Toxic Bachelors

by Danielle Steel

  “Shit. I'm sorry. You finally convinced me I was wrong.”

  “You weren't.” He was learning that she seldom was. She had a good sense about people and their reactions, and she was remarkably tolerant of their quirks.

  “I'm sorry. That must have been really upsetting for you. You're not a traitor, Gray. I know you still love them. There's no reason why you can't have a relationship, and them in your life too.” She wasn't trying to pull him away from them. But he had a strong sense that Charlie would, if Gray allowed him to.

  “If they'll still let me play. I was pretty candid about what I said.”

  “About us?”

  “About him, too. I told him he's wasting his life, and he's going to die alone.”

  “You could be right,” she said gently, “but he has to figure that out for himself. And maybe that's what he wants. He has that right. From what you've said, he's had some pretty major abandonment issues since his family died. That's hard to get over. Everyone he ever loved as a kid died. It's hard to convince someone like that that the next person he loves won't abandon him and die too. So he dumps them first.”

  “That's pretty much what I said.” They both knew it was true. And beyond all his defenses, Charlie did too. He just wasn't prepared to admit it, even to his best friend. It was a lot easier to say that there was something wrong with the women in his life, to justify his rejecting them.

  “I don't suppose he enjoyed hearing it much.”

  “It didn't look that way,” he said, sounding sad. “But I didn't like what he said about us.”

  “Hopefully, he'll get over it. If he'll come, we'll have him to dinner sometime. Let him simmer down for a while. You gave him a lot to swallow at one gulp. Us. And a lot of honesty about him.”

  “Yeah, I did. I think he was pretty shocked about us. The last time he saw me, on the boat, I was a member in good standing of the Boys Club, and as soon as he was out of sight, I jumped ship. At least that's how he sees it.”

  “How do you see it?” she asked, sounding worried.

  “Like I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I told him that too. I don't think he believed me. He thinks you've got me on drugs.” At that, Gray laughed. “If you do, don't detox me now. I'm loving it.” He sounded happier again.

  “Me too.” She smiled, thinking about him, and he could hear it in her voice. She had a client waiting for her then, and told him she'd see him at the apartment after work. “Try not to worry about it too much,” she told him again. “He loves you. He'll calm down.” Gray wasn't as sure. He thought about it long and hard as he walked to his apartment. Their lunch had come as a shock not only to Charlie, but to Gray as well. … “Spoken like a true traitor.” … he could still hear Charlie's words ringing in his head, block after block, after block.…

  Charlie was thinking of everything Gray had said all the way uptown. He had plenty of time to think about it. His appointment was at the children's center they had just funded, in the heart of Harlem. He still couldn't believe all that Gray had said. And more of it than he wanted to admit had hit its mark. He had had the same concerns as Gray recently, about dying alone. But he wasn't prepared to discuss terrors like that with anyone but his therapist. He knew Adam was too young to get it, but Gray did. At forty-one, Adam was still building his career, and playing hard. Charlie and Gray had already reached the top of their game, and were making their way down the other side of the mountain. And Charlie was no longer as sure as he once had been that he was willing to go it alone. In the end, he might have no other choice. He envied Gray more than he wanted to admit that he had found someone he wanted to make the final leg of the journey with. But who knew if it would last? Probably not. Nothing ever did.

  He was thinking about it with a sorrowful look, and remembering bits and pieces of the conversation to share with his therapist, when the cab stopped at the address he'd given.

  “Are you going to be okay here?” the driver asked with a look of concern. Charlie looked as though he should have been stopping somewhere on Fifth Avenue rather than in the heart of Harlem. He was wearing a Hermès tie, a gold watch, and an expensive suit. But he didn't like going to the Yacht Club looking like a slob.

  “I'll be fine.” He thanked the driver with a smile, and handed him a handsome tip.

  “Do you want me to wait? Or come back?” He hated to leave him there.

