He laughed again, but not in a mean way. My eyes shifted to his face, which was slightly older than Alex’s, a little more rugged but equally handsome. He had tan skin and straight, shiny hair that skimmed his forehead. It was golden wheat like mine, and his eyes were the most interesting shade of hazel. The iris was jade, and flecks of amber rimmed his pupils. He smiled, and two deep dimples sprang into his cheeks.
“Here,” he said, sliding his plate toward me. “I can’t let you go hungry.” His voice was as deep as Alex’s, and he smelled of cologne and Scotch and a trace of cinnamon. “It’s my own fault, anyway. It was impolite of me to skip out on the party to take a business call.” He slung his arm over the back of his chair and his sleeve rode up, exposing a Cartier watch.
“What’s your business?” I asked.
“Real estate development,” he said, and nothing else. Judging by his suit and his watch, I suspected he didn’t design mobile home parks, but I admired that he hadn’t said so. “I’m Jackson Lucas,” he told me, extending his hand. “But my friends call me Jack.”
I pressed my palm into his. “Savannah Morgan … I hope you haven’t heard of me yet,” I said, feeling the heat of Fabian’s stare from across the room.
He raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been away on business for the past few weeks, so I’m out of the loop. What would I have heard?”
A hand touched my shoulder; I turned around and there was Alex, rescuing me for the second time. He said his shift was over, he was heading home, and he’d call me soon.
“Hey, Jack,” Alex said, “nice to see you.”
Jack was pulling a tin of cinnamon Altoids from inside his jacket. “You too,” he answered, and then Alex left and Jack looked at me. “You know him?”
“We met tonight,” I said, detecting a touch of concern in Jack’s voice. “Why?”
He shrugged and popped an Altoid into his mouth. “Just something I heard. I only know Alex from Virginia Stone’s parties … I don’t like to spread gossip and I’m not even sure it’s true, so let’s forget it. Now tell me, Savannah … what’s a nice southern girl like you doing in this city of wickedness and vice?”
I laughed and hiccupped and wished I hadn’t downed that last glass of wine.
“Working,” I said. “I just moved up here and started at a magazine. I’m also a writer.”
He kept his eyes on me like he was actually interested in what I had to say. Except for Alex, Jack was the only person besides Mom and Tina who’d done that in forever.
I hiccupped again. “Damn it to hell,” I couldn’t help but say. I threw my napkin down, looked at Jack, and exploded with honesty. “Can you believe this? Sitting here at a formal event in an almost-new dress, hiccupping like a disgusting pig. I must be making you sick.”
He laughed as he pushed his hair back. It was blondest around his forehead. “Hardly,” he said, “and the last thing you are is disgusting. But I can solve your problem.” He reached across the table for a crystal bowl filled with sugar cubes and handed it to me. “Take one and let it dissolve under your tongue.”
I didn’t think he meant that to sound sexy, but it did. I followed his advice, and soon the sugar was gone and so were my hiccups. “I’m impressed, Jack. I’m also glad you didn’t suggest my mother’s remedy from when I was a kid. She forced me to drink a shot of lemon juice.”
“Aw,” he said. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
Why did every word out of his mouth make me sweat? Maybe it was because his voice was so outrageously smooth. I grabbed a napkin and dried my forehead as the band started playing a slow song and couples left the tables to dance. Jack asked if I wanted to join them, but it had been so long since I’d danced with a man that when we were standing in the center of Astor Hall I couldn’t remember what to do. Which hand was supposed to go where?
I froze. He gingerly took my left palm and put it on his right shoulder, where his suit felt soft beneath my fingertips. Then he slipped his hand around my waist, rested it on my back, and we swayed to the piano and the saxophone while other couples swerved around us.
“How old are you, Savannah?” he asked.
“Twenty-four,” I said. “And you’re—”
“A senior citizen compared to you. I turned thirty-one last month.”
I laughed. “Then you’re far from collecting Social Security. You’re young, Jack.”
