O’Leary and Kathy sauntered down the hall to the living room at a more leisurely pace. “The place has possibilities,” O’Leary was saying. “It also has flaws.”
Kathy shrugged. “What apartment doesn’t? I’ve been in luxury towers, penthouses, townhouses—they all have flaws. Still, I’d say that for the asking price, this is a real little gem.”
“A flawed gem,” O’Leary said, strolling across the living room to the south-facing wall of windows and then meeting Melissa’s gaze. Another wink.
Would he stop with the winks already? Did he have a freaking tic in his eyelid? “I heard you,” she muttered. “It’s flawed.”
“I’m just thinking, given the flaws, there’s got to be some flexibility in the price.” His voice was muted, but he’d managed to project it enough for Kathy to overhear
Then she got it. God, was she stupid. She might be able to negotiate on behalf of her clients. But on behalf of herself, she was helpless. It had never occurred to her to pretend to be less than thrilled by this apartment as a way of bargaining down the price.
“A two-bedroom apartment for under seven figures?” Kathy said. “You’re not going to find a better deal, not if you want to stay in Manhattan.”
Melissa almost retorted that $995,000 was barely under seven figures, but Kathy wasn’t the person she had to convince. The seller was. “Tell them I’ll buy it for eight-fif—” O’Leary squinted slightly and pointed his thumb downward. “Eight hundred thousand,” she said, her voice wavering. Even eight hundred thousand would be a stretch for her. She’d have to give up twelve-dollar margaritas and four-hundred dollar shoes. She might even have to buy her purses from some counterfeiter running his business from a card table on a street corner in Queens.
“Eight hundred thousand?” Kathy sounded shrill. “They’ll be insulted.”
O’Leary watched Melissa. He was measuring her, testing her, and that pissed her off. But damn if she wouldn’t pass his stupid test. “No they won’t,” she told Kathy, turning from him. “If they’re serious about selling, they’ll counter-offer.”
“Well, I don’t know.” Kathy sighed heavily and shook her head. “Eight hundred thousand?”
“The market is soft and mortgages are hard to come by. And any buyer who wouldn’t need a mortgage because he can pay cash for this place isn’t going to be house-hunting in this neighborhood. He’ll be looking at penthouses overlooking Central Park.”
“Yes, but Melissa—eight hundred thousand? For two bedrooms?”
“And a kitchen with synthetic cabinets.”
“The kitchen’s shortcomings are all cosmetic,” Kathy said.
“And they’ll cost money to renovate. Bring them the offer, Kathy. Let’s see just how insulted they are.”
Her back was to O’Leary, so she couldn’t see his smile. She could feel it, though. She could sense it.
“I’m just telling you,” Kathy said with a resigned sigh. “They’re going to slam down the phone in my face.”
Melissa was pretty sure you couldn’t slam a phone in someone’s face. “Well, you represent me, not the seller,” Melissa reminded her. “And I won’t hang up on you.”
Another deep, pained sigh from Kathy. “I’ll try,” she said.
“There is no ‘try,’” O’Leary intoned, once again resting his hand at her waist. When Melissa gave him a quizzical scowl, he recited, “Do or do not. There is no ‘try.’ Yoda says that in one of the Star Wars movies.”
Great. He’d gone from sensitive nursery-envisioner to Star Wars geek. “Was Yoda into real estate?”
“I think he was more a mutual funds kind of guy.” He sent Kathy a dimpled grin and ushered Melissa toward the door. “Thanks for letting us check out the place one more time. You can call Melissa tomorrow and let her know what the seller has to say.”
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, they were seated across a table from each other in an Indian restaurant. The walls were covered with sagging strips of cloth—uncoiled saris was Melissa’s guess—and raga music whined from the ceiling speakers. The air smelled of curry and chutney and cinnamon and Melissa discovered she was starving.
“So, tell me what you think,” she said after swallowing a warm chunk of naan, the puffy Indian version of pita, and washing it down with a sip of beer. O’Leary had ordered a beer for himself, an Indian label she’d never heard of, and she’d decided to be adventurous and try it herself. Plus she didn’t want him thinking she was some sort of female-urban-professional cliché, always ordering margaritas. “Is the apartment a dive? Am I crazy to want to buy it?”