  “Don't worry about it, but thanks a lot.” He smiled again, and tried to force his conversation with Gray from his head, as he looked up at the building. It was in serious need of repair. Their million dollars could do a lot, and he hoped it would.

  In spite of himself, he was still thinking about Gray as he walked to the front door. The worst of it was that he felt as though he was losing him to Sylvia. He hated to admit to himself that he was jealous of her, but in his heart of hearts, he knew he was. He didn't want to lose his best friend, to some pushy dynamo of a woman, as Gray described her—the dynamo, not the pushy part— just because she had the connections to find a gallery for him. She was obviously sucking up to him, and wanted something from him. And if she was manipulative enough, which he hoped she wasn't, she could blow their friendship right out of the water, and banish Charlie forever. The worst fear he had was of losing his friend. Death by marriage, or cohabitation, or spending the night, or whatever the hell Gray said it was. Charlie didn't trust her. Gray already seemed as though he'd been possessed. She was brainwashing him, and the worst of it was that some of what he had said made sense. Too much, in fact. Especially about Charlie. It had to come from her. Gray would never have spoken to him that way on his own. Never. She had turned him inside out and upside down. And Charlie didn't like it one bit.

  He stood at the door of the Children's Center for a long time after ringing the bell. Finally a young man with a beard, in jeans and a T-shirt, came to open it for him. He was African American, and had a wide white smile and velvet chocolate-colored eyes. When he spoke, it was with the lilt of the Caribbean in his voice.

  “Hello. Can I help you?” He looked at Charlie as though he had been dropped from another planet. They never saw people come to the center dressed as he was. The young man managed to conceal his amusement and led him in.

  “I have an appointment with Carole Parker,” Charlie explained. She was the director of the center. All Charlie knew about her was that she was a social worker, and her credentials were excellent. She had gone to Princeton as an undergraduate, got her MSW at Columbia, and was working toward her doctorate. Her specialty and area of expertise was abused kids.

  This was a safe house for abused children and their mothers, but unlike other similar establishments, the main focus was on the children, more than their mothers. An abused woman without a child, or one whose children hadn't been abused, could not stay there. Charlie knew that they were doing a research study, in conjunction with NYU, on preventing child abuse, rather than just putting balm on the end result. There were ten full-time staff working there, six part-time employees, who mostly worked nights and were, for the most part, graduate students, two psychiatrists who worked closely with them, and a flock of volunteers, many of whom were inner-city teenagers who had themselves been abused. It was a new concept to use survivors of child abuse to help younger kids who were enduring the same thing. Charlie liked everything he'd read about it. Parker had started it herself three years before, when she got her master's degree. She was planning to become a psychologist, specializing in urban problems, and inner-city kids. She was running the place on a shoestring. She herself had raised over a million dollars to buy the house and start it, and his foundation had matched the funds she'd been able to raise on her own. From what he'd read of her, she was an impressive young woman, and the only other thing he knew about her was that she was thirty-four years old. He had no idea what she looked like, and had only spoken to her on the phone. She had been professional and businesslike, but had sounded kind and warm. She had invited him to come and see the place, and had promised to g
ive him a tour herself. Everything on paper had checked out so far, including the director herself. She was young, but allegedly capable. The references she'd supplied to the foundation board had been extremely impressive. Some of them were from the most important people in New York. No matter how well trained and capable she was, she also had some powerful connections. The mayor himself had written a reference for her. She had met a lot of important people, and impressed them favorably, while putting the center together.

  The young man led Charlie to a small, battered waiting room, and offered him a cup of coffee as soon as he sat down, which Charlie declined. He'd had enough to drink with Gray over lunch, and most of what had happened there was still sticking in his throat, but as he waited for her, he forced it from his mind.