He smiled, creasing his dimples into his cheeks. “I work so much that it doesn’t always feel that way. I inherited my father’s business after he died unexpectedly last year … I’d been working for him since college, but I never thought I’d have to run things so soon.”
“That must be tough,” I said, glancing over Jack’s shoulder at Ned dancing with Kitty. He didn’t seem pleased with me, but I couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong this time. I wasn’t dancing with a bartender. Were suave businessmen off-limits, too? It didn’t matter, though. I couldn’t have cared less what he thought, and I’d never follow his rules. Ned turned his back on me and I shifted my gaze to Jack.
“I’m sure you miss your father,” I said.
Jack shrugged. “I always have.”
There was sadness in his voice that I understood. I wanted to find out exactly what he meant, but I couldn’t be that nosy. “Well,” I said, “my father died unexpectedly, too. We actually never met … but that doesn’t mean I didn’t miss him. Still, it’s probably not as rough for me as it is for you.”
“Maybe,” he said gently, “it’s even worse.”
I nodded, we kept dancing, and his strong hand against the curve of my back made my heart thump through the rhinestones on my dress. It also made me wonder what was wrong with me. I’d been so attracted to Alex just a little while ago—and that hadn’t changed—but now I felt just as drawn to Jack. They were so different, and yet they somehow made me feel the same way.
“Have you been enjoying New York since you moved here from…?”
“South Carolina,” I said. “And I have … for the most part. My best friend came up, too, and we’ve been doing all the touristy stuff … restaurants, shopping, dancing at a nightclub. We went to The Russian Tea Room once, but we only had cupcakes and champagne.”
He grinned, and I blushed. It seemed like all it took to charm him was me being me.
We danced until the band stopped playing, and then the party was over and he walked me out of Astor Hall. The front entrance was crowded with noisy departing guests, and he led me to a secluded corner where he took my hands in his.
“I don’t mean to be forward,” he said, “but I really want to see you again.”
I’d spent years without a drop of romance, and suddenly two gorgeous guys wanted to see me again. It didn’t seem right to have given my number to Alex and to now be forking it over to Jack, but I couldn’t help myself. I had to stop thinking like a small-town church lady. There was no ring on my finger, I was single and free, and I had every right to date two guys. People did it all the time, especially sophisticated women who lived in a city like this. I’d waited so long for something exciting to happen, and now that it had I couldn’t let it slip away.
Jack put his cool palm on my bare shoulder as he gave me a good-night kiss on my cheek. It sent a current of electricity through me and made sparks burst in my fingertips, and I wished I could keep his hand and his lips where they were for the rest of the night. But it was time to go.
The kiss prickled on my skin after he walked out of the library and disappeared into the crowd that was filing into limos and glossy sports cars on the street. I trailed slowly behind, feeling like I was floating above the library’s steps. Tina was down on the sidewalk in her tangerine dress, standing between Patience and Fortitude and waving at me. I waved back, my mind stuck on Alex’s blue eyes and Jack’s cinnamon-and-Scotch scent as I headed toward Fifth Avenue in the warm midnight air.
Ten
I squinted at the computer screen in my home office while I sipped tomato juice. It was daybreak, the
room was dim, and the light from the monitor pinched my pupils.
“You need a shot of Tabasco in that.”
I turned toward the doorway, where Tina stood in shorts and a violet top. “I doubt it would help,” I said, pressing my palm above my eyes. “This headache’s fixin’ to split my skull. It woke me up an hour ago.”
“You never could hold your liquor,” she said with a grin as she strode across the room and plopped onto a couch. “You were walking on a slant when we left the party last night.”
“That had more to do with the men than the alcohol.”
She grabbed a cushion and hugged it in her lap. Her mascara was smudged around her eyes because she’d gone to sleep in full makeup. Her mother hadn’t been around long enough to fill her in on all the Lady Laws. “So which one do you prefer?”
I’d gushed about Alex and Jack when we came home last night, and Tina had done her share of gushing, too. She’d told me that her bartender’s name was Kyle, he was from Brooklyn, and he was a grad student at some city college here in Manhattan. He’d taken her number and promised to call, and I hoped he would. I hoped he’d be good enough for her.
