“Josh? It’s Nicky D’Angelo,” Loretta’s brother boomed. He sounded friendly enough, but his voice had an edge to it.
“Nicky. Nice to hear from you.”
“Yeah, well, if you really wanted to hear from me, you would have given me your phone number. I had to jump through a few hoops to get your office number.”
“We’re listed in the Yellow Pages,” Josh pointed out.
“Not under Kaplan. Besides which, there are only something like two million attorneys-at-law named Kaplan in New York City. You didn’t think of that, did you.”
“Actually, no.”
“So I called Loretta’s place of business and said I was trying to reach you. You know that guy she works with, Bob? Someone said he was a client of yours, and he gave me your number.”
“Right.” Bob had, indeed, posed as a client of his. By pretending to be a client, Bob had connived to get Josh onto the show as Loretta’s blind date. And now Loretta was in Miami, becoming best friends with Melanie while Josh was fielding calls from Loretta’s big lug of a dentist brother. Sometimes life resembled an episode of the Becky Blake Show. “Well, I hope the effort was worth it,” he asked pleasantly. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m just checking to make sure you’re picking Loretta up at LaGuardia tonight.”
Josh checked himself before blurting out anything that would expose his complete ignorance. She was coming home tonight? He was supposed to pick her up? When was she planning to inform him of this?
“Um, yeah,” he said carefully. “I think that was the plan.” What flight? What time? Jesus, did she think he was her personal chauffeur? And clairvoyant, to boot?
“Because I hate the idea of her getting in so late and not having anyone there waiting for her. You know? A woman alone, it’s just not safe.”
How late is she getting in? “LaGuardia’s pretty safe,” Josh assured him.
“I told her I’d pick her up, but she said no, you were taking care of it.”
Josh fit the pieces together: Loretta had lied to Nicky so he wouldn’t greet her at the airport. “That’s right,” Josh played along. “You don’t have to worry about Loretta. I’ll be picking her up. Let me see, what flight was it…?” He pushed some papers around his desk. “You know, I think my secretary misplaced the flight information. Do you remember what flight she was coming in on?”
“Great. This is who she trusts to pick her up,” Nicky muttered. “Someone with a stupid secretary.”
“Never mind.” Josh labored to sound peeved. “My secretary isn’t stupid. I’m sure she has the information at her desk.”
“Loretta didn’t tell me the flight number,” Nicky relented. “It’s Delta, because I took her to the airport to fly down there—to see you, I thought. Like any of this makes any sense at all. But I figure, if she flew down on Delta, she’ll be coming back on Delta.”
“Of course.”
“Eleven o’clock? Sometime around then, I think she said.”
“Yes, that’s right.” Josh scribbled “Delta—eleven” on the corner of a photocopy of Henri Charnier’s lease.
“Look, Josh.” Nicky lowered his voice to an intimate tone. “I don’t know what’s going on with you two. If I asked Loretta, she’d say it was none of my business. And maybe you’d say the same thing.”
“That’s a good bet,” Josh said.
“But she’s my baby sister, if you catch my drift. The last guy she was involved with, if I had my way he’d be singing soprano right now. You know what I’m saying?”
“You’re coming through loud and clear. But Loretta’s an adult. She gets to make up her own mind.”
“She didn’t make up her own mind with that last boyfriend of hers. A real cazzo, you know what that is? A prick. He dumped her.”
To her great relief, Josh recalled.
“My sister doesn’t deserve that. Okay? She’s a pain in the ass, but she’s also my sister. You treat her badly, I’m going to get you.”
“Nicky—”
“And I’ll bring my brother Al with me to hold you down. You see what I’m saying?”
“I love your sister,” Josh said. “If anyone dumps anyone, it sure as hell won’t be me dumping her.”
“Yeah, well, she’s almost thirty years old. She can’t afford to dump anyone at this point. So—” Nicky altered his voice once more, ridding it of its intimidating edge “—how’s that old lady with the funky tooth? Loretta says it’s a half-hour job, just a little resurfacing.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Give us a call next week. My brother and I’ll free up some time for her.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“And don’t be late at the airport tonight,” Nicky demanded. “I don’t want her standing around all by herself for a minute. A lot can happen to a woman who’s alone in an airport late at night.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be there.” Josh said good-bye, hung up and let out a long, shaky breath.
Had he actually told Nicky that he loved Loretta?
A little dishonesty was sometimes necessary, he reassured himself. When dealing with Loretta and her family, a little dishonesty seemed to be standard operating procedure. With Nicky threatening castration—as a dentist he probably had all the equipment he would need to perform such an operation right in his office, starting with the high-powered drill his father had bought for him—Josh would have said anything to calm the guy down.