  He glanced at the people walking by the open door of the waiting room. There were women, young children, teenagers wearing T-shirts that identified them as volunteers. There was an informal basketball game going on in a courtyard outside, and he noticed a sign inviting neighborhood women to come to a group twice a week, to talk about preventing child abuse. He wasn't sure what their impact on the community had been so far, but at least they were doing what they said. As he watched the kids throw basketballs through the hoop, a door opened, and a tall blond woman stood looking down at him. She was wearing jeans, running shoes, and one of their T-shirts herself. He realized as he stood up to shake hands with her that she was nearly as tall as he was. She was statuesque, six feet tall, with a patrician face. She looked as though she should have been a model not a social worker. She smiled when she greeted him, but her manner was official and somewhat cool. They needed the funds the foundation had given them, but it went against the grain with her to grovel or kiss his feet, although she knew it would help. She still had trouble doing that on command, and she wasn't sure what he expected of her. She seemed slightly suspicious and on the defensive as she invited him into her office.

  There were posters on the walls everywhere, and schedules, memos, announcements, federal warnings to staff. Suicide hotlines, poison control, a diagram showing how to do the Heimlich. There was a bookcase full of reference books, at least half of which had spilled onto the floor. Her desk was buried, her in-box was full, and she had framed photographs of children on her desk, all of whom had come through the center at some point. It was definitely a working office. Charlie knew that she ran all the community and children's groups herself. The only one she didn't run was the one for abused mothers. There was a woman from the community who had been trained and came to do that. Carole Parker did just about everything else herself, except scrub the floors and cook. Her bio had said that in a pinch she was willing to do that too, and had. She was one of those women who were interesting to read about, but were sometimes daunting to meet. Charlie hadn't decided yet if she was. She was certainly striking, but when she sat down at her desk, she smiled at him and her eyes got warm. She had piercing, big blue eyes, like a doll.

  “So, Mr. Harrington, you've come to check us out.”

  But even she had to admit that for a million dollars, he had the right to do so. The foundation had actually given them exactly $975,000, which was precisely what she'd asked for. She hadn't had the guts to ask for a full million. Instead, she'd asked him to match what she had raised herself over the past three years. She had been stunned when she was notified by the foundation that their grant request had been approved. She had applied to at least a dozen other foundations at the same time, and all of the others had turned her down. They said they wanted to follow the center's progress for the next year, before they committed funds to her project. So she was grateful to him, but she always felt like a dancing monkey when money people came to look around. She was in the business of saving lives and repairing damaged kids. That was all that interested her. Raising money to do it was a necessary evil, but not one she enjoyed. She hated having to charm people in order to get money out of them. The acute need of the people she served had always been convincing enough for her. She hated having to convince others, who led golden lives. What did they know about a five-year-old who had had bleach poured in her eyes and would be blind for the rest of her life, or a boy who had had his mother's hot iron put on the side of his face, or the twelve-year-old who had been raped by her father all her life and had cigarettes stubbed out on her chest? Just how much did it take to convince people that these kids needed help? Charlie didn't know what she was going to say to him, but he could see her passion in her eyes, and a certain degree of disapproval, as she glanced at his well-tailored suit, expensive tie, and gold watch. Whatever he had spent on them, she knew she could have put to better use. He instantly read her thoughts, and felt foolish for coming there looking like that.

  “I'm sorry not to be dressed more appropriately. I had a business lunch downtown.” It wasn't true, but he couldn't have gone to the Yacht Club dressed as she was, in T-shirt, Nikes, and jeans. As he said it to her, he took his suit jacket off, unbuttoned his cuffs, rolled up his sleeves, took off his tie, and stuffed it in his pocket. It wasn't much of an improvement, but he'd made an effort at least, and she smiled.

  “Sorry,” she said apologetically. “PR isn't my strong suit. I love what we do here. I'm not so great at rolling out the red carpet for VIPs. For one thing, we don't have one, and even if we did, I wouldn't have time to roll it out.” Her hair was long, and she was wearing it in a thick braid down her back. She looked almost like a Viking as she sat there, with her long legs stretched out under the desk. She looked like anything but a social worker, but her credentials said she was. And then he remembered that she had gone to Princeton, and he said it was his alma mater too, hoping to break the ice.