“Too early to tell,” I answered, rubbing my bare foot across the hardwood floor.
“Give them both a try,” she said with her husky laugh. “It’s been two years since Jamie, and I don’t know how you’ve lasted without—”
“Enough, Tina,” I said, shooting her a warning glance.
She giggled and shoved the cushion behind her head. “You’re reading Nocturnal? That’s not like you.”
“I know,” I said, turning toward the monitor and a Web site that had a midnight-blue background covered with blinking silver stars. “I wanted to make sure I hadn’t been smeared, but Fabian Spader’s latest entry just raves about the party last night:
The ageless Virginia Barlow Stone was radiant while she watched her brilliant and handsome son, Edward Stone, Jr., take the reins at Stone News.”
I faked a gag. “He’s so full of crap. He would’ve destroyed both of them if I’d given him the ammunition.”
“So he didn’t mention you at all?”
I scanned the screen and then looked back at Tina, who was examining a lock of her hair. “I’ve been spared. I thought he might butcher me, but I’m relieved he didn’t. I don’t want my name all over the Internet … I like being a nobody.”
She tore apart a split end and flicked it into the air. “You’ve never been a nobody.”
I smiled. Then I stood up, walked toward the door, and stopped on my way out. “Tina,” I said. “Check online for a job. Find something that matters to you. And make sure that from now on, you wash off your makeup before going to bed. Your skin’s much too pretty to ruin.”
*
“Mind if we stop at Starbucks?” I asked a few hours later as Tony drove away from my building. “I need lots of coffee.”
He gave me a wry grin. “Maybe you shouldn’t stay out so late on weeknights.”
“I doubt I’ll take that friendly advice,” I answered with a laugh. “And we are friends now, aren’t we?”
“My boss wouldn’t want us to be. Drivers aren’t allowed to fraternize with clients.”
Why was everybody around here so hung up on this type of person keeping away from that type of person? It reminded me of the novels I’d read about Victorian England and all that upstairs/downstairs garbage. “I’m not big on rules,” I said, “especially stupid ones that try to keep me from people I like. So let’s just say we’re friends, okay?”
He moved his eyes toward me. The early-morning sunlight brought out the fading freckles on his cheeks. “Okay,” he said.
He brought me to Starbucks and then dropped me off at work. The usual gang of protesters was out front, walking in a circle with their Stone News Kills signs. I dashed by them and went inside, where Ned ignored me in the elevator and I waved to Kitty as I passed her office and headed toward my desk with a cup of dark roast. I stayed there all day without even a bathroom break, doing research for Kitty and typing up memos summarizing my findings until six thirty, when words started blurring together. Then I gathered up my papers, brought them to Kitty’s empty office, and put them on her desk. When I went back to mine, I found Caroline sitting in my chair.
“Remember what I told you about watching your attitude with my brother?” she said. “That goes for my mother, too. She let me in on what happened in the bathroom last night.”
I leaned against the wall. “She’s your mother … so I don’t blame you for defending her. But I heard her say some horrible things.”
Caroline’s thin upper lip twitched. “Like what?”
She was probably praying I hadn’t heard everything, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her I had. Just because I was surrounded by rats didn’t mean I was going to become one.
“Like her opinion of Kitty,” I said. “I know you don’t want me to presume what you’re thinking … but I doubt you believe Kitty’s worthless if she can’t have a baby.”
Caroline stood up. “Shockingly,” she said after a moment, “you’re right.”
She walked past me, bumped into my shoulder, and didn’t apologize. I reclaimed my seat and logged off my computer, and then my cell vibrated on my desk. I answered it and someone said, “Hey, Savannah … remember me?”
The voice had to belong to Alex or Jack, but it was so deep and smooth that it could have been either. “Can you give me a hint?” I asked without checking the caller ID.
“I cured your hiccups last night.”
“Jackson Lucas,” I said, feeling the sizzle of his kiss on my cheek. “How are you?”
“Hungry,” he replied. “Want to join me for dinner?”
