by Nora Roberts
“You’re going to be a fabulous mother,” Kate murmured. “Just fabulous.”
“Yes, I am.” Margo studied Laura, who was giggling and digging at a patch of scrubby earth with her two little girls. “I’ve got an awfully good role model right there. This past year’s been hell for her, but she’s never wavered.”
“Neglect, adultery, divorce,” Kate said quietly, not wanting the fitful breeze to carry her words. “Not a lot of fun and games. The girls have helped keep her centered. And the shop.”
“Yeah. And speaking of the shop—” Margo turned the detector off, leaned on it. “If these past couple of weeks are any indication, we may have to hire some help. I’m not going to be able to give Pretenses ten and twelve hours a day after the baby comes.”
Always thinking of budget, Kate frowned. The upscale secondhand boutique they had opened on Cannery Row was primarily Margo’s and Laura’s domain. But as the third partner in the fledgling enterprise, Kate crunched numbers for it when she could squeeze out the time.
“You’ve got over six months left. That hits holiday shopping time. We could think about hiring seasonal help then.”
Sighing, Margo handed the metal detector back to Kate. “The business is doing better than any of us anticipated. Don’t you think it’s time to loosen up?”
“No.” Kate switched the machine back on. “We haven’t been open a full year yet. You start taking on outside help, you’ve got social security, withholding, unemployment.”
“Well, yes, but—”
“I can start helping out on Saturdays if necessary, and I’ve got my vacation time coming up.” Work, she thought again. Work and don’t think. “I can give Pretenses a couple of weeks full time.”
“Kate, a vacation means white-sand beaches, Europe, a sordid affair—not clerking in a shop.”
Kate merely raised an eyebrow.
“I forgot who I was talking to,” Margo muttered. “The original all-work-and-no-play girl.”
“That was always to balance you, the quintessential all-play girl. Anyway, I’m a one-third owner of Pretenses. I believe in protecting my investments.” She scowled at the ground, kicked it. “Hell, there’s not even a bottle cap to give us a little beep and thrill here.”
“Are you feeling all right?” Margo’s eyes narrowed, looked closer. “You look a little washed out.” And frail, she realized. Frail and edgy. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you were the one who was pregnant.”
“That would be a good trick since I haven’t had sex in what feels like the last millennium.”
“Which could be why you seem edgy and washed out.” But she didn’t grin. “Really, Kate, what’s going on?”
She wanted to say it, spill out all of it. Knew if she did she would find comfort, support, loyalty—whatever she needed. My problem, she reminded herself.
“Nothing.” Kate made herself look down her nose disdainfully. “Except I’m the one doing all the work and my arms are falling off while you sit on your rock and pose for a Glamorous Mothers-to-Be photo shoot.” She rotated her shoulders. “I need a break.”
Margo studied her friend for another moment, tapping her fingers on her knee. “Fine. I’m hungry anyway. Let’s see what Mum packed.” Opening the nearby hamper, Margo let out a long, heartfelt moan. “Oh, God, fried chicken.”
Kate peeked in the hamper. Five minutes more, she decided, then she was digging in. Mrs. Williamson’s chicken was bound to erase the nagging hunger pains. “Is Josh back from London?”
“Hmm.” Margo swallowed gamely. “Tomorrow. Templeton London did a little remodeling, so he’s going to bring back some stock for the shop. And I asked him to check with some of my contacts there, so we may have a nice new supply. It would save me a buying trip.”
“I remember when you couldn’t wait to get on a plane.”
“That was then,” Margo said smugly. “This is now.” She bit into the drumstick again, then remembered something and waved a hand. “Umm, forgot. Party next Saturday night. Cocktails, buffet. Be there.”
Kate winced. “Do I have to dress up?”
“Yes. Lots of our customers.” She swallowed again. “Some of the hotel brass. Byron De Witt.”
Pouting, Kate turned off the machine and grabbed a chicken thigh out of the hamper. “I don’t like him.”
“Of course not,” Margo said dryly. “He’s gorgeous, charming, intelligent, world-traveled. Absolutely hateful.”
