“Has anyone called yet?” she croaked into the phone. “Have you heard from any reporters?”
“Not yet,” said Ethan in return.
“Okay, listen, if they do call, don’t talk to anyone. No comment from us just yet.”
“And what about the rat?” asked Ethan.
She gripped the phone tighter. The freaking rat. “This is insane. Why would anyone think we’re not using union—” She stopped suddenly, the pit of her stomach turning to ice. “Oh, my God, hang on a second.”
She dropped the phone and shoved her husband’s shoulder. “Kevin?” she said. “Kevin, wake up.”
Kevin slit his eyes open. “Jesus, Bridget, what time is it?”
“Last week did you deal with replacing those carpenters at Scarlett’s job like I asked you to?”
He blinked and scratched his chin. “What are you talking about?”
She tried to stay calm. “The carpenters. Did you do it or not?”
He yawned. The smell of stale scotch on his breath made her wrinkle her nose in disgust. “Oh, right. I told Danny to do it.”
Danny.
Danny Schwartz. In his sixties now. He’d always looked out for her. Helped her through. He was like a second dad to her. The only father she had left, really, since her own dad had passed away. But Danny had no relationship with the delegate and had no business hiring carpenters.
She looked at her husband, who pulled a pillow over his head and rolled back over. She picked the phone back up, barely keeping herself together. “It was Danny.”
“What?” said Ethan. “But the union knows Danny isn’t working with tools any longer and they leave him alone.”
She shook her head. “No, Danny brought in ten new guys last week. They must not have cards.”
“Oh, no,” said Ethan. “Who the hell told him to do that?”
She looked at her husband’s naked shoulders. He’d already fallen back asleep. “Kevin,” she said flatly.
She felt nauseated. She never used to let things slip like this. She never would have asked Kevin to take care of something she could do herself. Being a woman in this business, she did not have the luxury of ever taking her eye off the ball. For her, there were no second chances. She had to be ten times better to even be considered half as good. She was not allowed mistakes.
But then her father had died.
She flashed back to the day five years earlier when she had rushed straight from Bermuda to his bedside at the hospital in the Bronx. It had all happened so quickly, her mother had said. He’d gone in for testing for the Parkinson’s and they had realized he had a UTI and a raging fever, so they’d hospitalized him so he could get IV antibiotics. It was only supposed to be overnight. Her mother had wanted to call Bridget, but her father had insisted she not be bothered when she was finally on vacation.
Overnight had turned into two days, then three and four. The fever kept coming and going. He was in and out of consciousness, sometimes babbling nonsense, but when he was lucid, he still insisted he would be fine. To let Bridget enjoy her time off.
But then he crashed. And he was rushed to ICU. And Bridget’s mother panicked. “You need to come home right now,” she told Bridget, agony in her voice. “It might already be too late.”
Her father was still alive when Bridget arrived, but alone and asleep. Her mother was out of the room, talking to another round of doctors. Bridget had been overwhelmed when she saw how pale and thin he was, the tube in his nose and all the wires and bandages running from his arms and chest.
“Daddy?” she’d whispered. Her voice trembled. And just like that, an alarm went off—a high-pitched scream and a flat line on one of his screens that hadn’t been flat before, and Bridget knew that something was terribly wrong.
She had run out into the hallway, screaming for help, grabbing at anyone she could find, her mouth and throat dry, her heart pounding out of her chest. “Please!” she remembered crying out. “Please!”
And they’d saved him. They’d shocked him and his heart had started pumping again, and then they’d rushed him into surgery, and for two more weeks, Bridget had her father back with her. She was there round the clock, letting Ethan and Danny and Kevin take over things at work, refusing to leave her father’s side. Kevin brought her clothes and food, took care of her when she’d let him. Her mother begged her to go home just for a night, to shower and get some real rest. But Bridget’s father was not always himself—he’d fade in and out. Sometimes asking her how her trip had been, how work was going, what project was next, sometimes, excited as a little boy, describing the new model he’d bought for them to make together, and sometimes he simply didn’t recognize her. Bridget couldn’t bring herself to leave, afraid she’d miss those brief moments when he was whole and there and lucid.
Finally, two weeks in, assured that he was stable, knowing that she smelled terrible from not having washed in days, afraid she would collapse if she spent one more night in a hospital chair, she let a kindly nurse talk her into going home—just for one night. She kissed her dad good-night and told him she’d see him in the morning, that she’d be back real soon.
“Darling?” her father had said as she started to walk out of the room. “Are you set for money? Can I give you a little something?”
Tears sprang into her eyes. She rushed back to his bedside. “I’m fine, Daddy. Really.”
He grasped her arm. “Are you sure?” His hands scrabbled around, looking for his phantom wallet. “Let me just give you some cab fare, at least.”
“Daddy,” she said, taking his hand in hers. “I have a car and driver, remember? It’s okay.”
Suddenly, his eyes sharpened. “Oh, that’s right,” he said, smiling. “Of course you do. Because my clever, beautiful daughter is also a big success.” He squeezed her hand. “But I always knew that would happen.”
She waited for him to go back to sleep, kissed the top of his head, whispered good-night one more time and left him there.
