“Good evening,” he said pleasantly. He noticed that she was small and lithe, and he wondered if she actually was a dancer. And as a brigade of waiters served the first course, he asked her, and she laughed. It wasn't the first time someone had asked her that, and she claimed she was flattered. She knew who he was, and had been excited to find him sitting next to her. Her place card said Alexandra Madison, which meant nothing to him.
“Actually, I'm a resident,” she said, as though that explained everything, but to him, it didn't mean a thing.
“A resident of where?” he said, with a look of amusement. She was not his usual profile, but she was strikingly pretty, and he saw that she had lovely hands, with short nails, and no polish on them. She was wearing a white satin gown, and had a young girl's face and figure.
“At a hospital. I'm a physician.”
“How interesting,” he said, looking momentarily impressed. “What kind? Anything useful?”
“Not unless you have children. I'm a pediatrician, a neonatologist to be exact.”
“I detest children. I eat them for dinner,” he said with a wide smile that showed off the perfect white teeth he was known for.
“I don't believe you,” she said with a giggle.
“Truly. And children hate me. They know I eat them. I only like them when they turn into grown-ups. Particularly women.” At least he was honest. He had had a lifelong distrust of children, and an aversion to them. He generally tried to choose women who didn't have them. They complicated everything, and had spoiled many an evening for him. Women without children were much more fun to be with, from his standpoint. You didn't have to rush home to pay babysitters. They weren't sick at the last minute. They didn't spill their juice all over you, or tell you they hated you. It was one of the many reasons why he preferred younger women. Over thirty, most women seemed to have kids. “Why couldn't you be something more entertaining? Like a lion tamer. Or actually, being a ballerina would suit you. I think you should consider a career change now, before you get in any deeper.” Alexandra was having fun sitting next to him. She was impressed with him, but she was enjoying playing with him, and in spite of her unfortunate choice of jobs, and severe hairdo, according to Coop, he liked her.
“I'll have to give it some thought. What about being a veterinarian? Would that be better?” Alexandra asked innocently.
“I don't like dogs either. They're filthy. They get hair all over your trousers, they bite, snap, and smell. Almost as bad as children. Not quite, but a close second. We'll have to think of an entirely different career for you. What about acting?”
“I don't think so,” she laughed, as a waiter spooned caviar onto her blini. Coop loved the food at the Schwartzes' dinners, and Alexandra looked comfortable there too. She had an aura of ease and grace about her, as though she had grown up in dining rooms like this one. It was written all over her, despite the fact that she wasn't wearing important jewels. Just a string of pearls, and a pair of pearl and diamond earrings. But something about her spelled money. “What about you?” She turned the tables on him. She was above all intelligent, and he liked that about her too. At the dinner table at least, it provided a challenge. “Why are you an actor?”
“I find it amusing. Don't you? Imagine being able to play pretend every day, and wear beautiful clothes. It's actually very pleasant. Far nicer than what you do. You wear an ugly wrinkled white coat and children throw up all over you, and scream the minute they see you.”
“That's true. But the ones I deal with are too small to do much damage. I work in the neonatal ICU, mostly with preemies.”
“Ghastly,” he said, pretending to be horrified. “They're probably the size of mice. You could get rabies. This is much worse than I suspected.” He was having a delightful time with her, and a man across the table glanced at him with a look of amusement. It was like watching fine art as Coop turned the charm full force on a woman. But Alexandra was a good match for him. She was sensible, and smart enough not to let Coop lure her or make her feel ill at ease. “What else do you do?” Coop continued to quiz her.
“I fly my own plane, and have since I was eighteen. I love to go hang gliding. I've parachuted out of an airplane, but I promised my mother I wouldn't, so I no longer do. I play tennis, ski. I used to race motorcycles, but I promised my father I wouldn't. And I spent a year doing health care work in Kenya before med school.”
“You sound relatively suicidal. And your parents seem to interfere a great deal in your athletic pursuits. Do you still see them?”
“When I have to,” she said honestly, and he saw in her eyes that she was telling the truth. She was a girl with an amazing amount of poise and spirit. He was fascinated by her.
“Where do they live?” he asked with interest.