“He knows he’s gorgeous.”
“And that takes a lot of nerve. I don’t really give a damn whether you like him or not. He’s taken a lot of the weight off Josh here at the California hotels, recovered a lot of the ground Peter Ridgeway lost for us.”
She caught herself and glanced over toward Laura. Peter was Laura’s ex-husband, the girls’ father, and whatever she thought of him, she wouldn’t criticize him in front of Ali and Kayla.
“Just be civil.”
“I’m always civil. Hey, guys,” Kate called out and watched Ali and Kayla’s pretty blond heads pop up. “We’ve got Mrs. Williamson’s fried chicken over here, and Margo’s eating it all.”
With shouts and scrambling feet, the girls dashed up to join the picnic. Laura came after them and sat cross-legged at Margo’s feet. She watched her daughters squabble over one particular piece of chicken. Ali won, of course. She was the older of the two and in recent months the more demanding.
Divorce, Laura reminded herself as Ali smugly nibbled her chicken, was very, very hard on a ten-year-old girl. “Ali, pour Kayla a glass of lemonade too.”
Ali hesitated, considered refusing. It seemed, Laura thought as she kept cool, calm eyes on her daughter’s mutinous ones, that Ali considered refusing everything these days. In the end, Ali shrugged and poured a second glass for her sister.
“We didn’t find anything,” Ali complained, choosing to forget the fun she’d had giggling and digging in the dirt. “It’s boring.”
“Really?” Margo selected a cube of cheese from a plastic container. “For me, just being here and looking is half the fun.”
“Well. . .” Whatever Margo said was, to Ali, gospel. Margo was glamorous and different; Margo had run away to Hollywood at eighteen, had lived in Europe and had been involved in wonderful, exciting scandals. Nothing ordinary and awful like marriage and divorce. “I guess it’s kinda fun. But I wish we’d find more coins.”
“Persistence.” Kate flipped a finger from Ali’s chin to her nose. “Pays. What would have happened if Alexander Graham Bell had given up before he put that first call through? If Indiana Jones hadn’t gone on that last crusade?”
“If Armani hadn’t sewed that first seam?” Margo put in and earned a fresh giggle.
“If Star Trek hadn’t gone where no one had gone before,” Laura finished, and had the pleasure of seeing her daughter flash a smile.
“Well, maybe. Can we see the coin again, Aunt Margo?”
Margo reached in her pocket. She’d fallen into the habit of carrying the old Spanish gold coin with her. Ali took it gingerly, and because she was awed, as always, held it so that Kayla could coo over it too.
“It’s so shiny.” Kayla touched it reverently. “Can I pick some flowers for Seraphina?”
“Sure.” Leaning over, Laura kissed the top of her head. “But don’t go near the edge to throw them over without me.”
“I won’t. We always do it together.”
“I guess I’ll help her.” Ali handed Margo the coin. But when she stood up, her pretty mouth went thin. “Seraphina was stupid to jump. Just because she wasn’t going to be able to marry Felipe. Marriage is no good anyway.” Then she remembered Margo and blushed.
“Sometimes,” Laura said quietly, “marriage is wonderful and kind and strong. And other times it isn’t wonderful enough, or kind enough or strong enough. But you’re right, Ali, Seraphina shouldn’t have jumped. When she did that, she ended everything she could have become, threw away all those possibilities. It makes me feel very sorry
for her.” She watched her daughter, head drooping, shoulders hunched, walk away. “She’s so hurt. She’s so angry.”
“She’ll get through this.” Kate gave Laura’s hand a bracing squeeze. “You’re doing everything right.”
“It’s been three months since they’ve seen Peter. He hasn’t even bothered to call them.”
“You’re doing everything right,” Kate repeated. “You’re not responsible for the asshole. She knows you’re not to blame—inside she knows that.”
“I hope so.” Laura shrugged and picked at a piece of chicken. “Kayla just bounces and Ali broods. Well, I guess we’re a textbook example that kids can grow up in the same house and be raised by the same people and turn out differently.”
Kate’s stomach wrenched.