But it hadn’t felt like a lie when he’d said it. In fact, as the words had flowed from his mouth, he’d been thinking, Why am I telling her brother this? Why am I not telling her?
Because she was down in Opa-Locka with Melanie, bonding over a bottle of rum and an old Cher movie. Because Melanie was probably stuffing Loretta’s head with ideas about Josh, negative ideas about the man who’d not only broken up with her but refused her suggestion of a friendly fuck for old time’s sake. Because from the start, Loretta had been forthright about her desire to steer clear of love.
But he loved her.
And damn it, he’d better be at the airport to meet her tonight, or Nicky was going to come after him with a sharp object.
He logged onto the Internet, called up the Delta Air Lines homepage, and checked the schedule for incoming flights. He found no direct flights from Miami, but a connecting flight from Atlanta was scheduled to land at ten forty-six. He’d aim for that one. If she wasn’t on it, he’d sit around and wait for the next flight. And if she wasn’t on that one…
He’d fly down to Miami and get her himself.
***
Loretta was beat. She’d bought a soft pretzel during her layover in Atlanta, and now it sat in a congealing lump in the pit of her stomach. The salt on it had made her so thirsty, she’d downed three bottles of water on the airplane, and her bladder had swelled like a water balloon during the thirty-minute approach to LaGuardia, when the flight attendant announced that passengers were to remain in their seats with their seatbelts on until the plane was safely at the gate.
She’d made it to a lavatory inside the terminal—just barely. Her head hurt, her cheeks stung from a touch of sunburn—playing shuffleboard in without first slathering on sunblock could do that—and she wanted to go home, curl up in bed and swear to God that she’d approach rum with greater caution from here on in.
She rinsed her hands, splashed water on her cheeks and examined her reflection in the mirror above the sink. The trim Donna had subjected her hair to had done nothing to protect it from the vicissitudes of southern Florida’s heat and humidity. It looked like a fuzzy black rug. Melanie had had the right idea when it came to hairdos.
Melanie had had the right idea about a lot of things. Like cutting her losses with Josh when it became clear that he wasn’t going to make a commitment. Loretta was going to have to decide for herself whether to be satisfied what Josh could give her and expect nothing more, or to end whatever relationship they had
now, before he broke her heart. Because of all the stupid things she’d done recently, the stupidest had been to fall in love with him after claiming that love was the one thing she didn’t want from him.
She left the restroom and joined the flow of human traffic heading from the gates to the baggage claim area. Nearly eleven p.m. She hoped she wouldn’t have to wait long for a cab. Through the security gate, down the escalator…
“Loretta.”
She halted, then glanced around. People swarmed in all directions around her, mothers dragging cranky children, young couples clinging to each other as if one of them had just returned from a war, businessmen with garment bags slung over their shoulders, strutting and jabbering importantly into their cell phones. I don’t know where we are… Somewhere on Long Island. Wasn’t that what the babbling blond nitwit on the train had said? The Sunday evening when Loretta had first laid eyes on Josh Kaplan and—
“Loretta,” someone spoke more firmly, in Josh’s voice. She spun around, feeling dizzy and disoriented as people pushed past her to get to the baggage carousel. She saw a bearded man in a broad-brimmed hat, one of those very religious Jews who could pass for Amish. She saw a barrel-chested skinhead in a T-shirt reading, “This Could Be Your Lucky Day.” She saw a kid scarcely out of puberty, with acne scars pocking his cheeks and a lovelorn sorrow in his eyes. She saw an enormous bouquet of flowers, enough flowers to fill the back of a hearse at a funeral. Somewhere behind the bouquet was a person; human hands were holding the bouquet around the stems.
The hands looked familiar. She’d seen those hands before—gripping a bacon cheeseburger. Holding a bottle of Sam Adams. Weaving into her hair and angling her face for a kiss.
The bouquet shifted lower, and Josh’s face appeared above the array of blossoms. “Loretta.”
She felt even more dizzy and disoriented. What the hell was he doing here? Other than meeting her, which he wasn’t supposed to be doing even though she’d told Nicky he was. She’d never believed in the power of lies before.
“Who died?” she asked, focusing on the flowers until she regained her equilibrium. The blossoms represented the full spectrum in color, bunched with dark green leaves and brighter stalks that resembled chives.
“What do you mean, who died?”
“No one gets flowers like that unless they’re dead.”
“You can be the first live person to get flowers like this. They’re for you,” he said, presenting them to her.
She gathered them into her arms and nearly staggered under their weight. “What are you doing here?” she finally asked. “How did you know I’d be arriving now?”
