic” had brought Reggie to mind, and she felt as though he were sitting at the table with them, an unwelcome third. “What’s the most important thing in your life?” she asked to distract herself.
The waiter left their salads, then turned and walked away.
“Things don’t mean much to me,” Mark responded, lifting his fork. “It’s people who matter. And the most important person in my life is my son, Nathan.”
Even though she certainly wasn’t expecting anything to develop between herself and Mark, Carly was jarred by the mention of a child. “You’re not married, I hope,” she said, practically holding her breath.
“No, I’m divorced, and Nathan lives in California, with his mother,” he said. There was, for just an instant, a look of pain in his eyes. This was quickly displaced by a mischievous sparkle. “Would it matter to you—if I were married, I mean?”
Carly speared a cherry tomato somewhat vengefully. “Would it matter? Of course it would.”
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