They called her that night. They were so sorry, they said, but he had slipped away in his sleep.
Bridget thought she’d never forgive herself for letting him die alone.
And then, two weeks after the funeral, she discovered she was pregnant. And so she married Kevin, because he’d stood by her while her father was sick and she was exhausted and devastated and couldn’t stand the thought of being alone. Even though, deep down, she knew she was only bringing more trouble into her life.
And now her marriage was a mess, and work kept coming at her, and by the time she landed this job with Scarlett, she had lost track of so much. When the carpenters quit, she had been dealing with an unexpected asbestos issue at one of her other job sites and she had turned to Kevin, thinking that, just this once, she could trust him to take care of things.
But that, obviously, had been a huge mistake.
Scarlett’s job was currently the only thing standing between Steele Construction and bankruptcy. All the money Bridget had poured into Kevin’s business; all the money he had spent on the corporate Amex; all the savings he had drained from her bank account... She would be ruined if they lost this contract.
“Ethan,” she said urgently, “does Scarlett know? Has she seen the rat?”
He paused. “I haven’t heard from her yet so I assume not. But we won’t have much time. You better get down here as fast as you can.”
“Okay. Okay. Hang tight. I’m on my way.”
She put down her phone and felt so dizzy that she had to put her head between her knees. She took a deep, stuttering breath. She felt like she had just run a marathon. Her mouth was dry, her head was spinning, her whole body felt weak. The room was dim and quiet, just the soft breathing of her husband and the quiet tick of the clock on the mantel. The city below was not yet stirring. The light coming in through the long silk curtains was gray and muted. She strained
to listen. Rain, she thought unhappily.
She moved to get out of bed and Kevin’s sky-blue eyes fluttered open. “Aw, come on,” he whispered hoarsely. He snaked his arm around her waist and pulled her back toward him. “It can’t be that bad. Come back to bed.”
Bridget glanced at her husband—despite his bloodshot eyes and stale booze smell, he was still an undeniably gorgeous man. He slept naked, and the blankets only just covered his groin. The muscles across his bare chest rippled as he took a firmer grip on her body.
He had rolled in at three in the morning. She hadn’t bothered to ask where he’d been.
“It is that bad,” she said, trying to edge out of his grasp. “I can’t go back to sleep.”
“I’m not talking about sleeping,” he growled.
She knew. She knew what he wanted. There had been a time when, no matter what else was going on, she would have laughed, delighted, turned off her alarm and then straddled him. There had been a time when she would have let herself roam over every inch of his glorious body and then lie back and happily let him return the favor. There had been a time when she couldn’t resist this man, when it never would have crossed her mind to say no. But that was before. Before her father died, before the baby, before work got so crazy, before he started emptying their bank accounts and running up their credit cards, before he started staying out late every night, coming home speed-talking from the coke, smelling like booze and the sweet, salty scent of other things she forced herself not to think too hard about...before there was a giant frigging rubber rat about to ruin everything she had worked so hard to build over the past fifteen years.
She pulled out of Kevin’s arms and stood up, grabbing for her robe at the end of the bed. “Listen. I need your help. There’s a problem at Scarlett’s job.”
She tried to ignore the look of bitter resignation on his face before he shrugged and rolled back over. “Surprise, surprise,” he muttered.
She tied the robe firmly around her waist, the green silk sash slipping through her fingers, determined to stay focused, not to take the bait. “I have to get down to the site right now, so I need you to drop off Dylan at school.”
He didn’t look at her. “What do we pay that nanny for, anyway?” he said sullenly.
She took a deep breath, willing herself not to panic. “I told you, she’s not doing mornings anymore. It’s ridiculous to keep paying her just to drop him off at school when you’re home, anyway. Please, I have to get downtown.”
He shrugged. “I’m exhausted. Can’t you just drop him off on the way?”
“No. I can’t.” She was trying desperately not to raise her voice. “I’ve got to go right now.”
As if on cue, the high, sweet voice of her four-year-old son rang out from the room next to theirs, “Mama? Mama? I gotta go potty!”
“Please, Kevin.” She hated the begging note in her voice.
He kept his back turned. “He’s calling you. You better get going.”
She slowly shook her head. She could feel the rage building in her chest. “You’re really doing this?”
He didn’t answer.
“Mama? I gotta go!”
“Okay, sweetie!” she called out, trying to hold back the anger in her voice. “One second!”
“Now, Mama!” She could hear the urgency in his call.
“You wouldn’t be exhausted if you hadn’t been out all night,” she said with contempt to her husband.
He turned over and looked at her. His eyes were no longer sky blue; they were glacial. “I wouldn’t be out all night if I had anything worth coming home to,” he said.
“Mama!” Dylan’s voice was a wail. “Oh, no! Oh, no! I peed!”
She raised her chin, forcing down the knot in her throat. She wouldn’t give her husband the satisfaction of seeing how his words had slammed her right in the gut. “Great. Thanks for freaking nothing, Kevin.”
“Have an awesome day,” he said and rolled back over.
“Mama!”
For Dylan’s sake, she tried not to slam the door as she left the bedroom.