He seemed surprised. “No, you’re not crazy. It’s a terrific place.”
“Really? You think so?” She didn’t know why his opinion mattered so much to her. Hell, she did know. It mattered because he was smart and he was handsome, and after the first few times she’d kind of enjoyed the feel of his hand on her back. And, like her, he’d seen the second bedroom as a nursery, which was further proof that she wasn’t crazy—or else that they were both crazy.
“It’s not the Taj Mahal,” he said, “but the Taj Mahal is a mausoleum. Who’d want to live there?”
With a sitar wailing from a speaker somewhere above and behind her left ear, Melissa was not about to speak ill of the Taj Mahal. Instead, she tore off another piece of naan and popped it in her mouth. Sweet and floury, it melted on her tongue. They’d already ordered meals, and she was pleased to see that the restaurant was, indeed, cheap. She didn’t want O’Leary spending a fortune on her. He’d already done too much for her at the apartment. “Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome.” He grinned. “What are you thanking me for?”
“For nudging me to low-ball my offer.”
“Honey, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m good at negotiating.”
“Don’t call me honey,” she muttered, though she was smiling. Then she grew solemn. “Thank you for what you said in the second bedroom.”
“What did I say? I don’t even remember.”
“That it would make a nice nursery.”
“Oh, yeah. I did say that, didn’t I.” The glint in his eyes indicated that he’d remembered damn well what he’d said. “You have kids?”
“Me?” She nearly choked on the piece of bread she’d just bitten. “I’m not even married.”
“You don’t have to be married to have kids.”
“If I had kids, do you think I’d be sitting here having dinner with you?”
“If you were a lousy mother, you would.” He tore off a chunk of bread, popped it into his mouth, swallowed and asked, “You want kids?” as casually as if he’d asked her where the nearest subway station was.
She didn’t answer casually. Having kids was generally not the sort of thing a woman discussed with a man on their first date. Assuming this was a date. She sort of thought it might be.
But he’d asked. If the subject scared him, he wouldn’t have raised it.
She had the feeling very little scared Aidan O’Leary. “Yes,” she answered. “Kid, singular. I don’t know about kids, plural.”
“But you’ve broken up with your boyfriend.”
Had she told him that? God, she’d made such an ass of herself the last time they’d seen each other. She’d sobbed and whimpered and wound up with raccoon eyes. She’d probably mentioned Luc, too. “Well, you know, there are sperm banks,” she said, sounding less nonchalant than she’d intended.
“Yeah. There are men, too.” He grinned. “I think you’d look very cute pregnant.”
“Oh, God. My sister looked like a walrus when she was pregnant. And my sister-in-law—sheesh. She’s this adorable little thing with a twenty-inch waist and she was carrying twins. By her ninth month she looked like she’d devoured the magic pumpkin whole. I don’t care what Hallmark says. Pregnant women don’t look cute.”
“I guess it’s a matter of taste,” he said with a shrug. “I think they look cute.”
The waiter delivered their bowls of pistachio soup. Melissa took
a taste. Pale and sweet and milky, delicious. If she ever became pregnant, she’d make pistachio soup her food fetish of choice. No pickles and ice-cream for her. She wanted pistachio soup. And naan. Maybe she ought to get pregnant just to have an excuse to pig out on Indian food.
She sighed happily and forced herself not to gobble the entire bowl of soup in five seconds. “How about you?” she asked. “Do you have any kids?”
“Not that I know of,” he joked, then smiled to reassure her. “No.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?” He already knew her story; she had a right to know his. And since this was more or less a date, she ought to at the very least find out if he was unencumbered.
“No.”
Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. The waiter cleared away their soup bowls and returned with their entrees: chicken tikka for her, a tandoori mixed grill for him. While she smiled vaguely at the waiter and gazed at the food, and inhaled its spices and seasonings, and listened to the pounding raga drums, O’Leary’s no hung in the air between them.