  “I liked Columbia better,” she said easily, visibly unimpressed that they had gone to the same school. “It was more honest. Princeton was a little too full of itself for my taste. Everyone is so wrapped up in the history of the place. It seemed to me that it was a lot more about the past than the future.”

  “I never thought of it that way,” Charlie said cautiously, but nonetheless was impressed by her remarks. In some ways, she was as daunting and earnest as he had feared, in others not at all. “Were you in an eating club?” he asked, still hoping to score points with her, or find a common bond.

  “Yes,” she said, looking embarrassed, “I was. I was in Cottage.” She paused for a beat and then smiled knowingly at him. She knew his type. Aristocratic men like him attended Princeton in abundance. “And you were in Ivy.” It didn't accept women even while she was there. She had hated the boys who belonged to it. Now it just seemed sophomoric and foolish. She smiled when he nodded.

  “I won't say something stupid like 'How did you guess?' ” It was obvious that she knew the type, but she knew no more than that about him. “Is there a possibility you'd forgive me?”

  “Yes,” she laughed at him, and suddenly looked younger than she was. She wore no makeup, and never bothered to when she was at the center. She was too busy to care about vanity or details. “Nine hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars from your foundation says I can forgive you just about anything, as long as you don't abuse your children.”

  “I don't have any. So at least I'm not guilty on that one.” He sensed that she didn't like him, which quickly became a challenge to him to turn it around. She was a very pretty woman after all, no matter how many degrees she had. And few women were able to resist Charlie's charm, when he chose to turn it on. He wasn't sure yet if Carole Parker was worth the effort. In some ways, she seemed like a hardened case. She was politically correct to her core, and sensed that he wasn't. She was surprised to hear that he didn't have kids, and then vaguely remembered hearing that he wasn't married. She wondered if he was gay. If Charlie had known that, he would have been crushed. She didn't care what his sexual preferences were. All she wanted was his money, for her kids at the center.

  “Would you like to take a look around?” she offered politely, standing up again, and looking him right in the eye. In hig
h heels, she would have been exactly as tall as he was. Charlie was six foot four, and their eyes were the same color. Their hair was equally blond. For a shocking instant, he realized that she looked like his sister, and then he did everything he could to forget it. It was too unsettling.

  She didn't see the look on his face as he followed her out her office door, and for the next hour she took him into every room, every office, dragged him down every hallway. She showed him the garden that the children had planted on the roof, introduced him to many of the children. She introduced him to Gabby with her Seeing Eye dog, and told him his foundation had paid for it. They were both currently in training. Gabby had named the big black Lab they'd given her Zorro. Charlie stopped and patted it, with his head bent, so Carole wouldn't see the tears in his eyes. The stories she told him, when the children weren't around, were heartbreaking. For a few minutes, they watched a group in progress, and he was vastly impressed as he listened. Carole normally led the group, but she had taken the afternoon off from her duties to meet him, which she usually thought was a waste of time. She felt that her time was better spent with their clients.

  She introduced him to their volunteers, working hard at occupational therapy with the younger kids, and a reading program for those who had reached high school without being able to read or write. He remembered reading about the program in her brochure, and also that she had won a national award for the results they had achieved so far. Every one of their clients was literate by the time they left the outpatient services of the center after a year. And the kids' parents were welcome to join the adult reading program too. They also offered counseling and therapy for kids and adults alike.

  She took him from top to bottom, introduced him to everyone, and finally to her assistant, Tygue, the young man who had opened the door for him. Carole told Charlie that he was on loan from a doctoral program from Yale. She had pulled in some incredible people to work with her, many of whom she had known before, and some of whom she had found along the way. She explained that she and Tygue had gotten their master of social work degrees together. She had started the center after that, and he had gone to Yale to continue his studies. He was originally from Jamaica, and Charlie loved listening to him speak. After they had chatted with him for a few minutes, she walked Charlie back into her office. He looked drained.