“Palm Beach in the winter. Newport in the summer. It's very boring and predictable, and I'm something of a rebel.”
“Are you married?” He had seen that she wasn't wearing a ring, and he didn't expect a positive answer. She didn't feel married to him. He had excellent radar for these things.
“No.” She hesitated for a moment before she answered. “I almost was,” she volunteered. She didn't usually say that, but he was so outrageous, it was fun being honest with him. He was easy to talk to, and very quick.
“And? What happened?”
The ivory face turned icy, although she continued smiling. But her eyes were full of sorrow suddenly. No one but Coop would have seen it. “I was jilted at the altar. The night before actually.”
“How tasteless. I hate people who do rude things like that, don't you?” He was stalling for time. He could see that saying it had hurt her, and for an instant he was sorry that he had asked. She had been so bluntly truthful with her answer. He hadn't expected her to do that. “I hope he fell into a pit of snakes after that, or a moat full of alligators. He deserved it.”
“He did, more or less. The moat full of alligators, I mean. He married my sister.” It was heavy stuff for a first meeting. But she assumed she'd never see him again, so it didn't matter what she said to him.
“That is rude. And do you still speak to her?”
“Only when I have to. That's when I went to Kenya. It was a very interesting year. I enjoyed it.” That was her signal to him that she didn't want to discuss the matter further, and Coop didn't blame her. She had been painfully honest with him, far more than he would have dared with a stranger. And he admired her for it. He told her about his last safari after that, which had been fraught with miseries and discomforts. He had been invited to a game preserve, as their guest, and by his estimation, they had tortured him with every horror they could think of. He had hated every minute of it, but listening to him tell it, he made it sound funny, and he had her roaring with laughter at his description of the scene.
They had a wonderful time sitting beside each other, and they both ignored their other neighbors. She was still laughing at him when the meal came to an end, and he was sorry when she got up and went to talk to some old friends she had spotted at another table. They were friends of her parents, and she thought she should speak to them, but she told Coop how much she had enjoyed meeting him, and she meant it. He had made it a memorable evening for her.
“I don't have time to go out much. And Mrs. Schwartz was sweet to invite me. She's a friend of my parents. I only came because I was able to get the night off, but most of the time, I'm stuck at the hospital. I'm glad I did come.” She shook his hand firmly, and a moment later, Louise Schwartz was tittering beside him.
“Watch out, Coop,” she warned him. “She's a handful. And if you take her out, her father will kill you.”
“Why? Is he in the Mafia or something? She looks perfectly respectable to me.”
“She is. That's why he'd kill you. Arthur Madison.” It was a name that anyone would have recognized. It was the oldest steel fortune in the country, and the biggest. And she was a doctor. An interesting combination. Abe Braunstein's words rang in his ears as Louise said i
t. She was not only a rich woman, but possibly one of the richest. And totally simple and unassuming, and one of the brightest girls he'd ever met. Better than that, she had a lot of spirit. It would have been difficult not to be attracted to her, or amused, or challenged at least. Coop watched her with interest as she spoke to a number of people. She had scored a hit with Cooper. He ran into her again as he was leaving. He had timed his exit perfectly to match hers, and pointed to the waiting Bentley
“Can I give you a lift?” He sounded friendly, and harmless. He had calculated that she was roughly thirty, and had been correct in his estimation. He was exactly forty years older than she was, but at least he didn't look it, or feel it. And the funny thing was that he wasn't drawn to her because of who she was. He actually liked her. She was clearly a woman who would not tolerate any nonsense. Better yet, or worse, she'd been hurt, and he could see that she was cautious. And who she was, or who her father was, only added depth and color to the picture. She appealed to him immensely, and would have, with or without her father, or his money. Odd as it was, Coop mused as he watched her, he liked Alexandra for herself.
“I've got my car, but thank you,” she said politely, smiling at him. And as she said it, one of the valet parkers brought up her old beat-up Volkswagen, and she smiled at him.
“I'm impressed. Very humble. I admire your discretion,” he teased her about her car.
“I just don't like wasting money on cars. I hardly ever drive it. I never go anywhere. I'm always working.”