He didn’t have a girlfriend; that was a plus. He was arrogant; that was a minus. He was a lawyer, which could be a plus or a minus, depending. With a name like Aidan O’Leary, he probably wasn’t Jewish, which was neither a plus nor a minus as far as she was concerned. He was smug—a minus. He’d elbowed his way into her second tour of the apartment—a minus, except that he’d maneuvered her into bargaining hard on the price—a plus. He’d seen the second bedroom and thought nursery—so big a plus it scared her.
She was way ahead of herself, she realized. The fact was, his pushy, arrogant personality had predominated during the fifteen minutes they’d spent with Kathy in the apartment. She didn’t want pushy and arrogant. She already had an arrogant brother, and everyone in her family, with the possible exception of Jill, who was probably more passive-aggressive than anything, was pushy.
“All right,” she said, finally breaking the silence that had settled like a fog around their table. “Why did you insist on touring the apartment with me?”
He shrugged. “I was curious. I wanted to see how Murray Hill compares to Inwood. And what the hell.” He smiled. “I figured it would make your life more interesting.”
That it did. “And what was with all that pretending we were . . . something? A couple looking for a place big enough to start a family?”
“I wasn’t pretending anything,” he defended himself, doing a poor job of faking indignation.
“You kept touching my back.”
“You’ve got a nice back,” he said.
“I mean, you’re coming on kind of strong.”
He gazed steadily at her. “Is that a problem?”
Yes. No. Who the hell knew?
“I’ve already seen you at your worst, Melissa, and your worst wasn’t bad. Although I’ve got to say, you should go lighter on the eye make-up if you’re planning to cry.”
“I wasn’t planning to cry that day. I just felt overwhelmed.”
“And now?”
“Now I’ve got to crunch numbers.” She sighed. “Even at eight hundred thou—which the seller is never going to accept—I’m not sure I can make the down payment.”
“Sure you can. Ask for an advance on your bonus. What do you need to put down? Ten percent?”
“Twenty, probably.”
“Scrape it together. That apartment for eight hundred thou would be a steal. If you can’t afford it, you can put in new cabinets and counters and flip the place for a mil, easy.”
“Thanks.” She scowled. “I’m not looking for an investment. I’m looking for a home. Someplace stable, where people you’ve depended on all your life don’t suddenly announce they’re getting a divorce.”
“That place doesn’t exist,” he said gently. “Not for eight hundred thousand, not for a million.”
He was right, but the thought pained her. “Are your parents divorced?”
“No, but they probably should be. They fight all the time. Maybe you should count your blessings.”
“Why did you say the second bedroom would make a nice nursery?” she asked.
He drank some beer and displayed a couple of dimples. “Why else would you be looking at a two-bedroom apartment you almost can’t afford? You want to put someone in that second bedroom. Given what little I know about your parents, I figured the second bedroom wasn’t for them.”
“Maybe it was for a boyfriend. You know, he could come into my bedroom for fun and games and then go somewhere else to sleep, so I wouldn’t have to fight him for the blanket or listen to him snore.”
“I don’t snore,” O’Leary said. Despite his smile, he sounded extremely serious. “I think you ought to know that.”
Another silence settled over the table, this one surprisingly comfortable despite the aftershocks roiling the space between them. And in that silence Melissa understood that in the not too distant future, she was going to have the opportunity to find out if Aidan O’Leary truly didn’t snore.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“You’re sure you want to do this?” Jill asked.
Seated in the passenger seat beside her, Brooke smiled. “Are you kidding? It’s going to be fun.”
Jill didn’t think arguing with Gloria, the events manager at the Old Rockford Inn, would be fun. But then, she wasn’t Brooke.
She’d been surprised by Brooke’s phone call yesterday afternoon. When the phone had started jangling at two-thirty, just as she’d made the final push to complete the text for a Velvet Moon spread on camisoles—and honestly, just how much could a person say about camisoles, other than they came in such intoxicating colors as sherry, champagne, burgundy, bourbon and crème de menthe, although what Velvet Moon called sherry actually looked more like watered-down root beer to Jill—she’d assumed the caller was her mother, who despite her job had an uncanny knack for interrupting her with a phone call just as she was trying to compose some desperately needed catalogue copy. Jill had groaned, cursed and answered the phone, fully expecting to hear her mother say, “It’s your mother.”