He invited me to a restaurant called Masa in the Time Warner Center, I agreed to meet him there at seven thirty, and then Tony drove me toward Columbus Circle while I refreshed my makeup.
“Do you have a business meeting?” he asked.
“I have a date,” I said, and I hadn’t uttered those words for so long that they made my stomach twist. “Since we’re officially friends, I should probably explain why I sound like a teenager.”
I told Tony about Jamie and Eva Lee, the dreary existence I’d been living for the past two years, and my handful of miserable dates. He was quiet after I stopped talking, and I wondered if I shouldn’t have run my mouth off. I had a habit of doing that around him.
“Well,” he said finally, “I’d be nervous, too, if I had to get into the dating scene. I actually have no experience with it … I met Allison when we were in seventh grade, and we’ve been together ever since. I haven’t shown you her picture, have I?” He pulled a battered wallet from his pocket, handed it to me, and I opened it and looked at a wedding photo of Tony with a girl who was the image of Marjorie.
“She’s so pretty,” I said, examining the picture. Tony’s face was fuller and his hair was longer, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d walked down the aisle before he was old enough to order a drink. “That’s such a sweet story, too … not many people get to marry their seventh-grade girlfriend. Like I told you before, I could’ve married my high school boyfriend, but … I didn’t.”
Why did I bring that up again? I cleared my throat and dabbed illuminizer onto my cheekbones.
“Well,” Tony said after a pause, “whoever your date is … he should be honored to go out with a nice girl like you. And he better not pull anything funny … I know some leg breakers on Staten Island.”
I laughed. Maybe that was why I told Tony everything. It felt like he was the brother I’d always wished for.
Soon I was inside the Time Warner Center, a massive complex that could have been called Shopper’s Orgasmic Dream—a gigantic chi-chi mall overflowing with stores. I rode one of the many escalators to Masa, where I peeked inside and saw serene, understated Japanese décor and touristy-looking people being turned away for not having reservations.
I supposed they didn’t know better, but
I hoped Jack did as I stood outside the door, slipped my cell from my purse, and called Tina to let her know why I wouldn’t be home for dinner.
“Is it the bartender or the rich guy?” she asked.
“The rich guy,” I whispered. “Not that his money matters … I have my own.”
“No kidding. Another ten grand showed up at the front door this afternoon,” she said, and I made a mental note to stop at Chase Manhattan, stash a few thousand in Mom’s account, and send her a big check. “Anyway,” Tina went on, “I’d say I won’t expect you home tonight … but I know you too well.”
“Yeah … you do. I’d never spend the night with a first date,” I said, and realized I was insulting her only after the words were out of my mouth.
She laughed it off. “Never say never. A man like him might change your mind. He could bewitch you.”
“I doubt it.”
“Well,” she said, “just don’t forget your birth control pill today.”
I’d been taking the Pill since high school, when Mom had made sure to get me on it. And I still swallowed it every morning even though I had no reason to. It was best to be prepared in case a reason came along.
“I never forget that. And I’ll see you later, Tina,” I said, put my phone away, and felt a hand on my shoulder. I spun around and Jack was standing there, looking dashing in a sleek suit. He smelled like spicy cologne and a cinnamon Altoid that he must have had earlier, and just being near him made everything under my clothes ridiculously warm.
“Hi,” I said, and it came out sultrier than I’d planned. But that was a good thing.
He squeezed my arm and kissed my cheek. “Hi,” he said back in the smoothest voice.
“Did you happen to make a reservation?” I asked. “We need one.”
He shook his head. “We don’t,” he said, resting his hand on my back to guide me into the dimly lit restaurant. A pretty hostess gave him a smile, greeted him as “Mr. Lucas,” and led us through a windowless room to a table with a view of sushi chefs in action.
“Your usual spot,” she said, winking at Jack before she walked away.
This was impressive. My last date had taken me to a sports bar where he’d gotten drunk on beer and pulled out a coupon for half-price onion rings when the bill arrived. “Well,” I said as we sat down, “what a lovely restaurant. It’s nice to know a VIP.”
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