“True.” Margo had a low-grade urge for a cigarette, quashed it. “But we’re all so fabulous. Well . . .” She smiled sweetly at Kate. “Most of us.”
“Just for that, I’m eating the last piece of chicken.” Kate popped a couple of Tums first. Medication helped her to eat when she had no desire for food. Nervous heartburn, she thought of the low burn just under her breastbone. Insisted on thinking of it that way. “I was telling Margo that I’d be able to pitch in at the shop on Saturdays.”
“We could use the help.” Laura shifted so she could continue the conversation and keep an eye on her daughters. “Last Saturday was a madhouse, and I could only give Margo four hours.”
“I can put in a full day.”
“Wonderful.” Margo plucked some glossy grapes from a bunch. “You’ll be hunkered over the computer the whole time, trying to find mistakes.”
“If you didn’t make them, I wouldn’t have to find them. But . . .” She held up a hand, not so much to avoid the argument as to make a point. “I’ll stay at the counter, and I have twenty bucks that says I make more sales than you by the time we close.”
“In your dreams, Powell.”
On Monday morning, Kate wasn’t thinking about dreams or treasure hunts. At nine sharp, with her third cup of coffee at her elbow, her computer booted, she was behind her desk in her office at Bittle and Associates. Following her daily routine, she had already removed her navy pin-striped jacket, draped it behind her chair, and rolled up the sleeves of her starched white shirt.
The sleeves would be rolled back down and the jacket neatly buttoned into place for her eleven o’clock meeting with a client, but for now it was just Kate and numbers.
And that was how she liked it best.
The challenge of making numbers dance and shuffle and fall neatly into place had always fascinated her. There was a beauty in the ebb and flow of interest rates, T-bills, mutual funds. And a power, she could privately admit, in understanding, even admiring, the caprice of finance, and confidently advising clients how best to protect their hard-earned money.
Not that it was always hard-earned, she thought with a snort as she studied the account on her screen. A good many of her clients had earned their money the old-fashioned way.
They’d inherited it.
Even as the thought crossed her mind, she cringed. Was that her father in her, sneering at those who had inherited wealth? Taking a deep breath, she rubbed a hand over the tense spot in the back of her neck. She had to stop this, seeing ghosts around every thought in her head.
It was her job to advise and protect and to ensure that any account she handled through Bittle was served well. Not only was she not envious of her clients’ portfolios, she worked hand in glove with lawyers, bookkeepers, brokers, agents, and estate planners to provide each and every one of them the very best in short- and long-term financial advice.
That, she reminded herself, was who she was.
What she reveled in was the numbers, their stoic and dependable consistency. For Kate two and two always and forever equaled four.
To realign herself, she skimmed through a spreadsheet for Ever Spring Nursery and Gardens. In the eighteen months since she had taken over that account, she’d watched it slowly, cautiously expand. She believed strongly in the slow and the cautious, and this client had taken her direction well. True, the payroll had swelled, but the business justified it. Outlay for the health plan and employee benefits was high and nipped at the profit margin, but as a woman raised by the Templetons, she also firmly believed in sharing success with the people who helped you earn it.
“A good year for bougainvillea,” she muttered, and made a note to suggest that her client ease some of the last quarter’s profits into tax-free bonds.
Render unto Caesar, sure, she thought, but not one damn penny more than necessary.
“You look beautiful when you’re plotting.”
Kate glanced up, her fingers automatically hitting the keys to store her data and bring up her screen saver. “Hello, Roger.”
He leaned against the doorjamb. Posed, was Kate’s unflattering thought. Roger Thornhill was tall, dark, and handsome, with classic features reminiscent of Cary Grant in his prime. Broad shoulders fit beautifully under a tailored gray suit jacket. He had a quick, brilliant smile, dark-blue eyes that zeroed in flatteringly on a woman’s face, and a smooth baritone that flowed like melted honey.
Perhaps it was for all of those reasons that Kate couldn’t abide him. It was only coincidence that they were on the same fast track for partnership. That, she assured herself often, had nothing to do with why he annoyed her.