“Your brother Nicky called me to make sure I’d be picking you up. He made it pretty clear what would happen to me if I wasn’t here when you got off the plane. Frankly, I don’t think either of us would want him to do what he was threatening.”
She gazed into Josh’s beautiful hazel eyes. They held laughter but other emotions, too. Panic—perhaps reflecting his response to Nicky’s warning. Hope. Dread. Something else—something she couldn’t decipher.
“You cut your hair,” he observed.
“Donna cut it. It looks like shit.”
“It looks beautiful.”
“You like it?” She was thinking his hair looked beautiful. Tousled, windblown, honey-blond streaks shimmering in the terminal’s bright lights.
“It looks great.” He studied her for a minute. “You’re not going to go much shorter, are you?”
“You mean, like Melanie’s hair?”
He didn’t smile. “I like to be able to run my hands through a woman’s hair.” His expression became grimmer. “Not just any woman’s hair. Yours.”
And she liked his being able to run his hands through her hair. That still didn’t explain why he’d let Nicky browbeat him into making her lie come true. “What are the flowers for?”
“I thought you’d like them. I…” He sighed. “I love you, Loretta.”
“What!” Josh didn’t say things like that. Melanie had told her.
“I love you. I know you’re not looking for love, so all right. We’ll deal with that. We’ll start with flowers and work our way up.”
“We’ll work our way up to what?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged helplessly. “A ring? A wedding? Whatever you wind up talking me into. You know you can talk me into anything, Loretta. You’ve already talked me into blind dates and TV appearances and God knows what else.”
She felt really dizzy now. Seriously disoriented. This wasn’t supposed to happen. She’d just spent the past twenty-four hours preparing herself for the fact that it would never happen. Yet there she stood, in the middle of the bustling LaGuardia terminal, her arms aching around the bulk of the flowers, her shoulder sore from the strap of her duffel, and the man she loved, a man who was supposed to be commitment-phobic, was talking about rings and weddings.
Weddings. With photographers and reception halls and Alyssa and the twins as flower girls. In a church—or in a synagogue? Oh, God, how were they going to work that out? One of those hybrid ceremonies like the one her mother’s friend Sonia had gone to, with the clergymen enacting a bad joke: A priest and a rabbi walk into a wedding…
“I wasn’t expecting this,” she said.
“Great. You told your damned brother I was supposed to be here. Now you tell me you aren’t expecting this.”
“I’m not talking about your being here. I wasn’t expecting that, either. But the rest of it.”
“The flowers.”
“And the other things.”
At last Josh touched her. He cupped his hands beneath her elbows, helping her bear the weight of the bouquet. “I wasn’t expecting those other things, either.” He gazed at her through the multicolored petals and spiky green stalks. “So what happens now? You tell me you don’t want a relationship? You break my heart?”
“I’m not going to break your heart, Josh.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
He pressed through the flowers to kiss her. She heard stems rustling and snapping between her body and Josh’s, and smelled the blossoms’ heavy perfume pluming around them. She felt the warmth of his mouth on hers, the sweet glide of his tongue against her teeth, and the dizziness this time came from a surge of pure lust.
“My parents are going to want more grandchildren,” she whispered when, after an shamelessly long time, he drew back.
“This minute?”
“No, I’m just saying.”
“We wouldn’t want to disappoint your parents.”
“No, we wouldn’t.” She smiled.
He smiled, too, then touched his lips to hers. “Why did you go to Florida?”
To tell you I love you. She’d answer his question later, as many times and in as many ways as he wanted her to. But some of the ways she wanted to answer that question were not appropriate for two people standing in the middle of the Delta Air Lines terminal. So she said, “I wanted to pump Melanie for information about you.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“I know everything about you now,” Loretta warned him as, keeping one hand on her elbow, he led her past the baggage claim area to the taxi stand outside. “She said you’re self-righteous and overwhelmed by guilt.”
“Not true,” he protested with a laugh.
“She said you’re sarcastic and fanatical about your socks.”
“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
“She said you love sex.”
“She… Well, okay. We’ll let that one go.” He ushered her through the sliding glass door and into the balmy dark. No palm trees swayed along the driveway here. No steam-bath humidity hugged the pavement. This was New York, her home, and she was with the man she wanted to come home to. She had Josh, and a starlit night, and more flowers than she’d ever know what to do with.
Okay, so maybe she’d get married before sh
e turned thirty. It wouldn’t be the end of the world.
* * * * *
About the Author
Judith Arnold is the award-winning, bestselling author of more than one hundred published novels. A New York native, she currently lives in New England, where she indulges in her passions for jogging, dark chocolate, good music, good wine and good books. She is married and the mother of two sons.
You can find out about Judith’s other books, contact her, and sign up for her newsletter by visiting her website.
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