“I know, with those dreadful mouse babies. What about beauty school? Have you ever thought about that?”
“It was actually my first career choice, but I couldn't pass the exams. I kept flunking crimping.” She was as quick and as irreverent as he.
“I enjoyed meeting you, Alexandra,” he said, looking her in the eye with the blue eyes and the cleft chin that made him a legend, and irresistible to women.
“Call me Alex. I enjoyed meeting you too, Mr. Winslow.”
“Maybe I should call you Dr. Madison. Would you prefer that?”
“Absolutely.” She grinned at him, as she slid into her battered car. It didn't bother her in the least to have come to the Schwartzes' in a car that looked like it should have been abandoned by the side of a highway somewhere, or perhaps had been. “Goodnight,” she called to him with a wave as she drove away, and he called after her.
“Goodnight, Doctor! Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” He could see that she was laughing as she drove down the driveway, and he was smiling as he got into the back of the Bentley He reminded himself to send Louise flowers in the morning. A lot of them. He was so glad that he had decided not to see Charlene that night. He had had a wonderful evening with Alex Madison. She was a most unusual girl indeed, and a very interesting prospect for him.
Chapter 8
The morning after the dinner party, Coop sent Louise Schwartz an enormous arrangement of flowers. He thought of calling her secretary for Alex Madison's phone number, but decided to call the hospital directly to see if he could locate her on his own. He asked for the neonatal ICU, and they went down a list of residents before giving him her pager number. He paged her, but she didn't respond. They said she was on duty, but couldn't be called to the phone. He was surprised to find he was disappointed when he didn't hear back from her.
And two days later, he was out in black tie again. He was invited to the Golden Globes as usual, although he hadn't been nominated for anything in more than twenty years. But like all the other major stars, he added excitement and color to the event. He was going with Rita Waverly, one of the biggest stars Hollywood had seen in the past three decades. He liked going to major events with her. The attention they got from the press was staggering, and they had been linked romantically from time to time over the years. His press agent had leaked that they were getting married once, and she got annoyed with him. But they had been seen together too often now for anyone to believe the rumor again. But just being seen with her made him look good. She was an incredible-looking woman, in spite of her age. Her press kit said she was forty-nine, but Coop knew for a fact she was fifty-eight.
He picked her up at her apartment in Beverly Hills, and she emerged wearing a white satin bias-cut gown that was wallpapered to a figure that had not only been starved in recent years, but had experienced every possible kind of surgery except for prostate and open heart. She had been nipped and tucked and pulled and yanked and chopped with staggeringly good results. And resting on her considerable cleavage, which had also been enhanced surgically, was a three-million-dollar diamond necklace, borrowed from Van Cleef. And as she walked out of her building, she was trailing a floor-length white mink coat. She was the epitome of a Hollywood star, just like Coop. They made a handsome couple, and when the press saw them at the Golden Globes, they went wild. You would have thought they were both twenty-five years old and had won the Oscar that year. The press ate them up, as they always did.
“Over here!!!… Over here!!!… Rita!!!… Coop!!!” Photographers shouted for better angles, while fans waving autograph books screamed, and a thousand flashes went off in their faces, as they beamed. It was a night to feed their egos for the next ten years. But they were both used to it, and Coop laughed as they were stopped every few feet by TV camera crews asking them what they thought of this year's nominees.
“Wonderful… truly impressive work… makes you proud to be in the business…” Coop said expertly as Rita preened. With the endless adulation and all eyes on them, it took them nearly half an hour to get to their seats. They were at tables, and would be eating a meal before the televised awards began. And Coop was visibly attentive to her, leaning gently toward her, handing her a glass of champagne, carrying her coat.
“You almost make me sorry I didn't marry you,” Rita teased, but she knew as well as he did, it was all for show, although he was fond of her. But they were good for each other's reputations, and even the hints of romance over the years had always brought them back into the main focus of the public eye for a time. The truth was they had never even come close. He had kissed her once, just for the hell of it, but she was so narcissistic he knew he couldn't have stood her for more than a week, nor she him. They were both smart about that.
As soon as the show began, and the cameras scanned the audience, they zoomed in instantly, and at considerable length, on them.