* * *
Half an hour later Bridget could still hear Dylan’s tantrum as she ran back out into the rain and slid, panting, into her waiting town car. The nanny had not been amused by the early-morning call, but she’d finally agreed to come get Dylan ready for school.
“Okay, Jean Luc,” she said to her driver, “we’re going to the Hawkins job, as fast as you can.”
“I will try, boss,” Jean Luc said in his soft Haitian accent. “But the rain is slowing everything down today.”
Bridget fished the phone out of her bag and dialed as they inched out into the stream of Manhattan traffic. “Ethan?” she said. “I’m on my way. You heard anything from Scarlett yet?”
“Not yet.”
She took a deep breath, relieved. “Okay. I’m almost there. Maybe we can fix this before she even hears anything. Anyone else call? Any word from the press?”
He cleared his throat. “Yeah. A bunch of reporters called. They want you to get back to them right away. Page Six. The Times. And Good Morning New York. I’m sorry, Bridget.”
Bridget leaned back against the soft leather seat, all the air gone from her lungs. So it was already a story. It was already out. Even if she got in there before Scarlett and fired the guys Danny had hired. Even if she got the union delegates to remove the rat off the street. It was already news.
Bridget knew the score. This story would be everywhere. Everyone would know about the rat and Scarlett would find out and freak. This would be terrible press for Scarlett Hawkins Inc. They were literally branded as “America’s Company.” They couldn’t afford to be seen as anti-union; they couldn’t be associated with a rat and a picket line.
Bridget closed her eyes, quickly going over the possibilities. The only way Scarlett could possibly fix it would be to immediately make a big, fat, public deal out of firing Steele Construction. This would be it. It was over. She had bet everything on this job. Bridget had nothing in reserve. There was no coming back from a loss this big.
She felt all the strength drain out of her. It was too much. Her father. Her husband. And now her business. She couldn’t save any of it. It was all being taken away.
“Bridget?” Ethan sounded like he was talking under water. “Bridget, Scarlett just walked in the door. Bridget, she’s freaking the hell out.”
“I’ll—I’ll call you back later, okay? Let me just... I’ll call you back.” She dropped her phone onto the seat and stared blindly at the rain-smeared window, out at the traffic. In the distance, down the block, she suddenly saw the looming, gray, cartoon-like figure of Scabby the Rat.
“Missus Steele?” said Jean Luc. “Everything okay?”
Bridget shook her head. Of course Jean Luc had heard everything. Her driver knew more about her than her god damned therapist.
She stared at the rat as they drew closer. Beady black eyes, long black claws. It jounced softly in the rain and wind, mocking her with its leering yellow grin.
“Just...drive on by, Jean Luc. Take me home.”
Part Two
Chapter 6
Jason Russo rolled over with a groan, groping for the glass of water and the bottle of aspirin that he hoped he had been smart enough to leave on his bedside table. He found the aspirin, but instead of the water, there was only half a warm beer.
Good enough, he thought, popping a small handful of pills into his mouth and chasing them down with the flat, bitter brew. He grimaced and rolled back over, surprised to find himself in the center of his bed. He’d finally moved off the right side, spreading out onto the part of the mattress he’d always thought of as hers.
All it took was six beers, two shots of tequila and exactly one freaking year. “Happy anniversary of The Day My Wife Left Me,” he muttered to himself. “Ought to be a national holiday
.”
His head throbbed as he hauled himself into an upright position, leaning back onto the padded headboard and blinking in the dazzling morning light streaming from the floor-to-ceiling windows. The room was beautiful: bright, airy and shockingly large for a Manhattan apartment. He had renovated it himself. But his eyes went unwillingly to all the empty spaces that he had not yet roused himself to fill. The missing carved oak bureau, the place where the antique, silver-framed standing mirror had been, the lost bentwood rocker where Hana had nursed their daughter Alli night after night, crooning that one off-key lullaby about all the pretty little horses...
Now all those familiar things were in SoHo, probably looking ridiculously out of place in his best friend Liam’s massive chrome and leather loft; along with the big, pink, overstuffed velvet couch Jason had always complained about being too girly but secretly loved, the set of delicate, intricately painted Imari china they had inherited from Hana’s paternal grandmother, and worst of all, the long, chipped farmhouse table where their little family had eaten countless meals. It was the table where they had played family board games, where Alli had done her homework every night, where Hana had sat sketching, her back perfectly straight and her long, shining black hair pinned up and held with a pencil. Jason had never built her that desk he had always promised her.
He shut his eyes against the memories. For a brief moment he fantasized about an electrical short that would start a small but dangerous fire at the loft in the middle of the night—Liam had always tried to cheap out when it came to paying for a decent electrician—and he imagined himself showing up, pulling Alli and Hana safely from the blaze, maybe the table, too, but he’d let Liam burn, damn it. That asshole deserved it.
Or, an unwelcome thought rushed into his brain, maybe you’re the asshole in this scenario.
He shook his head at his own foolishness and finished the leftover beer in a few swift gulps. The aspirin wasn’t working; maybe a shower would. He padded naked into the bathroom.
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