Or just a very little to do with it.
“Your door was open,” he pointed out and strolled in without invitation. “I figured you weren’t very busy.”
“I like my door open.”
He flashed that wide, toothy smile and eased a hip onto the corner of her desk. “I just got back from Nevis. A couple of weeks in the West Indies sure clears out the system after the tax crunch.” His gaze roamed over her face. “You should have come with me.”
“Roger, when I won’t even have dinner with you, why would you think I’d spend two weeks frolicking with you in the sand and surf?”
“Hope springs eternal?” He took one of the pencils, sharpened like swords, from her Lucite holder, slid it idly through his fingers. Her pencils were always sharpened and always kept in the same place. There was nothing in her office that didn’t have a proper slot. He knew all of them. An ambitious man, Roger made use of what he knew.
He also made use of charm, keeping his eyes on hers, smiling. “I’d just like us to get to know each other again, outside the office. Hell, Kate, it’s been almost two years.”
Deliberately, she raised an eyebrow. “Since?”
“Okay, since I messed things up.” He put the pencil down. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how else to say it.”
“Sorry?” Voice mild, she rose to refill her coffee, though the third cup wasn’t sitting well. She sat again, watching him as she sipped. “Sorry that you were sleeping with me and one of my clients at the same time? Or that you were sleeping with me in order to get to my client? Or that you seduced said client into moving her account from my hands to yours? Which of those are you apologizing for, Roger?”
“All of them.” Because it invariably worked with females, he tried the smile again. “Look, I’ve already apologized countless times, but I’m willing to do it again. I had no business seeing Bess, ah, Mrs. Turner, much less sleeping with her, while you and I were involved. There’s no excuse for it.”
“We agree. Good-bye.”
“Kate.” His eyes stayed on hers, his voice flowing, just the way she remembered it had when she had moved under him, climbing toward climax. “I want to make things right with you. At least make peace with you.”
She cocked her head, considered. There was right and there was wrong. There were ethics and there was the lack of them. “No.”
“Damn it.” With his first sign of temper, he stood up from the desk, the movement jerky and abrupt. “I was a son of a bitch. I let sex and ambition get in the way of what was a good, satisfying relationship.”
“You’re abs
olutely right,” she agreed. “And you didn’t know me well the first time around if you have any hope that I’d let you repeat the performance.”
“I stopped seeing Bess months ago, on a personal level.”
“Oh, well, then.” Leaning back in her chair, Kate enjoyed a good, rolling laugh. “Jesus Christ, you’re a case, Roger. You think because you’ve cleared the field, I’m going to suit up and jump into the game? We’re associates,” she told him, “and that’s all. I’m never going to make the mistake of getting involved with someone at work again, and I’m never—repeat, never—going to give you another shot.”
His mouth thinned. “You’re afraid to see me outside the office. Afraid because you’d remember how good we were together.”
She had to sigh. “Roger, we weren’t that good. My appraisal would put us at adequate. Let’s just close the books on this one.” In the interest of sanity, she rose, held out her hand. “You want to put it behind us, let’s. No hard feelings.”
Intrigued, he studied her hand, then her face. “No hard feelings?”
No feelings at all, she thought, but decided not to say it. “Fresh sheet,” she said. “We’re colleagues, marginally friendly. And you’ll stop pestering me about having dinner or taking trips to the West Indies.”
He took her hand. “I’ve missed you, Kate. Missed touching you. All right,” he said quickly when he saw her eyes narrow, “if that’s the best I can do, I’ll take it. I appreciate your accepting my apology.”
“Fine.” Struggling to be patient, she tugged her hand away. “Now I’ve got work to do.”
“I’m glad we worked this out.” He was smiling again as he walked to the door.
“Yeah, right,” she muttered. She didn’t slam the door behind him. That would have indicated too much emotion. She didn’t want Roger the slime Thornhill, to get the idea there was any emotion inside her where he was concerned.
But she did close the door, quietly, purposefully, before sitting back down at her desk. She took out a bottle of Mylanta, sighed a little, and chugged.