“Holy shit!” Mark suddenly exclaimed as he sat in the gatehouse with Jimmy, drinking a beer, and watching TV. Neither of them had anything better to do, and Mark had suggested they watch the awards. He had even joked about it, wondering if they'd see Coop, but neither of them had expected to see quite so much of him, or his date. The cameras seemed to stay on them forever, and eat them up. “Look at that!!” Mark pointed and Jimmy grinned.
“Who is that? Rita Waverly? Jesus, he really does know everyone, doesn't he?” Even Jimmy was impressed. “She looks pretty good for her age.” It reminded him instantly that Maggie used to love watching all the Hollywood stuff, the Golden Globes, the Oscars, Grammys, Emmys, even the awards for soap operas. She loved being able to identify all the stars. But identifying Coop and Rita Waverly was hardly challenging, blind babies would have known who they were.
“That's quite a dress,” Mark commented, as the camera moved on to someone else. “Pretty cool, huh? When was the last time you had a landlord you saw on national TV?”
“I think I had one in Boston who got arrested for a felony, and I saw him for a split second on the evening news. I think he was selling crack.” They both grinned, and Jimmy popped open another beer. Their friendship had become convenient and comfortable, they lived close to each other, were both personable and intelligent, and other than their work, had nothing much else in their lives. They had recent grief and loneliness in common, and neither of them was ready to date. It helped pass the evenings to share a steak and a few beers a couple of times a week. And once Coop vanished from the screen, they settled in to watch the Golden
Globes. Jimmy had just put a bag of popcorn in the microwave.
“I'm beginning to feel like half of the Odd Couple,” Jimmy smiled as he handed the open steaming bag of popcorn to Mark. They were playing this year's nominees for best theme song from a dramatic movie, and Mark glanced up at him with a grin.
“Yeah, me too. But it works for now at least. Someday I'd like to get ahold of Coop's address book and audition some of his cast-offs, but not yet.” And Jimmy had practically taken a vow of celibacy for life. He had no intention of betraying Maggie's memory in the foreseeable future, or ever perhaps. Their friendship was a blessing for both of them for the time being. And their camaraderie filled their empty nights.
Alex Madison was on duty at the hospital that night, to pay penance for the evening she'd spent at the Schwartzes' when she met Coop. She had traded Monday for tonight with another resident, who had a date with the girl of his dreams. It had been an easy switch.
She had already had a busy, stressful evening, when she walked through the waiting room looking for the parents of a two-week-old preemie who had been a code blue earlier in the day, but had been stabilized again. She wanted to reassure them that their baby's vital signs were stable, and he had gone to sleep. But she realized as she stepped into the empty waiting room that they must have gone out to eat. And as she looked around, she glanced at the TV that was droning on, as it always did, and was startled to see Coop. The cameras had just zeroed in on him, and she stood there grinning as she spoke out loud in the empty room.
“I know him!” He was looking incredibly handsome, and very charming as he hovered over Rita Waverly, and handed her a glass of champagne. It was an odd feeling realizing he had done the same for her, with just that look, at the Schwartzes' only two days before.
Coop was certainly a splendid-looking man, and Rita Waverly looked good too. “I wonder how much plastic surgery she's had,” Alex said out loud again, without realizing it. It was funny to think how distant their world was from her own. She spent her days and nights saving lives, and comforting parents whose babies hovered on the brink of death. And people like Coop and Rita Waverly spent their time looking beautiful and going to parties, wearing furs and jewels and evening gowns. She hardly ever had a chance to wear makeup, and she was wearing wrinkled green pajamas with a huge stamp on her chest that said “NICU.” She was unlikely to appear on any best-dressed lists, but she had chosen this, and liked her life the way it was. Not for anything would she have gone back to her parents' rarified, pretentious, hypocritical world. It often made her realize that it was a good thing she hadn't married Carter. Now that he had married her sister, and was emblazoned in the social register, he was as snobbish and arrogant as all the other men she detested in her old world. Coop was an entirely different breed. He was a movie star, a celebrity. At least he had an excuse for looking and behaving the way he did. It was his job to be that way. But not hers.
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