Instead she’d heard Brooke saying, “Are you free tomorrow?”
“If I can get this copy written in the next twenty minutes, yes,” she answered. “Why?”
“Doug told me you’re having problems with the place where Abbie’s bat mitzvah is going to be. I thought I might be able to help.”
Brooke? Help? Jill had taken a moment to regain her equilibrium. “What do you mean?”
“This may sound silly to you—it certainly sounds silly to me—but Doug thinks I ought to be a party planner.”
“A party planner.” Jill had slumped in her chair, legs spread to accommodate the printer below her desk. The words she’d typed had blurred across her monitor screen; the only one she’d been able to decipher was “intoxicating,” which, given the boozy colors, had seemed appropriate when she’d written it.
“It’s not that we need the money,” Brooke had hastened to assure her. “We don’t. But he thinks I’m bored. And you know what? He’s right.”
“Bored.” Why had Jill kept echoing Brooke? Why had she had such difficulty imagining Brooke being bored? Brooke had twins; surely that couldn’t be boring. And Brooke was beautiful. Jill had always assumed that beautiful women, especially beautiful women whose rich husbands pampered them, couldn’t possibly be bored.
“I wouldn’t charge you, of course. This is just an experiment. If you’d be willing, of course.”
“Willing to what?” Jill had sounded mentally challenged to herself.
“Willing to let me discuss your situation with the Old Rockford Inn. Let me see what I can do.”
Jill had figured she’d have nothing to lose by letting Brooke intervene—she did have a contract with the place, after all, so even if Gloria didn’t like Brooke’s attitude, she couldn’t unilaterally erase the Abigail Sackler reception from the inn’s calendar. And given that Jill hadn’t done particularly well dealing with Gloria on her own, she’d seen no downsi
de to letting Brooke conquer her boredom by toiling on Abbie’s behalf.
Brooke had arrived at Jill’s house the next morning at ten, dressed like a Junior Leaguer in a stylish sweater set and tailored tweedy trousers that made her look slimmer than any woman who’d given birth to twins had a right to be. Jill had felt profoundly dowdy in her Red Sox sweatshirt and jeans. But Brooke didn’t order her to change into a less disreputable outfit, and today Brooke was in charge. She was the party planner, the unpaid pro.
“What’s the theme of Abbie’s bat mitzvah?” she asked as Jill drove her through town to the inn.
“The theme? ‘Happy bat mitzvah,’ I guess.”
“It needs to be something more than that,” Brooke suggested. “Just like the theme of your parents’ fortieth anniversary party wasn’t ‘Happy Anniversary.’”
“Yeah, that wouldn’t have worked,” Jill agreed. “Two years later and they’re kaput.” Stopped at a red light, she reflected on the party Brooke had hosted for her parents. A juke box filled with sixties rock, she recalled. Psychedelic wall posters illuminated by black lights. A peace sign on the powder room door. A couple of strategically placed lava lamps.
“Summer Of Love,” Brooke said, answering Jill’s unvoiced question. “So what’s Abbie’s theme?”
Jill panicked. She’d signed Abbie up for Hebrew school, booked a venue for the party and sent out “Save the Date” postcards, but she hadn’t come up with a theme. “Maybe you ought to ask Abbie,” she said, evading the question with a twinge of shame. “She might know what the theme is.”
“I’ll do that.” Brooke reached into her massive red-leather purse, pulled out a matching red leather folder, opened it and jotted a note to herself. “So, the inn. What are you gripes? What are we fighting for?”
“The price per plate, for one thing. They increased the price they quoted us. They said rising fuel prices are responsible for the hike. And there’s some disagreement about how long the DJ will be allowed to play.”
“You’ve already booked a DJ,” Brooke said.
Jill suffered a moment’s panic. Had that been a mistake? Should she have waited until she’d decided on a theme before hiring the DJ? He’d been recommended by Emma Tovick’s mother, and she’d wanted to lock him in before someone else hired him for that evening.
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